Myopia is Nearsightedness
Myopia means you can see just fine close up. It's distant objects that become blurry to you. Without addressing it, you may not be able to play sports, drive, or even enjoy a landscape. It all just turns into a fuzzy mess for you.
There are two common reasons this might occur. The first is that your eye is too long. The second is that the front of your eye (called the cornea) is too curved.
Light is supposed to focus on your retina, in the back of your eye. When your eye is too long or your cornea too curved, light focuses ahead of your retina instead of on it.
The solution to this is lenses that are thicker at the edges and thinner in the middle. This is what a negative lens prescription indicates.
Hyperopia is Farsightedness
If myopia is nearsightedness, you can guess that hyperopia is the opposite. It means that you can see objects in the distance just fine, but things that are closer to you become blurry.
This can interfere with your ability to study, read, or see details that are close to you. That can have a big impact on your job, especially if you have to read from screens.
Hyperopia happens because your eye is shorter than it should be, or because your cornea lacks enough curve. Instead of light focusing too far forward in your eye, like in myopia, light focuses too far back in the eye.
The solution here is for lenses that are thicker in the middle. This is what a positive lens prescription indicates.
Astigmatism Bends Images
Myopia and Hyperopia can be understood as opposites. They occur for opposite reasons and have opposite effects. Astigmatism is a little different from these common vision problems but can come with one or both of them.
Astigmatism can make what you see blurry at every distance. It can also bend images. It happens when your cornea creates more than one focal point. This is because your cornea isn't curved in an even way. By creating more than one focal point in your eye, it can make the images you perceive seem bent.
Astigmatism can make what's close and what's far blurry. When that happens, it begins to make a lot of everyday activities much more difficult. It can interfere with driving and your job, with studying and with sports. It can make it harder to see pictures, text, or to look up and see what's happening around you.
While a scary idea, don't worry. Astigmatism can also be solved with a prescription.
Get a Vision Test
If you're struggling with a vision problem, don't delay. A vision test is quick and can accurately identify how best to make your vision better. Living with blurry vision at any distance can be frustrating and make the world around you appear a bit less beautiful. It can interfere with the things you like to do.
A vision test gives you a prescription that you can use to get lenses that make the blurry part of the world clear again. It's that easy.
If you already have a prescription, know that your eyes will change over time. This is process occurs slowly most of the time, but it does mean that the best prescription for you can also change. Your vision can improve or become worse. As this happens, old prescriptions lose their accuracy. This is why it's a good idea to get a vision test every year.
None of the problems identified here is a disease. They just have to do with the shape of your eye. Eye diseases do exist, though, and they can endanger vision. Another benefit of a yearly vision test is that you can identify potential eye diseases early. Once you do that, they can be addressed before they become a problem or cause any permanent damage.
That's a lot of benefits for a test that takes very little time. Contact us today.