What does the "power" part in your contact lenses prescription mean?!
Question:
What does the "power" part in your contact lenses prescription mean?
You know where it says power and it'll give you a number like -2.75? what does that mean?? from both ends of the spectrum is the negative(-) symbol for people with bad eyes and the positive(+) for people with good eyes? My eyes are a negative number and i'm wondering if the higher up you go on the negative bar the worse your eyes are?
Answers:
The power is the strength of the lenses. There are (-) and (+) prescriptions. Neither is better than the other. (-) are people are nearsighted, or they cannot see far, also known as myopic. (+) people are farsighted, or they cannot see near, or hyperopic. People with a minus prescription have lenses that are very thin in the center and are very thick at the edge. This causes their lenses to minify their eyes behind their glasses. People with a plus prescription have lenses that are very thick in the centers and are very thin at the edges. This causes their glasses to magnify their eyes behind their glasses.
The higher up you go in either direction, the worse your eyes are in either case. A person with a -5.00, and a person with a +5.00 both have bad eyes, its just a different type of correction that they require to get them to 20/20.
If you have a (+) or (-) power, followed by another (+) or (-) number, that means that you have an astigmatism. This is a condition that most people have. It simply means that your cornea isn't round, like it should be and is more cylindrical. For that reason, the power is sometimes abbreviated as cyl. This causes blurriness and squinting at all distances, near and far. And the same applies with the cyl - the higher the number, the worse it is.
Hope this helps!