All About Presbyopia
Contact your Peoria, AZ Optometrist to Find Out About Treatment Options
Many adults eventually notice signs of presbyopia or an impaired ability to focus on objects that are close, as they age. With the growing international population of older adults, a significant number of people develop the condition, which is an unavoidable result of your aging eye.
The lenses of your eye bend to focus on objects at differing distances. Some theories are that as you grow older, that flexibility diminishes because the natural lenses harden. This phenomenon is known as presbyopia and is often first noticed by an increased difficulty focusing on things at a close distance. This usually begins to happen any time after someone turns forty. Sufferers often deal with near visual impairment by holding a book far away or standing back from the object they are looking at. Shifting from focusing on far away objects to closer ones can often be straining for those with presbyopia. The strain can add further discomfort by causing eye strain, fatigues or headaches.
The most popular solutions for dealing with presbyopia are bifocal lenses or progressives (PALs). A bifocal lens has two points of focus, the main part of the lens has a prescription for seeing objects from a distance and a second, lower portion for focusing on things nearby. Progressive lenses use the same principal as bifocals, but they offer a more gradual gradient between the two prescriptions and have no visible distinction between them. Users can more easily shift focus, as they would with normal eyesight. A third option is reading glasses which, unlike bifocals or PALs which are worn continually, are used only when needed.
Presbyopes can also opt for multifocal contacts or monovision lens correction (when one eye is prescribed a correction for distance vision and the other near vision) to improve their condition. It may take a couple of attempts to figure out the optimal use of contacts because different lenses can affect your comfort or distance vision.
Additionally, there are options for other procedures including surgery that could be considered that you may want to discuss with your optometrist. A significant number of patients are most successful combining options for presbyopia. Also, since your eyesight will likely worsen with age, you will probably need to continually adjust your prescription. With the population growing older, there continues to be quite a bit of research being done to discover additional and perhaps more permanent treatments for presbyopia.
If you are beginning to notice symptoms of presbyopia, call for an appointment with your Peoria, AZ eye doctor. Improved vision can be yours!
Like us on Facebook
Follow our Tweets
Find & Review us on Google
Review us on Yelp!