Our eyesight is key for survival. As an ophthalmologist, I see (pun intended) the importance of good vision every day.
The need for good eyesight becomes increasingly relevant when participating in sports, where visual acuity and contrast sensitivity play a major role. Visual acuity refers to the sharpness of your vision, measured by the ability to discern letters, numbers or figures at a given distance. 20/20 vision is the standard reference for very good visual acuity, whereby the individual can see clearly at 20 feet what “normally” should be seen at 20 feet. The objective of your eye physician is to improve your vision in each eye to 20/20 whenever possible.
Contact lenses tend to be the favored option for enhancing vision in sports. With custom fit contact lenses, correcting even for the smallest amount of astigmatism can make a huge difference. Both the quality of the contact lenses as well as the level of fitting expertise employed are crucial. An eye physician who specializes in contact lenses, with stellar expertise in correcting astigmatism and the axis of astigmatism, can provide athletes with unparalleled vision.
[Read: Keep an Eye on Your Eyes.]
Another variability with content lenses is their inherent water content. While participating in outdoor athletics, eyes tend to become dry and irritated, leading to discomfort and eyestrain. Naturally, these symptoms inevitably lead to decreased performance. Higher water content contact lenses, which enable more oxygen to penetrate the cornea, result in a healthier and more comfortable situation.
Previously, it was difficult to achieve the same level of vision with eye glasses as with contact lenses, a source of frustration for athletes in their 40s. Now, stellar new technologies in progressive lens and design exist with these premium lenses, such as Crizal, providing wearers with a competitive advantage in athletics, at work and while driving.
As we age, our eyes lose the ability to focus on close-up items, referred to as presbyopia. For generations, eyeglass wearers have switched to progressive lenses to see at all distances. For contact lens wearers, a comparable change is necessary to enable focusing for both driving and reading distances, unaided by glasses. The two main options for solving this dilemma are monovision contact lenses and multifocal contact lenses. With monovision contact lenses, patients have one eye corrected for distant vision and the other eye corrected for near vision. Multifocal contact lenses, on the other hand, concurrently correct for driving and reading in both eyes.
Monovision contact lenses have a host of disadvantages compared to their multifocal counterparts, including compromised distance vision and sub-optimal near vision. Worse yet, for the sports enthusiast, there is a glaring lack of depth perception, and significantly diminished peripheral field of vision which can impact performance. Compounding matters further, when patients eventually develop cataracts, monovision lenses become even more problematic, as decreased vision in the single eye being utilized for distance now becomes sacrificed further, and the single eye being utilized for near vision also diminishes and fatigues more readily. Participating in sports or exercise with the combination of incipient cataracts and utilizing monovision contacts can be frustrating and dangerous.
[See: 13 Foods That Do Your Eyes Good.]
Multifocal contact lenses are gaining remarkable popularity in the U.S. market due to advantageously superior distance and near vision, enhanced depth perception, and a full peripheral field of vision. Most eye physicians believe selecting a multifocal contact lens is a no-brainer, especially for patients who drive as well as sports enthusiasts. An exclusive disadvantage of multifocal contact lenses is that few contact lens specialists have the knowledge and expertise to successfully fit their patients with this superior technology, so consumer research is essential.
While maximizing level of visual acuity is of paramount importance, enhancing one’s contrast sensitivity can also be very helpful for athletes. Visual contrast sensitivity is the ability to perceive differences between an object and its background. In athletics, the level of contrast sensitivity can make a split-second difference, naturally impacting things like hitting, kicking or catching the ball. Some sports vision experts believe contrast sensitivity provides a better indicator of visual sharpness than visual acuity, which measures vision quality using perfect contrast in examining rooms with black letters on a white background. Specifically, visual acuity measures how well one can see a black cat on white snow, while contrast sensitivity ascertains one’s ability to see a white cat on white snow.
Very importantly, contrast sensitivity can be markedly improved by wearing eye glasses with certain features. Notably, having the newest digital lenses, such as Crizal embedded within single vision or progressive lenses, will increase contrast sensitivity by 20 percent. Furthermore, utilizing the newest digital lenses for single vision and also progressive lenses results in a 30 percent increase in contrast sensitivity. This allows athletes to distinguish between foreground from background, making colors brighter and details sharper.
Similar performance-enhancing benefits are prevalent in the better quality sunglasses. Optimally fabricated sunglasses with UV-400 blocker and polarization on both lens surfaces will dramatically increase contrast sensitivity for outdoor sports while protecting your eyes from the harmful effects of UV-light exposure and blue light emissions from the sun. Sunglass protection greatly reduces the incidence and severity of ocular diseases while providing crisper, sharper, clearer vision without glare.
[Read: The Importance of Getting Your Kids’ Vision Checked.]
Lastly, glasses, sunglasses and contact lenses can be ordered with different tints, depending on the specific type of sports participation. Skiers like yellow tints in their sunglasses, contact lenses and/or ski goggles because yellow yields increased contrast on snow surfaces, facilitating earlier recognition of dips, elevations or other ski slope issues. Sports enjoyed in bright sunlight, like golf, prompt participants to prefer a grey-green tint; recently, a violet tint has gained some traction among golfers, with proponents noting this tint provides visual cues to gauge the distance from the green and the grass conditions in between. Meanwhile, dark amber tint has long been a favorite of those playing softball, baseball and soccer. Bikers and runners on paved surfaces gravitate toward red-tinted lenses. Glasses and contact lenses can always be custom ordered to accommodate an athlete’s activities, thereby helping to enhance athletic performance.
Here’s the bottom line: Having the right eyewear can up your game. Invest in your glasses and contact lenses and see the results with optimal clarity, depth and dimension.
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The Link Between Good Eyesight and Sports Performance originally appeared on usnews.com
