To See or Not to See Clearly

There is no doubt about it: reading glasses are a pain. They are an obstacle that must be overcome. How exactly does one overcome one’s reading glasses you may be asking? With a set of lenses — not lenses for your specs, but lenses for your eyes. A pair of contacts may be just the ticket you need to hop on board the youth train. After all, there are few items, short of a cane or walker, that belie a persons age more than a pair of reading glasses perched at the end of the nose.

The condition is innocuous enough — indeed it translates to “old man eyes” — but presbyopia is one of the more irritating. Squinting and holding items at arm’s length to read them is a tremendous hassle. Moreover, it really makes a body feel old. Just as contacts help self-conscious people avoid the “four eyes” stigma, a pair of multi-focal contacts can help keep age-based guesses a decade off.

What casues presbyopia is not known. The specific mechanisms at work with presbyopia are still a relative mystery. We know the eye cannot see fine items at close range, but we do not have a definitive explanation of why this happens. It is generally accepted as an age-based manifestation of decrepitude. Whether it is a deterioration of the cornea, iris, or rods is not known.

Between the ages of 40 and 50 the eyes begin to go. It is as simple as that. Think of it as comparable to graying hair or the loss of bone density. Though many sufferers would appreciate a surgical solution, the simple fact its causes are not quite understood makes surgically treating presbyopia impossible. There are two viable solutions, however, neither of which requires the use off a scalpel.

First off most people hit the local drugstore to buy a stodgy pair of reading glasses. To be sure, they work, and work well, but seldom do wearers hail their comfort or “elderly” connotation. There is nothing young or attractive about a pair of reading glasses clinging to the bridge of your nose. A second solution is a pair of multi-focal contact lenses. These can be worn all day, require no fuss and are designed to allow for smooth visual transitions from “regular” vision to close-range fine print.