Archive for the ‘Science’ Category
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010
When we really think about how the human body works, muscles are seen as the power stores that drive us. Think of muscles and we visualize hard bodied sport’s men and women with sculpted bodies, perfect specimens of fitness and health. There are however some tiny muscles that most of us take for granted, which we use every waking moment in our visual system. They work tirelessly throughout the day to make our eyes work together and give us the gift of sight.
The movement of each eye ball is controlled by six muscles, called extra ocular muscles, which hold the eye in place and enable it to move. This gives us the maximum vision all around us, and helps both eyes to work together. Shut each eye individually and you’ll realize that you see a slightly different image with each eye, but by controlling the movements of both eyes and the brain then fusing the two images together, most of us don’t suffer from double vision.
Problems arise if your muscles don’t work together, and the eyes don’t turn together. Injury or disease such as stroke can cause difficulties with this, stopping the two eyes from co-ordinating their movements. Some of us are born with abnormalities in the length of a muscle, which means one eye is out of alignment. This can be corrected by surgery.
Opticians correct double vision by using a prism built into your spectacle lenses. The prism bends the light so that you only see one image. This can be put into one or both lenses, and usually we divide the prism up so that the weight is even across both lenses. We also use prisms that stick onto lenses sometimes, this allows us and you to experiment with the amount of prism needed, or correct a temporary problem. When you’re tired the double vision can be worse, as your eye muscles suffer from fatigue just like aching legs or arms! To prevent eye strain and overworking those busy eye muscles, always wear glasses if they have been prescribed, take breaks from close work at regular intervals, and visit your optician at once if you suddenly suffer from double vision. All less tiring than a visit to the gym!
Tags: double vision, eyes, gift of sight, ocular muscles, Opticians, Prism, visual system
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Thursday, July 8th, 2010
With growing awareness of body language and eye contact, nowadays we’re more conscious than ever of the importance of how we come across to others. The pressure is increased even further if you suffer from an eye condition that affects the way you look, especially when it comes to the super sensitive issue of your eyes.
One of the most common problems patients suffer from is lazy eye, or as people often call it. One eye wanders and does not focus as with as normal eye. This can make it difficult for other people to tell where you are looking. It can be successfully operated on, so do bring it up with your optician, it may be possible for you to be referred to the hospital eye service for assessment.
Cosmetic problems with the coloured part of the eye, the Iris, are more unusual. We have patients with different coloured eyes, or with a segment of the Iris missing. This can be treated with coloured contact lenses, which we can use to match the different colours, or to disguise a gap in the Iris. This can produce excellent results without resorting to surgery.
Ptosis is a term which covers drooping lids due to muscle defects. The muscles which control the eyelids are a complex mechanism and any difficulties with the system can impair vision if the lids droop down across the eye. Surgery can help in some cases, or you can have a slim metal prop attached to your specs which lifts the faulty lid.
Any of these issues may also be helped when it comes to changing your specs – small and fashionable frames, possibly with a light tint will give your more confidence and a small measure of camouflage. It’s never to late to look into solutions for these problems, and new techniques may give you options now that weren’t possible a few
Tags: different coloured eyes, eye condition, Iris, lazy eye, Optician, Ptosis, specs, squint
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Sunday, June 20th, 2010
The eye is one of the most amazing organs in our bodies. Our sight is the most precious of our senses, and these small and perfect globes make sight happen by refracting light through it’s systems to help us make sense of our world. The eye is an incredibly complex and sensitive structure, all finely tuned, so it’s not surprising that tiny abnormalities result in visual defects and lead us to need help to correct our sight.
For perfect sight, light has to enter the eye and focus on the back surface. If your eyeball is too long, you’ll be short sighted. If it’s too short, you’ll be long sighted. Specs or contact lenses position the light in the right place so you can see clearly. If the curve of your cornea, the clear window at the front of the eye, is imperfect, then this will also create a problem with focussing.
Light enters the eye through the pupil, the black hole at the centre of the eye. It travels through the crystalline lens, a transparent structure that changes shape to let us see both close up and far away. Muscles hold the lens in place and stretch and relax to alter its shape and therefore its focus. If the lens is not the perfect size and shape then this will add to the visual defect of the eye. So you can see that there are several reasons why you may need glasses or contact lenses.
Once your optical system has been corrected and is working as it should, light reaches the light sensitive layer, the Retina, which lines the back of the eye. Here the image we see is upside down and in reverse! It travels to the brain through the optic nerve, where thankfully it’s put the right way round.
Ophthalmologists and opticians are lucky in that they’re the only clinicians who can examine their specialist organ without cutting their patient open! Thanks to ever advancing screening equipment and retinal imaging systems we can see inside your eyes and spot the very first signs of problems. This fantastic and beautiful system works on our behalf for every minute of our waking day, so look after it by attending your check ups and taking a few minutes to appreciate and maintain it.
Tags: cornea, eye, eyeball, glasses, long sighted, optical system, Opticians, pupil, retina, short sighted, sight
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Wednesday, April 21st, 2010
After years of the struggle to find a way of curing short sightedness, scientists in Australia are in the early stages of research which will control the progression of defects in the short sighted eye! So can we finally throw away our specs, contact lenses and the thought of laser surgery forever?
An eye is short sighted because the eyeball, from back to front, is the wrong length, and light isn’t focussed correctly, so what we see is blurred. Specs and contact lenses re-focus the light so that if falls in the correct place and we see clearly. Laser surgery works by altering the curve of the front of the eye, so that light is focussed properly, but it’s a pretty drastic solution!
The Australian researchers have been working on spectacle lenses which play with peripheral vision. (That’s what we see around the edges!) They are working on creating lenses that work differently to standard spectacle lenses to control our short sightedness and stop it progressing. There have been many suggestions through the years to alter the length of the eye, and to understand why myopia occurs. The social stigma of wearing glasses and the sheer inconvenience of specs will always drive us forward in trying to correct visual defects by more permanent methods. There are already techniques such Orthokeratology, where you wear specially prescribed contact lenses at night to reverse myopia.
So even if we’re presently hanging onto our specs and contact lenses, there may be hope for the future, if the researchers are far sighted enough!
Tags: laser surgery, Orthokeratology, pectacle lenses, short sightedness, specs
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Monday, April 12th, 2010
We are all aware that the so called ‘obesity epidemic’ is a growing cause of concern to our future health. One of the problems associated with this is the rise in Diabetes, a complex disease that causes a wide array of symptoms and potential problems for sufferers. As Opticians we spend a great deal of time with Diabetic patients, as the effect on sight can be devastating.
Diabetic retinopathy is a major cause of blindness, and the condition must be carefully monitored and quickly treated to save a patient’s sight. Uncontrolled Diabetes causes blood vessels to grow and leak into the retina, destroying this vital layer of cells and leading to loss of sight. Research is currently involved in better retinal screening, improved treatment uptake, and new treatments. If the early signs of retinopathy are treated quickly by laser surgery sight can be saved.
At present we know that tight control of sugar levels in the first few years of diagnosis can affect development of Diabetic retinopathy in the future. Controlling blood pressure and cholesterol lower blood sugars, and therefore help to reduce symptoms. Patients taking Statins to control their cholesterol have a lower incidence of Diabetic Retinopathy, so it’s interesting that all the symptoms and good management are interlinked in combating the disease. As Diabetic Retinopathy is also connected to memory impairment and reduced brain function it really does make sense to take a holistic approach to managing Diabetes and controlling sugar levels.
Yearly eye exams are free to diabetic patients, so take advantage of this and make sure you have your check ups. Find an optician with OCT screening equipment – this takes a 3D scan of the retina and will pick up the every earliest signs of problems. Manage your symptoms and don’t mess with those sugar levels – as well as endangering your life and your sight here and now, you could be storing up problems for the future.
Tags: Diabetes, diabetic retinopathy, OCT screening, Optician, Opticians, retina, retinal screening, sight
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Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
It might sound like a pretty trivial problem, but dry eyes are at best an annoyance, and at worse a very painful condition. The incidence is on the increase, and opticians are dealing with ever increasing numbers of patients complaining of symptoms that can be attributed to dry eyes. Current statistics suggest that 18 – 30% of the population will have a problem with dry eye syndrome at some point in their lives. About 20% of over 65s will be sufferers.
For the patient this means sore, gritty, uncomfortable eyes, possibly with some visual disturbance. In time this may lead to damage of the front surfaces of the eye. Dry eye may occur because you don’t produce enough tears, or because the tears are of poor quality. Tears are actually a complex substance made of layers that perform specific functions in the eye. They have a fatty lipid layer that stops the underlying tears from evaporating, an aqueous watery layer that supplies nutrients and anti-bacterial proteins, and a mucous layer that lubricates the eye. So our humble tears feed, cleanse and lubricate the eye and create a smooth surface to make your sight as good as possible. Contact lens patients may suffer even more as the right quantity and quality of tears play a huge part in good comfort and vision with their lenses.
Research has been ongoing for many years to provide relief for dry eyes, both for contact lens wearers and other patients. Artificial tears have been developed to provide relief from symptoms, both short term and long term. As the whole mechanism of tears is to wash the surface of the eye at regular intervals then artificial tear drops have to be good at staying in the eye and of course not interfering with your sight while they are doing their job! There are many different formulations so do persevere and return to your GP if a particular product does not work for you.
Tags: dry eyes, eye, Opticians
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Friday, February 26th, 2010
The eye disease Glaucoma is a cause of blindness that can be easily treated if detected at an early stage, with the result of no loss of vision. As the patient often doesn’t suffer any symptoms until the disease has progressed, it is a definite reason to keep up to date with your eye examinations. Glaucoma occurs due to a build of pressure inside the eyeball. This happens when the fluid produced in the eye cannot drain away as it is meant to. The pressure builds and begins to affect the Optic nerve, which then reduces the sufferer’s field of vision. This usually happens so slowly that the patient is not aware of the problem.
Acute Glaucoma is a different issue, in that symptoms do appear, as the disease occurs suddenly. The eye will be painful and vision is quickly affected. Immediate treatment is vital to save sight. For either form of Glaucoma treatment may involve eye drops or surgery. Close monitoring is also vital, to keep the delicate balance between the in and out flow of fluid within the eye.
If you have Glaucoma then the NHS will pay for your sight tests, which should be done yearly. Close relatives over the age of forty will get their tests through the NHS too, as the problem can be hereditary. If you are diagnosed make sure your children, siblings and parents know and tell them to go for a check-up. The Optician screens for Glaucoma by reading the internal pressure of the eye, checking your field of vision, and examining the Optic nerve when they look into your eye. Usually pressure is checked by bouncing a puff of air onto the eye ball, to read the pressure. Older screening equipment needed anaesthetic drops so the eye could be touched, but nowadays the test is non-invasive. Field screeners emit flashes of light that you register to give a read out of your peripheral vision. There are different formats of tests, but all are quick and simple, and give a record of how good your field of vision is at a given time. When the Optician looks inside your eye with their ophthalmoscope they can examine the Optic disc and check for any changes or signs of high pressure. Subtle changes with any of these tests may be early signs of Glaucoma, so your Optician may refer you to the Hospital for further investigation. Always take their advice seriously and follow up warnings. It might just save your sight.
Tags: eyeball, field of vision, Glaucoma, Optic nerve
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Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
When a patient has a problem with their glasses it seems an obvious answer is to query the strength of the lenses. Sometimes of course the prescription has been read wrongly, or sight may have fluctuated, but more often than not the glasses are correct and so was the examination. So what else may be wrong?
The positioning of the lenses in your frames is as crucial as the correct power. If you have an astigmatism then the lens has to sit at the given angle – the axis – on your prescription. The higher your cyl or astigmatism strength the more crucial this angle is. You’ll feel seasick and suffer distorted vision if the axis is wrong. This was a dreadful problem when frames were round as the lens would swivel at will within the frame!
If you sit on your frame or manage to distort it in some other way, then you may inadvertently change the orientation of your lenses, so get them straightened before you give yourself headaches and eye strain. Return them to your online optician or go back to your high street optician and get them adjusted. If returning them to the online optician make sure they have a copy of your prescription so that the axis definitely in the right place.
The distance of your frame from your eye can also be an issue if you have a high prescription. This measurement is snappily called the back vertex distance, and is the space, measured in millimetres, from your eye to the back of your spectacle lens. Wearing glasses too far down your nose can be as detrimental to your sight as wearing the wrong power, so if you feel the power of wrong then talk to your optician. Here at the Internet Glasses Companywe advise clients if this will be an issue for them and discuss fitting options.
Tags: astigmatism, cyl, glasses, High Street Optician, lenses, online optician, ternet Glasses Company, the axi
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Thursday, February 11th, 2010
Alzheimer’s has been in the forefront of the news this week, as experts discuss the extent of the disease, and call for more research. Sir Terry Pratchett, himself a sufferer, has also been out and about, bringing this issue to the public attention with the euthanasia debate.
So how does this relate to eye care? Anyone who has had an eye examination will know that the optician does not just check their sight and help them decide if they need glasses or contact lenses. The optician can also diagnose and monitor the progress of many diseases, including MS, Diabetes and High Blood pressure. The optician will refer you to your GP if they have concerns about eye health as well as general health. This may be taken a step further in future as a test for detection of Alzheimer’s may be available from your optician within the next few years.
The test looks at dying brain cells which are visible in the retina, and can therefore be detected on retinal scans. Fluorescent markers are introduced into the eye, which then attach to the dying cells. This should allow us to spot early signs of the disease before symptoms appear. As medical science moves on and treatments are developed for Alzheimer’s and similar diseases early detection could be vital in halting progress of these conditions.
This test has only been conducted on mice so far, but clinical human trials will begin this year. It will be cheaper than present testing methods, and is non-invasive, causing less distress to patients. As our population ages the fight to cure age-related diseases will become more important, as we aim for good health in our longer life span. Your optician may be the place to visit for even more types of testing as time goes on, and we learn to recognise signs of disease by new methods. If the research progresses as expected then we may be booking you in for more than an eye teat within the next five years….
Tags: Alzheimer’s, clinical human trials, detection of Alzheimer’s, eye care, eye teat, Optician, Sir Terry Pratchett
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