Accommodation and Presbyopia

How is everyone doing today? It is another beautiful day today and the week has been good to us just as we had hoped it would from the start. I am optimistic that the days ahead would continue to be great and that we would continue to add more value to the steem ecosystem and help nurture others into growth.

Today I have decided to treat this topic because of some questions and understanding that cryptogecko was seeking from one of my previous posts. And so for today, we would be looking at a senile condition known as Presbyopia and its relationship with the mechanism of the eye known as accommodation. I hope you enjoy it.

Accommodation is a phenomenon or mechanism of the eye where the lens of the eyeball changes its shape and with that its power to enable one to be able to perceive objects clearly both at far and at near. Accommodation may be positive or negative.

Accommodation is said to be positive when the eye lens increases in size and hence power to enable the individual to appreciate closer objects. It is said to be negative when it decreases in its size to reduce the power to enable the eye focus light from farther objects on the retina.

The accommodation process is made possible with the help of what is called suspensory ligaments holding the lens to a part of the eye known as the ciliary body. When the ciliary body contracts, the ligaments relax and increases accommodation whereas as it relaxes the ligaments contract and decrease accommodation.

Accommodation or accommodative power is quite high when we are young because the muscles are strong and very healthy and can even overwork themselves where necessary to ensure that vision is achieved as it ought to or as desired, however, a natural senile process occurs as we age which brings about the condition of Presbyopia.

Presbyopia is a state or condition of the eye where objects at a near distance are focused at a point behind the retina instead of on the retina due to the loss or reduction in the accommodative power of the eye as we age. It is not a disease and has an easy solution of spectacle or glasses wear to supplement the power loss.

As already delineated above, as we grow old, our muscles generally lose their tautness and it's not able to function as they ought to have been, again the lens also losses its flexibility to alter its shape in response to the muscle pulls and in addition, the accumulation of lens by-product from metabolism over the years makes things involving the lens quite rigid and translucent.

All these add up to the reduction in accommodative power as we grow until eventually all that power is lost and one could not see objects at near no matter the effort they put in unless with the help of supporting lenses. Presbyopia is a normal aging process and so if your Optometrist tells you that you have presbyopia please do not panic, it is nothing scary, we all will experience it.

Presbyopia is managed the same way hyperopia or refractive errors are managed in general however it is not considered a refractive error because it is a normal aging process that one could hardly escape. It normally starts from the age of 40 years and the gradual decline of the accommodative power follows till nothing is left.

Management regimes include the use of plus lenses or spectacles or glasses as many prefer to call it to supplement the power helping to bring the light to the point in the eye where it ought to have focused. One could also explore the avenues of contact lenses, Orthokeratology as a therapy process for the eye using hard contact lenses, and even surgical processes.

You can also simply increase your near working distance by taking things further from you to be able to see them, however, I must hasten to add that this can only be done for a short while as your working distance would eventually reach a point where you hand can't reach or infinity and then you would still need those glasses. And so get them now, the earlier the better.

And so with that, I bring our lessons on accommodation and presbyopia to an end. I do hope you understood and that you enjoyed the entire trip through our ocular anatomy to physiology. Do well to let me know if there's anything at all you do not understand or wishes to get clarification on.