This is just a theory based on my experience. Someone came up with the concept of 20/20 vision (if you know the history of it or a url which describes it, please let me know), probably by doing a study where charts were placed 20 feet away from many individuals and a typical text size visible by the average person was determined. At some point, "eye doctors" decided to start testing individuals for how well they see and if someone had "worse" vision than 20/20, they were "prescribed" eyeglasses.

It has been my experience that as soon as I got new glasses, I would get headaches and feel very uncomfortable. It would take a few weeks to get used to the glasses and within a few months my vision would get worse. I was just a kid when this all happened and never realized the ramifications of what was happening until much later. So when my vision would get "worse" I would go back to the eye doctor and get new glasses. This cycle kept repeating itself until one time I decided to live with the "inferior" vision. But by then the damage had been done and I now have 10.00 thick glasses and can barely see anything without them.

Again, it's a theory, but I firmly believe that the cause of my bad vision is the false assumption that vision below 20/20 is "bad" for you. I believe your eyes "want to see" at a certain level and by prescribing glasses your eyes adjust downward to the level they want to be. I only wish that eyes had the ability to readjust in the other direction by stopping to wear glasses.

If you'd like to see more info on how we are being misled by the "eye doctors" in our society, just pay a visit to Surgical Eyes to see what Lasik has done to a lot of people.

I need to reread my entry and make it a bit clearer, but essentially I believe that the glasses I've been prescribed caused eyestrain and this eyestrain contributed to the worsening of my vision. Funnily enough, today I ran across MESH DiaWebLog which had a link to Will sitting too close to the TV, reading with bad light, etc., ruin your eyes? article at The Straight Dope.