Following is a list of topics that are covered here. Click on
a topic that interests you!
Here's a simplified anatomy review.
Index
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This document is designed to provide accurate and authoritative
information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is understood
that the publishers are not engaged in rendering medical advice
that is contrary to the best interests of the individual. If you
have a question regarding your eyes and their health, we strongly
recommend you ask your optometrist.
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Allergies
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Most of us in the valley know that seasonal allergies may cause
discomfort, especially with contact lens wear. Many people spend
time outdoors playing sports or other activities. There is no
reason why Mother Nature should prevent us from enjoying the outdoors.
More than 75 percent of allergy sufferers report discomfort with
their eyes. These include itching, burning, watering and redness.
However, there is something you can do. Here are some tips to
help maximize eye comfort during the allergy season:
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Clean soft lenses frequently to relieve itchy eyes.
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Use powerful contact lens cleaning solutions to minimize protein
buildup on lenses.
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Follow a frequent replacement schedule for soft contact lenses.
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Use preservative-free artificial tears to prevent further eye
irritation.
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Use cool compresses to relieve symptoms rather than rubbing your
eyes.
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Use extra artificial tears, especially if you are taking allergy
medicines or shots.
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Make an appointment to see us. We have additional information
on remedies that will be more specific to your complaints. We
can now prescribe stronger medicines for those who need extra
allergy relief.
It is thought that excessive eye rubbing, a problem especially
bad in those with allergies, may be the initiating factor of keratoconus. Don't rub your eyes!Just looking at pollen under a microscope, is it any wonder that
this stuff makes you itch?
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Amblyopia
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When one eye sees better than the other, even with the best possible
correction, the eye which sees blurrier is known as a lazy eye, or amblyopic. Amblyopic eyes are not strabismus which is a turning of the eye in toward the nose or out toward
the ear, but one can cause the other and the terms are often confused.
Amblyopia occurs early in a child's development and is very hard
to reverse after the age of six. The best functional cure for
amblyopia is intervention with vision correction within the first
six months of life! When a child is born, the eyes begin teaching
the brain to see. If one teacher is a good teacher and one is
a poor teacher, one eye will learn how to see better than the
other. If this continues for too long, the brain can begin to
ignore what the lesser eye sees. This is equivalent to "skipping
class". Early intervention with glasses places a "tutor" in front
of the lesser eye in order to help it get caught up. If the tutor
isn't used, the vision never improves.
You can't go on to learn the hard stuff until you master the easy
stuff. Bring your children in for eye exams early so this can
be diagnosed and cured.
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Astigmatism
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The front of the eye is amazingly close to being perfectly round.
But rarely is it exact. Just about everyone has a slight distortion.
When the front of the eye has a slight distortion (is not perfectly
round) the eye has astigmatism. Astigmatism, when there is enough
of it, causes blur. But it is not a disease or a sickness. It
only describes the shape of the eye. If you bought a new lens
for your 35 mm camera and the lens was warped, you would get blurry
pictures. Astigmatism does the same thing. The Hubble Spacecraft
had astigmatism and sent back terrible pictures until we sent
up a"contact lens" to correct the view. Now it sees perfectly.
Wearing your glasses will not cure your astigmatism. There is
only one real cure now and that is Laser Vision Correction.
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Cataracts
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The original lens in our eye that we are born with is perfectly
clear. Cataracts occur when that internal lens begins to lose
its transparency. This is generally caused by exposure to Ultraviolet Light. The effects are cumulative so the older you are, the more UV
light you have been exposed to over time. This is generally why
the elderly are the ones who notice trouble with cataracts. This
is because at some point, the loss in transparency begins to affect
the quality of the vision. When this occurs, sometimes surgery
is necessary to replace the cloudy lens with a new one.
Carrying around a few extra pounds is not only bad for your heart,
but can increase the risk of developing cataracts, according to
an article in the Archives of Ophthalmology. A study of 17,764
men found that regardless of their height, men who weighed 198
pounds had a 75% greater incidence of cataracts than those who
weighed 148 pounds or less. Cataracts are the leading cause of
preventable blindness worldwide.
Cigarette smokers also have a higher risk of developing cataracts.
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Children's Vision
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Every child deserves an equal opportunity to learn. Vision is
a very important part of the learning process. If your child can't
see the overhead projector or the chalkboard, they are missing
out on part of their course work. Not everyone can sit in the
front row. Make sure that your child's school does annual vision
screenings to determine if a student is in need of additional
help. Or better yet, call us for an appointment.
Infants should have their eyes checked within the first year of
life. If anyone in the family has a lazy eye or an eye that turns
in or turns out, they should be seen before six months. Although
rare, undetected congenital cataracts or glaucoma can have devastating effects.
Halloween is often just around the corner. One important thing
to consider for your children is how to make the night as safe
as possible. The days of letting your kids go out on their own
are gone. Parents are escorting their children trick-or-treating
in greater numbers than ever before. Some are abandoning the idea
completely in favor of a supervised party. Regardless of your
preference, use care in choosing a costume. Plastic masks that
cover the face are very dangerous in their limitation of vision.
A better choice is an ophthalmologist tested make-up to maintain
your child's vision and keep them safe and sound.
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Colorblindness
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Normal human eyes are trichromatic, meaning consisting of three
separate receptors all contributing to normal color vision in
a specific ratio. All colors are created in the eye using red,
green, and blue light receptors. There are far more green and
red receptors in the eye than blue.
Overall, males are far more likely to be color deficient as the
gene is carried on the X chromosone. If a female gets a defective
X chromosone, she can use the gene on her good X chromosone to
have normal color vision. In this case, she is merely a carrier
of the trait. A carrier of the trait has a 50/50 chance of having
A) a color defective son, or B) a carrier daughter. If a male
gets a defective X chromosone, the Y chromosone cannot make up
the difference. A color defective male will always pass the defective
X chromosone on to his daughter making her a carrier. In order
for a female to be color deficient, she needs to obtain a defective
X chromosone from each of her parents.
True monochromats are extremely rare. Dichromats are a little
more common and are individuals that have only two of the three
types of receptors. Depending on which receptors are missing,
they can be categorized as Protanopic (1% of males) or Deuteranopic
(1% of males). These individuals must use varying levels of the
two receptors that they do have to give them the best approximation
of normal color vision. These are your typical "color blind" individuals.
Thus red, orange, yellow and green cannot be differentiated when
their brightness and saturations are made equal. Similarly, blue,
violet and blue-purple differ only in brightness and saturation,
but not in hue (perceived color).
Most deficiencies of color vision involve individuals who have
all three receptors (trichromats) but have them in the incorrect
ratio. Depending on which receptors are missing, they can be categorized
as Protanomalous (1% of males) or Deuteranomalous (5% of males).
In the green to red region of the spectrum, hue discrimination
is poor and colors appear relatively more desaturated than normal
leading to confusion of light tints or of very dark shades of
these colors.
Deuteranomalous individuals are not blind to color, they merely
perceive them differently than normal trichromats.
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Computers and Eyes
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Computer use seems to cause more eye related symptoms and problems
than anything else. Between glare, blur, dryness and strain, eyes are always tired after a day of VDT work.
We'd like to give you some tips on glare prevention. Which way
does your computer screen face relative to the biggest glare source
in your office? For most people, that glare source is a window
with light coming through it. Don't face your screen directly
into the glare, but don't face directly away from it either. Light
coming from behind makes your screen hard to see and so does light
reflected off of the front. Ideally, you should turn your monitor
so that the glare source comes from the side. In addition, try
an anti-reflective glare filter for the front of your screen.
Lastly, when possible, don't wear light colored clothes because
they add reflected glare to your screen.
So you still have to stare at that computer screen everyday. Well,
here is a tip: Every fifteen minutes or so, stop staring at the
screen and look up to something far away and get it in focus.
Take ten seconds for this and then get back to work. This should
keep your focussing muscle from going into a spasm and making
everything blurry for the ride home. And don't forget to blink
a lot! The average person blinks every 5 seconds. But when using
the computer that drops to every 20 seconds! The more you blink,
the more moisture your eyes get. Tears are a lubricant and if
your eyes are not getting enough, they will be sore and irritated.
If you need extra lubrication, there are many products on the
market to keep you comfortable. Ask us for a sample.
Most computer screens are set too high causing neck and back strain.
You should be able to see right over the top of the monitor when
you look straight ahead.
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Contacts -Astigmatism
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Astigmatism is position specific. If the frames of your glasses hold the
lenses at the right angle, no problem. However, contact lenses
have no frames to hold them still and if the lens rotates (which
it tends to do) the vision is blurred again. Special contacts
need to be fit that move on the eye but do not rotate. Non-rotating
contact lenses or Toric lenses are difficult to make and fancier in design. That's why they cost
more. However, in some cases, you don't have to wear toric lenses, they just let you see clearer than typical lenses. How much astigmatism
you have and how important crystal clear vision is to you are
the deciding factors. You won't do any permanent damage if you
choose not to correct your astigmatism. But the more you have,
the better you will see with special toric lenses.
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Diabetes
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Diabetes is the number one cause of blindness in some age groups.
It causes leaking of blood vessels in the retina of the eye. The
retina is essentially the "film" of your "camera". If your film
is bad, your pictures won't turn out. Leaking blood vessels cause
a sick retina. This sick retina sends out a signal to the body
to grow more blood vessels to supply blood to tissues by an alternate
route. This is a good idea in principle, but the new blood vessels
that do grow are extremely dangerous. They tend to leak themselves
and also damage the tissues that they grow on. Leaky vessels cause
swelling which, if long-standing, tend to destroy tissue. New
vessels growing on delicate tissue also tend to exert traction
on them, thereby causing tearing of those tissues. Should these
new vessels grow in the anterior chamber angle or "drain of the
eye, they can also cause glaucoma. These are the destructive forces of diabetes.
If you have a family history of diabetes or if you are frequently
thirsty, urinate frequently, have fluctuating vision, are overweight,
or are just curious, see your eye doctor or your physician for
a consultation.
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Dry Eyes
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Imagine this: You are driving with a dusty windshield and it begins
to sprinkle rain just a little, not enough to wash anything off,
just enough to make a mess. When you turn on the wipers, everything
smears. The only fix is if you have windshield washer fluid. If
you don't have enough moisture, you will have a hard time getting
things cleared up and a harder time seeing the road. The eye has
a windshield, too, and it needs a certain amount of moisture to
keep it cleaned off.
Dry eyes can be caused by wind, decreased water intake, smoking,
excessive heat or moisture, decreased blink rate, medication, eyelid disease, age, and a whole host of other things. It is
one of the most common, yet difficult symptoms to treat when it
comes to our eyes. New treatment regimens ranging from eye drops
to meibomian gland expression to tear duct occlusion have been
developed to treat these annoying symptoms. If you suffer from
any of these symptoms call us today for an evaluation.
For those who do a lot of traveling, this may come as no surprise,
but airplane air is very dry and really hard on contact lens wearers.
We suggest not wearing your contacts on the plane, but if you
must, bring plenty of rewetting drops to stay comfortable. Also,
squeeze all of the extra air out of your contact lens solution
bottles and then close them tight to help prevent leakage in flight.
And, of course, put an extra case and some extra solution in your
carry-on because you never know when your luggage is going to
end up on a vacation of it's own!
Do you have dry, itchy, watery, red or irritated eyes? Although not usually serious,
eye moisture problems can be very bothersome. They can be caused
by a number of things which upset the balance of tear ingredients,
including wind, dust, air conditioners, eyelid health and age.
See your doctor for answers to your questions.
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Floaters
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If you had a fish bowl that you kept for thirty years and you
never changed the water in it, what would that water look like?
It would probably have stuff floating around in it. The skin on
the outside of the body sloughs off cells as the die, why wouldn't
the "skin" on the inside do the same thing? They do, but those
cells have nowhere to go and so they tend to float around in the
vitreous, a gel-like substance that fills the inside of the eye.
Thus the highly technical nomenclature, floaters. Generally, they
are not dangerous.
But now a few caveats. Anything that floats around in your eye
is something that came loose. And it is not always just the inconsequential
stuff like dead skin cells, that come loose. If you see floaters,
it is extremely important to have your eyes dilated to make sure that something necessary
didn't come loose. Once that has been affirmed, there is no need
to worry unless you notice a change in size, shape number or associated
symptoms. A retinal detachment feels exactly the same as floaters: No sensations at all. But
a retinal detachment can make you blind. DO NOT assume these things that you are feeling will just go
away. Get it checked.
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Glaucoma
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This is a very insidious and dangerous disease. It is the number
one cause of blindness in African-Americans. It is strongly family
oriented, genetically. Glaucoma is a disease where the nerve which
connects your eyeball to your brain becomes progressively damaged
over time, eventually leading to blindness. High pressure in the
eye is a contributing factor in the damage being done. Typical
treatment consists of eye drops to keep the pressure low to slow
down progression. Consistent eye examinations are extremely important
in both the management and the discovery of this disease, as the
early stages have no symptoms.
A precise series of laser burns can be as effective as liquid
eye drops in controlling glaucoma, a disease that affects nearly
three million Americans, a study published in the American Journal
of Ophthalmology says. This is good news for those who cannot
tolerate eye drops. The drops can cause stinging, nausea, and
allergic skin reactions in some individuals.
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Hyperopia
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A perfect eyeball is perfectly focussed at infinity when the
eye is at rest. This same perfect eyeball would then have to work
a little to see close up. If the eyeball is required to do some
work just to see at a distance, it follows that the eye would still have to work harder to see
at near. Thus in the case of this eyeball, FAR is a little easier
than NEAR. This eye is farsighted or hyperopic. (When NEAR is easier than FAR, see nearsighted or myopic
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Keratoconus
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Keratoconus is a progressive disease of the cornea which creates
a distortion in the refractive ability of the cornea. "Kerato" means cornea and "conus" means cone-shaped. This shape of the cornea makes images appear
blurry to the eye and glasses do not help. The standard of care is to fit these patients with a Rigid Gas
Permeable contact lens which when worn becomes the "new" front
of the eye, bypassing the corneal distortion and allowing clear
images. Soft lenses do not work because their soft shape tends
to merely mimic the distorted cornea.
If this disease progresses too far, a corneal transplant may be
required. This disease appears to be determined genetically, but
what is inherited is not necessarily the funny shape, but the
tendency to develop the problem. It is seen especially in atopic individuals or those with a lot of allergies. It is thought that excessive eye rubbing, a problem especially
bad in those with allergies, may be the initiating factor. Don't rub your eyes!
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Laser Vision Correction
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Laser Vision Correction has reached Stockton. The "Excimer" laser
is an extremely accurate instrument which can precisely shape
the front of an eyeball to allow people to see well without the
constant need of glasses.
Since the late 1970's, incisional refractive surgery has treated
vision abnormalities in patients all over the world allowing them
to experience a new kind of freedom. It's the kind of freedom
that allows people to make lifestyle choices that were not options
to them before, because they were totally dependent on glasses
or contact lenses. Now, refractive surgery is experiencing the
dawning of a new era with the advent of the Excimer laser. For
as many as 25% of the population, the Excimer laser could represent
the first step towards less dependence on corrective lenses. For
a more in-depth discussion, click here.
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Macular Degeneration
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Macular degeneration is a slow, progressive disease of the most
sensitive part of your retina, the "macula". Without this portion
of the eye, we would all be legally blind. There is at this time
no cure for this age-related disease. It has a strong family preference
and is made worse by Ultraviolet Light. It may be slowed down or prevented by the consumption of foods
high in anti-oxidant vitamins. With people living longer, there
is going to be a lot of this disease occurring.
Blindness among older Americans, much of it preventable, will
double during the next 35 years if the nation doesn't find better
ways to arrest eye disease among aging Baby Boomers, The Associated
Press reports. An estimated 860,000 Americans over age 40 were
legally blind in 1990, and that number will increase to 1.7 million
by the year 2035 at current rates of aging and diagnosis. Four
diseases cause most of the vision loss among aging Americans:
cataracts, glaucoma, diabetes, and age-related macular degeneration. Many cases of all four
could be caught and cured or controlled through regular eye examinations
which Americans tend to neglect.
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Myopia
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Nearsighted. Seeing better at near than at far. Typically this
occurs because the eye is too long. As eyes tend to grow, people
tend to get more nearsighted.
First the good news. You will not go blind from your prescription
worsening each year. Whether you are near-sighted or far-sighted
is determined by the length of your eyeball and just like the
size of your feet or the color of your hair, the length of the
eye is inherited from your parents. If your parents are very nearsighted,
you probably will be too. As far as the bad news, there seems
to be no way to determine the extent of your nearsightedness,
nor when it will level out. Most people find that their prescription
stops changing by the end of high school, but some groups of heavy
readers have lots of change in post-college years. Why this is,
is a hotbed for scientific discussion. Are nearsighted kids better
readers, or do intense readers become nearsighted? The debate
continues.
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Night Vision
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"The days are getting shorter, the nights are getting longer,...
and I can't see to drive in the dark!"
Decreased vision at night is probably the second most common visual
symptom that people have after decreased reading vision. However,
only half the time is it offered as a complaint during a typical
eye examination. Only after questioning do people seem to remember
that they fear night driving. Let's face it. We are not natural
creatures of the night. Our eyes are designed to work in daylight
hours. But thanks to the invention of electricity, our bodies
work hours that nature never intended. The black part in the center
of your eye is the pupil and it gets larger at night to let more
light in. But this also allows more blur to occur. The smaller
your pupils, the clearer your night vision. Now imagine you are
on a lonesome stretch of highway when a new Ford Explorer tops
the hill and shines its quartz halogen headlights into your giant
pupils. It's like opening the refrigerator in the middle of the
night. Everyone experiences decreased vision and depth perception
at night. If you have been to the eye doctor and your eyes are
fine, don't worry. However keep in mind that the following can
cause problems with night vision: changes in prescription, cataracts,
glaucoma, retinitis pigmentosa, dry eyes, light colored eyes,
most medicines, and increasing age. If you have concerns, see
your optometrist. Halogen Headlights bother everyone. Don't look
at them. Look toward the line on the right side of the road. If
you have difficulty seeing the road when there is no oncoming
traffic, this may signify a visual problem. Call our office for
a check up.
Nutrition
Move Over, Carrots
If your mother was like most, she told you that if you ate your
carrots, you would have better vision. But it turns out that she
should have been promoting greens instead. A recent Harvard study
shows that the magic ingredient your mom was talking about is
more plentiful in spinach and collard greens, as well as kale,
turnips, mustard greens, chard and broccoli. This ingredient,
a specific type of carotenoid, may prevent the retinal damage
caused by the sun, which can lead to macular degeneration.
Did you know that people who eat lots of fatty foods or drink
a glass of alcohol each day are more likely to get fatty deposits
on their contact lenses?
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Pink Eye
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If you wake in the morning with a sandy gritty feeling and discharge
in the eyes or the eyes are stuck shut, and you look in the mirror
and are frightened by the way your eyes look, you may have Pink
Eye, or a type of eye infection. Typically there is not much itching
(see Allergy for itching), there is a pinkish-red cast to the eyes, and there
is a white watery or yellow-green mucous discharge. Depending
on the findings and the severity, the treatment can range from
nothing at all to admittance to a hospital (although rare). Sometimes
viral, sometimes bacterial, and sometimes fungal, infections need
to be looked at and treated right away in order to minimize potential
damage to clarity of the cornea. Although these infections rarely
threaten vision, it is best not to take chances, especially if
there is pain involved. Call your eye doctor immediately.
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Presbyopia
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In a perfect eye, vision should be perfectly clear at distance
while the eye is at rest. When that is the case, near vision then
requires a change in focus. This takes effort. The effort is exerted
by a muscle in the eye that causes the crystalline lens of the
eye to change shape. In adolescence, the crystalline lens is extremely
flexible. By age 16, this lens starts to stiffen up a little.
This is not much of an issue at first because although slightly
stiffer, this lens is still easy to flex. However, year after
year this lens gets stiffer and stiffer. More and more energy
is required to get the lens to flex. When the eye muscles have
rested overnight, the task is easy in the morning, but after a
long day at work, close vision will seem a little bit of a strain.
By age 60, this lens has completely hardened and no longer flexes
at all. about midway between 20 and 60, the amount of energy that
it requires to flex the lens for a days work is more than we can
handle, and that is when a little help is required in the form
of a reading prescription. Think of reading as a weight lifting;
the glasses would be the spotter, still letting you do your work
and only helping out when the going gets tough.
You'll know that it's time when:
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you are continually having to push your work farther away from
you than is comfortable
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Your eyes won't let you work through the workday
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You borrow someone's reading glasses to see and they actually
do help!
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Red Eyes
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Redness in eyes is often caused by some irritation like dust or
wind, and the blood vessels dilated to bring blood and therefore
oxygen, to the eye to repair itself. (It is important that you
rule out the possibility of infection . If infected there will usually be a discharge.) When you use
Visine to "get the red out", that oxygen never gets to where it
needs to go. The damage is not being repaired and when the medicine
wears off, the redness returns to fix the original problem. This
can be even redder than the original and is called "rebound hyperemia".
Visine is fine for when you need to look good, say for an interview
or a date. However, when you want to be more comfortable and promote
healing (which will get rid of the redness), use an artificial
tear to soothe and lubricate. Also, when you can, wear sunglasses
outdoors to protect your eyes from wind, dust and ultraviolet light.
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Retinal Conditions
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definition to come
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Retinitis Pigmentosa
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There are many things that can go wrong inside of the eyeball.
Few are as devastating as Retinitis Pigmentosa. Retinitis Pigmentosa,
or RP, is the most common hereditary problem that affects the
retina of the eye. To give you an idea, if you think of the eyeball
as a miniature camera, the retina would be the film. If you have
bad film, it doesn't matter how good your camera is, the pictures
will still turn out bad.
RP slowly over time takes away your side vision leaving you with
tunnel vision. On the surface this doesn't sound too bad because
you would still have your straight ahead vision. With your straight
ahead vision, you can still see well far away and still read books.
However, your peripheral vision is that vision which gives you
your mobility, or your ability to walk around without bumping
into the couch, tripping on a step or stepping in front of a moving
car. In fact, it is so debilitating to lose your side vision that
even if you have 20/20 vision at distance, you are still considered
legally blind.
In contrast, those who have lost their central vision by another
disease known as macular degeneration can measure at 20/400 vision
or worse and still walk around without anyone knowing that they
have a sight impairment. Sadly, RP patients eventually lose their
central vision too.
The incidence of RP differs from study to study but is somewhere
in the range of 1/2000 to 1/7000 people. It is slightly more prevalent
in males and has no racial preferences. The most common initial
symptom is night blindness and the average age of onset of that
night blindness is the late teens. What is interesting is that
half of the cases of this "hereditary" disease have no traceable
family history.
There is a glimmer of hope for these people. In early 1998, doctors
at John Hopkins University Medical Center implanted a microchip
inside of an RP eye that is supposed to help the patients regain
some semblance of vision. This microchip bypasses cells of the
eye that are damaged and directly stimulates cells that are not
damaged. If you are interested in learning more, click here.
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Strabismus
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Strabismus, or an "eye turn" is a condition where the two eyes
don't point in the same direction at the same time. It can be
caused by the insertion of the muscles on the eyeball itself.
It can also be caused by one eye being amblyopic. It can cause amblyopia as well. If a person also has a high
hyperopic prescription, the eyes can be turned in while focussing. In this
scenario, the proper glasses can actually straighten the eye,
although they would need to be worn at all times. Eye turns caused
by muscle insertion can only be fixed by surgery.
The determination of what has caused the eye turn is very important
to the prognosis of the turn. If the turn has been prominent and
constant for many years, surgery can give a "cosmetic" cure, although
in some cases there is a chance of causing double vision. Early
detection can allow surgery to give a "functional" cure. All of
these determinations should be made by your eye doctor.
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Systemic Medicines
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All medicines are chemicals that when taken in sufficient quantities
can be toxic to our systems. The age old problem with medicine
is how much of this "poison" can I give to take care of the problem
and not harm the person who is taking it. Cancer medicines are
a perfect example. The amount of medicine or "chemotherapy" that
a person receives is very toxic because it takes a lot of poison
to wipe out a cancer cell.
The point is that medicine is a chemical that by its very nature
changes the chemistry of your body's organs and fluids. If you
were to make a cake, but instead of following the recipe you put
twice as much salt and half as much flour, the final product would
not turn out like it was meant to. Any medicine you put in your
body will change the chemistry of your body. Your tears are a
perfect example of a bodily fluid that changes composition with
medicine intake. The tears are made with three main ingredients.
Common everyday over the counter medicines can change the ratio
of ingredients and cause your tears to become thin and watery
or thick and sticky. There can be decreased amounts of tears due
to medicine as well.
A medicine does not have to be prescribed by a doctor to affect
your body chemistry. Any medicine you take should be reported
to every doctor who asks.
Following is a list of common medicines and their important side
effects. Notice that some are prescribed and some are over the
counter: 
There are many others that affect the eyes, including aspirin,
so let your eye doctor know what you take.
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Thin Lenses
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There is a common misperception that those who wear thick lenses
in their glasses need to choose a big, thick frame to hold them
because that is the only type of frame that will. Nothing could
be further from the truth. In fact, the bigger your frame is,
the thicker the lens will have to be to fill the frame.
For those of you with glasses that have a thick edge, have you
noticed that the centers of your lenses are very thin? Why not
take the "sweet spot" out of the center and put it into a small
rounder frame and be rid of those thick edges and extra weight
forever? Our staff can show you exactly how to do that and make
them even thinner by using a different type of plastic to make
them super thin and virtually indestructible.
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Twitching Eyes
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Myokymia is the name for the condition of the jerky contraction
of muscle fibers.
Myokymia can happen anywhere in the body, but there is something
disconcerting about losing control over your facial muscles. The
twitching there can be caused by a temporary imbalance in your
body's chemistry and this happens most frequently when one is
tired, under stress, not eating correctly, or consuming such drugs
as caffeine or nicotine.
The good news is that it is not serious and usually goes away
with time, rest, and proper nutrition.
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Ultraviolet Light
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UV is a specific range of light waves which are found at the blue/indigo/purple
end of the color spectrum. It is one of the non-visible wavelengths
of light meaning it is beyond our eye's abilities to perceive
this light. It is easy however to see the effects of ultraviolet
light. Imagine, for example, what a baby's skin would look like
after a couple of hours on the beach with no sunscreen.
Ultraviolet light has a proven effect on the skin of the body.
For all intents and purposes, it ages the skin, causing loss of
elasticity, loss of smoothness, and loss of normal cell metabolism;
in other words, wrinkles and skin cancer.
Ultraviolet light has also been shown to damage the different
"skins" of the eyes. The white part of the eye, or sclera, can
be affected by ultraviolet light and this creates small patches
of yellow or bumps at the 3 and 9 o'clock positions on the front
of the eye. These are known as pinguiculae, and are normal findings
in eyes exposed to ultraviolet light. In severe cases of sun,
dust and wind exposure, the skin of the sclera will actually start
to grow onto the clear part, or cornea of the eye, almost in an
effort, it seems, to protect the cornea. This is called a pterygium.
These can affect vision if left to grow toward the optical axis
of the eye. If this occurs, surgery is required to restore vision.
The cornea itself can be affected by ultraviolet and a prime example
of that is the sandy, gritty feeling you get in your eyes after
a day of snow skiing in the sun or a moderate welders flash. This
is extremely painful although no treatment is usually necessary.
The lens of the eye is the tissue most often affected by the eye
in that prolonged, cumulative exposure to ultraviolet light causes
the lens to become a cataract . This has good and bad points. When the lens becomes a cataract,
or less transparent, this hinders the vision of the eye. It is,
however, a protective mechanism for the preservation of the most
important and delicate structure of the eye... the retina. The
lens acts as a filter to keep ultraviolet light from accessing
the retina where UV may cause such problems as macular degeneration.
Indeed, in the early days of cataract surgery, no UV protection
was replaced and many of these individuals lost their most important
central vision in the macula because they had no supplemental
protection. Today, implants have built-in UV protection to avoid
this.
The ozone layer is the single greatest factor in eye protection
from UV rays. The more of it that gets destroyed by chloro-fluorocarbons
(CFCs), the more skin cancer, cataracts, pterygiae, and degenerated maculas we will see. The single most
important thing you can do for your eyes is to get 100% UV protection
in your sunglasses that you wear outdoors. Remember, clouds stop
visible light, but they don't stop ultraviolet light, and damage
can occur anytime during the day.
Protection can be afforded in many ways. First, use UV blocking
sunglasses at all times when outdoors during daylight hours. Remember
that plastic lenses block more UV than glass, and a UV-coated
lens works better than an uncoated one. Even though some of the
newer contacts block UV, contact lens wearers should wear sunglasses
too. If you have a hat with a brim and it keeps the sun out of
your eyes, use it. Watch for aerosol products that are CFC-free.
The earth and atmosphere that we destroy today is the legacy our
children will inherit.
©1999 Brookside Optometric Group