Sunglasses

Sunglasses protect your eyes by filtering light from the sun. There are times when sunglasses are needed (like skiing). Because you do want to protect your eyes from excessive UV (sun) exposure. Get polarized sunglasses. Otherwise all you're doing is squinting less.

If the sun is in your eyes, use protection.  If you are going to be out all day, then absolutely wear sunglasses .

Note: high index lenses 1.59 and above filter out almost all UV radiation. so arguably if you don't have tint, and you are not squinting, your pupil will constrict and will protect your eyes better than if you had a crap non-polarized sunshade. But, Huberman also points out that people with lighter color pupils (e.g. blue eyes) get less UV protection from their pupils, as their pupils don't block as much light.

Polarized sunglasses

Pros

• Protect your eyes so you can see colors clearly when you're old

• Sunglasses can be useful for avoiding changes to your circadian rhythm. So, if you have to go out in the sun and are travelling but don't want to change your sleep schedule too much because you're traveling again in a day or two again anyway. Or if you're like in a place that gets 20 hours of sunlight but you're trying get 8 hours of sleep despite the only 4 hour long night. So at some point you put on sunglasses to artificially make nighttime happen.

• Q: But what about the reflections of cars shining in my eyes while I’m driving? A: pro sunglasses in that case. Safety trumps eyesight improvement shenanigans.

Cons

• Huberman's guests are saying that sedentary indoors people aren't getting enough bright light exposure, and recommend not wearing sunglasses if you can get good indirect sunlight (obviously if the sun is in your eyes, use protection)

• But if you live the life of an internet person you probably are underexposed to sunlight and should be avoiding sunglasses.

Are my glasses polarized?

Apparently computer monitors and cell phone screens have anti glare tech, which is relevant when checking sunglasses polarization, because you can tilt your questionable shades in front of one, and only polarized shades get darker, closer to 90 degrees rotation.

Brand recommendations

• CHEAPEST: With many such as Zenni, you can get clip-on sunglass lenses as a cheap add-on to your purchase. As low as like $4 for a pair of polarized clip-ons.

• MIDDLING: You can get polarized sunglasses that go over your regular glasses at the drugstore (like Walgreens or CVS) for like $20 but they get scratched up almost immediately, so hang onto your receipt so you can return them!

• EXPENSIVE: Coccoons are alright. You can put them over the top of your regular glasses, which is nice for EndMyopia practices because if you use the same frame for your glasses, you can change your glasses all the time and keep your sunglasses the same. But it's like $80 for their polarized transitions sunglasses and $60 for regular polarized sunglasses.
• MOST EXPENSIVE: Get a new pair of prescription polarized sunglasses every time you change your normalized glasses. As far as Ray-Ban goes, like most things that are designer brand, they are overpriced but hopefully better quality control on the frames, but nothing special with the lenses. Anything special with the lenses would depend who does the fitting, or if it's a generic OC offset like with eyeglasses stores

Miscellaneous

• CARS: "I prefer flip-on cheapo sunshades for flexibility to flip on and off, but I think it's totally great to wear shades in the car. Car windshields are usually UV treated, so it's not like you get the hypothetical benefits of UV exposure anyway. "