Are there ways to maintain/improve eyesight?

weilke said:
Some myopic patients can compensate quite long for the development of presbyopia. They just lose the ability to see far and may or may not care about what goes on more than 3 ft from their face :wink2: .
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This is probably why I lasted to 55 without needing reading glasses. Never mind that my distance vision has always been bad uncorrected. Even now, if I want to see something very small it's easier without any glasses if I hold it really close...
 
Thanks, weilke - you seem to know your stuff!

In my library I have a book called "Eye And Brain". I think that was my source.

I'll check it out tomorrow and see if I was simply misremembering parts.
 
This brings back a few cool memories from early flights. I took a trip with a buddy from SoCal up to a town called Weed CA for a fly-in. of course, we had to transit the LA corridor, and then fly up the central valley. We were both being vigilant for traffic and I kept calling out distant traffic for the pilot who would then squint, and search, and struggle and just couldn't find it! To me, it was clear as a bell and I could even tell if it was high or low wing from miles away. I was kidding him that I could read the damn N number and if he can't see that he needs glasses. He gave me a raspberry and bet I couldn't read the N number, so I did, and we went after the flight for a bit and sure enough I was really close. I think I was off by calling a 0 a C in the last character. Now, some 40 years later, and my distant vision is so-so and my close vision is junk without a good diopter correction. Good times...
 
The book is "Eye And Brain" by R. L. Gregory*.

Here's the quote from which I got my information:

This system of a crucial structure being isolated from the bloodstream is not unique to the cornea. The same is true of the lens, and in either case blood vessels would ruin their optical properties...The embryological and later developments of the lens are of particular interest, and have dire consequences added all through life. The lens is built up from its center, cells being added all through life, though growth gradually slows down. The center is thus the oldest part, and there the cells become more and more separated from the blood system getting oxygen and nutrients, so that they die. When they die they harden, so that the lens becomes too stiff to change its shape for accommodation two different distances. As Gordon Walls puts it, in his great book The Vertebrate Eye: The lens is thus unique among the organs of the body in that its development never ceases, while it's senescence commences even before birth.


*Copyright 1966. I think I was led to this book by The Whole Earth Catalog.
 
If you don't wear glasses all day long, IMHO, do NOT get no line bifocals! If you are used to only looking straight forward out through the front of the lenses you will be fine. If you like to move your eyes from side to side they are horrible! The image leans to one side or the other.
 
My eye doctor says that high blood pressure messes up a lot of old guy's eyes.

I asked about vitamins. After giving me a handout on all the food I should eat but don't, she said 'AREDS' vitamins have been shown to be helpful for older people.
 
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