Pinhole Glasses - are they really worth trying?

I have a pair and they do seem to allow me to see better both near and far.

Mine are made of black plastic and have small (perhaps 1mm) holes all over the black plasstic lenses. I believe you are supposed to use them for 10-15 minutes per day and they will help certain eye conditions which are caused by fairly simple eye defects (short sightedness or long sightedness, etc)

I do not use normal glasses at all but my eyesight has got more longsighted as I have got older, which seems to be normal. I can still focus from a little way before my hand (on an outstretched arm) to infinity, which I feel is pretty good.

So I was wondering why the eye docs do not suggest these glasses when they could possibly save folks money and where they are a more natural solution to some, not all, eye conditions?

I was also wondering if smaller holes and more of them would make it easier to see through these pinhole glasses? These days the technology is probably available to place tiny, tiny pinholes in the plastic but I dont know if it would make a better pinhole glasses product. The problem I have with mine is that they cut down a lot of light entering the eye and so it is not feasable to wear them unless it is in pretty good light, in the daytime, sunlight, etc

In the past I have tried normal glasses but when I remove them after wearing them for a little while, my eyesight seems much worse than before I put them on. This makes me think that they are rather like hard drugs - they get you hooked so you cannot get off them and the need becomes worse and worse as time goes on.

I had a pair of them when I was a kid. They're a real thing? I never knew.

I thought they were a gimmick...

I dunno if they worked or not, but I'm as blind as a bat now unless I'm almost head butting something... I say blind, I mean one eye is. No,.. hang on, I'm confusing being able to see, with being sober.

Ah.. never mind, I'd be interested to know how it goes, but if it's a test of time to tell if they make a difference, anything could happen between starting to wear 'em and your eyes being poked out.

I had never heard of pinhole glasses before, but after Googling and reading about them after reading your thread they seem quite interesting. I have a medical condition called Acromegaly, and my eyesight has deteriorated quite rapidly in the last six years, so I may get a pair and try them out and see what happens..

I'll let you know what happens, I just hope they aren't a big rip off like the x-ray spex I bought that were advertised inside a bubble gum packet when I was 12 years old

I know they work as far as looking through them. I do not know if they actually end up making your eye site better as claimed.The one I saw had many holes in the lense area.My father inlaw and my wife can not see without glasses, they put those on and the could see.

I'll let you know what happens, I just hope they aren't a big rip off like the x-ray spex I bought that were advertised inside a bubble gum packet when I was 12 years old

They should not be expensive at all as they are generally made of plastic and often found in cheaper tacky shops. My problem is persevering with wearing them every day even for 15 minutes. I dont think you need get expensive ones as it is the principle of pinhole camera which makes them work not the quality of the plastic or lenses etc. Bees, flies and other insects use this kind of bug-eye imaging system with many small lenses around a pingpong ball-like eye so maybe thats why they never need glasses. :-)

I have never tried them but recognized the principle behind them when I was still in grade school (glasses) when I could see without glasses if I looked thru the little hole created by curling your forefinger up into your thumb.....

they work. you can try it at home.
poke a small hole in a piece of paper and hold it up to your eye.
it forces the lens in the eye to focus and see the image sharply

The ones I have, have fairly large amount of plastic between the holes. I was wondering if it would be better to have more 'hole' and less 'plastic'. Whether it would let more light in and still produce the same result?

If it did, then we could develop lenses without the need for glass and everyone (with eye conditions which were sorted out by pinhole glasses) could all have the same solution. That would put a large number of folks who sell expensive glasses out of business and make it cheaper for many of the rest of us. Our eyes do not get any better wearing glasses but get weaker it seems.

i discovered the pinhole method
quite by accident..it does work..it really does
dont know about the the glasses..but pin hole does work