PRESBYOPIA
Presbyopia most often starts to appear in your mid-40s. You may find it also takes longer for your vision to adjust when you switch from looking at a faraway object to one that is up close—and vice versa. And the amount of time it takes for your eyes to adjust to the dark may also be longer. Sometimes presbyopia is accompanied by headache and eyestrain as you try to adjust to your altered sense of vision.
These symptoms are part of the normal aging process. As we get older, the structure of certain parts of our eye changes. The lenses become stiff, which makes it harder for them to adjust so that they can focus on objects that are close up.
Presbyopia, as well as nearsightedness (myopia) and farsightedness (hypermetropia), are vision problems that result when the rays of light that enter the eye are not bent or refracted properly. The light that reflects off an object enters the eye through the cornea, where it passes through the lens, which then bends the rays. If this refracted light hits the retina at its focal point, your eyes have 20/20 vision and the images are sharp and clear; no correction with eyeglasses or contact lenses is necessary. The image is then sent on to the brain via the optic nerve.
When a person is nearsighted, the focal point occurs behind the retina. In farsightedness, the focal point occurs in front of the retina. Glasses or contact lenses can correct either problem.
With presbyopia, the focal point is the same; it’s the gradual hardening of the lens that causes the eye to work harder to focus on an object.
If you think you have presbyopia, try this simple test. Open the phone book to the white pages, and focus on a few telephone numbers. Slowly move the book away from you until you find that you don’t have to strain to focus on the numbers. If you find you need to have your arms almost fully extended before the numbers come into focus, you probably have presbyopia.
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