Is wearing sunglasses exclusively for an extended time bad for my eyes?

June 6, 2017 8:47 AM

I broke my bifocals and didn't have money to replace them so I started wearing my bifocal sunglasses. Six or seven months later I'm in the same prediciment. Is this bad?

The glasses are similar to these, from the same website. The yellow lenses are not blueblockers and pretty light. Normally I find sunglasses annoying (aside from practical situations, like driving) and these are light enough that I almost don't notice. I don't see the situation improving for another few months at least, but if this is going to cause real damage I'll try to figure something out. (I always have to wear them unless I'm in the shower, and unfortunately I'm beyond help from contacts.) YANMMD/DO

posted by Room 641-A to Health & Fitness (3 answers total)

You might experience some weirdness when you change back to normal glasses, the world might look really blue for a week or two.

Just to mention it, you can get bifocals from Zenni Optical for ~$20 plus ~$5 shipping. They also don't check if your prescription is current.
posted by gregr at 9:06 AM on June 6, 2017 [10 favorites]

When I was a kid in the 1980s, tinted lenses were all the rage, and people wore them all the time with no seeming ill-effects. Maybe it was a different kind of tinting than sunglasses? But it looked the same.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:09 PM on June 6, 2017

Best answer: You are at risk of minor improvement to your night vision, depending on how dark the sunglasses are. The darker the sunglasses, the more improvement to your night vision - and the less ability to cope with brightness without sunglasses. This will be transitory. Once you go back to clear lenses it will go away.

People who get cataract surgery, or have corneas replaced adapt from seeing through a not-crystal-clear lens so you will too.
posted by Jane the Brown at 4:17 AM on June 7, 2017 [1 favorite]