Welcome to a weekly series on Traveling with Baby, Health Happy Round-Up which focuses on multiple aspects of wholesome living and optimal health for the entire family. Each weekend, Traveling with Baby will share some insightful news, recipes, and tips to help you consider fresh new perspectives on wholesome and happy health. If there’s a topic or recipe you’d like featured on Health Happy Round-Up, let me know! [drgarnecki at gmail dot com].
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A few weeks ago, I wrote a Health Happy Round-Up post on Conquering Headaches. However, in that post, I failed to mention another common cause of headaches: eye strain.
When straining your eyes due to poor vision or squinting to reduce the amount of light that’s allowed through to the retina, often a headache may result. Sun glare and eye strain are common in areas where there’s a lot of reflection of light: snow covered ski slopes, the pool or other water areas, running on a wet surface, or driving while the glare of the hood pierces through the windshield.
How to Reduce Glare
Reducing glare isn’t as simple as shading your eyes with a hat or wearing any tinted glass or tinted plastic sunglasses. While a hat may provide some reduced glare from some angles, it won’t block out most of it. Most sunglasses that are tinted plastic lenses are simply that. They have a high refraction and no polarity to block out certain frequencies of light that can cause the most glare and resulting eye strain through prolonged exposure.
Simply put, that means you get what you pay for.
High refraction means that when you put on a pair of sunglasses and tilt your head side-ways, while looking at an object, and especially a light, you’ll see the image swell in size, then ebb. This is similar to looking at an object with a magnifying glass. The glass is curved, so it slightly distorts the shape of the image as the glass moves across it.
When it comes to sunglasses, you don’t want refraction. If everything you view while wearing sunglasses causes a bulging and waning of the image every time you turn your head or look in a different direction, not only will you get eye strain, but you might also get nauseous. No fun!
When I was in the military, I learned about both sound and light and frequencies in the visible and invisible spectrum. When light bounces off a flat surface like the road or the swimming pool, it creates a horizontal plane of light. It doesn’t scatter like the wind in several different directions. This horizontal-orientation results in what’s known as glare.
The reason television antennas and car radio antennas are shaped in a particular way are to “catch” the transmitting waves in the particular direction in which they travel. The same concept applies to light and blocking a specific light orientation with sunglasses.
Not all sunglasses can block this horizontal orientation. Polarized lenses are designed with a special filter to target blocking the horizontal-oriented glare light.
When Wearing Polarized Lenses Aren’t Too Helpful
When you’re looking at your GPS, computer screen, possibly your watch face, your digital camera playback mode, and most LED lit digital readouts.
Lifting up sunglasses in those instances usually isn’t a huge safety risk, unless you’re operating a motor vehicle at high speeds and you need to make split-second decisions. Personally, I don’t fall into that category, but a racecar driver would. Also, someone competing at X-Games would also fall into that category. Again, that’s not me. Not at all.
Finding the Perfect Pair of Polarized Sunglasses
I wanted a pair of sunglasses that enhanced my facial structure, reduced glare and had minimal refraction. I also wanted a pair that could take a beating (after all, I have a toddler running afoot), and weather my outdoor adventures for the long haul.
Bye bye, glare. Hello Native Eyewear!
Native Eyewear’s site features cool, polarized sunglasses in numerous styles and colors. Select a style, and you’ll be able to read right away whether the style is recommended for a small, medium, or large face profile.
I love the look of lenses that are almost frame-less. Less is definitely more.
The Dash SS by Native Eyewear is perfect for a small to medium profile. There’s no lower or side frame to reduce field of vision.
These rad glasses feature interchangeable lenses, Rhyno-Tuff air frames (they can take a beating), venting, (no foggy lenses), cushinol (comfy), and mastoid-temple grip (meaning they stay put). They come in a zippered hardshell carrying case with a spare pair of lenses, and a cord so you can securd them around your neck.
They’re comfy. No headache from the grip. No slippage on the nose piece.
They’re perfect for reducing glare whether I’m lounging by the pool or treking through the woods with my toddler on my back.
The Dash SS frames are available in platinum with copper reflex lenses, asphalt with silver reflex or blue reflex lenses, gunmetal with gray lenses, tiger’s eye with brown lenses (shown in the photo above), and maple tort with gray lenses.
These comfortable, beautiful, and sporty sunglasses also come with a lifetime guarantee. The Dash SS by Native retails for $129.
–By Dr. Dolly
Twitter me: drdolly
Filed under: Health Happy Round-Up, product review | Tagged: Carbonate lens sunglasses, Health Happy Round-Up, interchangeable lenses sunglasses, lifetime warranty on sunglasses, native eyewear, Polarized sunglasses
