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Home » What's New » How Age Affects Your Eyesight – Presbyopia

How Age Affects Your Eyesight – Presbyopia


Contact your Long Beach, CA Eye Doctor to Find Out About Treatment Options


Many adults eventually begin to see signs of presbyopia or an impaired ability to see objects at a close range, as they age. As people around the world are reaching older ages, a significant number of people develop the condition, which currently cannot be escaped.


The lenses of your eye bend when focusing on objects at differing distances. Some theories are that with age, that elasticity is reduced because the lenses lose their give. This phenomenon is known as presbyopia and is often noticed by blurred vision when reading or seeing things right in front of you. This usually starts to take place around someone turns 40. Sufferers often deal with the reduced vision by holding the paper far away or standing at a distance from the object they are looking at. Shifting from focusing on distant objects to nearer ones can often be tiring for people with presbyopia. This tension can add to one's discomfort by causing headaches, eye strain or fatigue.


Most commonly bifocal lenses or progressive addition lenses (PALs) are worn to deal with this issue. Bifocal lenses have two prescriptions for vision, the upper portion is for distance vision and the lower portion of the lens is for looking at objects that are close by. PALs use the same principal as bifocal lenses, but the transitions between the two prescriptions are more gradual and have no clear line between them. Users will more easily adjust focus, as they might, if they had normal sight. An alternative would be reading glasses which are usually worn just when needed as opposed to all day.


Presbyopes can also consider multifocal contact lenses or monovision lens correction (when one eye is prescribed a correction for distance vision and the other near vision) to correct their condition. It may take a few tries to come up with the best method and type of contacts since different lenses can have an effect on your comfort or distance vision.


There are also surgical options available that may be worth discussing with your eye doctor. A lot of people find the most success by combining treatments for presbyopia. Furthermore, since presbyopia will likely worsen with age, you will probably need to keep adapting your prescription. The positive news is, there continues to be a significant amount of experimental treatment on the market currently to discover additional effective treatments for presbyopia.


Seeing symptoms of presbyopia? Schedule an appointment with your Long Beach, CA optometrist. Improved eyesight is worth it!