A Second Look At Your Prescription  Like every other person who wears eyeglasses, you probably have a 10-year-old backup pair of lenses collecting dust in your junk drawer! But should you actually reach for them if your current pair gets broken or lost?  Your eyewear prescription has an expiration date, just like your prescription medication, and you may be wondering what that’s all about. Let’s explore why eyeglass prescriptions are only valid for a certain number of years, and why we shouldn’t purchase or wear lenses with an expired prescription.  It’s the Law  It’s an ex ..read more

Human eye color comes from melanin, the same compound that determines skin and hair color. Melanin absorbs light, even some UV light, which is important for the iris — the part of the eye that controls how much light enters the pupil. Melanin and Pigment Types There are two different types of melanin a person could have in their irises: eumelanin, which produces a rich chocolate brown color, and pheomelanin, which produces a range of amber, green, or hazel colors. Blue eyes, on the other hand, get their color from having relatively little eumelanin. The pigment itself isn’t blue, but the way ..read more

Back in the old days, makeup was full of ingredients like lead, arsenic, and mercury. Thankfully we don’t have to worry whether or not we’re putting actual poison on our faces when we apply modern makeup, but we should still take a few precautions to protect our eyes from unnecessary injury and infection. There’s no reason the saying “beauty is pain” has to be true, especially when it comes to eye makeup! Put a Little Distance Between the Makeup and Your Eye We’re not here to tell our makeup-enthusiast patients to give up their eye makeup, but we do have serious concerns about types of eye ma ..read more

Among the many changes our bodies undergo as we get older are the changes to our eyesight. Early diagnosis is critical for stopping many sight-threatening conditions in their tracks, which is why we should be on the watch for signs of age-related vision loss. There are also more benign ways our eyesight can change over the years, and it’s important to know about those too! The Main Age-Related Vision Changes A few of the most common changes that can happen to our vision with age include: Changes to color perception: the older we get, the more colors may grow dull or yellowish. Reduced tear p ..read more

We wouldn’t have gone into the optometry field if we weren’t fascinated by eyes, and there are some incredible ones in nature. There is such incredible variation in how eyes work across the animal kingdom that we could spend years studying and barely scratch the surface, so to start out, we just want to take a brief look at some of the most impressive features of animal eyes. What Makes Your Cat’s Eyes Glow in the Dark? They don’t literally glow, but anyone with a cat has probably gotten a scare at least once when headlights or a flashlight caught their eyes and lit them up like lasers. This ..read more

A staple of every school nurse’s office is the big E eye chart. That chart, the formal name of which is the Snellen chart (after the 19th-century Dutch eye doctor Herman Snellen who developed it), is certainly a good diagnostic tool for catching nearsightedness, but there are many other things that could be wrong with a child’s eyesight. That’s why a comprehensive eye exam with an optometrist is a must before your child starts school. How Vision and Learning Are Linked Sighted people use our vision for up to 80% of our learning. Being able to see clearly and perform visual tasks effectively i ..read more

We tend to think of 20/20 vision being a synonym for perfect eyesight, but that isn’t quite true. All it means when someone has 20/20 vision is that they have normal visual acuity without refractive errors like nearsightedness, farsightedness, or astigmatism. There is a wide range of vision problems that have nothing to do with refraction, and they are unfortunately much more likely to remain undiagnosed and untreated. What Are the Symptoms of an Undiagnosed Vision Problem? Some symptoms of an eye problem are very obvious, like a lazy eye or crossed eyes. Most symptoms are subtler, particular ..read more

Wearing glasses can be a big adjustment for kids when they’re just starting out. The temptation can sometimes be to leave the glasses at home instead of wearing them, even though that means going through a day of fuzzy vistas and squinting. That’s why today’s post is all about helping parents help their kids see the best advantages of wearing their glasses. You’ll Get Better Results With Age-Appropriate, Fitted Glasses It’s one thing for a child to put on their parent or grandparent’s glasses for a few minutes out of curiosity, but their own glasses ought to be the right size for their face ..read more

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