There are a number of great reasons to wear sunglasses however there are two main reasons. The first reason is to protect you from the bright sun shining into your eyes as the dark optical lens of the sunglasses help to block out bright light. The second is that the sun's ultraviolet rays can, over the long term, be extremely harmful to your eye sight causing irreversible damage including loss of eyesight and even cancer. A good pair of sunglasses can provide the needed protection against the dangers of UV rays.

So, you might ask, how do sunglasses really work? Well the answer my friend is really very simple. Tinted lenses are known to have a darkening effect allowing less light to reach your eyes. This, in turn, makes you squint less in bright sunlight ultimately helping you to avoid the headaches associated with eye strain from the strong glare of the sun. Less squinting also equates to better visual acuity.

The UV-filtering effect, however, is a bit more complex. The surfaces of UV-filtering lenses have a special coating that allow light to pass through them while at the same time reflect the unwanted ultra violet light. In the light spectrum, UV rays are considered high-frequency light waves. So the special chemical optical coating on the surface must be able to reflect high-frequency light while allowing the lower frequency light to easily pass. This is truly a miracle of modern science.

Add to the sunglasses a visual correction and you then have the complexity of prescription sunglasses. These are glasses that not only protect from basic glare of light and UV but also give the required correction to your eyesight like normal glasses. This adds a third step to the sunglass creation process: tinting, UV coating and now normal vision correction. Or for those who want the benefits of sunglasses without getting prescription sunglasses, there are tinted clip-on lenses that fit over the top of your normal prescription glasses

To add an additional level of eye protection it is recommended to have the sunglass lenses polarized. Sunlight reflected from flat surfaces usually result in glare which occurs when the light is horizontally polarized. This horizontally polarized light can be blocked by vertically oriented lenses. When adding this feature to your lenses you then have polarized sunglasses with the best available protection. The result is the true elimination of harmful glare.