Is it normal that I can see better close up without my contact lenses in that I use for distance vision? My close-up eyesight is fine without lenses but it goes blurred when I put my lenses in.

I would guess that you are nearsighted and over about age 45.

Myopia (nearsightedness) is where your eyes' default focus is up close instead of off at a distance as is the case in the normal eye. The one good thing about being nearsighted and reaching middle-age is that if you are not wearing glasses or contacts for your distance vision problem, you can read at near without having to use reading glasses. This is because you are using that abnormal close focus to neutralize your presbyopia. Presbyopia is the loss of near vision (in the normal eye) later in life from the progressive hardening of your natural lens. For most people, the increasing resistance to the near-focusing muscle from that hardening eventually requires magnification from reading glasses.

You don't need to do that because you don't have to exercise that muscle's squeezing the natural lens into shape!

_Written by J. Trevor Woodhams, M.D. - Chief of Surgery, Woodhams Eye Clinic