Lens Treatments

The official recommendations for the American and Canadian Optometric Associations are that infants should have their first eye exams at 6 months. Following that, children with no known vision issues should have another exam at 3 years and then prior to entering kindergarten. Children who do not require vision correction or therapy should have a vision checkup every year or two years and those who use vision correction should have an annual eye exam. Of course if your child is experiencing difficulty in school or after school activities that may be due to a vision problem schedule an eye exam immediately.

But did you know the same, serious approach to protecting your skin also applies to your eyes?

UV protection is critical to eye health

Eye exposure to ultraviolet rays can cause damage your eyes. Over time, UV can contribute to serious age-related eye conditions or diseases. That’s why wearing lenses with maximum UV protection is so very important. Because UV rays are always present outdoors—on sunny days, cloudy days and every day in between.

Unlike sunscreen that you apply and reapply, eyeglass lenses and sunglasses can have ultraviolet protection built into the lens, or applied as a lens treatment. Remember, although UV is invisible to the human eye, it is always present. Your lenses, therefore, should always provide UV protection.

The most important thing you need to know about UV glasses is this: Be certain your eyewear provides near or exactly 100% UV protection against both UVA and UVB rays. Anything less is less than ideal for the short and long-term protection of your healthy sight.

There’s no such thing as scratch-proof lenses. (Even glass lenses can be scratched!) Scratches, while not likely to affect your lens performance, are an annoyance that can interfere with clear vision. That’s why you should always request scratch resistant lenses (treatment) for your eyeglass lenses.

Many of today’s lens products have hard scratch-resistant protection built into the lens—a hard surface treatment that is specifically designed to resist scratches. But it’s not an automatic feature! Be sure to discuss scratch resistant glasses options with your eye care professional.

We put our glasses through a lot from day to day—and our children, even more so. Scratch resistant lenses can go a long way toward minimizing the everyday wear and tear we put on our eyewear.

Lens care for scratch-resistant glasses

Don’t forget, no treatment can completely protect eyeglass lenses from scratches. But you can help out! Remember to keep your glasses in a cushioned, sturdy case when not wearing them. Clean them regularly with warm, soapy water and dry them with a clean, soft cloth. With scratches as with life, a little extra care goes a long, long way.

More comfort. Better vision. Reduced glare from oncoming headlights. Greater cosmetic appeal. It might be hard to believe, but anti-reflective lenses can provide all of these benefits—as an add-on for any number of lens products. The same technology used to provide anti-reflective benefits to precision lenses in microscopes and cameras, is now available to enhance your healthy sight.

An anti-reflective treatment applied on the front and the back of prescription lenses greatly reduces the light reflected by the lens surfaces. As a result, your eyes appear clearer behind the lenses, vision is more defined, and glare from reflected objects—especially headlights at night—is virtually eliminated. Plus, if you have a high-powered “strong” prescription, anti-reflective coating makes your eyes appear more natural.

Lens care for scratch-resistant glasses

Carefully calibrated layers of metal oxides are applied to the front and the back of the lenses. Each of these layers is designed to block reflected light. That includes glare, annoying reflections, and the hazy “halos” you often see around lights at night.

Take special care to use only the cleaning agents recommended by your eye care professional, as anti-reflective treatments are delicate by design. They work well for sunglasses too—but as a general rule should only be applied to the back side of the lens to eliminate glare reflected around the sides of the frame.