Millions of people are affected by dry eye syndrome and the prevalence of dry eye increases with age. An estimated 3.2 million women and over and 1.68 million men age 50 and over are affected by dry eye syndrome.

Here are some risk factors for dry eye:

Aging: Advancing age is the single most important risk factor for dry eye. Most of our body’s moisture-producing glands produce less moisture as we age.

Gender: Women are twice as likely as men to suffer from dry eye. Changes in hormone levels throughout your lifetime often affect the amount of moisture produced by the lacrimal glands that produce tears.

Medical problems: Several diseases result in increased risk for dry eye syndrome, including rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, thyroid abnormalities, asthma, cataracts, glaucoma, and lupus.

Medication: Certain medications can decrease the body's ability to produce lubricating tears.

Contact lenses: Dry eye is the leading cause of contact lens discomfort or intolerance.

Environmental conditions: Exposure to smoke, fluorescent lights, air pollution, wind, heat, air conditioning, and dry climates can increase tear evaporation.

Computer users: People who spend many hours […]

Choosing a new pair of eyeglasses can be a daunting task.

Making a decision on what style glasses you will be wearing for the next year until your vision is checked again can be stressful. This is one of the many reasons opticians are here for you. In many ways, this may be the most important task for the optician, because keeping you happy motivates you to wear your glasses daily.

Most people’s reaction is to play it safe with new glasses and stick with something relatively similar to what they are currently wearing.

While not necessarily a bad decision, this isn’t something opticians try to promote. Opticians often spend time meeting with frame representatives and browsing the Internet to keep up with the ever-changing trends in the world of eyeglass frames. And it’s a great feeling to successfully “update” your image with a new set of frames. Many patients are amazed at the difference a well-fit and -styled pair of glasses makes on their overall look.

There are many simple tips and tricks to consider […]

Choroidal nevus is the fancy word for a freckle in the back of the eye.

This lesion arises from a collection of cells that make pigment in the choroid, which lines the back of the retina and supplies the retina with nutrients. These choroidal nevi (plural of nevus) are usually grayish in color and develop in about 5-10% of the adult population. They are usually asymptomatic and detected during a routine dilated eye exam.

Just like any freckle on our body, we should monitor it for any change in size or growth.  This is usually done with a photograph of the nevus and usually annual exams are recommended to monitor any change.  

In addition to a photograph, other tests that can be used to monitor the nevus are:

• Optical coherence tomography – a test that uses light waves to take cross-section pictures of the retina. This test is used to detect if the nevus is elevated or if fluid is present underneath the retina.
• Ultrasound – uses sound waves to measure the size and […]
  

Hydroxychloroquine (Plaquenil) was originally used to treat malaria and is now used mostly to treat rheumatological and dermatological diseases. Its most frequent use now is for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and Lupus and is often very effective in mitigating the joint and arthritic symptoms these diseases can cause.

One of the most significant side effects of the drug is its possibility of causing eye problems resulting in blurred or decreased vision. The most common issue is damage to the retina. It can impair your color vision or damage the retinal cells, particularly in the area right around the central vision.

In your retina, the area that you use to look straight at an object is called the fovea. The fovea is the area that provides you with the most definition when looking at an object. The area just around the fovea is called the macula and it has the ability to see objects with slightly less definition than the fovea but significantly better than the rest of your retina, which accounts for your peripheral vision. The most […]

A common in-office procedure is an eye injection for treatment of various eye conditions, such as wet macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy or vein occlusion.  

It is normal to be anxious prior to your first eye injection but knowing what to expect may alleviate some anxiety.  

Your eye will be numbed with topical anesthetic drops. Usually, a cotton-tipped applicator soaked in anesthetic will be held against the white part of the eye to numb it.  Sometimes, a thick gel may also be used for numbing. Once the eye is numbed, it will then be cleaned and a small instrument will be used to hold the eye open. During the actual injection, some patients feel pressure while others may feel a quick sting. Each person will have a different experience and each injection will be different.

The medicine is injected into the white part of the eye. Sometimes a blood vessel may be encountered during the injection and you may notice a little redness on the outside of the eye. This is purely a cosmetic symptom […]

Erectile Dysfunction (ED) drugs like Viagra, Cialis and Levitra have been implicated as possibly causing an increased incidence in a serious eye disease called Anterior Ischemic Optic Neuropathy (AION).

In 2005 the FDA received 43 post-marketing reports of sudden vision loss attributed to AION in patients taking ED medications. There was also a report in the Journal of Neuro-Ophthalmology that identified seven patients who had AION within 36 hours of their last use of an ED drug. These reports caused the FDA to issue the following drug safety alert to physicians:

Physicians should:

• Advise patients to stop use of all PDE-5 inhibitors and seek medical attention in the event of a sudden loss of vision in one or both eyes. Such an event may be a sign of non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION), a cause of decreased vision, which can result in permanent loss of vision.
• Discuss with patients the increased risk of NAION in individuals who have already experienced NAION in one eye, including whether such individuals could be adversely affected by use […]
  

Do you have family members with eye-related conditions?

The two main eye diseases in adults that have a genetic link are glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

Glaucoma is a deterioration of the optic nerve caused by pressure in the eye or poor blood flow to the optic nerve. It has no symptoms at its onset. In most cases if you wait until you begin to realize there is something wrong with your vision to get glaucoma diagnosed, upwards of 70% of your optic nerve will have already been destroyed. Once the nerve is destroyed there is no way of reversing that today and treatment is focused on trying to preserve whatever nerve tissue is left.

Your chances of getting glaucoma are four to 10 times higher if you have a close relative with glaucoma. Getting your eyes examined regularly is always important but even more so if there is a family history of glaucoma.

Macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in most of the developed world. It too can cause serious vision loss […]

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

In most cases, your health insurance gets 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 you needed them.

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 […]

The jury is still out on that question. There is some supportive experimental data in animal models but no well-done human studies that show any significant benefit.

What you shouldn’t do is pass up taking the AREDS 2 nutritional supplement formula, which is clinically proven to reduce the risk of severe visual loss in. Almost all the data supporting the POSSIBLE benefits of bilberry in visual conditions is related to NON-HUMANS. Stick with the AREDS 2 formula that has excellent clinical evidence.

So, what is bilberry and why do some people use it?

Bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus), a low-growing shrub that produces a blue-colored berry, is native to Northern Europe and grows in North America and Asia. It is naturally rich in anthocyanins, which have anti-oxidant properties.

During World War II, British pilots in the Royal Air Force ate bilberry jam, hoping to improve their night vision. No one is exactly sure where the impetus to do this came from, but it is believed that this event is what lead to some widespread claims that bilberry was good for your eyes.

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We have all heard the term ”Love is in the Air,” but can love really be in the eyes? Actually, Science has proven it so. Certain chemicals (or endorphins) that produce the emotion of love can be emitted through emotions expressed in the eyes. Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra all can prove that love is in the eyes of the beholder. There are physiological changes in the eyes that occur when love is expressed between two individuals. Two people in love, love shown towards a family member, child, or pet all cause the same response: the pupil (black part in the center of the eye) dilates.

The size of the pupil can be an indication of emotional responses and messages. According to Scientific American, the autonomic nervous system (our fight or flight response), causes the pupil to have a quick dilating response. The ANS is also in charge of heart rate and perspiration, and when a person is extremely interested in another person, the pupil has a dilating effect that is slightly less than the pupillary light […]