Hi Moogeneric,

I noticed that you glasses question got lost In the visual vertigo thread. Anyway, I feel for you as I went through this. I had glasses which I never wore. One eye had great vision, the other crap, and the good eye would compensate for the bad one. I realised some time in to all this dizzy crap that, without glasses I was making it harder for myself to compensate. My brain already had a lot to contend with working out the duff signals from my ear, throwing off vision in to the mix wasn't helping. Long story short, I tried wearing my glasses and it was hell. At this point, they were, anyway, the wrong prescription, my eyesight had got worse. I opted for contacts - as far as I know this is an easier calculation for the brain to do - they are up against the eyeball - there's no glass and frame to take in to consideration.

It was horrible getting used to them but I just stuck it out for about a week and things improved. I also believe it improved my compensation process in the long run. In your shoes, I would get some more contact lenses in the correct prescription and tough it out. There's no question you're going to want to chuck them in the bin with frustration, but if you keep going you will eventually get there. If you change your glasses prescription to the correct one, it's going to be the same ordeal as the contacts. The reason you feel better in your glasses with the wrong prescription is simply because your brain is used to them.

Your only alternative is to wear your glasses with the wrong prescription - which I do think, long term, isn't helping you. In fact it could well be one of the factors slowing down or impeding your recovery. Even if your dizziness improves despite the wrong glasses prescription, you're only going to have to go through this process further down the line, as your brain is going to compensate whilst wearing the wrong glasses prescription and at some point you will have to adapt to the new prescription when the bad eyesight starts to drive you mad or give you headaches. If you have vestibular damage, you will always have it, so it's always going to be hard. Personally I think it's better to get it out of the way now, whilst your still very dizzy, rather than improve and then find yourself slipping back when you have to mess with the change in prescription further down the line.

I don't mean to be a doom monger - you WILL adapt to the contact lenses with the correct prescription, it's just going to be harder for you than others. A friend of mine with no vestibular disorder changed her prescription recently and felt crap for 2 days. Most people struggle with it, just dizzy people struggle more than others.

One other thing. If you change your glasses prescription to the correct one, you may have some problems switching btwn the glasses and the contacts. Even if the prescription is ostensibly the same in contacts and glasses, there is a slight difference btwn the two and therefore a slightly different calculation for the brain to do. I'm afraid I have no answers for this dilemma. I have worn solely contacts for a year - I got daily disposables and am very very careful about hygiene with them as I wear them so much. Recently I've tried wearing my glasses at home occasionally, I hate it as I feel off in them, but I have noticed it is getting slightly better.

Hope this helps,

best,

hbep

Hi hbep,

Thank you very much for taking the time to reply to my dilemma. I agree I should just stick with it and deal with the extra dizziness from the correct prescription now, while I'm already dizzy, rather than doing it later when I'm better, and then freaking out about what I would probably think is a relapse. And besides, who knows when I'll ever get "better." At least now, I'll be able to see further. :cool:

I actually went ahead and popped my contacts in about halfway through the day yesterday, and again, it was a weird ride 'til I took them out at bedtime. I have them on again today... my eyes feel like marbles and it feels as though I float down the stairs, but I'll hang in there. I figured it'll be tougher for me to adapt than most "normal" people, so as you said, I'm giving it a week and will be holding on to my old glasses 'til then, just as an emergency back-up. I normally wear - er, wore? - contacts all the time, too, so the switch from contacts to glasses and back sometime down the line won't be too much of an issue, hopefully.

"I also believe it improved my compensation process in the long run." <--I hope this will be the case for me as well! At this point, I expect most things as it relates to my condition to happen "in the long run," but as long as compensation DOES occur, and the innate dizziness finally decides to go away and leave me alone, I'm happy.

By the way, my weird headaches have been creeping back, so I've been giving my ENT's non-commital-pseudo-diagnosis-non-diagnosis-guess of MAV some more thought, and am now 40% considering migraine meds. Ack. If I'm not severely confused, hbep, you had recently started on meds for MAV without any noticeable improvement, correct? I'm really interested in your progress, so please keep us posted. Thanks again for your input!

I wear glasses myself and have been having some lightheadedness issues sine the end of June. In Sept I got a pair of glasses, they changed the lenses from regular plastis to the "new improved featherweight" big mistake. Since I was already having some dizzies, when I got the new glasses the dizzies were worse but I never associated it with the glasses because the prescription was exactly the same. I was getting dizzy when I drove, dizzy if I turned my head from side to side, nausea too. I came across an article on another site and said some persons cannot adjust to the featherweight form the plastic. After a month or so of problems I took the glasses back and they switched the lenses and voila back to the regular dizzies I had before. Sandra

Hello

Re - If I'm not severely confused, hbep, you had recently started on meds for MAV without any noticeable improvement, correct?

Yup, correct, it's too soon to tell whether they're helping. Can take a while to kick in, I'll keep you posted. My feeling now, after 2 and a half yrs of this, is if there's any chance it's MAV, then you have nothing to lose by trying the drugs. You do have something to lose by waiting, namely you try the drugs months down the line, realise they work, and think why the heck did I spend months and months dizzy when these drugs could have knocked it on the head. The only real way to find out if it's MAV is through the response you have to the drugs - it's a process of exclusion, if the MAV drugs work then it's migraine.

best,

hbep