Losing one’s sight can get upsetting. In the beginning, if as standard, you start to lose your eyesight at around 40 years of age, it is the first sign of approaching old age, but later as it deteriorates further, people start to worry whether they will go blind.

Well, if you need spectacles at 40 then yes, it is the first sign of approaching old age, but there are not so many individuals who go totally blind now due to advancements in information about the eyes and how to treat impairments.

There is nothing you can do about the former problem, but at least two routes you can take to resolving the latter.

Most people ‘blindly’ follow their opticians advice and purchase spectacles or contact lenses. This is the best option for the optician and the cheapest option for the client in the short term. It is good for the optician because you will almost certainly require new spectacles every two years and contact wearers have to keep buying contact lenses as well.

It is handy for the customer because the outlay is small if you do not go for designer frames like Gucci or Levi. In the long term, though the client pays out many, many times more than if a different procedure had been chosen.

One of these other courses of action is Lasik surgery. This is expensive up front, but can last for 20 years although you may still require specs for either long or short distances. Most individuals have their long distance sight corrected and never ever have a problem with it again, although they do still need reading glasses.

A third option, which you may like to try instead of or in conjunction with any of the above is called Natural Vision Improvement. It has to be said that the technique of Natural Vision Improvement has more detractors than supporters, but some people regard it as a form of yoga for the eyes which cannot do any harm.

The purpose here though is that if you want to attempt Natural Vision Improvement, you should still go to an optician regularly so that they can check for eye diseases like glaucoma and macular degeneration, which Natural Vision Improvement cannot hope to, nor does it claim to, cure.

Proponents of Natural Vision Improvement say that contemporary apparatus like TV screens and monitors and even living in a city where long distance eyesight is almost unnecessary because it is blocked by buildings a few yards away, have trained us to ’see badly’.

They say that we need to relearn how to see in the correct manner. They even go as far as to say that spectacles and contact lenses may be part of the problem.

Here they mean that as your eyes become used to corrective lenses, they come to rely on them and so become weaker. Therefore, the next time your eyesight is measured, you will need more powerful glasses.

The Natural Vision Improvement philosophy says to use the weakest lenses that you can and make your eyes work harder. In this manner, they insist, the next time you go for a check up, you can get weaker lenses not more powerful ones until eventually you do not need glasses at all.

Some opticians and optometrists will work with you if you want to attempt this path, but you may have to look about for one. One vital point around the Natural Vision Improvement procedure is that if your impaired vision could create a danger to yourself and others, you should wear regular, full-strength glasses whilst carrying out those activities (like driving).

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a number of topics, but is now concerned with macular degeneration test. If you would like to know more, please go to our site at Macular Degenerative Disease

I have never had Lasik eye surgery, although I have had both of my human lenses replaced with plastic ones. However, I wanted to help a friend recount his story of Lasik eye surgery, because I know from my own experience that there is a lot of rubbish talked about having eye surgery of any form.

I robustly urge anyone who is thinking about having cataracts removed, Lasik eye surgery or absolute lens replacement to go ahead and have it done as soon as they can. There will be no looking back, I promise you and you will live in a brighter world again that you had not noticed had been getting slowly but surely ever dimmer.

I shall name my friend Fred to make it easier for me to tell his story and that of numerous others who have been in a comparable situation to him. Fred wore specs all his life or from the time that he was in the Navy doing his national conscription service anyway.

He got used to this predicament, but was growing alarmed at the rate that his specs were increasing in power year on year and the growing dependency he had on them.

After months of worry and chatting to ‘friends’ in bars, he decided to go talk to the only other person whose opinion actually mattered - the Lasik surgeon. He was quite nervous that they would say that his eyesight was too far impaired, but he was also worried that they would say he could undergo the operation because he had a dread of anyone doing anything to his eyes which could rob him of the little bit of vision that he still had.

The surgeon stated that both of his eyes could benefit from surgery, one maybe more than the other, but that he would definitely still require spectacles for the rest of his life, albeit weaker ones than he was using now. In effect, the surgeon was saying that he could restore most of Fred’s long-distance sight but that at his age, 63, he would still need reading spectacles.

Fred turned up on the morning of the first operation having not been to the pub and having had an early night. In his case they operated on one eye at a time with a week in between the operations. They began both session by putting drops in his eye. These drops dilate and numb the eye although the eyeball does not actually feel any pain.

The operations lasted around three minutes each, but Fred is not sure how much of that was ‘laser time’. He said there was a feeling of intense white light, but no pain whatsoever. He was required to rest in the waiting room for thirty minutes afterwards and then he went home.

On his GP’s advice he had taken a friend with him, because your old spectacles will not fit over the protective shield on your treated eye. This shield had to be worn for 24 hours to prevent Fred from poking or rubbing his eye involuntarily.

Fred had taken the next day off work, but he says there was no need and he did not bother the next time. Fred’s eyes have improved hundreds of percent and sometimes he can even read without specs as well.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on a number of topics, but is now concerned with macular degeneration glasses. If you would like to know more, please visit our site at Macular Degenerative Disease