You are likely just like many adults suffering from low vision acuity in low light settings like, nighttime driving, TV, Movies, theaters… BUT, did you know that one simple habit could help preserve your night vision?
That’s right, putting on a high quality sun lens when you go out into bright daylight, can help preserve your night vision. In fact, for every 10 minutes of bright daylight you are exposed to, you need 20-40 minutes for the daylight “bleached” pigment of the rod cells (rhodopsin) to recover your night acuity. Over time this recovery slows or lessens to a degree of noticeably poor vision in darkened spaces and night driving.
Everyone knows to wear full spectrum UVA/UVB protected lenses to reduce the harmful invisible light rays from damaging the back of the eye (retina), but not everyone recognizes that even the visible light that creates your day-vision, when unfiltered or too bright, can also cause damage to the cells of the eye.
Want to know why your child is afraid of the dark? It is because during unprotected outside playtime in bright daylight, their light receptor cells are being “bleached” and this makes night-time feel extra dark to children and causes night driving acuity to be poor for adults at younger ages than their counterparts that wear sunglasses routinely.
The good news is, wearing quality, light-filtering sunglasses year-round during the brightest times of the day, at all ages, may well help you preserve the activation time of your night vision and future night vision acuity. Only rock-stars on bright stages need to wear sunglasses at night, but the rest if us would do well to remember that while not all light is harmful to our vision, improperly filtered light definitely is, and it has long-term implications for our vision acuity in all lighting conditions. So, wear your sunglasses, protect your kids, and give the gift of better night vision to the whole family this year.