Mr Chan (M/38) came in with complain of blurry near vision & headache sometimes, not wearing his usual glasses. He has been on his mobile most of his time during the whole MCO. He has made a pair of Single Vision to correct his far vision just beginning of the year with no near vision complaint.
Mr Chan has:
- Significant astigmatism
He has significant astigmatism of -1.50 and short sighted of -1.00 in both eyes. He only wears his glasses when he is driving. He can see up until the second smallest line with best correction power. No matter what power I give, he also cannot see the smallest line in which other people can see. With his power, he needs to wear his glasses full time in order to develop & rewire back the connection between brain & eye. Without wearing his glasses, brain said: ok la, since I also can’t see, I don’t need to work to help seeing… so, eye becomes lazy & stop working to help see smallest line, even now that I give full optimum power to his eyes. The higher power his eye has, the more line he cannot see & the easier his eye can get lazy eye/amblyopia.
Can he regain seeing the smallest line?
Normally, for adult, it is unlikely. But we would want to try. First, he must wear optimum correction full time. Then we will check and see if his vision gets better. If it gets better, then it’s great and he must continue to wear full time to retain seeing the optimum smallest line. If his vision does not get better, we can work on vision therapy to try strengthening the wiring between brain and eye. Sounds like we are electrician now? Lol
He is going to be 40 years old, the period of time when we start to have presbyopia/’rabun dekat’/“lao hua”. This is completely normal for everyone. Presbyopia comes early for those who do a lot of computer work or those who do not have any power for far vision. When we do near work/see phone, our eyes need to help auto focus to see near. When we are young, our eyes muscles are still strong & flexible that can help to see far & auto focus see near effortlessly. When we are about 40 years old, and especially if you have a lot of computer work/on phone many hours a day, you may start to notice blurry near vision or you have headache sometimes. This is because your eyes are over worked to keep auto focusing for you, if you continue to force your eyes seeing near, you will have headache. Therefore, if you have symptoms like blurry near vision or headache, you have two options:
1. Manual by relaxing your eyes yourself
- By practising golden rule 20-20-20 rule, we manually relax back our muscles to avoid muscles from being over worked
- holding your reading material further away, as seeing upclose needs stronger power, so eyes need to work harder to keep near vision clear, but if you hold further away, eyes don’t need to work so hard, so eyes are more relaxed
2. Auto by lenses
- You use relax lenses to help with auto focusing at near.. instead of your eyes doing all the auto focusing job for you, let the lenses help to do the job, so your eyes are more relaxed especially if you are constantly on your mobile/computer
In this data technological era, many of us will be on computer/digital devices most of the time. Therefore, relax lenses will be an alternative if you have symptoms of tired eyes, dry eyes, blurry near vision, headache.
Lets sayang our eyes by SARANGHAE to our eyes! Still remember what SARANGHAE means?