Blog

22 Sep What is my prescription in 20/20 terms? Idk if I’m wording that right but my prescription is +3 -5 in both eyes and I always wonder what the numbers would be in the other form.

Posted at 12:14h in Uncategorized by woodhamseyedev

This is a very common question eye doctors are asked. The number ratio "20/20 or 20/40 etc." is a measurement of visual acuity. If your visual acuity is not 20/20, it can be from pathology (like cataract) or it can be from what we call "refractive error" e.g. nearsightedness, astigmatism, farsightedness -which are not...

22 Sep How bad is -14 eye Power for myopia? Will it eventually result in blindness?

Posted at 12:03h in Uncategorized by woodhamseyedev

A lens Rx for -14 Diopters tells us you have a very, very high degree of nearsightedness (myopia). This would be considered in the "severe" range. Of all the people who are myopic, less than 2% are worse than -10 Diopters. Myopia, however, is not a...

08 Sep Humans are practically defenseless. Why don’t wild animals attack us more?

Posted at 12:32h in Uncategorized by woodhamseyedev

It's a 19th Century myth that humans' sense of sight and smell is weak compared to the rest of the animal kingdom. The thing that probably stops most predators from killing us, over the course of our evolutionary history, is that we see them before they...

25 Aug The cylinder rating on my eye prescription has changed from negatives to positives, and back to negatives again. Why could that be?

Posted at 12:38h in Uncategorized by woodhamseyedev

There are two conventions used among eye doctors on how to notate a typical glasses prescription: minus cylinder or plus cylinder. They are functionally the same (at least at the level of accuracy required in spectacle lenses). In effect, it depends on whether you measure from...

11 Aug Why do you see starbursts around lights after cataract surgery?

Posted at 12:46h in Uncategorized by woodhamseyedev

Well, not everybody does! Cataract surgery is the replacement of the clouded, natural lens of the eye with an artificial intraocular lens (IOL), or "lens implant." Despite the tremendous advances in ophthalmic technology, there is still no IOL that has been developed that can successfully reproduce the...

11 Aug Do colors exist outside the brain?

Posted at 12:36h in Uncategorized by woodhamseyedev

Not really. A "color" is what we call a categorization within our conditioned brain of a particular combination of not just wavelength, but saturation and hue. Color is not really "out there." But the different wavelengths of light are really "out there."Am I just playing...

09 Aug Are your contacts ripping often?

Posted at 12:10h in Uncategorized by woodhamseyedev

Are your contacts ripping often? Soft contact lenses are a wonderful invention and are drastically more comfortable for many patients than the older-style hard contacts. But with this increased comfort comes increased fragility. Soft contact lenses are made of flexible plastic that lets oxygen pass through to...

28 Jul How does an ophthalmologist help you determine which lens will be best for cataract surgery?

Posted at 12:55h in Uncategorized by woodhamseyedev

Excellent question! You should definitely discuss this with your eye doctor well in advance of any surgery. Past vision history and understanding your vision priorities are important in getting you the best results with cataract/lens implant surgery. There simply is no one "best IOL" (IntraOcular Lens). Furthermore, noIOL can reproduce the...

28 Jul Does cataract surgery give you 20/20 vision?

Posted at 12:42h in Uncategorized by woodhamseyedev

It depends on what you mean by "20/20 vision." Many people mistakenly think 20/20 refers to both reading and far vision when it is actually just distance. You also need to specify "corrected (by glasses) 20/20" or "uncorrected 20/20" after the cataract is replaced with a lens...

14 Jul Can a nearsighted person become farsighted?

Posted at 13:00h in Uncategorized by woodhamseyedev

It is indeed quite possible to have both nearsightedness and farsightedness in the same eye, and at the same time. While this sounds strange, it is quite common -but it does matter how you are using the term "farsighted." Nearsightedness (myopia) is where distance vision is blurry...