Presbyopia
-Short Arm Syndrome-

Presbyopia is the medical name given to a phenomenon we will all experience. As we get older, so does the lens of our eye. Unfortunately for us, this means it is not as flexible anymore which makes it more difficult to focus on things up close.

You may experience difficulty with fine print, intermittent blurriness of your vision, lack of concentration, losing your place, eyestrain and headaches. At first it helps to hold reading material further away.

Once the lens has reached a certain level of stiffness, it becomes very difficult to concentrate on anything up close to our eyes. It is a long-standing process.

When you were six years old you could focus all the up to the end of your nose! By the time you are 30, you can only focus to about 15cm from your nose. When you are in your 40s it impacts on objects around 40cm or so - our normal reading distance.

Everybody gets this one. It doesn't matter if you are nearsighted, long sighted or astigmatic. Of course, near sighted people have an advantage here when they take their glasses off. But with distance correction glasses on they have just as much trouble as anyone else.

What can be done about it? Denial seems to be the first step for most people! It comes as a shock to you when your body lets you down. After all, you don't feel old at all! Once you get over that you have a number of options.

a. Reading glasses
b. Progressive Lenses
c. Multifocal Contact Lenses

Reading glasses are one of the simplest solutions. They can be stylish designer fashion statements, or purely practical. But there is no doubt they make life easier.

Reading Glasses

With this style of glasses, the prescription is set to give you the best vision help that your eyes need for your age and reading material requirements (computers are a lot further away than most people hold a book, for instance).

These lenses are great for presbyopia treatment, but you will find it very blurry and even dizzy if you try to look at things that are too far away for the design of the lens. You need to choose which distance they will be dedicated to before ordering them.

Progressive lenses

Also known as multifocals, these lenses have a variable prescription to cater for multiple distances. You can have a type designed for computer users that caters for reading and computer distances only. You then need to take these off for looking further away than your computer.

Or you can have a full Progressive lens that caters for distances from infinity up to about 40cm. This means you can leave them on all day and look at any distance and see clearly without fussing with changing your glasses. Great!

What about Contact Lenses for Presbyopia?

Multifocal Contact Lenses are also an exciting option. With these on your eyes, you can see at all distances and no-one can tell that you are wearing them. Think about sitting at a restaurant and you are the only one of your friends who doesn't have to get their glasses out to read the menu!

What about Bifocals for glasses? There is a time and a place for Bifocals. If you are getting glasses for the first time then this is not your best option. They were invented by Benjamin Franklin in the 1760s. This is now very old technology.

If Presbyopia and eye-diseases are not your only concern, try this website: