I’m 40, and I’m starting to notice that a) my eyes get tired looking at computer screens and b) I’m holding magazines further away to see the print clearly.
I know what this is: middle-aged eyes.
So, my question is: Do I need to go to an eye-doctor, or should I just get those magnifying glasses at the drug store?
Presbyopia. Not much you can do about it except correct. Do you normally wear glasses or contacts? You might need bifocals in that case, but the cheap drugstore glasses should be worth a try.
You might want to try prescription or at least go to an eye doctor. They test for all sorts of middle aged blindness risks and can get you glasses that fix more than the reading distance thingy. You might wind up seeing the world a whole lot better than you ever did. Nonetheless, everyone should have a glaucoma test yearly.
At the age of 40 there are a myriad of potential funky problems with the eyeballs. Chances are, it’s just hyperopia (farsightedness), which is par for the course when your lens starts to stiffen. If you can afford it or have eye care insurance, by all means get checked out by an ophthalmologist. I had cataracts when I turned 40, and in as much as it was a bummer, the implanted lenses work really well.
My eyes went bad almost exactly on my 40th birthday. It was almost like they had an expiration date! I went 12 years with the cheaters. Just got two pair of glasses – one pair for watching TV and one pair for reading/computer. The doctor advised against bifocals. Go figure.
You probably do just need to get some reading glasses.
But, as others have mentioned, it’s a good idea to see an ophthalmalogist every year. Vision is precious.
When I turned 40, the eye doctor said “Happy Birthday. Welcome to bifocals.”
We are not getting older, we are getting… what was the question again?
You will probably end up *buying *the glasses at the drugstore, since they’re much cheaper (and since you’ll end up owning a half-dozen pairs at a time), but get your eyes checked by a trained professional. Vision is precious.
I just turned 40 a couple of months ago, and right on schedule, I noticed vision problems, especially when reading and using the computer. Also, I’ve noticed that it takes an effort to focus on close-up things–they eventually come into focus, but there is a noticeable strain/effort, and it takes a second for close-up things to come into focus.
Anyway, I went to my ophthalmologist. Because I’m still able to focus on close-up things, he did not change my prescription for my glasses. He did indicate that the close-up vision usually deteriorates between 40 and 45. It’s obviously already started for me. 
Great.
[aside] Where the hell has the time gone? Heck, I was in my early 30s when I started posting on the SDMB… [/aside]
I won’t say whether “it’s a good idea to see an” ophthalmologist “every year” or whether “everyone should have a glaucoma test yearly” but since this is a SDMB, I feel I must point out that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) found insufficient evidence to recommend for or against screening adults for glaucoma. Clinical Guidelines and Recommendations | Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
“The American Academy of Ophthalmology recommends screening for glaucoma as part of the comprehensive adult medical eye evaluation, starting at the age of 20, with a frequency depending on an individual’s age and other risk factors for glaucoma: (http://www.aao.org/aao/education/library/ppp/loader.cfm?url=/commonspot/security/getfile.cfm&PageID=1275).”
“The Department of Veterans Affairs recommends that every veteran over the age of 40 be screened for glaucoma in a primary care setting with a frequency depending on his or her age, ethnicity, and family history: (http://www.oqp.med.va.gov/cpg/glaucoma/G/Glaucoma12_cpg.doc).”
“The American Optometric Association recommends annual eye examinations for people at risk for glaucoma; these recommendations can be accessed at: http://www.aoanet.org/conditions/glaucoma.asp.”
The USPSTF has decided to update its 1996 recommendation on screening for visual impairment in adults. In 1996 the Task Force concluded that “There is insufficient evidence to recommend for or against routine screening for diminished visual acuity among asymptomatic schoolchildren and nonelderly adults.” (They recommended screening the elderly but did not recommend any specific frequency.)
I had the same problem when I hit 40. I tried the drugstore glasses, but they didn’t seem to work as well as advertised. Having never worn glasses before, I figured it was something I had to put up with. Then I went to an eye doctor. It turned out that one eye needed a different prescription than the other. No wonder my same-correction-for-each-eye drugstore specs weren’t working well.
Needless to say, I’d recommend seeing an eye doctor. At least then, any problems such as I had can be caught early. Besides, as others have said, vision is precious; and having a professional check it certainly can’t hurt.
(Disclosure: I work in ophthalmology but IANAD/N. I also won’t profit if people go in for eye exams because they need reading glasses, so this isn’t a motivation for me.)
I checked over the link you posted, and note that the one study that did not show good results for treatment was one in which patients showed signs of optic nerve issues but not increased intraocular pressure (eye pressure, or IOP) and yet were treated with pressure-lowering treatments. Their cited disadvantages of glaucoma treatment, eye irritation (which goes away) and cataracts (which are common with age, a known risk of certain treatments, and can be resolved), are not necessarily compelling reasons to not get treated but are important to discuss with a doctor.
Finally, I also don’t see the cited quote in your link. It seems to refer not to glaucoma testing - which is frankly not the only concern related to an aging eye - but to visual acuity (vision) testing in the asymptomatic, which the OP certainly does not fit. Loss of acuity is being reported and it is probably worth being looked at.
(Glaucoma does not affect visual acuity, to the best of my knowledge, and other than loss of peripheral vision - which is typically slow and thus hard to judge if loss has occurred - a doctor must assess damage to the optic nerve or increased IOP to diagnose glaucoma.)
And yes, you can probably just get drugstore reading glasses. The ophthalmologists I work with recommend them all the time, or bifocals if you also need distance correction and don’t want to bother swapping glasses out.
I wear contacts and my eye doctor said one option just grab the lowest Rx in the drugstore ( -1.00 ) and see how those work. I ended up going with monovision–undercorrecting the non-dominant eye so it is used for close and the dominant is used for far. It’s been working OK so far.
Just to be helpful and cover all the bases, presbyopia isn’t middle-aged eyes, it’s old eyes.
My optometrist told me that taller people need their presbyopia treated a little later than shorter people, because their arms are longer. I think this sounds implausible as the entire body ought to scale up or down; big people probably have bigger eyes, right? Although my only friend who is actually a medical professional, a nurse, swears that very big and very small people all have the same size organs inside. She has no idea what takes up the rest of the space inside the very big people.
By the way, meandering through long and only tangentally related anecdotes comes next.
That reminds me of the time I was on my way to… wait, what was I talking about? Oh yes, forgetting what you were about to say. That’s another great thing to look forward to. And let’s not talk about prostate examinations either.
What your optometrist means is that taller people can compensate better for their inability to focus up close by holding their reading matter further away from their eyes than can short people because tall people have longer arms. (The size of their eyeballs is irrelevant, it’s the shape that matters.)
>What your optometrist means is that taller people can compensate better for their inability to focus up close by holding their reading matter further away from their eyes than can short people because tall people have longer arms. (The size of their eyeballs is irrelevant, it’s the shape that matters.)
Well, that is what the optometrist means, but you could draw a scale model of a human with eyeballs and use Snell’s law to trace rays from the fingertips, entering the cornea (where most of the refracting is done), and coming to a focus on the retina, to demonstrate the marginal case where holding things at arm’s length barely works. This scale model would involve angles and the ratios of distances. But you would not have to have any absolute size to construct this model. So, the size of their eyeballs IS relevant, if you want to use real sizes elsewhere in the model. Size cancels out in the simplest analysis and might as well do so in all the others.
Think of it another way. Imagine a transparent sphere, and two points in space equidistant from its center but all along the same line, the distance being, say, two sphere diameters. There is one specific index of refraction such that near the optical axis the sphere would image from one point to the other, and you could calculate what it was without ever having an absolute size measurement in the system. Lenses are all about angles, not distances. The lenses themselves have no idea how far away anything is; they just establish the relationships between entrance and exit angles for rays.
I’m probably going to generate hate mail for this, but my vision is about the best it’s ever been and I’m 45. I’m a photographer and I pay close attention to my sight. I can see a person standing against a light background at around three miles away and a Jeep at twice that. I think it’s because I read alot and then look for my subjects approaching from far away. I’ve been doing this for fifteen years and I guarantee my vision is better now than when I was in High School.
My eyesight began to deteriorate slowly around age 40, although it was so slow and insidious that I really didn’t notice that I wasn’t seeing as well until I realized that I’d stopped reading because it became too difficult. It wasn’t just close-up reading, either (and I started doing the arm-stretching thing about a year ago) – even my farsight started getting bad to the point where I had difficulty reading road signs. But I just never really noticed since I compensated for these things.
Finally, after getting decent health insurance that including eye exams and glasses, the first thing I did was make an appointment with an optometrist. He prescribed bifocals. They were ready in a week, and let me tell you, as soon as I put them on MY WORLD CHANGED! I had no idea how bad my eyes had become because like I said, I’d learned to compensate.
Reading is enjoyable again, I can see what’s going on across the room on the TV, and I couldn’t be more ecstatic about having good sight again. It took a while to get used to the bifocals (I couldn’t afford the blended ones as my policy didn’t cover them, but who cares? I can see!) In fact, I’ve only had these specs since April and sometimes I still find myself looking over the top of them at some things, a habit from wearing generic reading glasses.
It’s a new world out there for me.