Dr. Theresa Ramsey

I’m sure we have all been to the eye doctor, covered one eye and read a line of letters/numbers and repeated with the other eye. After that we were told our vision was 20/20 or otherwise. If you were told you have 20/20 vision this means that you read at 20 feet the same that people with perfect vision read/see. If you were told that you have 20/30 vision, this means that what you can read comfortably at 20 feet, an optimal seeing person can see at 30 feet. Once you are at 20/40 you have half the vision of an optimal seeing person.

As we age, many people start needing more light to see the same menu or require larger fonts to read without glasses as we have a progressively diminished ability to focus on nearby objects. This is called presbyopia. In Greek “presby” means “elder”, “opia” means sight. The cause is one of two things. One is that the lens of the eye becomes more rigid and less elastic, therefore having less accommodation for nearby objects. Another potential cause, or a little of both, is that the muscles that bend and straighten the lens (ciliary muscles) becomes weak, leaving less accommodation for nearby objects.

When light enters the eye and passes through the lens, it becomes concentrated upon the retina. The retina is a layer of tissue at the back of the inner eye that is sensitive to light. It converts images into electrical impulses, which send signals through the optic nerve to the brain to be identified as objects through the macula (which is in the center of the retina). The retina has a very rich blood supply, which diminishes as we age for many reasons. Some reasons have to do with the gel within the eye becoming moreContinue Reading >