Can I Wear Reading Glasses Over My Regular Glasses?
It’s a common experiment: you buy drug-store readers and put them over your distance glasses. And then everything goes swimmingly weird.
Why "Double-Glazing" Fails
Mathematically, it should work: Distance Prescription + Reading Power = Clear Near Vision. But physically, it fails because of Vertex Distance.
Glasses are designed to sit about 12-14mm from your cornea. When you stack a second pair on top, the outer pair sits way too far out (20-30mm+). This creates:
- Keyhole Effect: Your field of view shrinks dramatically.
- Magnification Distortion: Objects look warped around the edges (pincushion distortion).
- Induced Prism: The optical centers don't align, straining your eye muscles to prevent double vision.
✅ What DOES Work: Readers + Contacts
Wearing reading glasses over contact lenses works perfectly. Why? Because the contacts sit directly on your eye (0mm vertex distance), correcting your distance vision first. The reading glasses then add simple magnification exactly where it's supposed to be.
The Best Solution Isn't More Glass
Whether you wear contacts + readers or progressives, you are still relying on external lenses to do the work your eyes used to do. As your presbyopia advances, these prescriptions just get stronger.
There is a third option: Neuro-adaptation.
Brain Training + Lighter Prescription
By using Visionary to train with Gabor patches, you improve your brain's ability to interpret blurry images. This typically results in:
- Needing reading glasses less often (e.g., only for tiny print).
- Being able to use lower-power readers (+1.00 instead of +2.00).
- Restored ability to read menus in restaurants without any glasses.