Did you know that blindness affects women more than men? The National Institutes of Health reports that 2/3rds of the people with blindness or visual impairments are women. Often, hormones, and especially life changes such as pregnancy and menopause, cause changes in women’s eyes.

During the golden age of cigarettes—sometime between the roaring twenties and early sixties, vintage ads featured doctors touting the many “health benefits” of smoking. Most of us now know enough about the harms of cigarette smoking to roll our eyes at that. It’s well known that smoking causes lung cancer.

The colored part of your eye is called the “iris”. This part of your eye is pigmented depending on your genetics, which will determine what eye color you have. Many babies have blue eyes when they are born and for most of their first year of life. However, that might not be the eye color that they will always have, as pigmentation in the eye can change over time.

Low vision generally means impaired vision, and it can happen whether you are young or old. Many people have low vision (meaning they can’t see well) due to hereditary conditions, eye diseases or eye injuries. Some people don’t see well at sunset with changing light and others have vision that deteriorates slowly as they age.

Have you noticed vision changes lately? This could be caused by a refractive error of the eye. Refractive errors such as nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism are some of the most common visual problems affecting both adults and children. There is a difference between blurry vision and cloudy vision, as cloudy vision could signal an eye disease such as glaucoma or macular degeneration.

There are countless conditions and diseases that can target the eyes and affect your ability to see. Once damaged, can your eyes be healed once more? There are many common conditions such as glaucoma, macular degeneration, nearsightedness, farsightedness and more that our patients struggle with. Some conditions that involve eye damage or vision damage can be reversed while others can’t.

Your eyes are ever changing from infancy to adulthood. Good vision is not something your child is immediately born with. Vision develops over time, and the first 10 years of a child’s life are the most crucial for proper vision development. An infant sees colors, shapes, outlines, etc., all at different stages.

Blurry vision can occur without warning, or it can happen gradually with certain chronic conditions. If this is the case, your vision may be misty or blurry so that you cannot see details at a distance, or your glasses can seem scratched and dirty when they’re not. Some problems can be resolved with the right vision treatment or appliance such as glasses or contact lenses. Other problems may need close care and treatment throughout the years.

You may have heard of nearsightedness and farsightedness before, but what are they really? Both are some of the most common forms of visual problems we encounter in our office and are very common among patients. Nearsightedness means that people can see objects clearly up close, but objects farther away are blurry. Farsightedness is its opposite as objects farther away will be clear, while those close are blurry.

A vision type can be as unique to a person as their personality or sense of style. It is different in every single patient, but some visual conditions are quite common. Many of our patients have nearsightedness (myopia), farsightedness (hyperopia), astigmatism or near-perfect eyesight. What is the best vision type and what is the worst? At Optical Masters, we perform comprehensive exams that help us keep your eyes healthy.