Why You Need Reading Glasses at Age 40
If you’re turning 40 you may be thinking that your mom was right when she said “Don’t sit too close to the TV.” At 40 it’s natural to have trouble with your near vision. you’ve just joined over 135 million other Americans who are over 40 and oh by the way, your blurry vision has nothing to do with sitting too close to the TV.
It’s called presbyopia!
Presbyopia is defined as a shortening of the arms that prevents one from holding an object far enough away to be read clearly. Only kidding, your arms aren’t shrinking. Presbyopia is actually blurry near vision due to a normal decrease in eye focusing ability. That’s right, I said normal - it happens to everybody around age 40. Incredibly, very few people under 40 realize their eyes, even now, are plotting to betray them. Even more interesting is that there is nothing you can do to stop it. And contrary to “old wives” everywhere, wearing glasses does not make it worse. The explanation is simple.
Every eye has a crystalline lens that is responsible for focusing your vision between distance and near objects. When you are looking for a way the lens in the eye is relaxed, when you look at something near, like a book, the lens flexes to focus on the book. When you are young the lens is more flexible and active, they can focus on a distant sign and seconds later focus on your speedometer. As you age the lens gets thicker around the middle and doesn’t flex as much.
Because of these changes the lens becomes unable to flex like when we were younger to focus on nearby objects. By age 40 that lens is so fat and lazy it won’t even help out when we’re trying to read the newspaper or see our watch. Objects at 40 centimeters, our usual reading distance, become blurry.
While this process takes four years to occur, it is at age 40 that we notice because we can no longer do things nearby that we used to be able to do. Because of this, a new lens like glasses lens or contact lens will be used to focus our dear vision.
There are many great options to overcome this obstacle. Traditional bifocals, reading glass, progressive lenses, also known as no-line bifocals and bifocal contact lenses are just a few of the options available to you. cataract surgeons are using new implantable lenses that can be surgically inserted in place of your natural lenses. Monovision LASIK is also a great option. New and better technology becomes available each day and your local optometrist can share more information about the latest advances.
