When it comes to New Year’s resolutions for healthy eyes, there’s no better time to start than 2021. This can be the year that your vision goes beyond 20/20 with LASIK, or stays sharp and vibrant with a new prescription.
Beginning with a visit to InVision Eye Care, it can also be a time to try something new, like the latest ultra-comfortable contacts, or progressive reading glasses. It can be the year you recommit to a healthy diet and lifestyle, and resolve to leave behind habits like smoking, excess alcohol use, and even overdoing it with computer screen time.
Most important of all, it can be a time when you focus on the important things in life, which definitely includes the health of your eyes. Here are the top three ways a regular eye exam helps ensure you will enjoy clear, colorful, panoramic vision for a lifetime:
1. Sight Preservation
The best thing you can do to maintain the health of your eyes is to catch any developing problem in its earliest stages. A regular exam will always include a check of intraocular eye pressure. Elevated eye pressure is a key warning sign for glaucoma and macular degeneration. For each of these serious conditions, there are no obvious symptoms until very late in the progression of the disease, when it is often too late to prevent partial or total loss of vision. Glaucoma and macular degeneration can affect patients of any age, but are more prevalent among older populations.
2. Refractive Changes
Vision correction is also central to your exam. Your InVision eye care professional will precisely measure the magnitude of any refractive changes in your vision, adjusting your prescription for nearsightedness, farsightedness or astigmatism. Depending on the type of correction needed and your own preferences and lifestyle, your doctor will recommend appropriate lenses to sharpen your vision. If you work long hours in front of a computer screen, lenses that reduce eye strain will be important. If your eyes are sensitive to many types of contacts, advancing technology has led to the availability of ultra-comfortable lenses that feature high water content.
3. Comprehensive Eye Evaluation
During your exam, your skilled InVision eye care professional will also check how well your eyes work together and evaluate your field of vision, depth perception, color vision and your pupils’ response to light. Your doctor will measure the curvature of your cornea and examine your retina and optic nerve, as well as other internal structures of the eye. Changes within the eyes can be warning signs for diseases originating elsewhere in the body, including high blood pressure, diabetes and certain cancers.
At InVision Eye Care, we tailor eye exams to the age of each patient. Children need early and precise measurement of their vision, to ensure they are seeing everything in the classroom and not falling behind academically. Middle-age persons often begin to experience presbyopia, the common condition that makes reading fine print more difficult. Older individuals often develop cataracts, and may need lens implants to restore clarity to vision.
To schedule your exam with one of our trusted eye care professionals, please contact our Lakewood office today.
