We recommend to order in the same currency as the bank account used, since otherwise the bank may take commission on exchanging the currency for you. To change currency at Vision Direct, you can scroll to the very bottom of the home page and click the flag for Dollars (USD) or Sterling (GBP). For Euro (EUR), you can better go to our Irish website.
Particularly Small Ray-Ban sunglasses are returned because people have no idea of the size. When checking out Ray-Ban sunglasses online, it can be tricky to know what size or model will fit you. Buying them from Vision Direct means you get free track and trace shipping and you can return sunglasses free of charge in case they do not fit. We do, however, have some advice prior to buying them:
There has previously been a supply problem with the very popular Vision Direct Comfort Eye Drops.
Good news however, the supplier confirmed we can order them again.The comfort eye drops are therefore again live and available to purchase online!
Vision Direct is supporting Fight for Sight, the main charity in the UK dedicated to funding research preventing sight loss and treating eye diseases.
Donate just 50 or 99 pence to Fight for Sight when making an online purchase for eye care products such as contact lenses. It is easy to do – just one click when you check out. The goal is to donate £20,000. A counter measuring the current donations is available online.
About Fight for Sight
Achievements by Fight for Sight
According to Fight for sight, eye research is underfunded because fatal diseases win the fight for government and charity funding. The organisation therefore is entirely dependent on voluntary donations – such as those raised through Vision Direct. Please support Fight for sight through Vision Direct and help make sight loss a thing of the past!
15K+ customers decided to endorse us – why? Our thinking is they had the following in mind:
We use each of our senses to inform us of what is going on in the world around us, each providing an essential tool in the way we perceive the world and learn about it. As children, our eyesight is especially important to our development, helping us to create memories, learn about our environment, and as we begin to read, develop our language skills.
Vision is very closely linked to the learning process and childhood educational development. Children with undetected eye problems often struggle at school, being unable to read textbooks or view classroom displays correctly. And all too often, young children will not complain of vision problems, as they simply do not know what correct vision looks like.
The Importance of Routine Eye Exams
Early detection of childhood vision problems not only helps children’s educational development, it can also make a crucial difference to the success of treatment, as many conditions are more responsive to early treatment, and many will only worsen if left untreated.
Regular eye check-ups are essential for young ones, not only to check for vision problems, but as a valuable tool to help health care professionals detect eye diseases, as well as more serious general health conditions. All children benefit from regular eye exams, and if your child needs corrective lenses, or you currently buy them contact lenses online, they should also go for at least an annual check-up to ensure that their eye prescription is kept up to date.
In the UK, a baby’s eyes will be examined within 72 hours of their birth. A second eye exam should follow when they are six-to-eight weeks old, often carried out by a GP. Children’s vision will also be tested before they start school, at around four-to-five years old.
Early Visual Development
The NHS gives the following useful guide to the way a child’s vision should develop over the first year of life:
What Optometrists are Looking For
During childhood eye exams, optometrists check for a range of, not just eye problems, but general health problems too. Refractive errors, such as myopia (nearsightedness), (hyperopia) farsightedness and astigmatism, as well as focusing problems, such as presbyopia, will be checked for. These problems are often easily solved with the right prescription, allowing you to buy the right corrective glasses or contact lenses online. An eye examiner will also check for signs of amblyopia (lazy eye), strabismus (a squint) as well as cataracts (cloudiness of the eye lens), and at a later age, your child will also be tested for colour blindness.
When to Seek Medical Advice
If for any reason any of the routine eye examinations are not carried out, or if you notice any deviation from the NHS childhood vision guide above, you should speak to your GP about arranging an eye care check-up. If any problems are found, they can often be corrected with the right prescription for you to use to buy corrective glasses or contact lenses online, while other conditions may require simple refractive surgery.
As children are often unaware of an existing eye condition, parents can look out for the following signs of possible vision problems, and seek guidance from their GP if necessary.
In younger children:
In older children:
What is a Corneal Ulcer?
A corneal ulcer, or ulcerative keratitis, is an open sore that develops on the surface of the eye. An infection causes inflammation of the cornea, and although a common condition, if left untreated can lead to serious, long term visual impairment.
What Causes a Corneal Ulcer?
The main cause of a corneal ulcer is a viral or bacterial infection. A range of bacteria can lead to corneal ulcer development, which is why it is so important for users of our online contact lenses to stick to a proper eye care routine. Eye conditions like corneal ulcers are one of the reasons why contact lenses need to be thoroughly sterilised regularly. One-day online contact lenses offer a more hygienic alternative, as they are discarded at the end of each day and replaced with a new sterile pair the next day.
Corneal ulcers can also be caused by chemical injury, as well as by a range of conditions that allow the eyes to be more exposed to bacteria, such as long term vitamin A deficiency, dry eyes, distichiae, where the eyelashes grow incorrectly, corneal dystrophy, and ectropion, which is an eye condition that causes the lower eyelid to turn outwards. If left untreated, ectropion can prevent the eyelids from closing properly, and can lead to the development of a corneal ulcer as the eye is insufficiently protected from bacteria, usually warded off by bacteria-fighting tears.
What is the Cornea?
If you imagine the eye as a camera, the cornea is the camera lens. It is the transparent outer lens at the front of the eyeball, through which you can see the pupil and the coloured iris. It is the cornea that bends light rays so that a visual picture of the world around you can be projected into the retina at the back of the eye, transmitting these images to the brain. Corneal ulcers can interfere with this process, preventing light from reaching the retina, causing distorted or cloudy vision. The inflammation caused by a corneal ulcer can also cause severe pain, and sensitivity to light.
Corneal Ulcers – the Symptoms
Left untreated, corneal ulcers can worsen, and leave you with serious and permanent eyesight problems. The earlier a corneal ulcer is detected, the easier it is to treat, so it pays to know the symptoms. If you find you’re experiencing any of the following symptoms, you should consult your GP:
Corneal Ulcers – Treatment Options
The treatment of a corneal ulcer will depend on the both the cause, and the severity of the ulcer. Typically, a corneal ulcer will be treated with a course of antibiotics. A fungal corneal ulcer will require topical anti-fungal treatment, while viral corneal ulceration will require anti-viral treatment, typically in the form of an eye ointment. Pain medication may also be prescribed, often in the form of special eye drops to dilate the eye pupil.
Most corneal ulcers will heal up within a week, but deeper ulcers may require corneal surgery, special contact lenses, or a corneal transplant to correct the cornea and ease pain.
The contact lens once had but one humble goal – to correct the world’s vision problems one fuss-free lens at a time. It wasn’t long before our human vanity turned the simple contact lens into a fashion accessory, allowing us to change the colour, and shape of our eyes, to attract a mate, turn ourselves into red-eyed demons, or simply achieve that cat-eyed look we’d all been searching for. And now we humans are taking contact lenses one step further – with virtual reality lenses.
Yes, you read that right. Contact lenses may never look the same again, thanks to the boffins over at eye specialists Innovega. Their iOptik innovation, a new kind of dual focus contact lens, has the ability to project 3D images onto the eye itself. So if you’ve ever dreamed of wandering around your own virtual reality world without having to strap on that unwieldy virtual reality head gear, your chance to become Predator is finally here. Almost.
What?
These lenses aren’t quite as space age as you might hope. For starters, for these things to work, you’ll still need to wear glasses. You see, the lenses work by projecting images from these glasses, onto the contact lenses, which allows the wearer to focus in on the information being displayed, as well as the world around them, simultaneously. Sound like a headache?
These lenses give your eyes powers that they don’t have naturally. Using two filters for each lens, you’ll be able to focus clearly on two focal planes at the same time. Which is more than a little mindblowing. By directing light to both the centre of the pupil as well as the pupil rim, you’ll be able to clearly see the world around you, only with handy data projected over the top.
WHY?
Never ones to miss a beat when it comes to cutting edge battlefield technology, the US military’s research lab, DARPA, have already expressed an interest, because these new lenses will allow troops in the field a far wider range of vision.
For those of us thankfully not on the battlefield, these new lenses could mean handy visual pointers as we wander round town – directional arrows and the like. It could also turn the daily commute into a world of hands-free fun, as we sit back, relax and watch the latest movie releases directly on our eyeballs, with no need for separate screens. And your favourite console game will be taken to the next level, as your shoot-em-up components, zombies and monsters wander all around your field of vision, making it feel like they’re in your living room. Scary? Exciting? Possibly both.
When?
These new iOptik lenses are ready to go. In fact, the Pentagon’s already placed an order. For us mere mortals not at the forefront of US military operations though, a general release date has been pencilled in for 2014. So that gives interested parties two years to save up (these lenses are NOT going to be cheap), Google two years to get their Project Glass up to dual projection speed, and the rest of us time to ponder what this new development could mean for humankind and future technologies. No more living in the real world? Future evil governments feeding 3D propaganda directly into our brains? Or, gasp, no more TV?
What do Paris Hilton, Abraham Lincoln, TV’s Colombo, Johnny Rotten, and Melissa-Joan “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” Hart all have in common? That’s right, they all have or had lazy eye.
Lazy eye, also known as ‘amblyopia’, is an eye condition that cannot be corrected by glasses or online contact lenses. It is not caused by any disease, rather the brain does not fully recognise images seen by the affected eye. The condition usually only affects one eye, but may sometimes affect both, resulting in a reduction of vision in each eye. It’s important to remember that lazy eye doesn’t lead to a loss of vision, only a reduction.
So, what causes lazy eye? Different things can cause it, such as the constant turning of one eye (strabismus), different vision in each eye (anisometropia), and a blockage in an eye due to a cataract, a drooping lid, or other trauma. Lazy eye can be treated when you’re still young, so if you have children then it’s a good idea to get them checked out sooner rather than later.
The most common of these causes is anisometropia. Usually, the eyes have the same qualities in terms of vision and light refraction, whereas with anisometropia, they are different. This can be corrected with glasses, or you can look for online contact lenses. Soft disposable lenses can be used, though if you have other problems such as astigmatism, then custom-made contact lenses are the best course of action. As usual, check with a doctor.
Other treatments include forcing the lazy eye to be used, by patching over the unaffected eye or by using topical atropine eye drops in it. This has to be managed well, as it can result in reverse lazy eye in the good eye – hardly the situation we’re aiming for.
Contact lenses are often the standard method of dealing with lazy eye – good news for us all, thanks to their ease of use. Children who don’t fully understand their condition, or their treatment, can use contact lenses and not have to go through the difficulty of wearing glasses.
We at Vision Direct take an interest in all things eye related, and it’s no wonder we get all giddy with excitement when we think about our burgeoning eye lexicon. It’s not just contact lenses and contact lens solution soup here at Vision Direct towers – oh no. We know a good time when we see one, and word games are right up there. So without further ado, it’s time for us to walk down that optic nerve of fun and check out some of the eye phrases that have been catching our, er, eye recently.
There are heaps of famous quotes related to eyes, and some, like “An eye, an eye, my kingdom for an eye”, that we made up. A great quote related to eyes comes in the form of “The eyes are mirrors to the soul”. Now, Mrs Vision Direct was sure that this was Shakespeare, but a bit of research tells us that it is in fact an old proverb – Yiddish, to be precise. It’s fairly self-explanatory, but captures the beauty that first attracted us to the eye, and led to a grand career in contact lenses and other eye products.
The Bible can be a source of refuge for Vision Direct in our darker moments, not least because of the wonderful quotes on eyes contained therein. Well, they’re not exactly beautiful, but they’re certainly well known. “An eye for an eye” is a good one, coming as it does in the Old Testament, which is often full of vengeful heroes like Samson and Gideon. This was developed further in the New Testament through Jesus, and became the famous “turn the other cheek” maxim. Much later, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, jr, said that an eye for an eye “leaves everyone blind”. And how right they were.
Moving on, it’s time to talk about fruit. Apples, to be precise. They’ve played an important role in history, from Sir Isaac Newton to Steve Jobs and his shiny toys, and, of course, they make an important appearance in the Good Book. For did the serpent not tempt Eve with the fruit from the tree of knowledge? True, but you can also talk about the apple of your eye, which again comes from the Bible. This particular phrase refers to something or someone that you cherish – that is the apple of your eye.
Animals also have eyes, and form the basis of some other great phrases. You can have eagle eyes, or eyes like a hawk, meaning that you can spot delicious looking voles and carrion whilst on the wing. There’s also the “eye of the tiger”, a song made famous by the film Rocky III. It’s best to focus on the heroism part of this phrase, rather than the descent into self-parody which comes later.
