Eye Health – Page 2 – Hello Doctor

How to beat the odds and not go blind

August 22nd, 2017 by The Hello Doctor Team

Glaucoma is one of the most sneaky causes for blindness. It is an eye disease that causes damage to the optic nerve from an abnormal increase of pressure in the eye, and most of us don’t even know if we have it!

The optic nerve is vital for vision as it carries information from the eye to the brain. Damage to this nerve can be harmful to your eyesight. In the case of glaucoma, this damage leads to irreversible vision loss and eventually, blindness.

What are the symptoms?

Glaucoma progresses slowly and silently over the years, so by the time you recognise any symptoms, the damage to the optic nerve may be very advanced. Symptoms include:

Severe eye pain (usually with nausea and vomitting).
Headaches
Eye redness.
Blurred or cloudy vision.
Seeing halo-like glows around bright lights.

Risk factors

Glaucoma can affect anyone, but you may be at higher risk if you:

Are over the age of 40.
Have high internal eye pressure. Eye pressure increases with age.
Have a family history of the condition.
Have a condition that affects blood flow like diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure.
Are African. Glaucoma is more common and severe in people of African origin.
Have myopia (nearsightedness) or hyperopia (farsightedness).
Have had an eye injury.
Have had eye surgery.
Have corneas that are thin in the centre (less than 0.5 mm).
Take steroids for a long time.

How is it diagnosed?

To diagnose glaucoma, your doctor will review your medical history and do a complete eye exam. He’ll run a few quick, painless tests to:

Measure your eye pressure (tonometry).
Examine your optic nerve for damage (optic nerve assessment).
Check for areas of vision loss (visual field test).
Inspect your eye’s drainage angle (gonioscopy).
Measure the thickness of your cornea (pachymetry).

He may also take a picture of your optic nerve to see how far the glaucoma has developed. The only way to detect glaucoma before it damages your sight is with regular eye tests. The earlier it’s found, the earlier it can be treated. This is especially important if you have a high risk for glaucoma. “If you’re over 40, you should have your eyes tested every two years, and every year once you’re over the age of 60,” recommends SAGS.

Treatment

Once, you’ve been diagnosed with glaucoma, you have to go on lifelong medication, says Dr Ellen Ancker, an ophthalmologist from Cape Town. Your doctor may recommend eye drops and glaucoma medications to help lower eye pressure. These need to be taken regularly and as prescribed to retain your eye sight and prevent further damage to your optic nerve.

“It’s also important to go for regular check-ups and have a good relationship with your doctor,” advises Ancker. “You must be able to trust him and notify him as soon as you experience any changes or problems with your vision.”

If medication doesn’t help, your doctor may suggest surgery to improve the flow of fluid out of the eye. “However, this isn’t a first option as there’s a danger of infection, and cataracts in older patients,” says Ancker.

References

How ageing affects your eyesight

June 23rd, 2017 by The Hello Doctor Team

Can’t see as well as you used to? Blame it on ageing. Like other parts of your body, your eyes lose their power as you age. Here’s what to look-out for, and how you can treat age-related complications.

Presbyopia is the condition where you cannot see close objects or small print clearly. This is a normal, gradual process, but you may not notice any change until the age of 40. If you’re affected by presbyopia you may hold reading materials at arm’s length. You may have headaches or complain of tired eyes while reading or doing other close work. Presbyopia can be corrected with reading glasses and contact lenses.

Floaters are tiny spots or specks that float across your field of vision. They’re most noticeable in a well-lit room or outdoors on a bright day. Floaters are a normal part of ageing, but can be a sign of a more serious eye problem like retinal detachment (when the retina pull away from the back of the eye), especially if they’re accompanied by light flashes. If floaters bother you or impair your vision, see your doctor immediately. He may suggest surgery called a vitrectomy to remove some or all of the floaters.

Dry eyes are when your tear glands can’t make enough tears or produce tears of a poor quality. This can make your eyes itch, burn, and turn red. If untreated, you could lose some of your vision. Dry eyes can be treated with special eye drops that stimulate tears. Your doctor may also suggest a humidifier for your home. If you have a severe case of dry eyes, tear duct plugs, prescription eye drops, or surgery may be needed.

Save your sight
Although deteriorating eyes are just part and parcel of life, you can prevent or slow down the process with these eye-care habits:

Have your eyes tested once every two years until the age of 50, and every year after that. An eye test can pick up disorders in their early stages, and treat them before it’s too late.
Wear the right lenses. The correct prescription lenses can improve your quality of life, and lower your risk for accidents and injuries like falls. An eye test can help determine whether you need a different prescription.
Light it up. Your eyes need three times as much light when you’re 60 as they did when you were 20. Welcome daylight into your home. Keep your windows clean and curtains pulled back. Keep your home nicely illuminated. For reading or work that needs you up close and personal, use a direct light from a flexible table lamp. Position the light so that it doesn’t reflect in the page and cause a glare.
Eat eye-healthy foods like kale, spinach, and other leafy greens. These foods contain powerful antioxidants called carotenoids, known to maintain healthy eyes and ward off eye disease. Food rich in Vitamins A and C like carrots, strawberries, pumpkin, corn, and sweet potato can also improve your vision and lower your risk for eye problems. Foods high in Omega-3 fatty acids like tuna, salmon, and sardines can strengthen your eye muscles for better vision, and prevent dry eyes. Good Vitamin E foods like almonds, peanuts, and avocados have the same effect.
Drink enough water every day. Water can prevent dehydration, and stop dry eyes in its tracks.
Exercise regularly to improve blood flow to your eyes, and reduce your risk for eyesight issues.
Keep your health numbers (blood pressure, blood sugar, and waist size) in check. Hypertension, diabetes, atherosclerosis, and being overweight have been linked to vision loss. Follow a healthy lifestyle, take your medication as prescribed, and go for regular check-ups.
Get a good night’s rest. Sleep is your eye’s natural way to self-cleanse, and get rid of dirt and debris that may have accumulated during the day. A lack of shut eye may lead to eye pain, redness, light sensitivity, dry eyes, and blurred vision.
Put on a pair of sunnies. Direct sunlight can hurt your eyes and interfere with your vision. Always wear sunglasses with a built-in UV filter to protect against harmful rays.
Stub out cigarettes for good, and avoid secondhand smoke. Smoking can irritate your eyes, and cause irreversible eye damage.

References:

Your computer could be giving you dry eye syndrome

April 8th, 2017 by The Hello Doctor Team

This rather unfamiliar condition is synonymous with red, itchy eyes and is becoming more widespread in the digital age. As we spend more time in front of our screens, we place unnecessary strain on our eyes as we jump from our computers to our phones to our televisions.

Dry eye syndrome is predominantly caused by a lack of moisture in the eye, dust particles in the air and infrequent blinking which usually happens when you stare at a screen for too long.

Understanding dry eye would be a lot easier if we thoroughly understood normal tear function. To date, many aspects of tear function remain poorly understood. But what we do know is that it’s important not to turn a blind eye to this condition, because it may scar your cornea or lead to conjunctivitis.

Here are a few things you need to know about dry eye syndrome:

What is dry eye syndrome?

Dry eye describes a group of different diseases and conditions, affecting one or more components of the lacrimal system. The lacrimal apparatus is the part(s) of the eye that work together to produce tears and ensure drainage.

There are two types of dry eye; aqueous tear-deficient dry eye and evaporative dry eye.

Aqueous tear-deficient dry eye is a disorder in which the lacrimal glands fail to produce enough of the watery component of tears to maintain a healthy eye surface.

Evaporative dry eye may come from inflammation of the meibomian glands, also located in the eyelids. These glands make the lipid or oily part of tears that slows evaporation and keeps the tears stable.

Know the symptoms:

Burning eyes.
Redness of the eye.
A feeling as if something is in the eye.
Discharge from the eye.
Excessive tears following very dry eye periods.
Episodes of blurred vision.
Heavy eyelids.

Are you at risk?
Dry eye mostly affects us as we get older, but it can happen at any age. For women, dry eye is even more common after menopause. Age and gender play roles but there are loads of other factors that can cause dry eye syndrome, like dust particles in the air and sitting in front of a screen for too long.

To prevent dry eyes, avoid dry conditions and allow your eyes to rest. Glasses or sunglasses that fit close can help slow tear evaporation from the eye surfaces. Indoors, a humidifier may also help by adding moisture to the air.

Treatment
For mild cases (from reading, computer use and schoolwork), the general treatment is artificial tears or other lubricating eye drops. For long-term solutions, punctal plugs help tears remain on the surface of the eye longer. A punctal plug is a small, sterile device that’s inserted into one of the small openings that are located in the inner corner of the upper and lower eyelids. After these openings have been plugged, tears can no longer drain away from the eye through these ducts. In this way the tear stays intact on the surface of the eye for longer, relieving dry eye symptoms.

References:

What you can do today, to save your eyes tomorrow

January 23rd, 2017 by The Hello Doctor Team

You stare at bright screens all day and well into the night. Whether it’s from gaming, typing, or texting, your eyes are glued to a screen for hours on end – and this is not good for your eyesight. You may have 20/20 vision right now, but you may not always be so lucky. Here’s what you need to keep your eyes peeled for!

Cataracts can affect you at any age. Talk to a Doctor now about how to recognise the signs and symptoms.

Continue reading “What you can do today, to save your eyes tomorrow”

Are you colour blind?

October 31st, 2016 by The Hello Doctor Team

If you’re a sporting fan, you’ll be very familiar with the term “colour blindness”, after all how many referees suffer from this very serious condition! There is a common belief that if you are colour blind, you can only see everything in black and white, and a bit of grey in between. Well, there’s good news and bad when it comes to busting this myth. The good news, is that even if you are colour blind, you are most often still able to see colour which means the bad news is that doing a Rubik’s cube will still be impossible!

How you see colour
When light hits an object, the object absorbs some of the light and reflects the rest of it. The wavelengths reflected back off the object determine the colour you see. Take a minute to think back to your school days when you learnt about rods and cones. Both rods and cones sit in the retina, the light sensitive area at the back of your eye. Rods see in black, white, and shades of grey and tell us the form or shape that something has. Cones are what allows you to see in bright colour. You have around 6-7 million cones, concentrated on a 0.3mm spot in your eye! Not all cones are alike. Most respond strongly to red light, while about a third are set off the most by green light. Another lot respond strongest to blue light

When the light reflected back from an object hits these cones, it stimulates them to varying degrees. The resulting signal is zapped along the optic nerve to the visual cortex of the brain, which processes the information and returns with ta daaaa…. a colour.

What it means to be “colour blind”
Colour-blindness, more appropriately called colour vision deficiency, is a term used to describe a group of around 8 conditions that affect the way people see colour. This is caused from the malfunction of one, or all, of the three cone cells. For the majority of those with the condition, they struggle with distinguishing between certain shades, rather than not seeing any colour at all. It is extremely rare for someone to literally only see black and white.

The most common form of colour blindness is known as red/green colour blindness. This does not mean sufferers mix up red and green, it means they mix up all colours which have some red or green as part of the whole colour. For example, a red/green colour blind person will confuse a blue and a purple because they can’t ‘see’ the red element of the colour purple.

Blame your colour chromosomes!
While it is possible to acquire colour vision deficiency, from aging, alcohol, some medications or even a serious knock on your head, it is in most cases a genetic condition based on a few corrupted chromosomes. The condition is a lot more common in men, affecting around 8%, and only half a percent of women. So, ladies, give your man a break when he can’t help you choose between the two shades of purple… they DO look the same, he might not be making it up!

The effects of colour vision deficiency can be mild, moderate or severe. For example, around 40% of colour blind pupils currently leaving school are unaware that they are colour blind! The best way to find out whether you have colour vision deficiency is a check-up with your optometrist. There are many tests available to test colour vision and to accurately determine which type you may (or may not!) have.

Can it be treated?
Unfortunately, there is no known cure for genetic causes of colour deficiency, but there are a few ways to help those with the condition distinguish colours more easily. One of these ways is to use special colour-filtering lenses. The way these lenses work is to correct the balance of the signals sent from an object to your three sets of cones. In this way, the lenses filter through the correct amount of light to stimulate the cones as they would be in someone with “normal” vision. For acquired colour vision deficiency, once the cause has been established and treated, your vision may return to normal.

So, it seems that having this condition isn’t quite as black and white as you may have thought. In fact, it gives a whole new meaning to seeing the world through rose-tinted glasses!

Could it be cataracts?

October 20th, 2016 by The Hello Doctor Team

Do you have trouble reading the small print on medicine bottles or food labels? Has driving at night become a nearly impossible task? Are you having difficulty writing out cheques or filling out forms?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may have a cataract in one or both of your eyes.

Continue reading “Could it be cataracts?”

A clear vision: glasses or contact lenses?

April 5th, 2016 by The Hello Doctor Team

Did you squint when you read the headline? You may need your vision corrected – it’s time to go and see an optometrist.

Continue reading “A clear vision: glasses or contact lenses?”

What happens during an eye check-up?

September 25th, 2015 by The Hello Doctor Team

Reading, writing and researching is part of being a student. It’s great for your future career, but it’s going to take its toll on your eyes – when was the last time you had your eyes tested? Continue reading “What happens during an eye check-up?”

What is pink eye?

September 24th, 2015 by The Hello Doctor Team

Conjunctivitis, commonly known as “Pink eye”, is basically what medically refers to any sort of inflammation of the conjunctiva of the eye. The conjunctiva is the outer, wet surface of the eye and the inner surface of the eyelids. Continue reading “What is pink eye?”

What do you know about your eye colour?

September 10th, 2015 by The Hello Doctor Team

Why are there different types of eye colour? Is it to tell us apart from each other? Let’s take a look at the mystery of the different types of eye colour.

Before reading any further, go and look in the mirror and check your exact eye colour, got it? Good! Continue reading “What do you know about your eye colour?”

Are you smart enough to be a doctor?

March 6th, 2015 by The Hello Doctor Team

Think you know a lot about health? Test yourself with our eye quiz!

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What it’s like to see through an eye condition

March 4th, 2015 by The Hello Doctor Team

Blindness affects many people across the world. While some eye diseases occur from birth, others can be hereditary, or can come about through lifestyle.

What you might not know is that certain eye conditions have different effects on your vision. For example, glaucoma starts off with the loss of peripheral vision, whereas cataracts causes ones vision to blur. Here are four of the most common eye diseases, and what the world might look like for those with any of these conditions. Continue reading “What it’s like to see through an eye condition”