Start by finding an eye doctor that doesn't have a glasses shop attached, imo. Or one that isn't "attached" to such a shop in a way they would profit from it, I guess. Without insulting any doctor in specific, my thought is that making a profit from glasses being sold is likely to impact how likely the doctor is to prescribe new glasses.
> Or one that isn't "attached" to such a shop in a way they would profit from it, I guess.
Costco is set up this way: their optometrists are contractors who get a flat fee per eye exam, and they don't know or care about what else you buy while you're there.
> making a profit from glasses being sold is likely to impact how likely the doctor is to prescribe new glasses.
And beyond that, following the logic from the recent surgery thread: they see their patients see better. They see all the good cases, where someone walks out more confident and with better sight. Their product helps people. But then so do homeopathic placebos (to a certain (measurable) extent), and that's the hard part to figure out.
Of course, in this case everyone truly does see better when they walk out and what GP is wondering about are the long-term effects. This stuff is complicated, though I frankly have a hard time believing this claim of "just stop wearing glasses and you'll see better". Surely someone would have noticed that? But without doing a deep dive into the research here, it's all just speculation on both their part and mine.
I meant that you can discuss it with your doctor to get their factual knowledge or pointers, and then draw your own conclusions. I didn't say, and didn't mean to say (sorry if it came across like that), that you should follow their advice to any degree. I trust the overwhelming majority of people (doctor or patient) to use their own reasonable judgement, and the rest won't be helped by this advice anyway.
And for what it's worth, you may have had a string of bad doctors. I never had that feeling with any of mine (though I've only ever seen doctors in the Netherlands and Germany).
This requires having a doctor you trust.
My experience with most doctors is that I can trust them about as far as a used car salesman.