Changes: Managing Presbyopia

When you reach your mid-to-late forties, you might begin to experience difficulty with reading. Why? As time passes, your eye's lens becomes more rigid, decreasing your ability to focus on handheld objects. This is known as presbyopia. And it's universal.

Those with untreated presbyopia may hold books, magazines, newspapers, and menus at arm's length to be able to focus properly. Performing other close-range tasks, for example, embroidery or writing, can also result in headaches, eyestrain or fatigue. When it comes to rectifying the symptoms of presbyopia, you have a number of alternatives, whether you currently wear glasses, contacts or nothing at all.

Reading glasses are helpful but are generally most useful for those who wear contacts or for people who don't already wear glasses for issues with distance vision. Even though these are readily available at pharmacies or drugstores, it's better not to purchase them until you have spoken with your optometrist. This is because reading glasses may help for brief blocks of reading time but they can lead to fatigue with prolonged use. Not surprisingly, custom-made reading glasses are a much more effective solution. These are able to fix astigmatism, compensate for prescriptions which are not the same in both of your eyes, and on top of that, the optic centers of the lenses can be specially made to meet the needs of the wearer. The reading distance is another detail that can be designed to match your individual needs.

And if you're already wearing eyeglasses for myopia, and would rather not have to wear more than one pair of glasses, think about bifocal or multi-focal corrective lenses, or PALs (progressive addition lenses), which are very popular. Essentially, these are glasses with multiple points of focus, and the lower part of the lens is where there is a prescription to give you the ability to focus at close range. If you use contact lenses, speak to us about multifocal contact lenses. There's also a treatment technique which is called monovision, where you wear one contact lens to correct near sightedness in one eye and another to correct far sightedness in the other eye.

Since your eyesight changes as time goes on, you can anticipate adjusting your prescription periodically. Presbyopia still affects people even after refractive surgery, so it is important to understand all the options before making decisions about your vision care.

Have to chat with your optometrist for an unbiased perspective. Vision does not stay the same as you get older and we want to help you manage your changing eyesight in the best way possible.