Not All Sunglasses Are The Same

Who doesn’t love the outdoors on a gorgeous sun-filled day? If you spend a great deal of time outside, you’re likely at a higher risk for eye damage caused by UV rays. The good news is with the right eye protection, you can reduce your exposure to solar radiation so that it’s not an issue.

Most people are aware that getting too much sun is bad for your skin, but what they usually don’t know the same principle applies to their eyes. If your eyes are exposed to excessive amounts of UV radiation over a short period of time, you’re likely to experience a condition called photokeratitis, which in essence is an eye sunburn. Symptoms can include redness, a gritty sensation, extreme sensitivity to light, and excessive tearing. Photokeratitis is usually temporary and rarely causes permanent damage.

Serious conditions, such as cataracts or retina damage, are often caused by long-term exposure to UV radiation.

To protect your eyes, you need sunglasses, and not just any pair will do. The American Optometric Association recommends finding sunglasses that:

• Block 99 to 100 percent of both UV-A and UV-B radiation
• Screen out 75 to 90 percent of visible light
• Are perfectly matched in color and free of distortion and imperfection
• Have lenses that are gray for proper color recognition

Additionally, try wearing a wide-brimmed hat as well as wraparound shades for optimal protection from the sun. You’ll be doing your eyes a favor for years to come!

Are You Playing it Safe?

Spring is finally here, and more people are getting outdoors to participate in sports and recreation. With that, it only seems appropriate that the month of April is Sports Eye Safety month.

According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, tens of thousands of sports and recreation-related eye injuries occur every year. This ranges from scratches on the surface of the eye to blinding injuries. Because your regular eyewear doesn’t offer protection from such incidents, you need protective eyewear that’s appropriate for your level of activity. By doing this, you can prevent up to 90 percent of serious eye injuries.

According to www.geteyesmart.org, the following will help protect your and your family’s vision during sports and outdoor recreation activities.

1. Youth that play sports should wear eye protection such as polycarbonate lenses or masks that meet the requirements of the American Society of Testing Materials, even if the league doesn’t require it.
   
   
2. People who wear contacts or glasses should also wear protective eyewear because contacts offer no protection and glasses are not sufficient protection (lenses may shatter when hit by a projectile).
   
   
3. To preserve the vision they have left, all functionally one-eyed athletes – those with one normal eye and the other eye with less than 20/40 vision, even when corrected with glasses or contacts, should wear appropriate eye protection for all sports.
   
   
4. Functionally one-eyed athletes and those who have had an eye injury or surgery should not participate in boxing or full-contact martial arts because of the high risk of additional serious injury that could lead to blindness.
   
   
5. For sports in which a facemask or helmet with an eye protector or shield must be worn, such as football and lacrosse, it is strongly recommended that functionally one-eyed athletes also wear sports goggles that conform to the requirements of ASTM F803.
   
   
6. Sports eye protection should be replaced when damaged or yellowed with age, as they may have become weakened and are no longer protective.

Presbyopia is a Part of Getting Older

As we age, our bodies change due to natural wear and tear. Our skin starts to wrinkle and sag, muscles begin to shrink and lose mass, and hair becomes grayer. Your visual acuity also begins to decline, and this typically happens after you reach the age of 40. This common condition is called presbyopia, which means “old eyes” in Latin.   

Because it’s an age-related change and not a disease, presbyopia can’t be prevented. However, living a healthy lifestyle that includes exercise and a well-balanced diet can help slow the process.

What causes presbyopia? The lenses of our eyes lose their flexibility, causing them to become weaker over time. This makes it difficult to focus on close objects. While the condition may seem to occur suddenly, it actually takes a few years for your lenses to become weak.   

Common symptoms. If you hold reading materials at arm’s length, you might have presbyopia. Additional signs include blurred vision when you’re reading at a normal distance as well as eye strain with headaches when you work on things up close.

Simple solutions. To help you see clearly and comfortably, an optometrist can prescribe reading glasses, bifocals, trifocals, or contact lenses to compensate for presbyopia. You may only need to use glasses to complete up close work, such as reading, but you might also find it beneficial to use vision correction at all times.

As with any changing condition, presbyopia requires periodic monitoring. An annual visit to our office will ensure that you’re equipped with the best corrective vision solution for your needs.

If you think you might have presbyopia or you’re due for another age-related vision check, don’t hesitate to contact us today!

The Skinny on Eye Color Genes

You may have learned in biology class that your eye color is determined by the genes you inherited. (Genes are essentially “sets of recipes” that are provided in our DNA.) Along with that, you were probably taught about dominant and recessive genes. For eyes, the dominant gene for the color brown always won over the recessive gene for blue eyes. Unfortunately, that information isn’t right. In the past decade, scientists have discovered the influence of genes on eye color is a little more complicated.

A number of different factors define a person’s eye color, the most important of which is eight different color-related genes. The genes control how much melanin, or color pigment, exists in the iris of your eyes. For instance, a gene called OCA2 controls almost 75 percent of the blue-brown color spectrum. Other genes can overrule OCA2, but that rarely happens. This can explain why green eyes are a rarity throughout the world.

What defines human eye color is the amount of light that reflects off the iris, which is a muscular structure that controls how much light enters the eye. So, a person with a high level of melanin pigment in their iris will have brown eyes. Those with a moderate level of iris melanin will have green or hazel eyes, while someone with a low amount will have blue eyes.

There’s a wide range of eye color among people, and many of them don’t fall neatly into the categories of brown, hazel, blue, and green eyes. That is the result of the many ways in which the eight eye color genes can affect one another. Individuals with eye colors other than brown have a European descent, and those who have brown eyes are typically from African and Asian populations. Interestingly, a group of researchers found in 2008 that the gene associated with blue eyes only appeared in the last 6,000 to 10,000 years in Europeans.