Calling all optometrist/opthalmologist dopers: Will my eyesight improve?

Factual Questions
1

I currently have uncorrected nearsightedness at app. 20/150 with astigmatism. I’m 30 years old. I’ve been led to understand that one of the normal effects of aging after 40 or so is the development of presbyopia.

Given that presbyopia is functionally the same as farsightedness, does this mean that as I age, my eyesight will actually improve? Is it likely to progress to the point where I don’t need glasses or contacts to have near-normal/normal vision? And do the changes in the eyes have any likelihood of affecting the astigmatism?

2

IANA opt/opth., but this actually happened to my mother. She started out nearsighted like the rest of us, but as she got to be about 35 or 40 she stopped wearing her glasses. And we said, “What’s up?” because the rest of us are all blind as bats. She shrugged and said, “I dunno, but I don’t seem to need them anymore,” and she went to the eye doctor and he said, “Yeah, as you get older you tend to get more farsighted, so sometimes you go through a period when your nearsightedness and farsightedness even out, and you don’t need your glasses.”

So then when she got to be about 60 she had to go back to wearing glasses for sewing and reading.

Now me, I’m 20/400, legally blind without my specs, and I don’t see any signs, at forty-something, of the situation changing.

So I guess it depends.

3

IANA o/o either. Presbyopia means that your lens, and its ligamentous attachmenns, become less flexible. Consequently, the lens is unable to adjust to reading near material. When you are young, the lens is able to adjust quite nicely. I read once a table of the ability of the lens to adjust as you age. I forget the specifics, but when very young, it, for the sake of arguement, has a power of 9. By age 30, this is reduced to, say, 5, but you still can adjust. By age 40, it is reduced to the point where reading glasses slowly become necessary.

With your vision, you should be able to READ without glasses. In fact, you should be able to do that now. Presbyopie, per se, does not affect your myopia (near-sightedness). You will continue to have the same problems with seeing distance as you do, based solely on presbyopia.

Some people, however, have a diminishing myopia as they age. They become more hyperopia (far-sightedness). This means that you may be able to see distance better, but that’s not due to presbyopia. I know in my case, before I had RK surgery in 1991, my myopia lessened from near -8 diopters to near -6 diopters. That is so bad, however, that I could not tell the difference. I man, everything’s a blur either way. If your myopia is slight, as in your case, with 20/150 (which is probably around -2 diopters) it may diminish to the point that you don’t need glasses for distance. If that happens, however, you may need reading glasses, since your lens is still not able to adjust.

I don’t know if this developing hyperopia happens to everybody. I’d be interested, too, in hearing from an eye doctor. I’ve heard that people with normal vision may develop myopia as they age.

4

Oh - BTW - astigmatism is not affected by age. That’s the distortion of your cornea, and it does not become more or less distorted by age. If you have surgery, like I did, it may.

5

I’m not trying to pad my posts - honestly - but I was thinking about my statement that some people get more myopic as they age and DD Goose’s post about what the eye doctor said. There’s no phyiological reason why people would get more myopic, but there could be one for hyperopia. If the cornea gets flatter, the focus would be further out. Thus, people with normal vision will find the focus point behind the retina as they age. Corneas can get flatter as they lose fluid. As we age, we tend to lose things, such as fluids and money. (Of course some of us gain things, like fat - not me.)

So, I’ve heard people with normal vision needing glasses when they got older, and I assumed it was due to myopia, which is the bane of most people. But it could be they got hyperopic, and that seems more logical.

So, yes, there may be a period when you no longer need your glasses for distance. However, you will then need reading glasses. (You don’t need them now, since your lens can adjust, and you probably can read with them or w/o them.)

Astigmatism is caused by irregularities in the cornea, and I don’t think a flattening will cure that.