When Vision Blurs, You Can Still Look Sharp Stick-On Lenses Turn Trendy Sunglasses Into Reading Glasses

Here’s an option for fashion-conscious baby boomers whose vision is starting to blur: peel-and-stick corrective lenses that will transform your hippest shades into reading glasses.

For most folks past 40, there comes a time when the fine print - in telephone books, menus, road maps and novels - is just too fine.

Peter La Haye’s stick-on lenses are for those who just aren’t ready for drugstore “cheaters.”

And they’re much cheaper than custom-made prescription sunglasses.

The flexible Optyx 20/20 lenses cost about $25 and come in nine powers, much like drugstore reading glasses.

They’re held in place by “molecular attraction” - the phenomenon used for those windshield date-of-oil-change stickers. They cling tightly but peel off readily for readjustment or transfer to different glasses.

The lenses were introduced in September by La Haye’s year-old company here, Neoptyx Inc. Optyx lenses are being sold in such places as optical centers, department stores and sporting-goods stores.

They’re “a very clever product,” said Dr. Michael Gilbert, a Bellevue-based refractive surgeon and editor of Eye Care Technology magazine.

“I’ve used them with my own family, and with good results.”

They can also be a cost-cutter for people such as carpenters and pilots, who need near-vision help at the top of the visual range and the bottom.

“Those glasses can be custom-made, but this allows you to put the (extra lens) right where you need it,” Gilbert said.

Optyx lenses are sold in a clear plastic case, also developed by La Haye, that looks somewhat like a safety goggle and slides in and out of a box, protecting the lenses while allowing the customer to try them out.

La Haye said he expects to be able to make lenses of any prescription within a couple of years - including bifocals and lenses that intensify gradually.