Modern glasses come with tons of different lens coatings and treatments to enhance your vision, including blue light filters, polarization and more. One new type of lens treatment is melanin infusion.
Melanin is the pigment that causes your skin to tan and protects it from the sun’s UV rays. The darker your skin, the more natural melanin it has. Melanin also plays a similar role in your hair and eyes — it gives brown and hazel eyes their color and protects the eyes from damage by absorbing light.
Because of its protective properties, some brands are now offering glasses and sunglasses with lenses that have been treated with melanin. That may sound a bit wacky — after all, could wearing melanin in glasses really be effective? On the other hand, a little extra melanin could be helpful for people with lighter eyes, who don’t have as much natural melanin for protection. Think of it like sunscreen for your eyes.
At CNET, we’ve been diving deep into the ins and outs of eye care, separating fact from fiction when it comes to everything from sunglass tints to eye drops. Here’s what we uncovered about melanin-infused glasses.
Melanin and eye health
Melanin is “instrumental in optimizing eye health,” said Dr. Saya Nagori, an ophthalmologist and CEO of EyeFacts. It absorbs several types of light, including kinds that can cause damage or stress over time, like UV light. It’s also an antioxidant, making it “effective in stabilizing free radicals, reducing inflammation and defending against toxins,” Nagori added.
But not everyone has the same amount of melanin in their eyes. People with blue or green eyes have less melanin, while people with brown or hazel eyes have more, per Medline Plus. According to the Michigan Eye Institute, some eye conditions can also cause a change in melanin levels, like glaucoma. The amount of melanin in the eye may also decrease with age.