We are honored to be quoted in a recent LIVESTRONG.com article on vision, glasses, contacts, and headaches. This excellent article by Kate Bayless discusses various causes of headaches and makes the specific point that headaches can be caused by an over-corrected prescription in your glasses or contact lenses, which causes overworking of the eye’s internal focusing muscles resulting in eyestrain and headaches. In fact, it is not uncommon for me to find that a prospective patient has had trouble finding the source of their headaches, when it simply is their over-corrected glasses prescription. Many times the reason for this is that the glasses or contact lens prescription was derived form the refraction, the “which is better, one or two?” test. This test is subjective and notoriously imperfect in its results. In fact, the more over-corrected choice can seem darker and bolder and often patients pick that one, even though it leads to an over-corrected prescription. For Customized Wavefront LASIK or Customized Wavefront PRK laser vision correction surgery, we measure the eye with a more accurate and objecctive system of measurement using laser beams. Rather than basing the correction on the “which is better, one or two?” test, laser-based wavefront aberrometry is used to measure your personal “optical fingerprint”. This optical fingerprint is downloaded into the laser and treated on your cornea with billionth of an inch tolerances. I can think of many patients over the years who had headaches with their glasses or contacts which disappeared after laser vision correction simply because the new laser correction was more accurate! Of course, many headaches have causes other than the wrong glasses or contact lens prescription, but people are often surprised how often this does happen.