Blinded by Headlights? Here’s what to do

Dr Alan here and today we're going to be talking about Headlights you know those super bright headlights that bother you while you're driving at night time we'll be talking about why we have such challenges driving at night time in the first place and then what you can do about those bright oncoming headlights I have a lot of patients who come in every single week telling me they can't see well at driving at night time and that headlights really bother them so I wanted to list out a couple of tips things that will help you so

let's get going so first off why do we struggle with driving at nighttime in the first place and why do headlights seem too bright nowadays and why do they seem to bother us more now than they used to like 20 some years ago so first of all of course driving at night is dark out in the human eye we just don't see as well there's not enough light to see all the details around us but specifically for Wally driving at night is more challenging really falls into two reasons first of which has to do with

your pupil size when it is dark out your pupil dilates really wide this allows more light energy to get into the retina to stimulate it so that you can see detect motion and other objects at night time this is kind of a survival mechanism because you can imagine if you're in a forest somewhere and some things like a predator is rustling in the bushes off to your side Vision if you were able to see that motion you're more likely to move get out of the way or run away and survive the downside to having a

large dilated pupil is that you lose what is called your depth of focus this happens when we dilate our patients in the clinic all the time they feel like they can still see things but everything around the edges seems to have a subtle little blur to it and that's because with a dilated pupil you have a good Focus ability but it's a very narrow range of focus where normally with a small pupil your range is really big so while you're driving you can still see road signs but everything in front of that road sign and

everything behind that road sign is is just out of focus and not as sharp and of course the reason why oncoming headlights can induce even physical pain to our eyes is because when that headlight comes and hits you your pupil can constrict really fast in that constriction of those people array muscles you can sometimes feel them and it becomes painful now the second reason why driving at nighttime sucks so bad has to do with the new headlights themselves the first problem has to do with what is called photoretinal bleaching you know how if you look

at a bright flashlight even for just a second if it's super bright there's kind of this Afterglow effect where you can see this after image of the light bulb itself but everything in your visual kind of visual perception seems blanketed in kind of this whitish glow for a few seconds well this is something where a car it may be coming your way in front of you with his headlights on or perhaps a big truck will be behind you shining its Bright Lights into the rear view mirror and then hitting you in the eyes there either

way the lights can bleach the photoreceptors in the back of your retina and it takes some time for these photoreceptors to sort of rejuvenate and wake up and reset and that can be really scary because if that happens to you there's this few seconds where you just can't see details in front of you may be hard for you to see the lines on the road maybe you can't see another car or an animal or even a pedestrian that may come off maybe the side of the road and that's where headlights especially these newer brighter ones

can become almost dangerous in a way and the other reason why headlights can be such a problem and even dangerous has to do with glare and this is really true when it comes to the newer headlights that are out because I remember growing up as a young kid most headlights on cars were kind of this yellow tungsten sort of color because they were halogen light bulbs and then around the year 2000 they invented what are called Xenon headlights and then eventually LED headlights came out and the newer Xenon and LED lights they give up way

more of a white and even a bluish Hue of light in fact let me know if you've ever seen a bright blue headlight coming your way and if they bother you I think personally they should probably be made illegal in some way because when I see them they not only are bottom bothersome visually like I can't see but they cause almost like a physical pain inside my eye but compared to the older softer yellow colored lights people really didn't have a problem with those old yellow lights not like they do today and that's because even

with the brightness levels kept the same the new whiter blue lights your neurological system perceives as being brighter on top of this in newer research studies blue light has been found to be more triggering for and disturbing for a neurological system and blue light has been known to basically scatter through our ocular tissues about 16 times more than something like red light does and people complain of this problem with glare all of the time it can kind of give you like the starburst pattern coming from headlights and other lamps it almost seems like light is

like glaring across your entire vision and you can just it makes things kind of disturbing and hard to see like good quality clear images and this can be further aggravated if you're driving with like a dirty windshield or even maybe like the other person's headlights are covered or obstructed and like you know bug guts from driving on the road or maybe from snow or rain water not to mention if somebody happens to have an eye disease like cataracts for example where the lens inside their eyes becoming opaque that causes enormous amounts of glare in fact

a lot of older folks individuals who are like maybe the age of 60 and older who have cataracts developing they oftentimes report that they don't feel safe driving at night time because the glare can be so debilitating in fact that's even a question that we ask our cataract patients in the clinic because if they don't feel safe while driving at night time then perhaps that might be a qualifying factor for them to get cataract surgery okay so now that we know why driving at nighttime sucks so bad and why the new headlights that are out

make things even worse than it was before let's talk about some things that you can do that improve the safety of your driving at nighttime and help you reduce the brightness and everything for those oncoming headlights because hopefully we all know that wearing sunglasses at nighttime is not a good option that is not safe and just tucking down from the bright lights that hit you in that rear view mirror that's also not the best option either okay so the first few tips here are really not even just for you and your car but really to

improve the safety of other people on the road because of your bright headlights so the first tip is to talk to your local auto mechanic just to make sure that your headlights are in proper alignment in my research for this video I find out that a lot of the different states here in the United States where I live they don't require player that headlamps or headlights of the car are regularly checked for alignment otherwise your headlights may be tilted too far upward hitting people in the eyes or perhaps they're diverted in different directions and then

that light may be going astray causing more problems for drivers too so look there's something even I learned in this whole process the second other tip is to periodically clean the headlights of your car because bug carcasses and things can hit on there and kind of Grease them up or if you're in like a snowy weather sort of area then make sure you do clean off the snow from your headlights otherwise light will scatter through those headlights causing more disabling glare for other oncoming drivers but at least doing those two little things is kind of

a nice courtesy that you can do for just other drivers on the road okay so now let's talk about things that you can do to improve your own comfort and safety while driving first of which is of course wash your windshield you want to make sure it is completely spotless clean otherwise any light going through your windshield is going to be scattering causing more glare and it's just going to be less irritating for you my second tip for this is that if you feel your vision isn't quite clear it's good to have your eyes checked

by an eye doctor and get updated glasses prescriptions just because even a little bit Improvement in Your Vision might make you feel a little bit safer while driving and if you do happen to be a glasses wearer or you have maybe a specific pair of glasses that you wear while you're driving make sure that your glasses are clean as well if you're not sure how to really clean your glasses super well I do have an older video I did on kind of glasses cleaning secrets and like really the best ways to clean your glasses it's

amazing to go back and watch that video if you've never seen it I encourage you go back watch it and count how many times I say the word actually in that video I just recently watched it again and it's amazing to see how far my video making skills have come but the other thing of course for your glasses if you haven't gotten an anti-reflective in your glasses before I do recommend getting an anti-reflective that should help you see better at night time by reducing the glare that you see that may be bouncing off of the

lens of your glasses as far as why they don't put an anti-reflective on your car windshield I think I have seen it a few times but it's not something I've seen very often if there's any auto manufacturers who watch this video let us know in the comments why you don't put an anti-reflective on a car windshield seriously I want to know but wait what about those yellow nighttime driving glasses that you've seen on Late Night infomercials that are supposed to help reduce glare and help you see better at night time well there's not a strong

consensus about these glasses and really being beneficial I've done a more in-depth review about them on another video and I encourage you to check that out if you're really interested in seeing if it's something you want to try but the whole idea is that the yellow filters reduce chromatic aberration and maybe boost contrast especially in a dusk or cloudy kind of situation I do have patients who swear by them and come into the clinic just to get these made in their prescription but again it seems kind of hit or miss some people like them some

people don't but you can check out that review for more info another option is that of taking supplements especially if you're somebody who is light sensitive or struggles with photophobia like we discussed just recently in another video but taking supplements of lutein and zeaxanthine has shown in many studies to improve the pigment layers in the back of the eye and this improved levels of pigment basically acts as a natural filter of harsh light including that of blue blue light and not only are these nutrients really healthy for the eye overall but they have been shown

to reduce light sensitivity in some studies and then finally there might be a few medications that may be able to ask your doctor about if it'll be something that could help you again because so much of this challenge with driving at nighttime has to do with your pupil size being so big some eye doctors I know have prescribed medications off label to pharmacologically constrict your pupil and make it smaller that way you have less glare and problems with blurred vision while driving in dim light the first time that I ever heard of eye drops being

prescribed this way was doctors prescribing bromonidine a glaucoma medication off label because it does constrict the pupils by just a few millimeters and this was originally being used as kind of an option to reduce glare for patients who had Lasik eye surgery but now of course we are seeing this Resurgence of meiotic prescription eye drops to constrict the pupils to help people will kind of void the need of relying on reading glasses as much so there may now be some other options available however all of these medications are would be considered treating off label and

I don't think any Studies have specifically looked at the safety of using these drops in this sort of scenario so it's definitely something that you will want to have a discussion with with your doctor because they may not think it's really right for you and they may not think it's appropriate for it to be prescribed that way in the first place either way though it is something I know some doctors will prescribe so I think it's worthwhile to ask your doctor what they think about and if it's right for you one other alternative to maybe

help constrict your pupils while you're driving I've heard some people suggest is just increase the brightness of the kind of the dash light behind your steering wheel the idea of course is that the brightness of that light will kind of stimulate your pupils to constrict just a little bit and maybe that will help with some glare but hey thank you so much for watching I hope this video helped you out in some way please let me know in the comments section first if you think those blue oncoming headlights are dangerous and maybe they should be

outlawed and then what was your favorite part of this video and what really helped you out the most also if you want to check out our other video on the yellow kind of tinted nighttime driving glasses and want to see that full review I'll put that over here to the side for you otherwise again thanks for watching Dr Allen here from the Dr aisle show keep an eye on it and I'll see you in that next video see ya foreign [Music]