We were living down in San Diego when you and I were both professors at UC San Diego and we had moved into a house and I found a pair of glasses a pair of reading glasses in a closet and you know we asked around you know did any of the grandparents leave some glasses behind nobody seemed to know who they were so we finally just decided like well I guess the people who moved out of the house just left a pair of glasses you know in this in the back of this closet and then I tried the glasses on and I looked at my phone up close and was just like oh my god wait a second I didn't realize how blurry my near vision was and this is back I was about 40 42 something like that so so I didn't even realize until I put on the readers and these were you know 1.25 magnifiers you know so also mild yeah fairly mild ones yeah and I'll tell you I got addicted because who doesn't like good vision right right I mean oh my god now I can make the type smaller on my phone I can you know it was wonderful and you can relax a bit I mean the musculature that's responsible for for moving the lens and focus in the eye and then all this extraocular musculature and we forget I mean I'm definitely going crow's feet around my eyes probably because I you know squint or something but you know just the ability to relax one's face it just feels like you know more more energy I feel like can be devoted to what we're actually looking at yeah I'm not making light of this yeah well pretty soon I just kept that one pair of glasses with me all the time and I would just keep them in a pocket and whip them out whenever I was you know working at near using my phone at a little greater distance like a typical computer distance I could still see the computer fine so it really started for like kind of that close-up phone it was it was I could get into here but not all the way into here and yeah and then pretty soon I was just totally addicted and so you know then I had to go buy ten pairs and leave them one by the bedside table you know one in the car one in the computer bag one on every desk I work at yeah because I'd leave them anywhere and forget them and that way I could just yeah exactly you know yeah so yeah so whether using the readers accelerates the progression of dependence on the readers is still not you know it's still up for debate you know some studies say maybe yes some studies say maybe no but certainly psychologically we get addicted to good easy vision and if you don't have to squint and you're if you're not straining your muscles and all of a sudden the text on your phone looks crisper again boy that's addictive you're you're gonna like good vision and so it feels like you're getting dependent and how much of that is changing the eye muscles and how much of that is just the psychology of wanting to have good vision I think probably the jury's a little bit out on that point but point being you're either either way your dependence will grow and as you continue to age 40s 50s up until about 60 65 the ability to shape that lens gets weaker and weaker and weaker and so you need to move from the 0.5 to the 1.0 to the 1.5 and to the coke bottle to the coke well thankfully not you eventually max out at about plus 2.5 or plus 3 because that's the amount of extra refractive power that you need in magnifiers to take the equivalent of your infinity viewing and bring it up to 14 inches to read it near basically you need a plus 3 and then you don't need any lens eye muscle action whatsoever so you kind of max out around 2.5 or 3 so because most people will hit this somewhere in their 40s this sort of like gosh I'm having trouble on the phone I think most people actually use that that's like kind of the first time for a lot of people they're like well I guess I should go to the eye office right see the optometrist or maybe ophthalmologist and when they go in they should be getting the standard in either of those offices will be to give you a full screening exam most people will hit this somewhere in their 40s, this sort of like, gosh, I'm having trouble on the phone.

I think most people actually use that. That's like kind of the first time for a lot of people. They're like, well, I guess I should go to the eye office, right? See the optometrist or maybe ophthalmologist. And when they go in, they should be getting the standard in either of those offices will be to give you a full screening exam, including maybe it's the puff test or a blue light test or a little pen that can check your eye pressure and having a look inside and seeing if your retina and optic nerve look healthy.

It's kind of screening for all the main diseases. And they'll tell you at that point, hey, you'll look great if you feel like your glasses aren't doing it for you in a year or three years, come back. Or they might say, hey, I've detected something. I'm worried about you.

And they'll set up a routine for your ongoing eye care. I'm worried about you. And I'll see you later. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Music by Ben Thede