so have you been struggling reading or seeing things up close or perhaps you're
having difficulties transitioning from near to far and then back to near again
or maybe you're holding things way out here and your arms just aren't long
enough well you may have a condition called presbyopia and in this video
we're going over what is presbyopia and how to deal with it let's take a look.
Welcome this is dr. Allen here from the doctor eye health show helping you learn
all about the eyes and vision and if you're new here to the channel and you
like learning about different eye diseases as well as finding the best
vision products then you're in the right place so consider hitting that subscribe
button down below also at any point throughout the video
included a bunch of additional information and links in the YouTube
description below so you can learn a little bit more now in case you haven't
noticed there's a lot of people out there who start using reading glasses
wearing bifocals or some sort of optical correction to see things up close as
they get older and that's from this condition called presbyopia and this is
a condition where a structure inside the eye starts to change and makes things up
close more difficult to see and this affects just about everybody starting
around their mid forties some people a little bit earlier maybe their late 30s
and just about everybody before the age of 55 getting into their 60s and there's
this little bit of a misconception that it has to do with changes of the eye
muscles inside the eye however that is not entirely true so inside the eye
there's a clear structure called the crystalline lens and when we are very
young children this lens is not only clear but it is very thin and flexible
and the problem is that every year of life as we get older this lens gets
thicker and thicker have you ever heard that every seven years the cells of your
body regenerate and you have pretty much an entirely new body well not entirely
true the lens of the eye has the exact same cells that you were born with and
the lens grows an extra layer thick almost every year of life kind of like
the rings on a tree or layers of an onion and again when we're young there's
less layers and so it's very flexible kind of like a young sapling tree
blowing in the wind it can move very easily however if you're trying to push
on a really big tree that's got many layers like a giant oak tree or a pine
tree yeah it's much more difficult to move and that's exactly why after
about 40 years of life people start to have difficulty flexing this lens inside
the eye and they start to have trouble seeing up close so starting to have
trouble reading up close with age is a very normal phenomenon now before I go
to the different treatment strategies for presbyopia go ahead and let me know
if you're enjoying this video by smashing the like button down below and
leave a comment if you have ever been diagnosed with presbyopia before and if
your doctor ever explained this to you now there are many different strategies
to see things better up close the oldest one of course throughout history is a
magnifying lens now there are many different magnifiers that are out there
of course people still use them for small print and people who have low
vision will use these a little bit more often and it is best to find one that
has a magnifying light built into it because then you'll see a little bit
sharper when there's good light then of course there are reading glasses which
are really just two handheld magnifiers stuck together and fit over the eyes of
course you can get ones with your prescription dialed in those are going
to be higher quality and offer you the best vision and that's something that
can be tailored from your eye doctor depending on what you're reading tasks
are you're somebody who just uses their phone a lot there's somebody who sits on
the computer screen that's a little bit further away or is there some other ha
being task that maybe you need really strong readers and you have to hold
things really up close and of course many people will just find themselves
buying cheap or reading glasses that they find at something like a
convenience store because well they're made very cheap and low quality so they
don't feel bad losing them around the house or some place order does make them
a little inconvenient and so it's hard to keep track of them and they're
usually never quite with you when you need them the most
for that reason my favorite brand of over-the-counter reading glasses is from
thin optics because they come in either a cool key chain like this or they just
attach to the back of your phone and then you can actually keep them with you
all the time and they just hug onto your face like this kind of giving you this
cool kind of smart professor type of look now if you're somebody who requires
to wear glasses a little bit more full time to see things even clearly at
distance then perhaps you need to think about something like a bifocal such as
the ones with that flat line that goes across that was originally invented by
Benjamin Franklin of all people but thankfully since his time we've now
invented new lenses that help you see things up close without having to deal
with that line and those type of lenses we call progressive lenses or no line
bifocals if you are in the market for buying glasses with a bifocal or a
progressive lenses I do encourage you to speak to
your local optician because they're gonna get you the best lenses and get
the proper fit if you try to buy these type of lenses online historically
nobody ends up being very happy with them there's just too many differences
in lens technology and the measurements need to be fairly exact otherwise yeah
people just don't see that well and they get very frustrated with those lenses an
alternative to these types of glasses or something like contact lenses
some people wear contact lenses just to see well at distance and then they'll
continue to use over-the-counter readers to see up close another two ways we can
correct for both distance and near vision with contact lenses are both
multifocal contact lenses as well as mono vision contact lenses multifocal
lenses help people use both eyes to see objects at distance up close and
everything in between allowing depth perception but there is another
alternative again with mono vision contact lenses that's where a person has
one eye corrected for far away distance while the other eye is focused more for
things up close and if you're already a user of contact lenses or you're
thinking about getting into them I do have a whole video series about contact
lenses and you can learn more about these lenses here and hook them up here
in the YouTube card above as well as in the description below again if you want
to check out that full series and cool enough there are some eye surgery
options for presbyopia as well like I mentioned monovision correction with
contact lenses with one eye corrective for distance and one eye corrector for
up close if that's something that works for you then something like getting
LASIK done could be an alternative again they would kind of have to do that same
thing with one eye crack in for distance and one eye up close but if you've never
experienced that before it's often best to first try contact lenses like that
for just a short time to see if you can adapt to it before you make that
commitment to having eye surgery and right now there's even another surgical
procedure called a Kamra inlay where they implant a tiny microscopic disc
into the cornea of one eye and that'll improve your depth of field reducing
your reliance on things like reading glasses in most cases as always if
you're interested in these procedures make sure you talk to your local eye
care professional to figure out which one is best for you thanks for watching
if you'd like to learn more about different common eye diseases and their
treatments go ahead and click or tap the screen over here to the side to check
out that full playlist or if you'd like to see another cool video from dr. eye
health go ahead and clip it up the screen down over here again this is dr. Joe
Allen here from dr eye health helping about the eyes and vision keep an eye on
it and we'll talk to you soon