In this free-for-all-Friday Trent talks about new glasses that treat myopia and his own experience with spectacles.
Trent Horn (00:00):
I finally got glasses. I was trying to go my whole life without having glasses and I basically still do, but I decided to get them. I’ve joined the world of glasses wearers. Well, I’m not fully joining it. I live in it at work and then I retreat from that world when I leave. And so I just wanted to talk about that today. Welcome to the Council of Trent. Mondays and Wednesdays we talk apologetics and theology, but Friday, well, we talk about whatever I want to talk about and I just got glasses and I got glasses for one of my children and there’s new technology now to help children with issues to their eyes I really wanted to share with you about in today’s episode. Okay, so here’s what happens. I go take my children in, they get to go and do an eye exam. And I found out that one of my children has nearsightedness, myopia.
(00:50):
And it’s something that we hadn’t recognized before and I’m really grateful. He’s still very young, so I’m grateful that we took him into the eye doctor to go and do all of the tests to recognize this because it turns out like the doctor asked him, “Do you ever have to really squint to see things on the board or do you have a hard time seeing things on the board at the front of the class?” And so we hadn’t noticed before if he was sitting at the front of the class, but like this year he’s sitting his seats more in the back of the class and he can’t read the board as well. He has to squint really hard to see it and that strains his eyes. So it turns out that he has childhood myopia or nearsightedness. And so there’s different things that were recommended for treating it because if you don’t treat nearsightedness as the eye grows, as the child gets older, the nearsightedness gets worse over time.
(01:43):
Now it can be treated with laser surgery, but you can’t do laser surgery on children because the eye is still growing so you have to manage it. And so it can get worse. And they used to just have eye drops and other ways of treating this, but now they have just a new pair of glasses that if you wear these glasses, it can treat the issue at hand. So we helped them with that. And I’m going to tell you a little bit more about this here in a second, but back to me, it’s about May. So I decided, it’s been a while since I had an eye exam. I’ll go and I’ll do an eye exam. And so I sit and I do it and they said, “Okay, it came back. You have twenty twenty vision. Your eyes are looking great. We did notice a little bit of a defect in your left eye, just a little bit that could get worse as you get older due to eye strain, but you still have twenty twenty vision, your vision’s great, but we recommend that you wear glasses when you have to look at a computer screen because if you don’t, this defect is going to get worse and worse over time.” And so they recommended glasses for that and I got glasses with a special blue light blocking tint.
(02:49):
I’ve bought those before, but they’re kind of the cheapy ones you get on Amazon. These are like the real deal that I have. And when I put them on, because I have to look at a computer like eight hours a day, it stinks. So that’s how my job. I read PDFs, I write 8,000 words, not 8,000 words, sorry. I write, well, probably four to 6,000 words a week scripts for Council of Trent. So I’m in front of my computer all the time or looking at my phone for things, which I wish I didn’t do as much, but that’s just how it is right now. So my eyes get strained and I’ll realize it. And when they gave me these new glasses, it was insane. I put them on and looked at my computer. And the one thing that I noticed was that when I looked at a Word document, the black text for me, it actually looked like a dark gray.
(03:36):
With these new glasses, the blue light blockers, it now looked like just straight black ink that I was reading and it was sharper, a little bit sharper, but noticeably sharper. And I realized that I would’ve been straining my eyes to see the text, that it was sharp enough for me, but my eyes are doing work I don’t even recognize, but that’s going to burn out the muscles in them over time and defects will get worse and worse. And so I saw that I said, “Okay, wow, this is just a brand new thing.” So I started wearing them and I noticed, well, two things. One, the slide down. Oh man, they’re always sliding down my nose. So I might need to get different frames for that, but I got like big thick frame. I just wanted the biggest frame so that I can barely see the rims of the glasses.
(04:21):
I’m not distracted by them. I want big old glasses because I’m not going out wearing them. So I’m not wearing them out in public. So I don’t have as much anxiety about them. And I like them. I think I’d look fine with glasses, but I like not having to wear them. I remember growing up, the big anxiety, there was a special episode of Full House where Stephanie has to get glasses and she’s all nervous and everyone’s going to make fun of her. And it’s like, who’s going to help Stephanie? She’s so sad. But who walks in the front door? Crossover alert. Jaleel White, who of course portrays, we all know what I’m talking about here, Steve Urkel on Family Matters for some reason comes to visit the family full house in San Francisco and he comes over and he tells Stephanie. Well, he plays Steve Urkel and Stefan Urkel where he’s … Although here’s the thing.
(05:11):
So he tells Stephanie, “Oh, you don’t need glasses. You look better with glasses and hey, hold your head up high.” And it is a heartwarming message, but it’s undercut a bit because I remember he says in there, some people look better with glasses, but in another episode of Family Matters, Steve Urkel creates the transformation machine and it makes him the cool version of Steve Urkel who is Stefan Urkel who does not wear glasses. And that’s part of the reason that he’s so cool and tries to win over Laura Winslow. Family Matters, by the way, is an absolutely hilarious show. And that season on is basically a Cosby show-esque type show about a cop and his family and he’s trying to be a good dad and they’re learning life lessons. Then season two, Urkel shows up as a guest star and everyone loves him. They get Urkel Fever and he becomes the main element of the show and he’s a nerd so he can invent things.
(06:02):
And if he invents things, you have a wacky adventure. So by the time you get to the later seasons of Family Matters, we have left the family drama and it has just become what crazy invention did Steve come up with this time that’s him and Carl are on a pirate ship or they travel through time and they get shrunk or absolutely absolute. I love the total breakdown of family matters in that regard. So let’s see, I should have a clip here of Urkel and Stephanie from Full House. So here’s one. Window face. The trick is to make them laugh with you before they laugh at you. And always remember, hold your head up high, otherwise those suckers are swiped right off your nose.
(06:41):
So yeah, I’m not worried about glasses like Stephanie, but I don’t necessarily want to wear them out everywhere. You don’t want accessories when you don’t need them, but they slide down the nose, they get in the way a little bit. So I don’t need to wear them when I’m out. But the thing I have noticed, the bigger thing I’ve noticed is now I’m kind of addicted to them. I need these glasses Before I could look at my computer and it’s fine, but now I’m so used to looking through this corrective lens, even though it’s a minor adjustment, like my eyes strain, it gets fuzzy and blurry. I really need them now when I look at a computer. I’m spoiled. So that’s been a big thing that I’ve been trying to get used to. So yeah, a lot of this came from my son who has childhood myopia and nearsightedness and we got him these things called stellist lenses in order to help treat … Well, it doesn’t treat, you can’t stop myopia or reverse it, but it can slow it.
(07:33):
So that way he doesn’t have to deal with really severe nearsightedness as an adult and it could be very minor and he could decide if he wants to get laser surgery or not when he is an adult. It also says that high levels of myopia increase the risk of serious eye diseases later in life like retinal detachment, glaucoma cataracts and macular degeneration. Stellas lenses use a unique optical design that combines a clear central viewing zone with thousands of tiny lens lets, arranging concentric rings around the periphery of the lens. And I look at his glasses and almost looks like the bottom of a beer bottle, like there’s these weird little indentations in it. It says, “These lens lets create what is known as peripheral myopic defocus, a visual signal that helps reduce the eye’s tendency to elongate. By slowing eye growth, the lenses can help reduce the rate at which myopia worsens over time.
(08:23):
And clinical studies have shown promising results. The data review by regulators, children wearing stellas lenses have significantly less myopic progression than children who wear conventional lenses. It says it slows myopic progression by approximately 71% on average. So it was then in 2021 brought to the FDA, Food and Drug Administration, and granted a breakthrough device designation. And then in September 2025, I think it was given more of the full authorization and now you can get that. So yeah, if you’re dealing with especially children between the ages of six and 12 who have nearsightedness, I mean, they’re expensive. They’re not horribly expensive, but they’re more expensive than regular glasses. But I think it’s really great for kids. You don’t have to do with the eyedrops, although the big thing is you got to make sure they wear them. And little kids, they play and are rough. So I have the rule like no glasses on the trampoline, no glasses while wrestling, but they give them pretty good frames, like the bendy frames that don’t … I mean, most kid glasses have those things.
(09:28):
So I find that to be very helpful. But yeah, that is my adventure, my family’s adventure with glasses. Now I am in the club if you wear glasses while I wear them at work. You’re going to be like, “You’re not a true glasses person. You’re not like Velma. You’re not blind without your glasses.” No, I’m not Velma, but I’m glad I got glasses so I don’t end up as Velma. As much respect as I give Velma on Scooby-Doo, I don’t want to have to be dependent on my glasses in that way. So all right, thank you guys so much for listening and I hope you have a very blessed day. I