Have you ever gone to order your contact lenses online and never noticed the minus (-) or plus (+) sign on the box? And only realised you’d bought the wrong lenses after putting them in? Don’t worry — it happens to everyone. Mixing up the sign on your prescription seems to be the most common mistake among contact lens wearers, whether they’re new to lenses or long-term users.
That’s why today we want to share some useful information about myopia and long-sightedness, and hopefully help you with your next order.
Myopia and Long-Sightedness: clearing up the confusion
Both common but distinct visual conditions, myopia and long-sightedness are refractive errors — abnormalities of the eye that make it difficult to focus light on the retina.
In simple terms, people with myopia can see clearly up close but have blurry distance vision, and tend to squint to see objects better. It is the most common vision defect, with a significant proportion of the population affected. The reason? The eye is longer than normal, so the image of objects doesn’t form perfectly on the retina — it forms in front of it, causing a blurry image.
What about long-sightedness? In people with long-sightedness (hyperopia), the focusing point falls beyond the retina, usually due to a shorter eyeball. As a result, close-up vision is poor while distance vision is better.
It’s a visual defect that can go almost unnoticed if it’s mild, thanks to the effort of the eye muscles and the lens. However, headaches and eye strain while reading can be a red flag.
The symptoms shouldn’t be confused
Working out which condition you have is a job for the specialists: your ophthalmologist or optometrist can, after an eye exam, determine whether you have myopia or long-sightedness and the dioptric value needed to correct it, through glasses or contact lenses.
In the meantime, it’s worth having a clearer picture of the symptoms that go with each condition so you can recognise them. The most common symptoms for both are headaches and eye fatigue.
Myopia
As mentioned above, myopia gives itself away through blurry, distorted vision when looking at things in the distance — such as a road sign when driving.
Long-sightedness
Long-sightedness, on the other hand, causes unclear vision of nearby objects with consequent eye strain: symptoms range from fatigue when reading to headaches, dizziness, blurred vision, nausea, tiredness, and burning eyes.
How do we correct them?
We can easily correct both myopia and long-sightedness with prescription glasses or contact lenses — the latter offering a wider field of vision across the whole visual field. On your prescription, or on your last box of contact lenses, alongside the dioptric value you’ll find a minus sign (-) for myopia correction, or a plus sign (+) for long-sightedness correction. If in doubt, take a look at our how-to page for entering your prescription.
Now that we know the difference between these two visual conditions and which prescription sign we need, we can head to Lenstore.ie and place our next order.
At Lenstore you’ll find the best soft contact lenses for correcting both myopia and long-sightedness: daily, fortnightly, and monthly contact lenses. And if you’re still not completely sure, you can contact us and our optical advisers will be happy to guide you through your order step by step.