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Your Eyes At 40: Are You Ready For The Changes?

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Aging eyes require more care, not less. When you are young, and even into your thirties, your eyes seem to have no limitations except those to which you were genetically predisposed. Then you turn 40, and suddenly things are not quite the same. It is disconcerting when you begin to notice oddities with your vision.

Hopefully, if you are still seeing your eye doctor annually, he or she will catch anything out of the ordinary. Since many more changes to your vision are on their way, are you ready for them? Here are the changes with your vision that you can expect to start in your early forties, and what you can do to be prepared for them.

Bifocals

Bet you did not see that coming, did you? Bifocals are often something people associate with old age, not with middle age. Yet, your eyes' ability to focus on things up close, especially little things, begins to disappear. The tiny zonules, or ligaments attached to your lenses, are not as taut, and they cannot expand and contract as quickly as they did just a few years ago.

You will notice this the minute your children push something close to your nose and ask you to read it, and you cannot, even though you are wearing your glasses. If you put your glasses on, your lenses focus and you can read. Otherwise, you have to put the object farther away to read it. You know you have no other choice but to get bifocals when you can no longer read close up without your glasses or really far away with your glasses. If you are really lucky, you can put this off until your late forties, but most people who have worn glasses all their lives will have bifocals before they are fifty.

Eye Fatigue

Along with the bifocals, you will also discover that your eyes fatigue faster. Bright screens, such as those on a computer or smartphone, will be impossible to stare at for long periods of time. You'll have to take more frequent breaks so that your eyes can recover. This is a major problem for anyone whose job relies heavily on staring at a computer screen most of the day. 

The eye care necessary to relieve this problem is simple—less screen time. That means less TV, less smartphone time, and less computer time. When that is not always possible, you should try to spend more time away from screens when you are not working. Reading books is better, as long as you are not using a tablet or e-reader to do it. The lack of glare on a real paper page in a book does not create the same amount of fatigue as staring at a bright, white screen. Also, warm, wrung-out chamomile tea bags or cucumber slices placed over your closed eyes will calm the flesh and muscles and provide some relief for the pain.

More Frequent Visits to Your Eye Doctor

As your eyes change, you will need to make a couple more visits each year to your eye doctor. Two or three visits during the year becomes the norm, especially if you have a health condition such as diabetes or high blood pressure. Your doctor can monitor the health of your eyes while your general physician keeps track of the related physical conditions. 

Your eye doctor can also help you keep up with changes in your prescription eyeglasses and provide medications that will give you some relief from eye conditions. Some people in their forties and fifties have very rapid changes. That is why you will see your doctor more often.

To learn more, contact a company like Master  Eye Associates.


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