Low Vision after 40, Perhaps you need Reading Glasses

Hopefully you're not struggling to read this, and if you are, you may already be aware of the fact that you need reading glasses. We're going to discuss why the age of 40 seems to be the tipping point for many adults in regards to when they need glasses and how you can get ready to adjust to the change of wearing reading glasses and help prolong what's left of your healthy sight.

Many over the age of 40 become disgruntled with the fact that their eyes are deteriorating. The fact of the matter is that as we get older, our eyes are one of the first things to start losing their full capabilities. In some cases it may be an eye disease that's causing the problems you're noticing, but in most cases, it's simply a matter of age. But what exactly is happening to your eyes that's making them worse with age? While there are a multitude of problems that can arise that can make our eyes go, two main factors cause more problems than anything else: a smaller pupil and a less elastic lens.

As we get older, our pupils start to take in less light. That means that when you were in your prime, dancing away at a night club in the dark at the age of 21, your pupils were very capable of expanding and letting more light in, about four times more light in fact. As you age, your pupil starts to contract and less light makes it into the retina. Many older folks often complain that colors don't look as bright or as vivid as they used to and that they have a lot more trouble seeing in the dark. Both of these symptoms of deteriorating eye sight can be attributed to a contracting pupil and can be corrected simply by increasing the amount of light in a room and bringing things closer to your face so that your eyes don't have to strain themselves to see.

While the the pupil taking in less light can affect your vision in more ways than one, the fact that our lenses deteriorate over time has more of an impact on our vision than anything else. From years of wear and tear, our lenses start to lose some of their capabilities. Unlike when you were a kid and you could push a book up to your nose and still squint to see it, once you reach the middle years of your life, the muscles behind the eye have lost the ability to focus the lens in the same capacity that it used to for nearby objects. Because far away objects are all relatively the “same distance” to a focusing eye, many people lose their nearby sight, or “reading” distance sight, first. In cases where the lens is having trouble focusing, reading glasses are in order.

Reading glasses as they're known, are actually for more than just reading. They aid in seeing nearby objects and are fairly useless if you try and use them to see things far away. If you struggle to see things at a distance, it is recommended that you skip past over the counter reading glasses and go to an optometrist, which you should do every 2 to 3 years anyway after hitting the age of 40, who can recommend the proper corrective action for your vision. Reading glasses can help aid in the problem of farsightedness, or hyperopia, by putting what is essentially a magnifying glass into a frame that sits on your face. By magnifying the text you're trying to read or amplifying the size of that pesky screw you're trying to fasten, reading glasses make it easier for the eye to find what it is it's supposed to be focusing on.

There are varying degrees of magnification in eyeglasses and they range in size from what's known as a +1.00 to a +3.00. Each of these numbers is simply a “guide” for you to judge how much you need things to be amplified for your eyes. If you've never picked up glasses before, it's very easy to try on the different pairs available at a store and determine what level of magnification will help you read. It's very easy to head to a local drugstore and pick up a pair of over the counter eye glasses with a predetermined amount of amplification, but if the off the shelf pairs aren't quite cutting it for you, consider seeing an optometrist. An optometrist can make custom fit glasses that fit your eyes and their ability to see.