Skip to main content

Bordering Cedar Park & North Austin, minutes from Lakeline Mall. NW Corner of El Salido Pkwy & 620, behind AutoZone.

Home » Our Blog » Are You Suffering From Presbyopia?

Are You Suffering From Presbyopia?

Ever wonder why it gets harder to read small print as you get older? With age, the lens of your eye is likely to become more and more inflexible, making it more difficult to focus on close objects. This is called presbyopia.

Often, to prevent having to strain their eyes, people with untreated presbyopia may hold reading material at arm's length in order to focus properly. In addition to reading, engaging in other close-range activities, like crafts or handwriting, could also result in headaches, eyestrain or fatigue. In order to treat presbyopia, there are a number of options, which take your eyewear preferences into account.

Reading glasses are an easy choice but are mostly efficient for those who wear contacts or for people who don't wear glasses for correcting distance vision. You can find these at lots of shops, but it's better not to buy them until you have spoken with your eye care professional. Too often cheap reading glasses may be handy for brief periods of reading but they can result in eyestrain when people overwear them. A more beneficial alternative to drugstore reading glasses are custom made ones. These can address additional eye issues such as correct astigmatism, compensate for prescriptions which are not necessarily the same in both eyes, and in addition to all this, the optic centers of every lens are adjusted to suit the person who wears them. The reading distance is another detail that can be designed to meet your individual needs.

And if you already have glasses to fix near sightedness, and would rather not have to wear more than one pair of glasses, think about bifocal or multi-focal corrective lenses, or PALs (progressive addition lenses), which a lot of people find very beneficial. PALs and multi-focals are eyeglasses with separate points of focus; the bottom part has the prescription for seeing at close range. If you already wear contacts, it's best to speak to your optometrist about multifocal contact lenses. There's also a treatment approach called monovision, where you wear one contact lens to correct near sightedness in one eye and another to correct far sightedness in the other eye.

Expect to periodically adjust the strength of your lenses, because your eyes and vision change as you get older, especially after middle age. But it's also crucial to look into your various choices before you decide the direction you want head in when it comes to your vision; presbyopia can affect you, even if you've had refractive surgery.

Ask your eye care professional for a helpful view on the matter. We can give you the tools to help you deal with presbyopia and your changing eye sight in a way that's both beneficial and accessible.

Patient Insurance | History forms
Join Our Team
Schedule an Eye Exam