Posts Tagged ‘eye’

Accommodation Wanted!

Wednesday, January 12th, 2011

We all know that deep inside us our brains are hard at work, managing our bodily functions with very little help or effort on the part of our conscious minds. More juggling goes on than we could imagine, all in the interest of us keeping fit, healthy, and able to go about our day to day lives. If you’re under the age of forty there’s one miraculous task that goes on, and you won’t even notice it until it’s gone….

Accommodation is an amazing function of the eye, and it allows us to see clearly both far away and close up, effortlessly allowing us to switch focus so we see at any distance. Look up from your desk to the horizon and back to your fingernails, and accommodation is what’s allowing you to see at all of these focal lengths.

Your eyes accommodate from babyhood upwards, thanks to a wonderful little organ called the crystalline lens, which works hard all day every day inside your eyeball. The lens is suspended by ligaments which hold it in place, and they contract and stretch as you look around. This changes the shape of the crystalline lens and therefore it’s power, making it stronger or weaker to focus near or far away. And you never feel a thing!!

At birth, we have very stretchy lenses which allow us to see really close too – for important things like Mummy’s face! But as time goes on the lens continues to increase in layers within the eye, and it loses elasticity. With this change we start to notice we can’t see very close too any more, and desperately move things further away to try and focus on them! One day your arms get too short and your optician has the job of replacing the function of the crystalline lens with a spec version.

This ageing change within the eye is called presbyopia – Greek for ‘old eye’ – and there’s no escaping it, it comes to us all! So if you had perfect sight, short sight or long sight, at some point from the forties onwards you’ll need glasses for close work. You may choose separate specs for reading, varifocals or bifocals, as specs or contact lenses, and they will do the job that accommodation once did for you. So if you’ve still got it, appreciate it now, and if its’ gone, just get some varifocals and pretend

Varifocal Glasses

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The Perfect System

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.


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Home Help

Monday, June 7th, 2010

For serious eye diseases and problems with vision, you have to turn to the professionals for help, which may be referral to your Doctor, or the prescribing of glasses. There are however some eye conditions that you can treat yourself, with a little bit of store cupboard assistance.

A stye, proper name Hordeoleum, is an irritating and painful swelling which appears along your eyelash line. They flare up due to infection of an eyelash follicle, and can be around for about a week. They’re usually due to bacteria getting into the lash follicle, and if you’re under stress or sleeping badly you can be more prone to an infection. You can deal with the stye by gently applying a hot compress up to four times a day. Press carefully until the cloth has cooled. Don’t soak it in boiling water – just have it as hot as you can stand on the skin. If you can see well enough to remove the infected lash, sterilise some tweezers and carefully remove it. Recurring styes may mean you have underlying health condition, so talk to your GP.

Blepharitis is an ongoing problem with the eyelid margins, causing the formation of flaky skin or more distressingly, crusty deposits. These can make the eyes sore and they look quite nasty too. You can use a solution of boiled water with bicarbonate of soda or baby shampoo. Gently massage the lid margins, which will remove the deposits and clear the little blocked glands which have caused the condition.

Ongoing eye health issues can be painful and distressing. To avoid infection, only use make-up within its sell by date and discard mascara and brushes if you’ve had an eye infection. Wash hands thoroughly before and after touching the eyes if you’re using contact lenses. Follow your Optician’s instructions to the letter and contact them immediately if your eyes are sore, uncomfortable, or if your vision is blurred. Don’t borrow specs, make up or drops from anyone with an infection, and use separate towels and flannels if someone in your family has an eye disease like conjunctivitis.

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Not a Dry Eye

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.

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High Power Solutions

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

Those amongst the population who have normal vision have no idea how debilitating it can be if you are very short or long sighted. While most visual defects can be corrected with specs or contact lenses, none of the options is perfect, and then you have the problem of your sight without your correction in place. What if you wake up in the night and can’t find your specs? What if you break your only pair? What if you get an eye infection and can’t wear your contact lenses? Most patients with high prescriptions will at some point have had the heart stopping experience of having to manage without their glasses. So what are the other solutions?

A first step for many is contact lenses, and within that long term wear lenses. Disposable lenses that can be worn overnight are not new, but as new materials are developed they are available for more patients and with many different options. The joy of waking up in the morning and being able to see is the gateway to a whole new world if your sight is very bad, and extended wear lenses are an excellent choice for more and more patients. Speak to your optician, but always adhere strictly to their wear guidelines and keep up to date with check-ups.

A more permanent option is surgery, either Laser surgery that changes the shape of your eye to correct sight, or an implanted lens that goes inside your eye to give you the correction you need. Neither is for the faint hearted, but with clinics springing up all over the country and prices coming down, the surgical route is one that is becoming more popular. Today society is generally more accepting of elective surgery, and compared to Botox or a Boob job this is a necessity! Either type of surgery does have  limitations, and you have to go through examination and counselling before you can go ahead. The shape of your eye, thickness of your cornea and prescription may limit your choices, and a good surgeon will discuss all of this with you before you commit yourself. You also need to know recovery time, expected results, and cost before signing your sight into their hands! For some patients full correction cannot be guaranteed, and you may still need glasses at certain times. A reduced prescription or specs just for close work may however make a massive difference to your lifestyle, so don’t dismiss this idea without thinking about it. If your poor sight is a disability then maybe it’s time to look at more drastic measures than new specs!

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Mind The Gap

Sunday, May 17th, 2009

Customers often ask us about the weird moment when you look up from close work to distance, and your sight takes a moment to catch up. It happens to specs wearers and those with no spectacle prescription. As it’s come up quite a bit we thought we’d go through this for you.

Lenses are not just the bits of plastic or glass set in spectacle frames. We all have a lens inside each eye – it’s called the crystalline lens, and along with other structures in your eyes in helps you to focus. The lens is a clever little thing that changes shape to let you focus both close too and far away. It does all this work without us even having to think about it, although as we get older – forty onwards – it loses this ability and we need reading glasses.

At any age though, the lens is still doing it’s best to help you see close up. This is why you get that little visual gap – as you focus on different distances your lens and your brain have to catch up and let you re-focus. Of course you notice it more if you’re tired, or have been concentrating hard on anything at a specific distance. It’s nothing to worry about, although you should always make sure that your prescription glasses are up to date, to give your eyes all the help they need.

When you’re working close too, give your eyes a frequent rest by looking around the room at different distances, and remembering to blink, as this washes a fresh layer of tears across the eyes to lubricate them. If you only wear reading glasses you could consider swapping to varifocals, as they let you look comfortably into the distance without having to take your specs off.

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Help – My Arms Got Too Short!!

Thursday, March 26th, 2009

As if I didn’t have enough to worry about, what with the grey hairs, the inexplicable sprouting hairs, the dreaded wrinkles, I am now incapable of even reading a newspaper without help. I was even examining my shirts in case my arms had actually shrunk, because I was having to stretch things further and further away to see small detail.

Disaster! I couldn’t even read the small print on the Viagra (!) – but at least there was a simple solution, not as drastic as dying my hair or having anything waxed. I had an eye test, and the optician explained that I am now presbyopic. Sounds painful but the only discomfort was to my wallet, and I invested in some prescription glasses for reading.

As we get older – more mature as I prefer to think of it – the eye ages too, and the lenses inside the eye loses the ability to focus on detail. The optician did cheer me up by saying it happens to everyone and of course things could always be worse! I’ve since visited an online optician and ordered some reading glasses from them too – you can never have too many pairs and I leave them all over the place.

My reading glasses are now a way of life, and I like to think my groovy metal frames have a certain sophisticated elegance to them. Now where did I put that Viagra bottle….

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