Why squinting helps vision

Depending on the condition of your eye, the level of astigmatism, and the thickness of the cornea, LASIK results are often better than what people get with glasses or contact lenses. One of the problems with glasses and contact lenses is that, over time, our eyes continue to change and we end up needing new prescriptions.

This often means more costs in the long run. Imagine never having to squint to help you focus again! Only your doctor can say for sure. For more information about LASIK surgery , or to schedule a consultation and evaluation , call or email us today. It's not that the place was busy, in fact the bartender was waiting for me. But I'd forgotten my glasses, so reading the tap list—hung high on the back wall—was slow going, even though it was written in six-inch chalk letters.

Just before I made my choice, I caught a glance of myself in the back mirror. I was squinting like a sea captain steering through a gale. With wide open eyes, the list would have been unreadable. Why do people squint to see better? For the longest time, I thought squeezing my eyelids somehow reshaped my faulty eyeballs. And while squinting does slightly change the shape of your lenses, the real answer has to more to do with the back of your eye than the front.

Your eye is like a camera, and blurriness comes mostly from the way it captures and processes light. This light, in particular, requires the lenses to straighten it out so it can focus on the retina.

Less peripheral light means less light for the eyes to deal with. Besides having less light rays to focus on the retina, squinting also slightly changes the shape of the eyes.

This small shift may, in fact, help vision acuity by affecting how the light is filtered. If the eyes are compressed in a squint, the light rays are apt to focus more precisely near the center of the retina.

Although squinting may help you see a little better, this small adjustment should not be considered a cure. Squinting may be an indication that you need corrective lenses. An exam will show the exact type of prescription that would address your vision problem. This would then determine the type of curvature that should be used to create your own personal eyeglasses. The type of curve in the lenses of eyeglasses is the main way in which vision can be improved.