According to an article recently published by the American Academy of Ophthalmology, emergency wards across the USA treat upwards of 30,000 eye injuries caused during/from sports activities, annually! Moreover, 90% of those injuries could be prevented with adequate protective sports eyewear.
Translation? About 27,000 unnecessary eye injuries could be prevented every year. What sort of impact could that have on emergency rooms? (How many extra lives could be saved with all that time?)
That’s the USA, but how does that number play in Canada? “We believe that sports eye injuries are the largest cause of vision loss in children,” said Keith Gordon, vice-president of research at Canadian National Institute for the Blind in Toronto.
Imagine! If we could reduce the largest cause of blindness in Canadian kids by 90%, why isn’t protective sports eyewear mandatory? Well, in some sports and leagues it is.
The protection numbers speak for themselves, but the benefits of sports eyewear don’t stop there. Not only do sports eyewear make you (or your kids) a safer player, but also a better one!
Do you just take off your glasses when you put on a helmet?
When you play without your prescription, you’re hindering your ability to compete. Designed to withstand the extra strain a given sport dishes out, sports eyewear remains in fixed position, maintaining 20/20 vision. And when you can see better, you can play better.
As (the first asterisked) baseball legend Pete Rose is alleged to have said: “See the ball; hit the ball.”
True: But why not just play with your glasses or contact lenses?
Customized sports eyewear is much safer than playing a sport wearing glasses, which can get knocked off your head or, worse, broken. Or, worse still, broken while you’re still wearing them.
Meanwhile, your contact lenses don’t protect you from pucks, sticks, balls or elbows.
Sports glasses’ lenses are typically crafted from polycarbonate, which is not only resilient against impacts, it has built-in protection against the sun’s harmful UV rays. (See all our past posts about cataracts.)
What you choose depends on the sport you’re playing. Each sport has its own hazards and demands. Some are fitted into a helmet. Others may wrap partially around the head. Contact lens wearers may prefer a complete wraparound goggle that offers extra protection, period, and no prescription at all.
Talk to us about fitting what’s right for you.
You don’t want to go halfway with protective sports glasses. Perhaps your work’s insurance is valid. We offer popular sport brands including Maui Jim and Oakley and may recommend fitting yours with Oakley Prizm lenses. Prizm are made from ‘plutonite’—which is mostly a fancy substitute word for polycarbonate but they’re sturdy and superb for outdoor use.
The Oakley website claims Prizm “Sharpens visual perception to help you see more clearly and react faster; enhances color recognition through boosted contrast to help you quickly spot what you need to see; optimizes your ability to better see the important moving objects in your environment.”
Which are all deeply important to athletes. Best recommendations? We’ve had zero complaints from customers who purchased them.
Play safe and hard. But first talk to us about your customized sportswear.
