sunglasses

[Sly]

Hi there

2013 is a great year for me, I read Born to Run, ran a barefoot half-marathon and realised how the "popular wisdom" can be wrong sometimes. You know as much as I do that when you run barefoot, people tell you you are wrong and want you to wear shoes again, kind of heavy social pressure. You also agree, for most of you, that shoes created a lot of problems for runners.

This made me think a lot in the last few months.

Today I was wondering about sunglasses. I never had sunglasses, dunno why, but its a fact, and too many times had know-it-all friends telling me I was killing my eyes and really should buy some. (I should mention that I dont live on Mt. Everest but in Portugal, where there is no snow at all). I never thought about this before today, so I dont have any idea about the subject. But would it be possible that sunglasses are as good for the eyes than shoes for the feet ?

It's just a question, not an affirmation, maybe some of you already thought about it ?
In only 2 minutes, google showed me that :
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/fashion-news/can-sunglasses-give-you-skin-997163

Cheers

 

[Longboard]

http://thebarefootrunners.org/threads/how-do-they-run-without-sunglasses.7395/

 

[Sly]

ok I 'm new here,
forgot about the search function

 

[Longboard]

Well welcome again!
And remember, almost nobody bothers with search.
It would be pretty boring here if folks did!
And I'm sure plenty of new stuff will be added to the conversation now that it has been refreshed here.
Great topic, and thanks for bringing it back for our consideration.

 

[barefootn]

Wearing sunglasses is like wearing orthotics. The eyes were designed to adjust to varying light.
I used to have a book "See without glasses" The Bates method. I believe one of the exercises involved sweeping your eyes across the sun (not staring at it). This would strengthen the iris's response. People who wear sunglasses all the time become dependent on them.

 

[Hobbit]

It is quite possible to train the eyes' capacity to adapt to different degrees of sun glare.
Here is another one: Everyday, exactly at sunrise or sunset, go outside and look at the sun (without any sight correction devices and not through a glass window) for a couple of seconds: begin with five seconds and the next day make it 6 seconds and so on. When you have progressed to a couple of minutes (always and exclusively early in the morning or late in the evening!!) you'll remark that you need much less wearing your sunglasses during the day.
At sunrise and sunset the sun's glare isn't yet dangerous but a good training tool for adaptation. You should not do this however for longer than 30 minutes after sunrise or 30 minutes before sunset, nor at any other moment of the day!!

 

[ArcticDuplo]

I think there may be some merit, but it is very dependent on region and conditions.
Where I live we have issues with people not wearing them enough and kids getting permanent eye injuries from not wearing them.
Even the old inuits used to wear "sunglasses" made from animal bones to prevent eye injuries.

 

[Longboard]

I don't mind wearing sunglasses, just like some people don't mind wearing shoes all day. I am a contact lens user, so the added protection from tiny foreign particles I appreciate as well. And at age 60, I need a close-up reading correction over the contacts anyways, so I have that built in to my very light weight progressive sun readers. I even wear them on cloudy days to enjoy all those benefits while not having to wear heavy highly distorted glasses that would be necessary otherwise to correct for my astigmatism, myopia, and presbyopia.

 

[Hobbit]

I think there may be some merit, but it is very dependent on region and conditions.
Where I live we have issues with people not wearing them enough and kids getting permanent eye injuries from not wearing them.
Even the old inuits used to wear "sunglasses" made from animal bones to prevent eye injuries.

Of course you're absolutely right! There will always be extreme situations where you shouldn't be without sunglasses.
But as Sly stated, he doesn't live in a snowy region...

 

[ArcticDuplo]

Of course you're absolutely right! There will always be extreme situations where you shouldn't be without sunglasses.
But as Sly stated, he doesn't live in a snowy region...

You can ofcourse find regions or conditions where not wearing sunglasses in sunlight is not damaging to your eyes. I just wanted to point out that there is also a lot of situations where it makes sense to wear a pair.
Spending a lot of time with a camera, I tend to prefer a cap when I can get away with it, simply to have a more undistorted colour and contrast impression, but there are a lot of situations where sunglases makes sense.