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If you’re around 45 years old you may have started noticing difficulty reading small print whether it’s your smartphone, restaurant menu or while relaxing and reading a book.
Perhaps your arms aren’t long enough as you stretch out to hold your reading material further away from your eyes to see it more clearly. Sorry to say, but as you move things further away from your eyes the print gets smaller in size, so while this may work for you now, it is only a temporary and partially successful solution to presbyopia.
What is presbyopia?
Presbyopia is the age-related changes that occur in our eyes. You can’t avoid it, even if you’ve never had a problem with your vision before. Changes occur within the proteins in the lens of our eyes making the lens harder and less elastic over time. Age-related changes also take place in the muscle fibres surrounding the lens. With less elasticity it becomes difficult for the lens to move and therefore your eyes to focus on close objects.
Other symptoms of presbyopia
Presbyopia can also cause headaches, eye strain and visual fatigue that makes reading and other near vision tasks less comfortable and tiring. You will find that you need more light for reading. This is due to the muscles that control your pupil size and reaction to light losing their strength and the pupil not adjusting to let as much light into the eye.
Do you want to look as young as you feel?
Are you too young to ‘age gracefully’ and pick up a pair of cheap readers from the chemist or supermarket? Or perhaps you are ready to announce you’re at middle age with a style transformation and you visit the optometrist for a pair or trendy (for this season) frames. Regardless of which pair of glasses you choose you will need to update them every couple of years as your prescription will need to be increased as the number of birthdays increases. Eventually those ‘readers’ become necessary for more activities and you’ll spend more time looking for them to wear them. You may already have glasses for distance vision and now require a second pair for reading; even more of an inconvenience when you pick up the wrong glasses as you head out the door.
Or perhaps you want to have the freedom to do things that you enjoy without having to think about glasses, live without lenses - no readers, no bifocals, no varifocals (progressive lenses). Laser Blended Vision (LBV) treats presbyopia allowing you to become less dependent on lenses to see objects close up, at a distance and the space in between.
Can Laser Eye Surgery help people with presbyopia to read again without glasses?
Yes, most people can then throw away those annoying reading glasses after Laser Blended Vision. We can’t stop the ageing process but we can make vision more convenient and comfortable.
PRESBYOND Laser Blended Vision is suitable for 90% of people and uses the same laser eye surgery as for LASIK technology but it adjusts each eye slightly different. One eye is adjusted to see mostly at distance, and a little close up, while the other eye is adjusted for the opposite; mostly close up and a little at distance. The brain compensates by combining the two images to provide much greater depth of vision and an all-round improvement in visual acuity.
Presbyopia is not something that goes away by ignoring it. Are you prepared to age gracefully at the tender age of 45-50 or would you like to look as young as you feel?
Call 0800 69 2020 or email info@boweneye.co.nz for a free, no obligation, suitability assessment with Dr Reece Hall. Appointments can be made for clinics in Wellington, Waikanae, Palmerston North or Nelson.