Vision problems are not an uncommon issue in people all around you. Nearly everywhere you look you can see people wearing glasses, and many people around us are wearing contact lenses to correct their vision problem. A trend that is gaining increased popularity lately is Lasik eye surgery. This surgery corrects the vision problem and can eliminate people’s need for glasses or contacts. Both my mom and brother have had a history of vision problems. My mother underwent the corrective surgery and now has no need for glasses, but my brother’s issues are so extreme that the surgery cannot be performed on him, so he is still using contact lenses.
I have always been curious as to why some people have issues with near vision, or far vision. With what I have learned through my psychology class that focuses on perception, these issues come from a result of the length of the eyeball. My mother and brother both have issues with hyperopia. Hyperopia is another name for the condition many people know as farsightedness. With this issue people can see distant object clearly, but struggle focusing on objects that are close to them. This occurs due to the eyeball being too short. The close object is focused behind the retina. The retina is a very important part of the eye that is used for receiving light that comes through the eye’s lens. This then focuses the light and relays it to the brain to form the visual picture. Due to the eyeball being too short, the focus point of the close object is behind the retina, causing it to be blurred. Many people also struggle with myopia, nearsightedness. People with this condition can clearly see objects that are close to them, but have issues seeing objects that are in the distance. Myopia occurs when the eyeball is too long. The focus point of the light of the distant object is in front of the retina.
Glasses or contacts can be used to change the focus point of these objects as they reach the inner eyeball. In order to process the light clearly the focus point must be at the retina. These issues will never fully disappear, but with the progression of science and technology this issues may be much easier to overcome.
This made me think back to when I was in elementary school. I remember when our principal came up with a new rule that every morning during our self-studying period, the whole school has to go out to the back hall way and stare at trees that were far away for around 20 minutes. I knew that green is better to look at for our eyes than other colors, but I did not know why we had to stare at trees that were further.
Now that we learned about our eye structure, I finally understood how it works. Since our eyes adjust to how far or near we look at objects, when we make ourselves look far away, it helps with our eye sites by letting our eyes get use to far site visions so we do not get myopia.
Great Post! I was going to initially write my first blog comment touching on glasses because my mom as well has very poor vision. She is near sighted and uses glasses but she is terribly afraid to undergo surgery. My homeroom teacher in high school went through eye surgery. I noticed that his eyes were extremely blood shot for weeks and had to use eye drops in his eyes every couple hours or so. I am curious as to why the surgery initially makes the eye ball so blood shot and dry? Also, he said that his vision was at first blurry after the procedure. I would assume that if you are going through this surgery, you would want to see perfectly just hours after? Since I have never had eye problems this has always been a question on my mind.