The new incredible innovations that mean you can stop wearing glasses, including eye-drops that help you read: Doctors reveal breakthroughs – and what really works

By the age of 50, most people need some help with reading up close – even if they have never needed glasses before.

Long-sightedness, or presbyopia, is caused by the lens inside the eye becoming less flexible, a natural effect of ageing.

It causes blurry vision when you look at things up close, causing you to move things further away in order to restore focus, often as far as your arm can stretch.

And it’s a trend that High Street opticians, pharmacies and even supermarkets are tapping into – with ready-to-wear magnifying spectacles available with no prescription for as little as £3.99 a pair.

Meanwhile, an estimated one in three people in the UK is affected by myopia – or short-sightedness – and struggle to see things in the distance.

But do you really need to have a pair of specs, or even half a dozen different pairs, to improve your vision? 

Professor David Gartry, a senior consultant ophthalmic surgeon at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, has been wearing reading glasses himself for more than a decade, since his mid-50s.

‘Unfortunately, presbyopia is not something you can avoid as you get older – just like your hair turning grey.’

In fact, there are a growing number of alternatives, from medicated eye drops to contact lenses and surgery. Some people even swear by daily eye exercises which they say have helped keep their vision sharp.

Eye drops

Many people use eye drops to reduce irritation – but now there are varieties that claim to improve vision for older people.

The Food and Drug Administration (the regulatory body in the US) recently approved daily drops – used to treat glaucoma (a leading cause of blindness) in Europe since the 1970s – for the treatment of presbyopia.

The drops, called Vizz, work by creating a pinhole effect in the eye – so focusing the vision better.

They do this as the active ingredient in the drops – aceclidine ophthalmic solution – stimulates the iris muscle (the coloured part of the eye), making the pupil smaller.

The FDA approved the use of the drops for presbyopia after trials in 2024 found the drops helped people better focus on objects up close within 30 minutes of administering them.

What’s more, the effects of the drops – you place two in each eye, two minutes apart – lasted for ten hours.

The drops are yet to be approved for presbyopia by regulators in the UK or Europe – however, these aren’t the only drops that might help.

A recent study, presented at the European Society for Cataract and Refractive Surgery conference in September, found that eye drops containing a weak solution of two drugs, pilocarpine (which acts on the iris) and diclofenac (an anti-inflammatory added to reduce any discomfort or inflammation that the pilocarpine may cause), could improve presbyopia.

This study of 766 patients found that the majority could read three or more extra lines on an eye chart used (called Jaeger lines) after using the drops twice daily.

One hour after the first dose, patients improved an average of 3.45 Jaeger lines.

Dr Giovanna Benozzi, director of the Centre for Advanced Research for Presbyopia, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, who led the study, said it was hoped the drops would help meet ‘significant unmet medical need in presbyopia management’, for those who ‘have limited options besides spectacles, and who are not candidates for surgery.’

Professor Burkhard Dick, chair of ophthalmology at University Eye Hospital Bochum called the findings ‘encouraging’, but added that in the long-term pilocarpine can lead to ‘night-vision difficulties or rare retinal complications’ – and called for bigger trials.

Professor Gartry would not recommend these drops to his patients, as they make the pupil smaller – and ‘the problem is that it reduces the light getting into the eye and reaching the retina, which contains the cells that pick up light, so everything seems a lot darker’.

That doesn’t matter if you are in a bright place or looking at a back-lit screen, such as a Kindle, he adds – ‘but in twilight or darker areas where lighting is reduced, the narrowed pupil may not allow enough light to enter the back of the eye for you to see clearly’.

He adds that common side-effects of pilocarpine can include eye redness, watery eyes, blurred vision, dim or dark vision, sensitivity to light or problems changing focus between objects, seeing flashes of light or floaters in vision – and, in rare cases, detached retinas.

Contact lenses

‘Multifocal contact lenses can effectively correct presbyopia because they enable you to focus on objects at all distances,’ says Professor Sunil Shah, a consultant ophthalmologist at the NHS and private Midland Eye clinic and an honorary professor of ophthalmology at Aston University.

But the problem until now is that many older people couldn’t tolerate them.

That’s because after the age of 40 people are more likely to suffer with dry eyes – sore, gritty eyes due to a lack of tears or the tears evaporating too quickly – and as contact lenses reduce the oxygen flow to the eye, this can make tears less effective, making the dry eye even worse.

This may be especially true of post-menopausal women as the hormone changes affect tear production ‘making contact lenses less comfortable’, explains Professor Shah.

Changes to the design of lenses mean many now allow more oxygen to pass across the contact lens into the cornea, the front window of the eye – so people may now find the lenses more comfortable than previously.

Look for multifocal versions, such as breathable silicone hydrogel lenses, which will improve lubrication of the eye surface.

Surgery

The best surgical approach for presbyopia is lens replacement (rather than laser surgery to reshape the corneas as may be done for short-sightedness, for example – lasers can’t make the lens more flexible again), according to Professor Gartry.

The technique, Refractive Lens Exchange (RLE), is essentially the same procedure as cataract surgery and can reduce long-sightedness so that people no longer need their reading glasses, adds Professor Shah.

‘It’s particularly good if you are over 45 and want to correct both distance and reading vision – because over the age of 45 you typically need help for both distance and near, and may have a high prescription that might not be suitable for laser eye surgery.’

He explains: ‘With RLE, the surgeon replaces the natural lens with an artificial lens that is typically an extended depth of focus lens, which improves both distance and intermediate vision – or a multifocal lens to give you both distance, intermediate and near correction.’

These multifocal lenses allow good distance, intermediate and near vision (although these are only available privately) – essentially combining different prescriptions in a single lens – so you look at things close up, such as reading a book through one part of the lens, and distances through another part.

‘These can dramatically reduce your dependence on glasses, although none can absolutely guarantee you’ll never need them again,’ says Professor Shah.

Lens replacement surgery typically costs between £3,000 and £5,000 per eye for private treatment.

He adds there may be haloes and glare after the surgery, although this usually settles; there may also be some slight grittiness or discomfort in the eyes for a few days after the procedure.

Exercises

Could a daily regimen of simple exercises at least delay the need for specs, eye drops or even contact lenses?

Encouraged by online posts promoting simple eye exercises as being good for vision, a growing number of people religiously undertake them in the hope that it will at least postpone the day when they have to give in to the ageing process and start wearing glasses.

But can simple eye work-outs really work?

A review published in the journal Frontiers of Public Health in 2023 suggests they can, at least for myopia (or short-sightedness).

The review looked at the outcome from 12 studies involving 134,000 people in China, where schoolchildren are encouraged to massage points around their eyes in an attempt to reduce the chance of short-sightedness – this is thought to help improve blood flow and reduce strain on the eye.

The authors concluded this has ‘a modest protective effect on myopic control’, but suggested many youngsters may not be doing the exercises properly and so the effects may be more significant than suggested.

Outside of China, the most popular forms of eye exercises are those developed by ophthalmologist William H Bates in the US 100 years ago. These are based on the belief that poor vision stems from chronic strain on the eyes, and that people with poor eyesight tended to stare and fixate on a single point.

Techniques include daily exercises such as palming, which involves covering the eyes with the palms of the hands for ‘exclusion of mental strain’ and blocking out all the light – while relaxing and shifting (moving the eyes rapidly around while keep the eyelids closed) is supposed to sharpen the acuity of vision.

‘All day long you are looking right and left, up and down, you are exercising your eyes all the time so doing more exercises for a few minutes a day is pointless,’ says Professor Gartry, who says that the scientific basis for this remains weak.

‘The iris and the lens are controlled by muscles but these are under the control of the autonomic nervous system and can’t be influenced by exercises.’

He believes that exercise is unlikely to help short or long-sightedness – but can help in the case of a squint (strabismus), for example, ‘to help strengthen the external muscles that move the eye-ball’, he says, ‘but they should be done with specialist help’.