How Blue Light Glasses Can Protect Your Vision

If you take a walk outside, observe your surroundings, then return inside and look at your screens, you may notice a distinct difference in the quality of the light. Over the long term, screen use can disrupt sleep and even damage vision. Are the benefits of blue light glasses glaringly obvious? Let’s take a look.

What is Blue Light?

Light falls on a spectrum of energy and wavelength. Blue light is a short wavelength of high energy emitted by screens. It can limit melatonin production, which is necessary for sleep, and we’re exposed to it daily. While blue light is more effective than green light at waking us up and improving our focus during the day, too much blue light can disturb sleep and has been linked to other health issues like diabetes, high blood pressure, and immune problems. Finding a balance and wearing lenses that mitigate the effects of blue light emitted from devices can help maintain healthy sleep patterns and overall well-being.

What does Blue Light do to your Vision & Body? 

Light signals to our body the day and night cycle. This cycle regulates our sleep, mood, and overall health. Our eyes detect light through a system called the non-image‒forming visual system.  Eyes detect light and send a signal to our brain, while rods and cones in our eyes help with vision. There has been a relatively new discovery called ipRGCs (a type of eye cell), which also plays a role in this process.  IpRGCs are sensitive to blue light (between 460 and 480 nanometers), adjust in size in response to light, and control things including our sleep-wake cycle, mood, and body temperature.

Blue light is not all bad. It can elevate moods, and keep us active and alert. However, in our modern lifestyles with more tablet use, many hours in front of computers and smartphones, we experience short-term and potential long-term effects on our vision. In the short term, many experience digital eye strain, also called computer vision syndrome, dry eyes, headaches, and blurred vision. While in the long term, there is risk for damage to the retina and can increase the risk of macular degeneration.  The use of a mitigator, like blue light glasses, can help protect vision in the long and short term.

Protect your Vision

To protect vision, experts recommend that you take a break every twenty minutes, and look at something for twenty seconds that is twenty feet away, and take steps to limit overexposure to blue light. Another way to protect vision is to use blue light glasses. Bluelight glasses may protect vision in the face of constant artificial light and screens.

How Blue Light Glasses Work & How You’ll Benefit From Them 

When you wear blue light glasses, there is a color overlay that reduces the high-energy blue light wavelengths and shifts the color towards the warmer end of the color spectrum. By shifting the color to a warmer tone the screen appears a more yellow or amber color and your brain processes the light differently, like natural light. Blue light glasses also have anti-reflective coatings to minimize glare. The benefits are multifactor.

If you want to reduce eye strain from office work, gaming, prolonged phone use, or use screens frequently at night, adding blue light glasses or a blue light coating to your frames can provide real health and well-being benefits. Bluelight glasses can improve sleep quality through the effect of melatonin production, reduce eye strain and fatigue related to blue light overexposure, and increase the comfort of screen use. Bluelight glasses may not create a world seen through “rose-colored glasses”, but its benefits are well documented and recognized.

Green Light on BlueLight Glasses

If you are giving the green light to purchase blue light glasses, there are as many styles or more as prescription and nonprescription glasses. There are nonprescription blue light glasses for those looking to protect their vision from blue light and prescription versions for those requiring glasses. Another option for those who have glasses is clip-on blue light blockers. If you are buying a new pair of glasses, there is also an option for blue light lenses. There are not a lot of reasons why not to add blue light protection to your list of must-haves in a new pair of glasses. 

Modern eye care for those who are regularly exposed to blue light includes blue light glasses, the 20-20-20 rule, proper lighting in your work setup, and adjusting screen use during the night. Annual eye checkups should also be part of your health routine and remember to visit an ophthalmologist if you experience prolonged headaches or pain behind your eyes. Vint & York offers Eyefend lenses designed to reduce eye strain caused by digital devices designed for the modern wearer. This unique line of lenses is made specifically for the contemporary wearer with lenses developed with the most advanced technology that offers maximum eye protection and filters more blue light than any standard lens. Learn more and shop here!