Vision - use of glasses and neck pain

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chriskurton
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Joined: 30 Apr 2017, 5:10pm

Vision - use of glasses and neck pain

Post by chriskurton »

When cycling I have the problem of having to raise my neck in order to look through my prescription glasses. This causes pain when cycling all day.
Does anyone know if there are glasses on the market that sit so that you actually look through them and not over the top?

I also have the problem in that I have quite a complex prescription, including prisms in my lenses to prevent double vision.

I can't seen to find anything on the internet, but as there must be lots of middle aged, glasses wearing cyclists out there, hopefully someone will point us all in the right direction.
Oldjohnw
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Re: Vision - use of glasses and neck pain

Post by Oldjohnw »

You can get varifocals now which accommodate differing needs. You would probably need more than one pair of glasses.
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mjr
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Re: Vision - use of glasses and neck pain

Post by mjr »

Sounds to me like your glasses haven't been fitted properly and the arms are too long.

(I've worn glasses 25 years and currently have both some little half-frameless rectangles and some aviators for longer days on the bike. I look through both of them.)
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NUKe
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Re: Vision - use of glasses and neck pain

Post by NUKe »

Souds like your prescription is quite specialized, Go see an optician and tell them you want sports glasses. There are different types there are the ones where the lens is an insert , and ones where the glases are made to your prescription. I would suggest using someone who offers second pair free. As you can take the sports glasses as your second pair.
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londoncommuter0000
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Re: Vision - use of glasses and neck pain

Post by londoncommuter0000 »

chriskurton wrote:When cycling I have the problem of having to raise my neck in order to look through my prescription glasses. This causes pain when cycling all day.
Does anyone know if there are glasses on the market that sit so that you actually look through them and not over the top?

I also have the problem in that I have quite a complex prescription, including prisms in my lenses to prevent double vision.

I can't seen to find anything on the internet, but as there must be lots of middle aged, glasses wearing cyclists out there, hopefully someone will point us all in the right direction.


I can but echo the views of the person who said that there's something wrong with your setup. I wear glasses and my bikes have drop bars, and I have no problems seeing through the speccies. Maybe look into the angle of your seat/stem/bars?
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foxyrider
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Re: Vision - use of glasses and neck pain

Post by foxyrider »

It sounds more like a position thing than a glasses thing tbh. Your specs might not be helping, do they sit down your schnozz or at the bridge? The former could certainly cause an issue.

I wear glasses all the time on the bike and have no issues looking through them. Occasionally I have to adjust their angle as they move a little while riding but i'm still looking through the lens.

If you have to raise your head to see, something is wrong in your set up and you need to get it sorted as soon as, it could be quite dangerous.
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anniesboy
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Re: Vision - use of glasses and neck pain

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ThePinkOne
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Re: Vision - use of glasses and neck pain

Post by ThePinkOne »

Depends on the vision correction required.

I have a complex prescription such that the High St "offers" never apply to me and for several years now I have gone to an excellent local independant optician who has the expertise to get my prescription right- both in measuring and dispensing.

For complex prescriptions, it's not just about the lense correction- dispensing is critical as it can be about additional stuff like centering the lense in the frame properly, and taking account of the frame position on the face. As I was once told by the dispensing optician in the practice- "with your prescription, being a couple of mm further away from the standard distance [used when specifying the presciption] can make a couple of dioptres difference for you when you wear the glasses." They first fit the frame to my face, then take centres and details for the lenses.

Lens material and size can be important- I get special high refractive index material lenses and relatively small lens size, this minimises distortion and thickness and improves field of view. I must say, the specialist lenses have come on massively in the past 30 years or so, these days the edge distortion and reflections at night is minimal in my "worst" eye and gone totally in the better one.

However. Neither those "Sports glasses" nor wrap-around safety glasses are available for my prescription- not only from the off-the-shelf people, but also, at the specialist place I go, over a period of a couple of months they experimented with trying to get the wrap-around-with-insert type to work for my precription- and eventually had to admit defeat. I can get one type of safety glasses (traditional frame with side shields type and comes at a cost) however I find in practice that most of the time I prefer to wear usual glasses with overglasses, especially as my new hard-hat has built-in overglasses attached to the helmet.

The only face screen I found worked on the bike was a helmet with a pull-down screen- but only a couple of brands work as they need to be far ennough from the face to accommodate glasses.

The only solution to the OP's issue I found was to change my position to more upright- or use a recumbent.

I have to admit, it annoys me when spectacle wearers with non-complex prescriptions tell me I can adopt all sorts of options; I have had that a lot over the years with "advice" on safety glasses plus battles with HR departments to get them to provide the specialist safety glasses I require- whereas if you have a complex prescription, it's not as simple as the "standard solutions".

TPO
peterb
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Re: Vision - use of glasses and neck pain

Post by peterb »

My optician asked me what sort of bike I rode and asked me to adopt my cycling position when setting up the position of the varifocal lenses being ordered for the inserts in my cycling glasses. He'd obviously done it before. His charges were very reasonable too - so much so that the business became insolvent and closed down not long after - a great loss!
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