Eyes

Pagina: Anti-Aging For Men

Eyes

Okay, so your eye problems aren’t figments of your imagination. Middle agethat is, turning 40-somethingappears to be the critical age for a lot of light-to-moderate nastiness having to do with your eyes. The most noticeable change as we age is in our visual acuity, especially close up, or “near vision.” It seems that our arms have become too short. Then, too, as we get older, night driving becomes more difficult because we become hypersensitive to glare. There are other potential problems, but these are the most common.

The dimensions of vision most commonly affected by age are the following:

visual processing speed (reading speed)
light sensitivity (the ability to see in twilight or dark)
dynamic vision (like reading scrolling TV credits)
near vision (for small print)
visual search (like locating a sign)

Let’s get down to cases. According to Timothy Diegel, MD, clinical associate professor of ophthalmology at the University of Minnesota, “Turning 40 is a time of accommodative weakness.” In other words, you experience decreased eye (visual) function but usually adapt to it effectively so that you may not even notice it.

This means many things, from a vision perspective. As we age, for example, the cornea begins to flatten, accentuating any earlier astigmatism. Our lenses, devoid of their own blood supply, are especially sensitive already to any form of insulttraumatic, toxic, or degenerativeand may develop dullness or actual visual disability. With age, we all lose the ability to increase the thickness or curvature of the lens in order to focus on near objects. Tell me about it. You know something’s seriously wrong when you have to ask your dinner partner on the other side of the table to hold your menu so that you can read it.

Another hazard of aging is dry eyes. When you’re tired or have been exposed to cold air, wind, toxic fumes, or rain, contacts can become unpleasant or impossible to wear. Individuals spend their entire workday within high-rise offices cursed with low humidity and windows that won’t open. Humidifiers, of course, are now verboten because of code restrictions. They have been known to cause other inconveniences such as a sometimes fatal pneumonia called Legionnaire’s disease. The books say that the average humidity in the Sahara Desert is somewhere in the neighborhood of 37 percent. In the average office building in the wintertime, it’s more like 20 percent. Either way, you have to choose between perpetually dry eyes or risk a humidifier and a big-time fine.

Artificial tears or thick rewetting drops are a preventive, if not simplistic, answer to keratoconjunctivitis sicca (dry eyes). If you are going to spend an extended amount of time outdoors, load up on these thick moisteners.

Ever heard of “floaters?” These are vitreous particles, shaped like dots, lines, and even cobwebs, that can make the sun’s rays painful to the eyes. In the least, they are distracting, but they can lead to more serious problems. Such possibilities include a retinal detachment, or worse yet, vitreal hemorrhage. If someone has floaters that are in fact annoying, a retinal vitreous surgeon has techniques for removing them by inserting needles (painlessly), aspirating the floaters out, and then replacing the fluid with a balanced salt solution.

Eyelids, too, can literally begin to turn on you in midlife. Eyelids that begin to turn in (entropian) or out (ectropian) may produce excessive tearing or painful redness. Because the eyelids are a perfect barrier catching the sun’s rays first, they are also a perfect setup for basal cell carcinoma (that is what a raised, reddening, pearly bump on the eyelid ends up being 90 percent of the time, especially if you are fair-skinned and blue-eyed). The cure for most of these problems of the lids can be straightforward: excision. Fortunately, these are annoying enough that most people don’t wait too long before getting them checked out.

Protect your eyes. There are plenty of state-of-the-art breakproof (polycarbonate) lenses and breakaway frames that will not become a part of your permanent bone structure in a face plant. They can also prevent a lacerated eyeball from a ski pole tip or a swinging branch.

Some eye problems, such as near visual acuity trouble, can easily be overcome by getting reading glasses or bifocals. The others you may just have to get used to, just as you have of all those wrinkles you see in the mirror every morning. anti-aging medicine