Eye Care – Try a new perspective
Clear vision is obtained when light coming in to a healthy eye is focussed directly on the retina.
Myopia (short sightedness):
When light coming into your eye is focussed in front of the retina.
This makes you see close things clearer without glasses, but things at a distance appear blurry. Spectacles or contact lenses may be worn for driving, watching TV or looking at the board at school.
Hyperopia (far sightedness):
When light is focussed at the back of the retina.
This makes you clearly see objects at a distance, but objects close up are blurry without glasses.
Depending on the degree of farsightedness, people expend their focussing effort to see things clearly at a distance also.
This can cause eye fatigue, headache, lazy eye or crossed eye.
This occurs when the front surface of your eye (cornea) is not perfectly round and is slightly oval in shape. Both distance and near vision are blurry. Spectacles are needed to be worn for clearer vision.
More than 75% of people around the world have astigmatism at different degrees.
As you age, you lose the ability to focus on close objects. The lens in your eyes lose elasticity, which makes it hard for you to focus at near objects.
This can be corrected with glasses. We do expect the strength of the glasses to increase over the years until it becomes stable; that is when the lens are not elastic at all.
Common EYE diseases in Mauritius:
2)Age related macula degeneration
Cataract is the fogging of the lens in eyes. Vision gets blurry and dim as light cannot pass through to get to the back of the eye.
Exposure to UV light, Smoking, Medication, General health issues, History of cataract in the family.
Change the power of your glasses in order to improve your vision.
You need to protect your eyes from UV light.
A simple operation can be done to remove the cloudy lens from your eye.
Age-related macula degeneration:
The macula is a small area at the back of your eye that allows you to get a clear and detailed central vision that you need for reading, driving ,etc. Deterioration of the macula with age is known as age-related macula degeneration.
Smoking, Excessive sun exposure, Age, History of age-related macula degeneration in the family.
Try to stop smoking.
Protect your eyes against UV light.
Increase dark green leafy vegetables in your diet.
Glaucoma is a gradual and painless loss of vision and very slow progressing. You slowly end up losing your side vision. As a worst case scenario, it can lead to blindness. Glaucoma is usually associated with high pressure within your eye.
Treatment is available for glaucoma as eye pressure can be controlled by using eye drops. Drops must be used long term as advised by an eye specialist.
There is no way of preventing glaucoma. But if you are over 40, you should have regular check-ups done by your optometrist so as to pick up any abnormality at its earliest.
Diabetic Retinopathy is a common complication of diabetes. It occurs when high blood sugar levels damage the structure of the back of your eye. The blood vessels situated at the back of your eye start to swell and leak fluid. In severe cases, this can lead to vision loss and blindness.
Diabetic retinopathy is the main cause of blindness in working population. It is very important to control your diabetes. You need to schedule check-ups to your optometrist every 6 months to a year in order to detect any change and get treated if necessary.