How does your eye problem affect your quality of life?
Is quality of life important? How do you measure it? What is it worth to you?
There are few things that affect your quality of life more than how you see the world. Enquire today, and you’ll be taking the first step towards dramatically improving your quality of life, right now.
Read on to learn more about the normal eye and the different types of eye conditions, and how we can treat them.
How does the eye work?
There are two structures in the eye, which work together to create a clear image - the cornea and the lens. The cornea is the clear window at the front of the eye. It is what you would touch if you touched the front of your eye. The lens is suspended inside the eye by small cables. It sits behind the coloured part of the eye.
The cornea is a rigid structure, which doesn’t change shape.
In our youth the lens inside the eye is soft and elastic and can change shape.
Normal vision in adult life
For people who are lucky enough to have perfect vision, the image they see in the distance when driving or at the cinema is crystal clear without any effort.
When the eye is relaxed, light from a distant object is brought into clear focus inside the eye. When they then look at an object up close (a text message for example) they can then contract a muscle and make the lens inside the eye more powerful. This brings the near object into clear focus.
Normal vision in later life
This ability to “pull focus” for near objects is something you begin to lose in your forties. If you started out with perfect vision for distance, you usually keep clear distance vision.
However, it becomes more difficult to bring near objects into focus. When reading a menu or newspaper we hold it further away than we used to. Eventually we can’t read without putting on reading glasses. This normal age related change in the ability of the eye to “pull focus” for near is called presbyopia and is caused by stiffening of the lens suspended in the eye.
At the same time the lens develops something called spherical aberration. This is the most important higher order aberration and makes the image quality worse for distance as well as near.
In our fifties and sixties the lens continues to become less elastic and less soft. It also gets larger and begins to become cloudy. We can now call it a cataract. If you live long enough, all of us will develop cataract – even those who were lucky enough to begin their adult life with perfect vision.
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