Vision Tips

Before diving into the pool this summer, make sure you’re aware of the eye safety facts.

What can we do to protect our eyes while we cool off in the pool or have a swim in a lake? What are we protecting our eyes from anyway?

Eye Irritants in the Water

If you’ve ever felt a burning, stinging sensation after opening your eyes underwater at a public pool, then you’ve felt the burn of chloramine. This is a compound that forms when chlorine reacts with contaminants like dirt, oils, and urine. It sounds pretty gross, but chlorine is great at killing harmful bacteria so that the water is safe to swim in. Chloramine only causes mild, temporary irritation to the eyes in most cases. Poor pH balance in the pool can also cause irritation.

Don’t Forget Your Goggles

An easy way to skip the sting is to wear goggles while swimming! Choose a pair that fits properly so that it can form a good seal over your eyes. If you wear glasses or contacts, you could even get fancy and go for a pair of prescription goggles to help you enjoy the underwater view!

Leave Those Contact Lenses at Home

We know what you’re thinking: why not just wear normal goggles over my contacts instead of buying prescription goggles? As logical as that solution might seem, it does come with risks. Chlorine kills most of the microorganisms in water, but it doesn’t get them all. The ones that are left still shouldn’t be a problem. However, when you wear contact lenses while swimming, they act as Petri dishes for these microorganisms, which need a warm, moist environment to multiply.

One such microorganism is acanthamoeba, which lives in just about every body of water on the planet. We don’t really need to worry about these microscopic critters most of the time, but wearing contact lenses while swimming can lead to acanthamoeba keratitis, which can do serious damage to the cornea and even cause permanent blindness.

Aside from the risk from microorganisms, contacts simply aren’t designed for use underwater. They could fall out and get lost, or they could shrink and tighten around the cornea, causing irritation. We recommend leaving the contacts behind and sticking to glasses and goggles whenever you’re at the pool or participating in other water activities.

Need a Recommendation for Goggles?

There are a lot of goggles out there to choose from, but there’s no need to feel overwhelmed trying to find your perfect pair! Just give us a call or stop by the practice and we can give you a few recommendations. We don’t all have the same swim gear needs, but we do all need good protection for our eyes!

Enjoy the water and keep your eyes safe!

The content on this blog is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions.

Ocular migraines can be alarming if you don’t know what they are and suddenly get one for the first time.

If you’ve ever noticed a patch of bright, shimmering light that gradually widens until it fills your entire field of vision, you might have had an ocular migraine. When we hear the word “migraine,” we tend to think it’s about headaches, but this particular type of migraine doesn’t always have anything to do with pain.

Different Types of Visual Migraines

While ocular migraines on their own are usually temporary and not serious, they do come in three different types.

Painless Ocular Migraine

Sometimes, ocular migraines happen without headaches. They won’t look exactly the same for everyone. Some people may see psychedelic images, others see flashing or shimmering lights, and others see stars or zigzagging lines. The effect begins small but soon spreads and obscures the field of vision in both eyes, then clears on its own.

The visual effects may be the only symptoms, but sometimes motor function or speech is also temporarily affected. While these types of ocular migraines are not considered serious, they do briefly interfere with ordinary activities, such as driving, reading, or writing. If one comes on while you’re on the road, pull off to the side until it passes. Typically it lasts between thirty minutes and an hour.

Migraine with Aura

A fifth of people who suffer migraine headaches also experience ocular migraines, sometimes as a warning symptom that the headache is on its way. If you’ve experienced visual distortions before headaches, make sure to discuss it with your doctor. It is sometimes possible to reduce the frequency of migraines by avoiding triggers like eating certain foods, exposure to sudden bright light, and stress. Other triggers can include smoking and oral contraceptives.

Retinal Migraine

The third and potentially more dangerous form of ocular migraine is a retinal migraine. While ocular migraines affect both eyes, retinal migraines will only affect one, though they may also precede a migraine headache just like in the case of a migraine with aura.

This is the rarest type of ocular migraine. It happens when the blood vessels in the retina constrict, reducing the blood flow to the eye. Long-term damage to the eye is rare, and a retinal migraine may only happen once every few months, but it’s a good idea to consult with the eye doctor to make sure it isn’t connected to another condition.

Getting Ocular Migraines? Let Us Know!

Any time you experience something strange or worrying with your vision, it’s a good time to schedule an eye appointment, even if it seems like it might be temporary and harmless. If you’d simply like to learn more about ocular migraines, we’d be happy to give you more information, so call us up or send us an email!

We love being your partner in vision health!

The content on this blog is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions.

In the US alone, cataracts affect over 20 million adults 40 and older and half of all seniors age 80 and up.

Over time, the lenses in our eyes can become clouded by clumps of protein, resulting in worsening symptoms like reduced night vision, light sensitivity, glare, halo effects around lights, dim or cloudy vision, more frequent changes to glasses prescriptions, faded colors, and double vision in a single eye. Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness in the world, and there is a long and fascinating history of treating cataracts to restore sight.

A Brief Cataract Surgery Timeline

Cataract surgery is actually one of the oldest known surgical procedures, with the earliest record of it being from 600 BC! Back then, cataracts were treated through the couching technique. We don’t recommend it. It involved smacking the eye with a blunt object to dislodge the lens into the eye. When it worked, it allowed the patient to see again, but at the cost of any ability to focus their vision.

Eventually, couching was done with a sharp instrument rather than a blunt one, but it wasn’t until 1747 that the procedure saw significant improvement. French surgeon Jaques Daviel is credited with performing the first extracapsular cataract extraction, and the advent of topical anesthesia certainly helped. Despite Daviel’s improvements to the process, there still wasn’t a way to replace the opaque lens with a clear one.

Claude Monet and 1920s Cataract Surgery

Losing vision due to cataracts would be inconvenient for anyone, but it can be especially disruptive to a painter. This is exactly what happened to Claude Monet, one of the most famous French Impressionist painters. In his mid-50s, his vision began to suffer from cataracts. We can see the effects of his declining vision in his paintings. The colors he used became muddier and redder and the details much more vague.

Other artists hadn’t been very lucky with cataract surgery, so he avoided it as long as he could, trying other solutions like eye drops. In 1923, Monet finally got surgery on one eye. After his operations, he was a pretty miserable and difficult patient, but between the operations and special glasses to help him focus, he did enjoy greatly improved vision in the next few years, and his paintings from that period look much more like his work from before 1914.

Modern Cataract Surgery

Advancements with plastics and silicone finally made it possible to restore eyesight without the need for bulky glasses, by replacing the cataract-clouded lens with an artificial one. Now, 3 million Americans undergo cataract surgery each year, and the success rate is incredibly high, around 98%. Thanks to those artificial lenses, after surgery, patients are often able to enjoy 20/20 vision (or close to it) for the first time in years or decades!

Experiencing Cataract Symptoms?

If you’ve noticed changes to your vision that sound like the symptoms we listed above, it’s a good idea to come in for an eye exam. In this modern age of incredible medical advancements, there’s no reason to suffer vision loss due to cataracts. Give us a call to learn more or to schedule an appointment!

Your clear vision is our top priority!

The content on this blog is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions.