Eye tests urged before heading to school

(Kyrsty Hazell for MadeForMums.com) Despite the World Health Organisation estimating that 80% of UV exposure takes place between the ages of 0-18, one in five parents have admitted that they aren’t taking the necessary precautions to protect their children’s eyesight.

A recent study by Transitions Optical found that 24% of parents questioned have not had their children’s eyes tested before they reach 8 years old. According to the experts this is the critical time-period for diagnosing eye problems.

“Children are particularly susceptible to UV eye damage, especially under 12s whose clear lenses aren’t yet fill formed, allowing harmful rays to reach and damage their retina,” optometrist Lindsay Brown said. “If children’s eyes are left unprotected, this can lead to long term eye health problems including cataracts.”

Parents also admitted that eye tests are at the bottom of their ‘back to school’ list, causing experts to urge them to prioritise their children’s eye health with the same importance as going to the dentist or doctor. “There seems to be a lack of understanding about eyesight. I would urge parents to take their children to see an optician at around the age of 4, or even before, as problems detected this young can be corrected more easily,” advised Karen Sparrow, from the Association of Optometrists.

Now is the time to schedule your children for an eye appointment! Wing Eyecare is offering FREE Polycarbonate lenses ($163 value) when you order a complete pair of eye glasses for your child!

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August is children’s eye health and safety month

(Kevin Chierek of HeartlandConnection.com) -- As students across the heartland head back to school, eye doctors want to remind parents and children that August is Children’s Eye Health and Safety Month. One in 10 children is at risk from an undiagnosed eye problem. While far and near sightedness are the two most common eye ailments in children, Certified Optician Kim Moody said the most common symptom is a simple one.

"Probably the most complaint you're going to hear from a child is headaches” said Moody. “That's what brought mine on, that's why I got an exam, because of headaches all the time and my regular doctor suggested that might be it, that's one indicator if somebody's having headaches all the time.”

In the United States, only 14 percent of children under the age of six have had a comprehensive eye exam. Moody said that statistic sounds about right because children have nothing to compare their eye sight too.

"If you haven't seen something 20/20, you've got nothing to compare it to” said Moody. “So from the child's point of view it's the way it is. It's hard to look to the kid for the answer because they don't have anything to compare it to. Once they've seen that 20/20 then from then on they know, this is not as good as it should be.”

Children’s Eye Health and Safety Month is dedicated to increasing awareness of the importance of proper eye care for youths. When in doubt, the best thing you can do for your child is to get a comprehensive eye exam from an eye professional.

Now is the time to schedule your children for an eye appointment. Wing Eyecare is offering FREE Polycarbonate lenses ($163 value) when you order a complete pair of eye glasses for your child!

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Does Your Child's Vision Make The Grade?

(By Kristi Runyon of WTQV.com) Vision experts say 80% of a child's learning comes through their visual system so a student's eye health can be very important for success in the classroom.

Dr. Pamela Lowe of the American Optometric Association explains how vision problems can be misunderstood in the classroom, "1 in 4 children have an undetected vision disorder, that's a huge number of kids entering school this fall that could have potential problems. In fact, kids labeled as problem learners, 60% have underlying vision disorders."

A comprehensive eye exam is reccommended to catch any vision problems early. Vision exams are a requirement for enrollment in Kentucky schools.

To learn more about children's vision health visit these links from the American Optometric Association:

Children's Vision Information: http://www.aoa.org/childrens-vision.xml

Preschool Vision http://www.aoa.org/x4743.xml

School-Age Children http://www.aoa.org/x4744.xml

For general vision information: http://www.aoa.org

For information on KY school vision exam requirements visit http://www.education.ky.gov/KDE/Instructional+Resources/Early+Childhood+Development/School+Eye+Exam+Questions+and+Answers.htm

For information on OH school vision requirements visit :
http://www.starpupils.org/pba/content/ohio-school-requirements-childrens-vision

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Bill Nye - The Eye Health Guy

(By Jenny Williams of Wired.com) Bill Nye (of “the Science Guy” fame) has teamed up with VSP to teach us about eye health. In these VSP EyeFiles videos, he talks about various eye health myths and other information, all while sitting in a laboratory full of bubbling things, microscopes and other science paraphernalia. Each video is short, about two minutes, and is both silly and informative. The videos give the impression of being aimed at kids, but a lot of the content seems to be aimed at adults. So, watch these with your kids! And watch the videos in order, as the underlying storyline makes a little bit more sense that way.

Do 3-D movies make you seasick?

When you get a bit dizzy or disoriented when watching a 3-D movie, is it just you, or is there something more to it?


Can an eye doctor detect diabetes?

This video contains some images disturbing to the squeamish (like me), but gives some important reasons to see your eye care professional.


Can wearing your old glasses, or glasses belonging to someone else, damage your eyes?

Everyone has heard this one. I hesitate before letting my kids try on my glasses. But should I worry?


Will eating carrots help my vision?

Carrots are healthy, but will your eyes improve, or keep from getting worse, if you eat more carrots? Watch the video and then visit these two sites for more information on nutrition and eye care.


The end of each video directs you to visit VSP’s website for more information on eye health. Ironically, the site is in Flash, which won’t play on the iPad that Bill Nye uses in each episode. Huh. But on a non-iPad/iPod/iPhone, you can do things on the site such as create your own eye chart, learn some eye care tips and more.

For those not in the know, VSP stands for Vision Service Plan and is the largest of the vision insurance companies.

There are plenty of interesting and useful eye facts in each video. Remember, even if you don’t need vision correction, it’s important to visit an eye doctor regularly because they can detect many health problems that aren’t related to nearsightedness, farsightedness or astigmatism.

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Eye Strain, Dry Eyes, Fatigue and Headaches Associated With Those Spending More Than Four Hours in Front of Digital Devices

Research Finds More People Are Suffering From Computer Vision Syndrome Affecting Learning and Work Productivity; VSP Offers Tips to Reduce Effects
(RANCHO CORDOVA, Calif., July 27 /PRNewswire) -- Eye strain, fatigue and headaches are common indicators that your digital devices - including computer monitors, smart phones and video games - might be causing you discomfort.

According to recent research with VSP Vision Care eye doctors, 33 percent reported that nearly one third or more of their patients suffer from symptoms of Computer Vision Syndrome or digital device-related vision problems. The most common symptoms of patients suffering from Computer Vision Syndrome include eye strain (82 percent), dry or irritated eyes (74 percent), fatigue (70 percent) and headaches (61 percent). Yet, two in three eye doctors report 20 percent or fewer of their patients even know what Computer Vision Syndrome is, showing a low level of understanding of the condition.

Computer Vision Syndrome is a serious condition that can have a major impact on the well-being, work productivity and learning capacity. As six hours is the average time spent in front of a digital device, American workers alone are spending in excess of 200 billion hours a year in front of a digital screen.

"Computer Vision Syndrome is a major problem for Americans," said Dr. Nate Bonilla-Warford, VSP provider. "For professionals with this condition, work productivity can decrease by as much as 20 percent. We are seeing patients uncomfortable in the workplace with neck pain, headaches, eye strain, blurred vision, etc. that could easily be avoided. It's important for people to discuss their digital usage with their eye doctor and make sure they are getting annual eye exams."

VSP Vision Care recommends the following tips to help lessen the symptoms of computer-related eye strain:

Blink Often: When looking at a computer or hand-held digital device, it's common for you to blink two to three times less than you normally would. This can lead to "dry eye." Blinking bathes your eyes in tears, and tears are naturally therapeutic for the eyes.

The 20/20/20 Rule: When spending long periods in front of a digital device, every 20 minutes, spend 20 seconds looking at something 20 feet away to allow your eyes to rest.

Ensure Proper Lighting: Poor lighting often causes eye strain. To help ease the strain on your eyes, keep bright lighting overhead to a minimum and position your desk lamp to shine on your desk, and not at you. Position your computer screen in a way that reduces reflections and glare from windows or overhead lights.

"Today, digital device eye strain is the number one computer-related complaint ahead of carpal-tunnel, neck and back pain," Dr. Bonilla-Warford continued. "Eye doctors are trained to help patients mitigate the symptoms of Computer Vision Syndrome, and can even offer computer vision glasses, which are prescribed glasses that provide the optimal lens power for viewing your computer screen at the correct distance, without the need for excessive focusing or squinting."

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Don't Put Eye Health In The Shade

(By AlGrace) When the sun’s out, you might be tempted to cover up in style but the College of Optometrists is urging the British public to slide on some quality sunnies, too. The advice is to look further than the price-tag and think about how they’ll look after your eyes.

Sunlight can damage the retina and lens of the eye, increasing the long-term risk of developing conditions such as cataracts and possibly AMD (Age-related Macular Degeneration).

Dr Susan Blakeney, optometric adviser at The College of Optometrists said: “It’s just as important to cover your eyes from the sun as it is to protect your skin. Many people regard sunglasses as merely a fashion accessory but they have an important part to play in protecting our eyes from harmful UV rays so you need to ensure that the pair you buy are fit to do the job.”

Dr Blakeney added: “Up to 80 per cent of exposure to UV over a person’s lifetime occurs before the age of 18 so it’s particularly important for younger people to take care of their eyes and for parents to make sure that children wear sunglasses so that any long term damage is minimised.”

Here are some basic but essential tips for buying new sunnies!

Buy good quality, dark sunglasses.

Check they carry the “CE” Mark and Bristish Standard BS EN 1836:2005, ensuring a safe level of UV protection.

Don’t forget your kids – what’s good for you is good for them, too.

They’re not just for summer – some people find the glare of the sun more noticeable in winter, particularly when they’re driving. If you drive, it’s handy to keep a pair of (prescription if you need them) sunglasses in the car, though never wear them at night.

If you have light coloured eyes, take even more care.

People who wear glasses can wear sunglasses too – they can be made up to any prescription: distance, reading, bifocals or varifocals.

Look out for deals at your local optician. In the summer you can often get a free pair of prescription sunglasses if you update your regular specs.

Research conducted by the College of Optometrists revealed that:

Almost 80 per cent of under 25s put fashion and price before safety standards when choosing sunglasses.

The 66 and over age group is the only one to focus on protection over anything else although they’re also the group least likely to have a pair!

Overall, the majority of Brits (62.6%) are more influenced by how sunglasses look and how much they cost than whether they actually protect eyes.

Around one in seven of us never wear sunglasses at all.

Three quarters of parents don’t protect their kids’ eyes in the sun.

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Better Living Through Implants

Have a look a what are likely to be the first wave of medically implanted electronics designed to improve and enhance human beings.

(Narasu Rebbapragada of PC World ) Imagine if you could learn to fly a helicopter by downloading software directly to your brain. Imagine if your eyes could see an object, overlaid with data, miles away in the dark. These science-fiction scenes from The Matrix and Terminator movies may be less fictional in the future, thanks to the fascinating science behind medical implants.

Interdisciplinary teams of surgeons, researchers, engineers, and computer scientists are creating complex electronics designed to work within the human body to simulate human functions. Today's bionic technology helps people suffering from disease or disability, and may pave the way to a future where the blind can see and the deaf can hear. Researchers have achieved breakthroughs in medical science, but the level of improvement these advances offer doesn't approach the level of typical human sight, sound, thought, or movement.

But implants are getting better, faster, and smaller; and experts say that they could be used to augment healthy human performance within five to ten years. A look at the current research in medical implants shows not only unprecedented potential for curing disease but also a new paradigm for understanding human potential.

Bionic Eyes

The Boston Retinal Implant Project's device consists of a surgical implant and a wearable camera. Image: MIT Retinal Implant Research Group.

Since the late 1980s, the Boston Retinal Implant Project has been working to develop an eye implant for treating retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration, two leading causes of blindness. The airtight titanium implant contains a 200-channel chip that sits in the eye socket and a wire coil that encircles the iris of the eye; a wireless computer-based controller outside the body handles data transfers. MIT visiting scientist and project member Dr. Shawn Kelly has been working on the project for 14 years. He expects to start human clinical trials in three years.

Patients fitted with the implant will wear glasses with a camera and carry a small pocket computer with a battery. The computer will read and analyze images and then send data to the implant, which will use electrodes to deliver electrical impulses to retinal nerve cells. They will see hundreds of pixels of data, rather than the millions of pixels of healthy sight, and they will need therapy to teach their brains to interpret the patterns of dots and color information.

"It will be a pixel scoreboard kind of image," says Kelly.

But could implants eventually move beyond correcting vision to making it superhuman? Kelly speculates that the field of brain/machine interfaces, including the interface related to eyesight, will move toward performance enhancement, but any such application is a long way off.

"It's just not there yet to risk someone with totally healthy vision," says Kelly.

Second Sight Medical Products' eye implant gives a form of sight to blind patients. Image: Second Sight Medical Products

But even if the implant weren't ready to dole out bionic vision, what if the input device were? What if you replaced the camera used to feed images to the implant with a night-vision camera that could give the user sight in total darkness?

That's the hypothetical scenario posed by Dr. Brian Mech, vice president of business development at Second Sight Medical Products, whose Argus II eye implant system is currently in clinical trials.

The Argus II consists of electronics implanted in the eye, a camera mounted in sunglasses, and a video processor and battery pack worn on a belt. The implant has 60 electrodes, which loosely translates to a total of 60 pixels in an entire image. Keep in mind that a standard Web graphic contains 72 pixels per square inch; still, in the night-vision scenario, 60 pixels might be better than what you'd see on your own when the lights go out.

The previous Argus model had 16 electrodes. The next generation will have 240 electrodes, and a 1000-electrode device is on the drawing board.

Read more about Brain Computer Interfaces, Better Brain Implants, and other Body Implants here: PC World - Better Living Through Implants