This thread:
inspired my post.
I am 32 years old and have 20/20 vision. Does everyone need vision correction as they age, or do some people live to ripe old ages with perfect vision?
Everyone becomes presbyopic eventually, except for those lucky folks who die in their thirties.
That means that the crystalline lens of your eye will lose its ability to change shape. You will not be able to accommodate, or increase the optical power of your eye to focus light that comes from a near object.
So, you’ll notice that things that are close up become blurry. This change doesn’t just hit people in their 40s – it actually happens gradually. First it becomes harder to see things that are very close, and eventually reading or other every day activities become uncomfortable or difficult. At that point, if you have a distance correction, you’ll need bifocals or progressives. If you don’t have distance correction, you can get by with a pair of “reading glasses” for near-work. If you’re a lowish myope, (less than, say, 4 diopters or so) you might not need glasses for reading at all – just take them off! You’ll see clearly at a distance that is approximately the inverse of your optical correction in diopters (that is, a 2D myope will have a clear far point, without accommodation, of 1/2 = .5 m from their eyes.)
There are other options (like monovision) but thus far no one has found a cure for presbyopia.
I had absolutely no vision problems until a couple weeks after my 40th birthday. It was almost like the warranty had expired.
I still only need cheaters, but I need a check-up and I have a feeling the distance vision might be diminishing. 
20/20 vision is only a measure of distance vision.
I’m almost 42 and my eyes are still working A O K. I’m sure things will go down hill some time soon.
It wasn’t even gradual for me! One day I couldn’t see my computer screen. It was kind of scary, but other people reported that it came up on them suddenly as well, and the eye doctor didn’t find anything abnormal, so I guess it’s just that way with some people.
Is there any correlation between years in front of a computer and vision problems?
Just because the (recently legaly required) pictures on the cigarette packets have me concerned, do you smoke?
I have spent years in front of a computer screen and I am hoping my vision won’t go the way the cigarette packet picture of the eye goes (or foot, heart, lung etc goes)
There was a similar thread a few weeks ago which touched on this topic, and some discussion as to what actually causes eyesight problems as we age. As I understand from my optometrist, the eyes change with age, and eye-strain is a contributing factor to some degree, as well as what our parents’ eyesight was like.
Me, I’m just getting by day-by-day feeling more and more like Mr.-damn-Magoo with the progressives. To see things really up close, though, I take the glasses off.
Got my first reading glasses at 52. I’ve had to increase the strength of them every year for the last 4 years.
You could still be one of the lucky ones though. My Pappaw died at age 91, and never needed more than cheap reading glasses. I’m not sure how old he was when he had to start using them because he wore them so rarely (just up-close reading of the newspaper and such).
My step MIL is in her early 80s and scores 20/20 every time she is tested. She’s Norwegian, if that means anything.
It happened to me soon after I was 42. And like some other people in this thread, it was quite sudden. I sat down in a cafe, opened my newspaper, and… huh…why is the text blurry like that?
However, I’m slightly myopic, so the end result is that I rarely wear glasses anymore (I used to wear them all the time), since they’ve now become more an inconvenience than an asset, most of the time, as explained by ** Cromulent **
But does she score 20/20 on a distance Snellen test or a Snellen (or other) near card? As other people in this thread have mentioned, it’s certainly possible to maintain clear distance vision to a ripe old age. It’s also possible to be able to see clearly at near if you’re a natural low myope (nearsighted) despite the loss of accommodative ability. It would be very interesting if your step MIL was an emmetrope – that is, someone with perfect vision at distance – who could also read perfectly clearly at near (say, newspaper print 40 cm or closer) with no optical correction.
As one of my profs put it, there are three things that are certain in life — death, taxes, and presbyopia 
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I don’t know the answer to your question. The tests that I am aware of are the driving tests where you cover one eye and read the smallest line of letters that you are able to read. I have seen her read magazines and newspapers with no problems. I’ll admit her driving terrifies me: she makes drag-racing starts and her car’s horn and brakes get quite a workout. She learned to drive in Brazil if that’s relevant. I will try to question her as to her near and far vision the next time I see her.
My brother in law is a commercial airline pilot in his early 50’s, and doesn’t need glasses for either reading or distance.
The day after he retires he’ll probably need a white cane.
As long as he doesn’t need it the day before.
A driving test is most likely a distance test.
It’s great that your step MIL is still able to read uncorrected, but it’s 99.9% likely that, rather than accommodating to see up close, what’s happening is one of the following possibilities:
- She uses reading glasses.
- She’s a low myope who trades slightly blurry distance vision for the ability to see more clearly up close, uncorrected (the 20/20 distance vision makes this unlikely)
- In my opinion, the most interesting possibility – she has natural monovision. If she has perfect distance vision in one eye and is, say, a -2 D myope in the other, she may simply suppress her “good” eye for near vision, and her “bad” eye for distance vision. Plenty of people who want to stay in contacts after becoming presbyopic arrange for a similar set-up with their eye doctor, but it’s possible to have this occur naturally (called myopic anisometropia, if you’re curious. That’s just a fancy way to say that this person is a myope who requires a different prescription in each eye.)
At any rate, everything I’ve read/heard/seen in clinic dealing with presbyopia points to its inevitability. Sorry to be depressing. I’m only 26 and frankly love the ability to accommodate and would be happy to learn that there’s a chance that I’ll retain it, but all signs point to that not happening. 
You can get by without them a lot of the time but they end up being essential if what you are drinking is draft.
Pretty much yes, if you have 20/20 vision into your 40’s you’ll need reading glasses at some point. Then again, you could get mild myopia or presbyopia and not really *need *glasses.
Distance vision doesn’t change much as we age. Presbyopia, which means “old eye,” happens when the lens starts to stiffen, making accommodation slower. eventually, the range of plasticity is narrower, causing presbyopia.
It’s a form of far-sightedness. Some near-sighted people say it improves their near vision.