I wear my (prescription) SUNGLASSES at night

Hello, friends!  I hope your day is starting off well.  This month is my birthday month, and I try to do little celebretory things each day of the month to remind myself how lucky I am to be alive and healthy.  I'm a very lucky girl!

One aspect of my life that I'm very grateful for is my fabulous group of friends.  There are times in our lives when our friends play a huge role - where they are more like family.  I am lucky to have great friends and a great family. 

One of the friends I speak of is my friend Egg Beater.  You might think that's a strange name for a friend, huh?  Well, when I was a freshman in college, my roommates named all of our friends after kitchen tools.  We had wooden spoon, spatula, egg beater, etc.  I would often get messages that said "Egg Beater called at 3:45 pm," or something like that.  Anyway, Egg Beater recently asked me to write a post on the worth of prescription sunglasses, so here it is!

My opinion on Rx sunglasses is this:  Sunglasses in general are ALWAYS a good idea.  If you wear contacts all the time or have good distance vision, then prescription sunglasses are not a top priority for you because you can purchase non-prescription sunglasses and still see well.  However, if you're like Egg Beater (you have a high prescription in your glasses), then prescription sunglasses are an awesome idea and worth the cost.

Sunglasses protect your eyes from UV-A and UV-B rays that can damage your eyes.  Skin cancer around your eyelids, along with cataracts and corneal or retinal burns can all be the result of sun exposure to your eyes.  None of those things sound fun, right?  Wear some sunglasses!

I'd like to also stress the importance of protecting your child's eyes from the sun.  You put sunscreen on your kid when they go to the beach, right?  Please protect their eyes from the sun as well, you'll be glad you did!

One last awesome thing about sunglasses (Rx or not):  They make you look super hot.  Haven't you seen cool celebrities sporting shades before?

Anyway, the optimist optometrist is very proud that you're thinking about your eye health and that you are going to protect your eyes from the sun.  Speaking of which, I'm off of work today, so am going to grab my sunglasses and head to the beach!  Hope your day is as great as mine is shaping up to be!!!

My doctor said I have narrow angles - What the heck does that mean??

Hello, friends!  Thanks for reading today.  I hope each of you had an awesome weekend.  I just got back from doing a triathlon at the Space Center.  It was beyond cool!  The cycling was a bit more than I'm used to but I'm glad to say that it went pretty well.

I am very lucky to have wonderful people in my life.  One of them is my aunt Lisa.  She is awesome - kind, loves animals, compassionate, loves to travel, can find great deals, ... you name it.  Anyway, she asked me to write a post on narrow angles, so here it is!

So, there's a part of the eye called the angle.  It's called an angle because that's eactly what it is.  It is a space between (cue the Dave Matthews song here) the cornea and the iris that can be different sizes in different people. 

Generally (but of course there are exceptions to every rule):

FARSIGHTED individuals (Hyperopic; Glasses prescription is a "plus" or "+" prescrption, cannot see well up close) generally have narrower/smaller angles than their nearsighted friends.

NEARSIGHTED individuals (Myopic; glasses prescription is a "minus" or "-" prescription, cannot see well far away) usually have more wide or open angles.

So what's the problem if you have narrow angles?  In some cases, it's no big deal.  However, in other cases, narrow angles can cause the pressure in the eye to build up, leading to something you probably don't want to have called glaucoma.  The eye pressure builds up sometimes in narrow angles because the angle is where the fluid drains - too much fluid and not enough draining leads to increased pressure.  Kind of like my garbage disposal last week (it wasn't pretty).

If you are concerned about narrow angles, go see your friendly optometrist so they can take a look at your eyes.  I promise once again that we are SO NICE!  We want to help you and we love questions!!  So ask us, we want to help!

Your optometrist can use a microscope called a slit lamp to look at your eye magnified many times.  We can see how shallow or deep your angle is.  If it is very narrow or shallow and we are concerned that the fluid isn't properly draining, we may send you to a spccialist to do a cool laser treatment to allow for better drainage.  Basically, the laser forms a tiny hole in the colored part of the eye so that the fluid has another way to go.  If your doctor recommends this procedure, please don't worry - it's a pretty quick procedure and doesn't cause any pain.

I hope you have found this post helpful, and I hope you are trying to make each day your best!  Have a wonderful week.  :)

Appreciation of the present

Hello, friends.  Just feeling really thankful and wanted to share.  I was reminded recently on how important it is to let go of things/people/ideas in your life that no longer serve you.  The past, that you may long for now, was ignored by you when it was the present.  The present is all you have!  Live for now.  I'm trying to do that myself.

So, it's really rainy here and rain makes me think.  Just wanted to share my rainy day thoughts!  Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Tetris is an awesome game!

Could Tetris help treat Adult Amblyopia?




The mesmerizing falling blocks seen in the Tetris video game could be a helpful tool for treating adult amblyopia, according to a small study in Current Biology.



The study involved 18 adults with a history of amblyopia. Half of the participants in the study played Tetris with their stronger eye patched. The other half had special goggles in place during their Tetris games. The goggles allowed the participants to see the falling blocks with their weaker eye, and the ground plane objects with their stronger eye.



The participants who wore the goggles fared better than the ones who patched their stronger eye. There was a statistically significant difference in vision improvement of the lazy eye and depth perception in the participants who were using the goggles. The researchers concluded that forcing the eyes to work together was more beneficial than patching, although both groups showed some improvement in the vision of their lazy eye.



Computers and video games have often been used as aids during vision therapy. Making the eyes work together through use of special video games is one treatment for children and adults with amblyopia.







References:



“Dichoptic training enables the adult amblyopic brain to learn.” Current Biology, Volume 23, Issue 8, 22 April 2013, Pages R308-R309.

Jinrong Li, Benjamin Thompson, Daming Deng, Lily Y.L. Chan, Minbin Yu, Robert F. Hess





“Tetris may help adults with lazy eye, study finds.” From Huffington Post Online, April 23, 2013.

Cataracts can be "Stellar"

Hello friends,

I'm on something called the Optometry Advisory Board for my company (fancy title for getting to help out by acting as a bridge between the company optometrists and our management people), and one of my responsibilities is to contribute to our optometry newsletter.  Mostly I write about interesting eye-related things in the news, so that's what the next couple of articles are going to be about.  Hope you enjoy!

This first one's about a guy with a cool-looking cataract :):


Have you ever seen a patient with stars in their eyes? Check out the photo of an Austrian man who was punched in the eye, causing a star-shaped cataract. As reported in the New England Journal of medicine, the 55-year-old man noticed worsening vision over a six-month period. Upon examination, the patient was found to have lens opacification in the shape of a star. The patient was punched in the affected eye nine months earlier.



Most often, cataracts like these are caused by being punched or hit by a ball during a sporting activity. Injuries from air bags or steering wheels can also cause a similar appearance. Very rarely, infrared energy or electric shock can cause a stellate cataract.



In many cases, the cataract looks like a cloud, but sometimes a distinct star pattern is formed.



Four times more males than females experience ocular trauma, and the average age for occurrence of ocular trauma is 28.



As optometrists, we should always stress the importance of proper eye protection to our patients.



SPECIAL NOTE TO MY OPTIMIST OPTOMETRIST FANS:  The moral of this story is that even something bad (being punched in the eye, in this case) can lead to something beautiful (that was a pretty nice looking cataract, right?).  Hope you all have a wonderful day!!!



References:



1. emedicine.com, “Traumatic Cataract Clinical Presentation”:

Robert H Graham, MD Consultant, Department of Ophthalmology, Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale, Arizona

2. “Punch Leaves Man With Star-Shaped Cataract,”By Karen Rowan, MyHealthNewsDaily Managing Editor
LiveScience.com – Wed, Apr 3, 2013



Photo from New England Journal of Medicine, April 2013