What is presbyopia? – If you struggling reading or seeing things up close or perhaps you’re having difficulties transitioning from near to far and then back to near again then you may have a condition called presbyopia.
You may have noticed individuals wearing reading glasses, wearing bifocals or some sort of optical correction as they get older this type of eye condition is may be due to presbyopia.
Presbyopia is an eye condition where a structure inside the eye starts to change and makes things up close more difficult to see.
Presbyopia or senile farsightedness is connected with the natural aging of an eye. In this problem, the person suffers from both myopia i.e. nearsightedness and hypermetropia i.e. farsightedness.
It occurs due to the hardening of the eye lens which prohibits light to focus on the retina.
1. While looking at a near object the light gets focus behind the retina.
2. While looking at a far object the light gets focused beyond the retina.
Thus restrict a person to see things clearly. With age, there are accommodations progressing decrease that leads to a gradual loss of the ability of an organ of vision to be focused on nearby objects.
This affects just about everybody starting around their mid 40’s some people a little bit earlier maybe their late 30s and just about everybody before the age of 55 getting into their 60s.
There’s this little bit of a misconception that it has to do with changes of the eye muscles inside the eye however that is not entirely true.
Causes of presbyopia
Inside the eye there’s a clear structure called the crystalline lens and when we are very young children this lens is not only clear but it is very thin and flexible and the problem is that every year of life as we get older this lens gets thicker and thicker.
The crystalline lens grows an extra layer thick almost every year of life kind of like the rings on a tree or layers of an onion.
When we’re young there are fewer layers and so it’s very flexible kind of like a young sapling tree but after about 40 years of life people start to have difficulty flexing this lens inside the eye and they start to have trouble seeing up close so starting to have trouble reading up close with age and this is a very normal phenomenon.
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| Normal Eye Vs Presbyopia eye Image Source- Wikipedia | Author- BruceBlaus |
Symptoms of presbyopia
1. Headache and eyestrain during reading the newspaper, books.
2. Difficulty in the work at a short distance (sewing, occupation with fine details).
3. Requires more light while working at a close distance.
4. Fatigues in the eyes, dull ache in the eyeballs is the common symptom of presbyopia.
Prevention of a presbyopia
Completely it is not possible to exclude the development of presbyopia – with age the crystalline lens inevitably loses the initial properties. To postpone the approach of presbyopia and to slow down the progressing deterioration insight it is necessary:
1. Avoid excessively visual loading.
2. Select proper lighting in the working environment.
3. Carry out gymnastics for eyes- Eye exercises.
4. Accept vitamin medicines (And, B1, B2, B6, B12, C) and minerals (Cr, Cu, Mn, Zn .).
5. Fruits for good eye health.
It is important to visit annually the ophthalmologist, to carry out the timely correction of anomalies of refraction, to be engaged in the treatment of diseases of eyes and vascular pathology.
Correction of Presbyopia
1. Magnifiers
There are many different strategies to see things better up close the oldest one of course throughout history is a magnifying lens.
There are many different magnifiers that are out there of course people still use them for small print and people who have low vision will use these a little bit more often and it is best to find one that has a magnifying light built into it because then you’ll see a little bit sharper when there’s good light.
2. Reading Glasses
These are really just two handheld magnifiers stuck together and fit over the eyes you can get ones with your prescription dialed in those are going to be higher quality and offer you the best vision.
These type of glasses can be tailored from your eye doctor depending on what you’re reading tasks are you’re somebody who just uses their phone a lot, somebody, who sits on the computer screen that’s a little bit further away.
3. Contact lenses
People can also use contact lenses if they do not want to wear eyeglasses. There are two ways we can correct for both distance and near vision with contact lenses are:
3.1. Multifocal contact lenses.
3.2. Monovision contact lenses.
Multifocal lenses help people use both eyes to see objects at distance up close and everything in between allowing depth perception.
Monovision contact lenses that’s where a person has one eye corrected for far away distance while the other eye is focused more for things up close.
This means the person with presbyopia wear contact lens for distant vision in the dominant eye and contact lens for close-up vision in other eyes.
4. Eye Surgeries
4.1. Refractive Surgery.
4.2. Kamra inlay.
Refractive surgery changes the shape of your cornea. It can reduce the problem of presbyopia to some extent but one has to wear eyeglasses for close works.
LASIK eye surgery could be an alternative with one eye crack in for distance and one eye up close but if you’ve never experienced that before it’s often best to first, try contact lenses like that for just a short time to see if you can adapt to it before you make that commitment to having eye surgery.
There’s even another surgical procedure called a Kamra inlay where they implant a tiny microscopic disc into the cornea of one eye and that’ll improve your depth of field reducing your reliance on things like reading glasses in most cases.
As always if you’re interested in these procedures- make sure you talk to your local eye care professional to figure out which one is best for you.
5. Lens implant
Sometimes doctors use a procedure in which they replace the lens with a synthetic lens. It is known as the intraocular lens. Various types of lens implants are there for the correction of presbyopia. But the major disadvantage of lens implants is that it can decrease the quality of your near vision.
Generally, concerning side effects are glare and blurring, chances of inflammation, infection, bleeding is also associated with it.
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