Aches and Pains and Presbyopia. Oh Dear.

Turning 40 or 50 are milestones in life we all face, complete with their attendant baggage. Everything about us seems to be aging. And getting creaky and cranky or impossibly annoying.

A frustrating eye condition that begins around age 40, which you may be experiencing and which can definitely make you feel older, is presbyopia. 

Just like your skin and your joints, your eyes age too. Presbyopia is a natural consequence of that aging process. With presbyopia, your eyes lose their ability to change focus to allow you to see objects that are near.

When your eyes were young, their lenses were soft and flexible, and could change shape easily. This ability to change shape allowed you to be able to focus on objects that were both near and far away.

Sometime after the age of 40, however, your lenses become less flexible, 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 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):

• Presbyopia occurs when the lenses of your eyes lose flexibility.
• Farsightedness, which has genetic tendencies and can be present at birth, occurs when the natural shape of your eyeball (either it is shorter than normal or has a flat cornea) causes light rays to bend incorrectly when they enter your eye.
• The confusion arises because the results are much the same – difficulty seeing things up close without correction – but the causes are different.
• There is no cure for presbyopia, but it can be easily corrected. Some people simply opt for standard drugstore reading glasses, keeping a few pairs around the house wherever they may need to do some reading. Presbyopia can also be treated with laser surgery.

Should you decide to treat your presbyopia with surgery, the doctors at The Longwood Eye & LASIK Center, are trained in the latest LASIK laser techniques. Call for a consultation appointment, today: (888) 296-0106.