Farsighted Eyes Contact lenses And Other Ways Your Optometrist Can Improve Your Look With a Thinner, Lighter Lens Designs and Eliminate the Bug Eye Look! Read On-

First a disclaimer-you have to read to the end for contact lens solutions for farsightedness. Being farsighted (hyperopia is the technical term) is when distance vision is good, but close reading text is hard to see. It is a somewhat confusing term since farsightedness is actually an optical error of the distance vision. If your optometrist finds your eye prescription is extremely farsighted, you can’t see up close or far away. Fortunately a muscle referred to as the ciliary muscle surrounds the lens in the eye, and is attached to the lens with small fibers called the zonular fibers. Active contraction of this muscle loosens the tension and increases the eyes focusing power. In lower amounts of farsightedness under the age of 40 the focusing capacity of the eye can accommodate for farsightedness and clear your vision for both distance and near easily.

Farsighted Eye Problems Optometrists Find You May Be Experiencing Needlessly

Even lower amounts hyperopia have been shown to interfere with reading in some children, but between 2 to 3 diopters it usually starts to create symptoms in most people. Kids and teens have an enormous amount of accommodation, and sometimes very large prescriptions for farsightedness are not noticed because they can clear near and distance vision by focusing. Often they will suffer headaches and an unconscious aversion to reading because of the eyestrain and effort constantly being required to keep their vision clear. As we grow older we gradually lose the ability to focus. This degradation of focusing starts between the age of 15-20 but effects distances so close that we never notice because we don’t use our vision at that location. People who are farsighted have a different type of problem that individuals who are nearsighted. They constantly have to focus to keep their distance vision clear and as objects move closer they have to ramp up their focusing efforts. This is not a problem if they are young and have lower amounts of hyperopia, but as they age or with larger amounts of hyperopia the extra effort they are exerting starts to be noticeable. This occurs with reading and computer use initially, due to the added effort of focusing on top of the amount required for distance. In Fort Collins we have a higher use of computers and more symptoms from farsightedness are being seen by optometrists. Frequently, eye patients will be prescribed glasses or contact lenses for close work that only correct the distance amount of farsightedness. This lessens the amount of focusing needed for near back to normal levels that rarely create visual discomfort. As farsighted optometric patients enter their early 40′s they find they have gradually started wearing glasses all the time. Many people mistakenly believe that wearing the glasses have made their eyes weaker, and sometimes feel their eye doctor has made them dependent on the lenses. This is an incorrect assumption, as the loss of accommodating ability would have occurred without wearing glasses, and would have been a problem at an earlier age in the absence of corrective eyewear.

New Eyeglasses Lens Technology For Farsighted Vision

Optically, the farsighted eye is usually too short and light focuses behind it instead of on the retina for distance. There may also be individual components of the eye that are too weak to focus vision adequately. The lens could be a little short in power, or the clear cornea tissue on the front of the eye could be curved slightly less than normal. A lens with plus, or positive power is used to correct for hyperopia. This is a lens thicker in the middle and thinner on the edges, like a biconvex lens. Best optical design for clear central and peripheral vision is a lens more curved on the front and still curved forward on the back, just to a lesser degree. This results in a lens with a center that sits relatively far away from the front of the eye. As you move an ophthalmic lens used for farsightedness away from the eye, the eye appears larger, just like the effect produced from moving a magnifier away from an object. This also magnifies the size of the image seen by the eye. Advanced optical designs have eliminated the resulting type of coke bottle appearance by using aspheric lens designs. Aspheric lenses start out with a front lens surface spherical in the center (like the curve on a tennis ball) then the curvature gradually decreases or flattens towards the edge of the lens. This is the traditional design that has a spherical curvature on the back surface of the lens. Newly emerging freeform lens technology allows aspheric lens curves to be ground on the back surface of a lens that steepens away from the center in an atoric design. Atoric designs use different degrees of asphericity in different tangential lines to compensate for astigmatism in your prescription. Either way, the flattened lens design allows the lens to sit closer to your eye decreasing the magnification or bug eye effect. The aspheric design by the complex quirks of optics also counters several forms of optical aberrations (blurring of vision) that normally occur when you look to the side of a spherical lens using a flatter lens design. A common misconception is that aspheric lenses improve vision. They do not significantly improve vision but they do allow for a thinner, lighter, more cosmetically appealing lens with less magnification. The aspheric design allows these improvements to be achieved while maintaining clear peripheral vision. The lenses available to your eye doc do just keep getting better, and much more so the last 5 years in many different ways.

Farsighted Eye Facts From Your Optometrist to Consider When You Have Insomnia

1. Some people are farsighted in one eye and nearsighted in the other. If the amounts are just right they can see near and distance without bifocals
2. President James Buchannan was farsighted in one eye and nearsighted in the other (and had an eye twitch)
3. President Harry Truman was farsighted
4. Latent farsightedness occurs when a child has compensated by sustained focusing for distance for so long they cannot relax their eyes for a true reading of the prescription. Only checking the eyeglass prescription after eye drops have eliminated the eyes focusing capacity can yield an accurate prescription reading
5. Ohio State University has started a study to see if providing prescriptions that are not strong enough for extremely farsightedness infants will help the eye self correct themselves
6. The eyes tend to become slightly more farsighted (or less nearsighted between the age of 40 to 50)
7. Young to middle age males can develop fluid swelling in the central retina and become farsighted as a result of stress
8. Children that are farsighted tend to have brothers and sisters that are farsighted
9. Approximately one in four people are farsighted

Vision screenings have value in detecting problems, but often miss farsightedness because of children’s capacity to focus and pass the 20/20 test. Only a thorough eye exam by your eye doctor can assure you your children and teens have the correct eye prescription for efficient reading and learning in school. Schedule them for an annual eye check up today.

Now For The Contact Lens Part

It is very simple.

1. Contact lenses sit right on top of your eye and therefore supply very little magnification effect
2. Contact lenses stay centered in front of your eye s you look to the sides-we don’t have to worry about aspheric lens designs from an optical aberrations perspective. (They may be used for thinner edges and improved comfort in some cases though)
3. Contact lenses used to correct Hyperopia (farsighted) are significantly thicker in the center and effectively provide a much greater barrier to oxygen passing through to keep the cornea eye tissue healthy underneath. Silicone Hydrogel contact lens materials have almost completely eliminated this barrier for farsighted contact lens wear

All of these reasons make contact lenses frequently the primary choice for correction of higher amounts of farsightedness in kids and teenagers when their appearance is so important to their self esteem. Who doesn’t want to look better, especially when the old alternative were bug eye magnifying lenses that weighed a ton and slipped down your nose constantly, making you an imitation of Clark Kent, always pushing those things back up. Remember, it does not have to be that way today with glasses or contact lenses.