Optician explains why wearing glasses affects your hearing
Chelsea Connor
Featured Image Credit: Westend61/Photographer / Basak Gurbuz Derman
Do you ever automatically turn down the music in the car when you're lost or need to focus, and then wonder what on Earth you're playing at?
Well, it turns out there's a reason you might be doing this that actually makes sense, as the science behind it has been confirmed.
There was recently a TikTok debate about this after a skit was posted on the platform by @Isabel Esquivel playing on the way that 'taking off your glasses makes you see better' for some reason' - with most users agreeing but unaware of the science behind it.
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One user wrote “I strongly believe there’s a connection between sight and hearing."
While another agreed with the TikTok skit, which showed a woman listening in on her daughter's conversation with friends and taking off her glasses as she struggles to listen.
One viewer wrote: “Same energy as turning the music down in the car so you can see the street signs better."
Someone else added: “YESSSS!! Everyone tells me that I’m crazy for saying I can’t hear without my glasses.”
This prompted Malcolm Maciver, an optometrist from Leightons Opticians in the UK, to clear things up and provide some answers to the theory, with him explaining why it might seem that reducing sound makes you see better.
He said: "While not 100% understood, the well-established connection between our eyes and ears is something that has been observed since antiquity."
He then mentioned a scientific study that was done back in 2015, which basically tracked how the brain uses more effort to process sound when people avert their eyes from the source.
It seems when we're not focusing on gazing at something in particular, our brains 'concentrate' more on sounds, meaning we've not been imagining it this whole time!
The participants also exhibited slower reaction times and increased brain activity when their gaze was averted, showing that other senses would have been heightened when they averted their eyesight.
How strange!
Maciver added: "The notion of taking off your glasses to hear better may also have some basis.
"As studies suggest a connection between vision and hearing, the act of removing glasses alone may not dramatically enhance auditory perception, but rather the overall collaboration of our senses that plays a crucial role in our perception."
He concluded: "It's more about the overall coordination of sensory input.
"In other words, it's not just about one specific action, like removing glasses, but rather that removing your glasses allows the brain to focus on just one of the senses, in this case, hearing."