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When it comes to vision, nature is both diverse and innovative. Animals have evolved an array of visual abilities that often far surpass human capabilities, tailored to their unique environments and survival needs. This blog post explores some of the most intriguing differences between human eyes...

As parents, we aim to give our children every advantage in their educational journey. Clear vision is far more critical to a child's academic, social, and athletic success than often recognized. Did you know that as much as 80% of learning during a child's formative years is visual? While traditi...

Many of us have gotten or will get some form of pink eye. Pink eye, or conjunctivitis, is a prevalent eye condition marked by red, irritated eyes paired with discomfort and discharge, ranging from clear to thick and yellow. This infection involves the inflammation of the conjunctiva — the delic...

Have you ever wondered why carrots are credited with improving night vision? This belief actually stems from a clever piece of British wartime propaganda during World War II. To conceal their new radar technology, which was used to spot enemy aircraft at night, the British claimed that their pilo...

Many believe that achieving 20/20 vision marks the pinnacle of eye health. However, the full picture is a lot more complicated. While 20/20 vision indicates clear sight at 20 feet, it doesn't capture the entirety of ocular health. There are numerous vision issues that this measurement doesn't add...

Embarking on your glasses journey? You'll soon notice some subtle and surprising shifts in your everyday life — quirks and nuances you'd never anticipate. Ready to see how many you've already experienced? 1. Battles with Fog, Steam, and Humidity Removing the lid from a boiling pot or opening a ...

Selecting makeup that enhances your facial features can be a delightful challenge. However, for those who wear glasses, the task becomes a bit more complex. If your prescription significantly alters the size of your eyes, making them appear larger or smaller, you might consider switching to conta...

Maintaining an active lifestyle not only boosts overall health but also benefits our eyes. A balanced diet, adequate sleep, and regular exercise contribute to staying fit, feeling vibrant, and building strength. Additionally, these habits lower the risk of chronic conditions such as high blood pr...

Cataracts have been a major cause of blindness throughout history. The journey from ancient remedies to contemporary treatments reflects a profound evolution in medical science. In the United States alone, over 20 million adults over 40 are affected by cataracts, with the likelihood of occurrence...

Summer is here, and for many of us, that means heading to the water to cool off and have fun. Whether you’re planning to splash around in a pool, float down a river, paddle across a lake, ride the waves at the ocean, enjoy the thrills of a water park, or slide through your backyard on a Slip N ...

How do you celebrate the Fourth of July? Perhaps with a festive barbecue, a lively parade, or decked out in vibrant red, white, and blue attire? For many, fireworks are a highlight, dazzling us with their explosive beauty. But amidst the excitement, it's crucial to remember the risks involved. Fi...

Have you ever noticed a flickering spot of light that gradually expands until it dominates your field of vision? If so, you may have encountered an ocular migraine. This phenomenon can be quite unsettling if you're not familiar with what's occurring, and somewhat confusingly, it isn't always asso...

When choosing your next pair of glasses, what factors influence your decision? Consider adding your face shape to that list. Glasses are not just functional; they serve as a customizable element of your facial expression and are a distinctly visible part of your look. They provide a brilliant opp...

Eyelashes and eyebrows do much more than enhance our looks. Far from just being accessories for conveying emotions or casting playful looks, they play a vital role in eye health. Serving as a primary protective barrier, they help keep airborne particles and environmental threats at bay, safeguard...

Summer is coming, bringing with it extended daylight hours and abundant sunshine! With the arrival of the warmer months, many of us find ourselves spending more time outdoors. This increased exposure to sunlight also increases our exposure to harmful UV radiation. It's crucial to protect our eyes...

Do you recall learning about eye anatomy in biology class? Whether you're well-versed in the topic or didn't delve into it much, we're passionate about keeping our patients well-informed on everything related to the eyes. Within a space not much larger than a golf ball, our eyes convert light pho...

It might surprise you how different eyesight and eye health can be between the sexes. For instance, men are at a higher risk of sustaining serious eye injuries, while women are generally more susceptible to various eye diseases. Given these distinctions, what steps can both men and women take to ...

Visual skills are the unsung heroes in athletic performance. When envisioning the quintessential athlete, attributes like speed and strength typically dominate our perceptions. However, just as vital, yet often overlooked, are an athlete's visual skills. The ability to rapidly process and react t...

When we rub our eyes, we might be jeopardizing our eye health. Rubbing our eyes is often an automatic response during moments of fatigue, discomfort from a foreign object, or sensations of dryness and itchiness. While it might seem like a quick fix, this action can actually escalate the issue. Th...

It's hard to enjoy the sights and smells of springtime through seasonal allergies. Nearly one in every four people (kids and adults alike) experience seasonal allergies. What exactly causes these symptoms, such as redness, puffiness, and itchiness in our eyes during spring? While allergies are a ...

Why do we need to blink so often? If you take a moment to tally your blinks over a minute without altering your natural rhythm, you'll likely find that an adult blinks between ten to twenty times each minute, with each blink lasting only about a tenth of a second. Blinking: A Natural Eye Refreshm...

Before you seek a sun-kissed glow, understand the perils of indoor tanning booths. These risks extend beyond skin health to encompass serious threats to our eyes. A coalition of medical professionals, including physicians, dermatologists, surgeons, and eye specialists, recently testified before C...

Happy Workplace Eye Wellness Month! There's no better time to delve into the topic of maintaining eye safety in various occupational environments. The nature of eye hazards varies greatly depending on the type of work one engages in. While manual labor positions may expose individuals to direct d...

Frequent headaches can stem from unexpected sources, including vision problems. If you find yourself grappling with recurrent headaches, we recommend scheduling an eye examination to investigate potential vision-related factors. While headaches can arise from diverse origins and not all are linke...

About one in five adults in the United States has an undiagnosed eye condition. This underscores the critical importance of regular eye exams for maintaining optimal vision health. For those who have never undergone an eye exam, it's natural to feel uncertain about the process. However, we're her...

The impact of glasses and contact lenses, despite their small size, is profound. If you wear glasses or contacts, you likely recall the transformative moment when donning them let you to make out individual blades of grass and leaves on trees. Clear vision is essential for a multitude of daily ta...

Color blindness isn't all black and white. Despite common misconceptions, color blindness doesn't equate to seeing the world like a black and white movie. In fact, most individuals with color blindness can perceive some colors, albeit with varying degrees of vividness. Let's delve into the three ...

Eyes, the windows to the soul, captivate us with their myriad colors and expressions. Yet, there exists a phenomenon that elevates ocular allure to a whole new level—heterochromia. In this blog post, we embark on a fascinating journey into the intriguing world of mismatched eyes, exploring its ...

Are your eyes playing tricks on you? When staring at an optical illusion, it often feels that way. The intriguing world of optical illusions goes beyond mere visual deception; it delves into the intricate workings of our visual system, revealing that what we see is not solely a function of our ey...

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a leading cause of permanent vision loss for people over fifty. The slow loss of central vision occurs due to the deterioration of the macula, the part of the retina with the highest concentration of photoreceptor cells and the part that gives us our deta...

Why do people over the age of forty so often need reading glasses or bifocals? As the sands of time trickle away, the lenses in our eyes gradually lose their flexibility, leading to a common vision concern known as presbyopia. This optical evolution typically sets in after the age of 40, affectin...

A crucial yet oft-overlooked component of a high-quality life is healthy eyesight. Approximately one in six adults grapple with sight-threatening eye conditions, while a significant number experience some degree of vision loss as they age. Aging is a risk factor for prevalent causes of blindness,...

Maintaining clear eyesight is a complex interplay of many different components within the eye. When a single element falters, it can significantly affect vision and overall eye health. One often-overlooked factor is the fluid inside the eye, which must maintain a precise pressure range. Deviation...

As winter rolls in, the days get shorter, making night driving harder to avoid. For those of us without perfect eyesight, this annual adjustment can be stressful and potentially dangerous if we neglect the specific challenges posed by driving in the dark. Fortunately, a few simple precautions can...

Having healthy eyesight plays a massive role in children's education and development. Experts estimate that up to 80% of all learning is visual and that more than half of childhood learning difficulties can be linked to an undiagnosed vision problem. What can parents do to ensure that their child...

Autoimmune diseases are conditions in which the immune system turns on healthy cells. Some of these diseases can have a serious and negative impact on the health and function of the eyes. For those grappling with autoimmune conditions, it's crucial to be aware of the potential effects on vision. ...

Did you know that using our eyes is something we have to learn how to do? That's right, not only are we not born with fully developed eyesight, but all of the visual skills we use hundreds of times a day take a lot of practice to master, just like it takes a lot of practice learning to walk and t...

The shorter days in winter are no excuse to slack off on eye protection! The sun's UV rays can do just as much damage to our eyes on a snowy slope as they can at the beach, and sometimes more. We probably don't need sunscreen thanks to all of the layers of snow gear, but our eyes are still highly...

Smoking causes harm to every organ in the body, including the eyes. We usually think of lung cancer first when it comes to the harms of smoking, and maybe we think of oral health issues next, but even the parts of the body that don't come into direct contact with the smoke are in danger. Studies ...

If it isn't carefully controlled, diabetes can cause a wide variety of secondary health problems. Several of those specifically affect the eyes, to the point where diabetes is one of the leading causes of blindness worldwide. All types of diabetes come with a risk of sight-threatening conditions ...

The same compound that determines our skin color also creates the variety of eye colors we see. In fact, it's the very same compound that protects our skin and eyes from getting damaged by the sun (though we still need sunglasses and sunscreen to finish the job). So how can one compound (melanin)...

The complexity of the human eye makes it vulnerable to a variety of problems. One of the most concerning is retinal detachment, a condition that can result in permanent vision loss without treatment. This sight-threatening problem affects one in every 300 individuals at some point in their lives....

Since at least 60 AD, people have been crafting tools to correct vision problems. There are records of Roman philosopher Seneca magnifying text with a glass globe of water. Emperor Nero needed a magnifying emerald to see gladiator fights more clearly. We don't have to resort to these kinds of rud...

Insufficient sleep can affect the mind and body like alcohol, but what does it do to our eyes? For the sake of both our overall health and our eye health, we need to be getting plenty of sleep, but it's actually a two-way street. If we are more careful about what we put in front of our eyes befor...

The vast majority of eye injuries (90%!) are preventable, and many of them happen at home. Broadly, the best way to prevent eye injuries is through simple precautions like minimizing unnecessary hazards around the house and yard and wearing protective gear whenever we have to work with harmful ch...

The older we get, the more our eyesight tends to change. As we age, our vision can undergo significant changes, ranging from the subtle to the sight-threatening. Early detection of age-related vision issues is crucial for effective management, which is why we urge our older patients to make regul...

A lot of Halloween costumes and cosplay outfits aren't really complete without costume contact lenses. This can be difficult, however, because unlike an intricately crafted outfit, costume contacts are medical devices, so it's important for the safety of your eyes that you source good costume len...

How often should you be getting an eye exam, considering your eye health history? Preventative care is as important for our eyes as it is for our teeth and our overall health, which means we should be getting regular eye exams even when we don't need a new glasses or contact lens prescription. Ou...

"Beauty is pain" is a bad idea in general, but especially when it comes to eyes and makeup. In the modern day, we no longer use makeup made of lead, arsenic, or mercury like people did in previous eras, but it's still not exactly pleasant or healthy to get makeup in your eye. Even makeup made of ...

The vast majority of eye injuries can be prevented easily, including sports eye injuries. How can we prevent them? By wearing the right eye protection. We often think eye protection is mainly for welders or construction workers or people working in chemistry labs, but it can also save an athlete'...

Our jobs are all about keeping human eyes healthy and making sure our patients see clearly. However, every once in a while, we like taking a look at the fascinating world of animal eyesight. There are some incredible eyes in nature that work very differently from the way human eyes do. Human Eyes...

Do you know how much time you're spending each day looking at screens? Between our work computers, tablets, TVs, and smartphones, the average person can rack up a pretty staggering amount of daily screentime these days. That can be pretty taxing on the eyes. All it takes to create a 90% risk of d...

As parents, we want to ensure that our children have the best possible start in their education. Making sure they can see clearly plays a more important role to a child’s education than most people realize. Did you know that up to 80% of a child's learning is linked to their vision? Good eyesig...

Pink eye is one of the most common eye infections we can get. Pink eye or conjunctivitis is characterized by redness in the whites of the eyes, accompanied by itchiness and discharge (which could be watery or thick and yellowish). Conjunctivitis is the inflammation of the conjunctiva, which is th...

Do you know why people say carrots will give you good night vision? It’s actually a leftover piece of World War II British misinformation to trick the Germans. The British had just developed radar and didn’t want the Germans finding out how they were locating their planes at night, so they sp...

The first and last thing many people know about good eyesight is 20/20 vision. Contrary to popular understanding, however, having 20/20 vision isn’t the entire story of healthy eyesight. It’s only a tiny fraction; it simply means that you can see something clearly from 20 feet away without gl...

New to wearing glasses? They’re going to change your life in some not-so-obvious ways. A lot of those changes are silly little things that never would’ve occurred to you before you started wearing them. How many on our list can you already check off? 1. Fog, Steam, and Humidity Woes If you’...

It can be a challenge to choose the right makeup to flatter your facial features. For glasses-wearers, it can be even trickier. How can you adapt your makeup strategy to complement your glasses too, especially if your prescription is strong enough that your eyes appear either unusually large or u...

Staying active is great for our overall health, but it’s also good for our eye health. Eating well, sleeping enough, and getting exercise makes it easier to stay in shape, feel healthy, and grow stronger, and it also reduces the risk of developing chronic diseases, including high blood pressure...

Cataracts have been the leading cause of blindness all throughout history. In all that time, treatment for cataracts has unsurprisingly come a long way. Over 20 million American adults over the age of 40 will develop cataracts, and half will have them by age 80 — and that’s just Americans! Wh...

It’s summertime and that means lots of us are going to be spending as much time in the water as we can. Before you dive in, we recommend learning a little about some eye safety considerations that come with water activities (whether you prefer a pool, river, lake, ocean, water park, or backyard...

What does your Fourth of July involve? A barbecue? A parade? Wearing a lot of red, white, and blue? Fireworks are most likely on your list, and they certainly set this particular holiday apart. However, if we aren’t careful when enjoying fireworks, we could easily become seriously injured. Fire...

Have you ever had a shimmering patch of light appear in your vision, then widen until you can’t see anything else? If you answered yes, you might’ve experienced an ocular migraine. It can be very alarming to someone who doesn’t know what is happening, and the name is a little misleading bec...

What factors do you consider when picking the best new pair of glasses for you? We might recommend adding face shape to your list. Wearing glasses is like having a facial feature you can customize, and they’re a very noticeable part of your appearance. They’re a fantastic way to show off your...

Eyelashes and eyebrows serve a greater purpose beyond their aesthetic appeal. They are not merely tools for facial expressions or flirtatious glances. In fact, their most crucial role is to act as the first line of defense for our eyes, shielding them from contaminants and potential hazards prese...

Summer is around the corner, and so are longer days with more hours of sunlight! Most of us end up outside more often in the warm summer months, and that can expose our eyes to a lot of harmful UV radiation from the sun. That’s why it’s so important to wear UV-blocking sunglasses (though we s...

Do you remember much from biology class about eye anatomy? Maybe you didn’t cover it much in your class or maybe you remember all of it, but we love keeping our patients informed about all things eye-related. All inside a space smaller than a golf ball, our eyes transform photons of light into ...

There are many differences between men and women — even when it comes to vision and eye health. Men, for example, are more likely to experience sight-threatening eye injuries than women, whereas women tend to be more vulnerable to certain eye diseases. So what can men and women do to address th...

When we think of the traits of an athlete, we usually think of speed and strength first. A close third should be their visual skills. Athletes need to be able to process and react to visual information very quickly in order to play their sports well. The cool thing is that some of these visual sk...

A habit of rubbing your eyes could come back to bite you. We do that sort of thing without really thinking about it in moments when we’re tired, when we get something stuck in one eye, or when our eyes feel dry or itchy. It's an attempt to alleviate the problem, but in reality we could be creat...

Stopping to smell the spring flowers can be hard when your nose is stuffy and your eyes are swollen. What makes red, puffy, itchy eyes so common in the springtime? While it’s often allergies, it isn’t always, so let’s take a look at what can cause allergy system this time of year — along ...

We blink our eyes several times every minute of the day, but why do we need to? Count the number of times you blink in a minute (when you do this, don’t try blinking more or less frequently than you normally would). The typical number of blinks per minute for an adult is between ten and twenty,...

Anyone who enjoys a nice tan should be aware of the risks of tanning booths. Those risks include ones to eye health. A group of physicians, dermatologists, surgeons, and even eye doctors went before Congress to describe the negative health effects of tanning beds, and the World Health Organizatio...

Headaches can have a number of causes you wouldn’t expect, like an uncorrected vision problem. If you live with frequent headaches, it would be well worth your time to schedule an eye exam, if only to rule out a vision problem as the cause. Not all headaches are tied to vision and not all visio...

March is Workplace Eye Wellness Month, which makes it a great time to discuss eye safety on the job. That will mean very different things depending on your line of work. A manual labor job can present a lot of direct dangers to eye safety, while an office-type job is more likely to cause a lot of...

Approximately 1 in 5 adults in the United States has an undiagnosed eye condition. This startling statistic highlights the importance of regular eye exams for maintaining optimal vision health. We want to demystify the eye exam for anyone who has never had one and explain why they are so importan...

Glasses and contact lenses are small things that make a huge difference. If you wear glasses or contacts, you probably remember what it was like the first time you put them on and could suddenly see individual blades of grass and leaves on trees. The ability to see clearly is critical for so many...

Contrary to popular belief, color blindness does not mean seeing in black and white. Usually. The vast majority of colorblind people can still see some colors. Let’s take a look at the three basic categories of color blindness and how they can impact a person’s daily life. Red-Green Color Bli...

Most of us notice a person’s eye color almost immediately when we meet them. A striking pair of eyes can make a deep impression, and what could be more striking than a pair of eyes that don’t match? In scientific terms, that’s heterochromia, a phenomenon fairly common in cats and dogs but m...

Do you spend a lot of time after the sun goes down looking at a bright screen? For as long as we’ve been using handheld devices to go online (and probably longer), many of us have had our eyes riveted to bright screens late into the evening. As optometrists, we can’t approve of this bedtime r...

Age-related macular degeneration is a leading cause of permanent vision loss for people over the age of fifty. Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the slow loss of central vision due to the deterioration of the macula, the part of the retina with the highest concentration of photoreceptor c...

As we get older, the lenses in our eyes become less flexible. This is presbyopia, and it affects the majority of people older than 40. It’s why most people end up needing reading glasses even if they never needed glasses before. For those who already wear glasses or contacts, presbyopia makes t...

An underrated ingredient of a good quality of life is healthy eyesight. As many as one in six adults struggle with sight-threatening eye conditions and far more than that live with some level of vision loss as they get older. Age is a risk factor for many of the major causes of blindness, includi...

Clear eyesight requires all of the intricate parts and systems of the eye to work together. If one thing goes wrong inside the eye, it is often enough to seriously impact eyesight and the health of the eye. For example, we don’t often think much about the fluid inside the eye, but that fluid ha...

The shorter days of winter inevitably lead to more night driving than in the other seasons. Those of us without perfect eyesight may find it a stressful adjustment each year. It can even be a dangerous one if we don’t take the dangers of night driving into consideration. We can make a big diffe...

Babies aren’t born with visual skills; they actually have to learn how to see! We’re so used to our sense of sight that it seems automatic, but everything we do with our eyes is something we had to learn and develop in early life. Babies need to develop a number of visual skills to use their ...

Even if there are fewer hours of daylight in the winter, sunglasses are still important! UV rays can do just as much harm on a snowy mountain slope as they can at the beach. While our skin is protected by layers and layers of snow gear, our eyes are still vulnerable if we aren’t being careful a...

Many autoimmune diseases can interfere with the health and function of the eyes. An autoimmune disease is a disorder that causes the immune system to attack healthy cells. If you or someone you love has an autoimmune disease, it’s important to be aware of these possible effects, so let’s take...

Functioning, healthy eyesight plays a huge role in a child’s development and education. As much as 80% of all learning is visual, and experts estimate that over half of childhood learning difficulties trace back to undiagnosed vision problems. How can parents help ensure their child doesn’t e...

Smoking damages the entire body, and the eyes are no exception. The main health risk that tends to come to mind with a smoking habit is lung cancer, perhaps followed by oral health problems, but it doesn’t merely harm the parts of the body that come into direct contact with the smoke. Studies s...

Uncontrolled diabetes can wreak havoc on health in many ways, including eye health. All types of diabetes increase the risk of developing eye diseases including diabetic retinopathy, diabetic macular edema, glaucoma, and cataracts. When these diseases all go under the umbrella term “diabetic ey...

Melanin, the same compound that determines skin and hair color, is also responsible for different eye colors. Melanin helps to protect the eye by absorbing light (including some UV light) that hits the iris, which is the part of the eye that controls the amount of light that reaches the retina. H...

The human eye is complicated, and there are a lot of ways something can go wrong with it. The one we want to look at today is retinal detachment, a serious and sight-threatening condition that affects one in every 300 people at some time in their lives. It can be treated with early action, but fi...

People have been using tools to help them see clearly since at least 60 A.D. Roman philosopher Seneca is recorded to have used a glass globe of water to magnify text, while Emperor Nero would use a magnifying emerald to see gladiator fights better. We no longer need to resort to using water bowls...

Not all vision problems can be corrected with contact lenses or glasses. If even the strongest pair of glasses can’t produce clear vision, that is on the visual impairment spectrum. This spectrum is good for everyone to understand, even if they have perfect eyesight, so that we can know best ho...

Sleep deprivation hits the body and mind a lot like alcohol, but how does it affect our eyes? Getting enough sleep is great for our overall health and our eye health alike. At the other end of things, we can improve the quality of our sleep if we are more careful about what we put in front of our...

44% of all eye injuries happen at home, but 90% of eye injuries are preventable! We prevent them by taking simple precautionary measures such as wearing protective gear when we’re working with harmful chemicals or power tools, as well as by minimizing any unnecessary hazards we might have aroun...

Our eyesight, among many other things, tends to change as we get older. For any serious changes, it’s critical to get an early diagnosis. Many sight-threatening conditions that are associated with advancing age are combatted best by being discovered in the early stages. That’s the biggest we ...

Costume contact lenses are often a cool and spooky way to upgrade a Halloween costume or cosplay outfit. Unlike the rest of the costume, however, these contact lenses are medical devices. We should always take special care to buy safe ones that fit correctly. Follow these tips from the optometris...

Most dentists will recommend a cleaning and dental exam twice a year, but how often do we need our eyes checked? It’s as important to get preventative care for our eyes as for our teeth, and that means getting eye exams when we don’t need an updated prescription for our glasses or contact len...