The Aging Eye, Accomodation and Presbyopia

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Hello,

Welcome to my blog. As the world continues to battle out this pandemic hope erupts and we will continue to count on hope that we will win this war and all this shall pass. Do not forget to stay safe and adhere to measures put in place to safe guard life.

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Today I would be continuing the discussion on aging and the eye and I would attempt to explain one of the major mechanism that gets affected as we age and how it affects sight or vision. Previous writeups include Geriatric Ocular Condition, Conditions of the Cornea and Common Conditions of the Eyelid

Introduction

Aging is an inevitability which all have come to accept however the issues of aging including anatomical and physiological breakdowns are not easy to accept and embrace which end up affecting the psychology of many as the grow however I believe that knowledge is power and that with knowledge we are able to handle this issues just a little better.

The visual system as part of the all the other systems in the body also gets affected with aging and whiles some of these changes have very little to no effect on vision others do affect vision and may require visual aids and therapy in some situations.

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Accomodation

Accomodation may be described as the change in power of the eye or the lens within the eye to enable us see both far and near easily. The change involved an increase or decrease in dioptric power to bring rays from an object into focus. For objects at far there is decrease in dioptric power and this may be considered as the eye relaxing whereas near object results in an increase in dioptric power.

This is done with the help of fibers that connect the lens to muscles within the eye that surround the lens. Now generally as we age our muscles become flabbier and losses that semi-contracted state and strength it ought to have. When this happens the fibers are not able to pull and relax against the lens as they ought to because the contraction of the connected muscles are affected.

When this happens the eye losses some of the ability to increase its dioptric power making nearer things more difficult to read as they become blurry and requires that things a moved farther from the eye for clarity.

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Presbyopia

When the gradual loss of the dioptric power sets in we end up with the condition we refer to as presbyopia. The more we age the more we loss part of our accommodation until a later time in our life when we have lost everything.

Does that mean presbyopia cannot be avoid? The answer is a big yes however there are always variable in place and some people never really get to feel the impact of losing their accommodative power because they do not any kind of near work. But for individuals especially in academia who uses lots of near vision especially for reading, they would require that the power for near vision is supplemented with lenses.

Ideally presbyopia it supposed to start from the age of 40 however in some instance one may experience it a bit earlier, say at 35. When it happens like that know that you still have nothing to fear and that it all a part of the growing process.

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Conclusion

Presbyopia is not condition to be apprehensive about and the good news is that all you need is a set of lenses fitted for you by your optometrist to retain you near vision. So do report to your optometrist when you start experiencing blurry vision at near and get yourself checked.

Presbyopia is not painful in anyway and so if you are experiencing pain with blurry vision at near do report to your optometrist as soon as possible for the right diagnosis. One more thing, I do not recommend buying some spectacle from the road side for near vision because the wrong prescription could end up stressing your eye for no apparent reason.

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Thanks for reading and have a great day, Special thanks to my mentors and supporters @mcsamm, @tj4real, @armandosodano, @delilhavores, @gentleshaid, @agmoore. For further reading;

Presybopia

Presbyopia

Accomodation

The Aging Eye



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