How does aging affect your eyes?
Age sometimes brings changes that weaken your vision and eyes, but you can do certain things to maintain lifelong eye and overall health. The solution may be as simple as using brighter lights around the house to help prevent accidents caused by weak eyesight or seeing your doctor more frequently to screen for age-related diseases. Cataracts
Dry eye
Glaucoma
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD)
Retinal detachment
Diabetic retinopathy
The sixth one may not affect you, if you do not have diabetes but surely the other five, may affect us one way or the other.
Eye problems and disorders are common in the elderly population. Laser surgeries and other treatments exist to correct and even reverse some of these conditions related to ageing.
”The key is to detect them early, as I suggested in the piece on our New Year resolutions. Regular eye exams will help detect vision problems that can affect people at various stages in life, but often affect the elderly. Let us quickly summarize the five conditions as stated above.
Cataracts
The eye has a lens that helps it to focus. The lens is made of protein. When the protein molecules in the eye clump, a cloudy spot, a cataract forms.
This is common in the older people, because cataracts grow slowly, your eye doctor may simply monitor the cataract until it interferes with vision.
Cataract surgery is a very common procedure to remove the cataract from your eye. Talk to your doctor whenever you notice blurred vision, as you age, and corrective lenses are no longer helping.
Dry eyes
Your eyelids have lachrymal glands that produce tears and they drain into the tear ducts in your lower eyelids. If the lachrymal glands stop working well, your eyes will become dry and uncomfortable.
Eye-drops or artificial tears can help, but consult an ophthalmologist to have your eyes properly evaluated, to rule out other eye diseases. There may be simple procedure to partially plug your tear duct – to keep tears from draining too fast.
Glaucoma
Four weeks ago, I discussed glaucoma in details. Let me just recap here.
The eye is filled with fluid. If too much pressure develops in the eye, it is called glaucoma. Over time, this build up of pressure can damage the optic nerve and cause blindness.
Luckily, this pressure develops slowly, and routine eye exams, as I mentioned some weeks back, can detect glaucoma before it becomes dangerous. Note also that glaucoma runs in the family. So if granny or parents had open-eye-blindness please start early eye exams from 40.
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD)
This is a very long term for loss of central vision. The macula is a part of the retina that processes central vision. Sometimes with aging the macula deteriorates. This causes problems with driving, reading and many common tasks.
Treatment can include laser surgery on the macula. Consult your ophthalmologist if you notice early central vision loss.
Retinal detachment
Layers of the retina can detach from the underlying support tissue. If untreated retinal detachment can cause loss of vision or blindness.
Symptoms include
Increase in the number of “floaters” in the eyes
Seeing bright flashes of light
Feeling as if a curtain has been pulled over the field of vision
Seeing straight lines that appear curvy.
Surgery and laser treatment can often re-attach the layers of the retina.
Diabetic retinopathy
Due to problems with diabetes and the control of blood sugar, the tiny blood vessels that supply oxygen and nutrients to the retina become less effective, which leads to vision problems. Treatment includes laser surgery and a surgical procedure known as a vetrectomy.
NB- All diabetics as I mentioned last week should have annual eye exams.
The eye is so important that we do not treat it with levity. Be medically guided.
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How does aging affect your eyes?
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