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What Do You Know About Presbyopia (pres·by·o·pi·a)?
It’s a fact: everybody gets old. It seems turning 50 comes with a bouquet of black balloons, corny jokes and strange health complications. Our body begins to change…and sometimes it frustrates and betrays us. Your eyes are no exception. They age as your body ages and changes.
A very common eye condition, which can definitely make you feel older, is presbyopia.
Presbyopia causes your eyes lose their ability to change focus and see objects that are close or read without holding your book at arms length.
When you were young, your eyes had flexible, soft lenses that changed shape easily. This ability to change shape allowed your eyes to focus on objects that were both near and far away.
Changes to you eyes happen around the age of 40, when the lenses of your eyes become less flexible and much more rigid. They can’t change shape as easily as they did when you were young, so it becomes much more difficult to see things up close, like your phone or the newspaper. But take heart. You are not alone. Presbyopia affects almost everyone at some point in their lives.
Presbyopia is sometimes confused with farsightedness (hyperopia) but they are different. Farsightedness, which has genetic tendencies and can be present at birth, occurs when the natural shape of your eyeball causes light rays to bend incorrectly when they enter your eye. Presbyopia occurs when the lenses of your eyes lose flexibility as you age. This can be confusing because the results are much the same – difficulty seeing things up close without correction – but, again, the causes are very different. There is no cure for presbyopia, but it can be easily corrected.
Presbyopia is treated by our highly trained refractive (LASIK) surgeons at OCLI. We use LASIK vision correction, an all-laser procedure that only requires a few minutes to complete. LASIK reshapes your cornea and improves your reading vision – bringing your near vision back into focus.
If you would like to know more about treating your presbyopia with LASIK surgery, call for a consultation appointment with one of our highly trained LASIK surgeons by requesting an appointment or calling 1.866.SEE.OCLI (1.866.733.6254).
