No this is not a late-night personal injury lawyer infomercial.

This is a recommendation that you have your LASIK records available, for your own good, later in life.

There are 2 million cataract surgeries done yearly in the U.S. and the odds are, if you live long enough, you will eventually need cataract surgery, too.

What does this have to do with LASIK surgery? 

When doctors perform cataract surgery they remove the cataract, which is the lens of your eye that has become cloudy.  And they replace that lens with an artificial lens called an Intraocular Lens implant (IOL).

The IOL needs to have a strength to it to match your eye so that things are in focus without the need for strong prescription eyeglasses.

Currently, we determine what the strength the IOL needs to be by using formulas that mostly depend on the measurements of the curvature of the cornea and the length of the eye.

Those formulas work best when the cornea is its natural shape — i.e., not previously altered in shape from […]

Have you ever felt a twitching sensation in your eye? Were you sure everyone was looking at you because of it? Worried that it was the beginning of a big problem?

Relax, it’s not likely to be a big deal. Most of the time it is not even visible to other people.

First, it’s almost never your actual eyeball that is twitching; it’s your eyelid muscle. Actual eye twitching is fairly rare and your vision would be pretty blurry if that's what was really happening.

The eyelid has a muscle in it that closes the eyelid and that muscle has a very high concentration of nerve innervation. Because of that dense nerve tissue in the eyelid, anything that makes your nervous system a little hyped up or off kilter can result in the eyelid twitching.

What are some of the risk factors for eyelid twitching?

Fatigue

Not getting enough sleep can result in your nervous system not performing at its best and one of the results of that may include twitching of your eyelid. If you […]

Need a  chuckle or a groan?  Here you go…

1. Did you hear about the guy who just found out he was color blind?  It hit him right out of the purple!

2. What happened to the lab tech when he fell into the grinder?  He made a spectacle of himself.

3. Why is our staff so amazing?  They were all bright pupils!

4. Why did the smartphone have to wear glasses?  It lost all of its contacts.

5. What did one pupil say to the other?  I’m dilated to meet you.

6. What do you call a potato wearing glasses?  A Spec-Tater!

7. What do you call an optician living on an Alaskan island?  An optical Aleutian.

8. What was the innocent lens’s excuse to the policeman?  "I’ve been framed, officer!"

9. Where is the eye located?  Between the H and the J.

10. Where does bad light end up?  In Prism!

The sun does some amazing things.  It plays a role in big helping our bodies to naturally produce Vitamin D. In fact, many people who work indoors are directed to take Vitamin D supplements because of lack of exposure to the sunshine. 

But being in the sun has risks, as well…

If sunglasses are not worn, there is a greater risk for cataracts or skin cancers of the eyelids. It is important to know that not all sunglasses are made alike. UVA,UVB, and UVC rays are the harmful rays that sunglasses need to protect us from.

However, many over the counter sunglasses do not have UV protection built into the lenses, which can actually cause more damage than not wearing sunglasses, especially in children. 80% of sun exposure in our lives comes in childhood. Without UV protection in sunglasses, when the pupil automatically dilates more behind a darker lens, more of the sun's harmful rays are let in.

The whole point is that consumers should be aware that it is vital to buy sunwear that has […]

Cataracts are part of the natural aging process. Everyone gets them to one degree or another if they live long enough. Cataracts, as they progress, create increasing difficulty with the normal activities of living. The symptoms vary from one person to another. Some people have more difficulty with their distance vision, some with reading. People may report difficulty with glare, or foggy, blurry, or hazy vision.

Doctors have noticed an increase in requests for second opinions because patients are sometimes told they have cataracts and they HAVE to have surgery–even though the patient has no visual complaints. Just having a cataract is not a reason to have cataract surgery.

According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, "The decision to recommend cataract surgery should be based on consideration of the following factors: visual acuity, visual impairment, and potential for functional benefits." Therefore, the presence of a cataract is not enough to recommend surgery. There needs to be some degree of visual impairment that is altering the ability to perform your normal activities of daily living. There also […]

Hygiene is critical to wearing your contact lenses safely.

Contact lenses can significantly improve your vision, but it’s essential to care for them properly to avoid potentially serious infections or other problems.

These recommendations will help extend the life of your contact lenses and keep your eyes safe and healthy. 

Your lens insertion and removal routine

• Before you handle contacts, wash and rinse your hands with a mild soap.
• Make sure the soap doesn’t have perfumes, oils, or lotions. They can leave a film on your hands.
• Dry your hands with a clean, lint-free towel before touching your contacts.
• It’s a good idea to keep your fingernails short and smooth so you won't damage your lenses or scratch your eye when inserting or removing your contacts.
• Lightly rubbing your contact in the palm of your hand with a few drops of solution helps remove surface build-up.
• Rinse your lenses thoroughly with a recommended solution before soaking the contacts overnight in a multi-purpose solution that completely covers each lens.
• Store lenses in the proper lens storage […]
  

There is a common misconception that any adverse reaction to a drug is an allergy. That is definitely not the case.

Reporting to your doctors that you have an allergy to a medication when what you really had was a side effect could potentially create a substantial alteration to your medical care in the future. And this could mean a physician might avoid using a drug that could possibly save your life because of the fear of an allergic reaction.

An anaphylactic allergic reaction generally produces a very specific set of symptoms, including difficulty breathing due to constriction of windpipe, swelling of your tongue, and/or a rash and hives that break out over your body. While an allergic reaction can present in other ways, these are the most frequent reactions that occur when you have a true allergy to something.

If that is not the type of reaction you had then it probably isn’t an allergy. If you are uncertain if your reaction to a medication is an allergy or not, testing by an allergist may […]

Will reading glasses make your eyes worse? The short answer is "No."

Although we don’t know the exact mechanism by which humans have a decreased ability to focus up close as we age (a process called presbyopia), the fact remains that it will happen to all of us.

The leading theory of how this occurs is that the lenses in our eyes get stiffer and thicker as we age–one of the muscles in the eye that contracts to change the shape of the lens does so less and less effectively because the lens itself gets less pliable.

The process of changing the focus of the lens from far away objects to up-close objects is called accommodation. If you have normal distance vision without glasses, then your eye's natural focus spot is far off in the distance. In order to focus on an object close to you, the lens in your eye has to alter its shape. The ability of your lens to do that is at its best when you are born and it slowly gets […]

Motherhood…the sheer sound of it brings enduring memories. A mother’s touch, her voice, her cooking, and the smile of approval in her eyes. Science has recently proven that there is a transference of emotion and programming from birth and infancy between a mother and her child–a type of communication, if you will, that occurs when the infant looks into its mother’s eyes. So what is this programming? How does it work and what effect does it have on the life of the child? What happens if it never happened to the infant? What happens if the mother is blind? These questions and more can be answered through a term called “triadic exchanges” in which infants learn social skills.

The gaze into a mother’s eyes brings security and well being to the child. When she gazes at another person, it makes the infant look at what she is gazing at, and introduces the infant to others in the world. This is known as a triadic exchange. So now their world is no longer just one person, their […]

The eye care medical field has an unusual split between two different types of insurance for covering eye issues: health insurance and vision insurance. Not all patients have both.

In most cases, your health insurance is used to cover medical and surgical eye problems but not routine exams or the cost of contacts or glasses. Those things are often covered by separate vision insurance.

Why the difference? Originally, health insurance was created to take care of health “problems” and wasn’t designed to cover “routine,” “screening,” or “wellness” exams.

Since health insurance wasn’t going to cover “routine” eye exams, the vision insurance industry arose to help insure/cover those routine exams as well as the costs of glasses and/or contacts if they were needed.

That dichotomy now often causes great confusion when you make an appointment at your eye doctor. When making your appointment, the office is going to need to know which insurance, if you have both, you are going to be using for this particular visit.

Why does the office need to know in advance which […]