How Can High Powered Readers Help With Age Related Vision Problems?

Video Transcript:

Today we're going to talk about high-powered readers. And high-powered readers are a solution for when your eyes just don't work quite the way they used to. So one of the things that happens, there's kind of a natural evolution of humanity and that is called presbyopia. And what that is, is that your ability to change focus from distance to near is impaired, as you normally do around the age of 40. The lens that is kind of your auto-focus lens inside your eye, much like your knees and maybe the rest of your body when you get to be a certain age, kind of tightens up and doesn't flex as easily.

It's not quite as flexible as it used to be. And as it reduces in flexibility, your ability to change focus is reduced. So if you have presbyopia and you look at your prescription that you get from your optometrist or some allergist or whoever, there's usually an add power. And what that add power represents is the amount of kind of function that you've lost in your focus ability.

Normally. And when I say normal, kind of the normal path, vision is you end up peaking around an add of about a plus three. So if you go to any kind of pharmacy or anything like that, they'll usually have a little rack of these reading glasses. And those reading glasses will be in different powers, sometimes level one, 1.5, 2, 2.5, and three.

And each of those powers will make, as the power grows, the image that you can see will become bigger. Now, with macular degeneration and various vision conditions that affect your central acuity, your ability to see with even a plus three might not be enough to help you read. So that's where high-powered readers come in to help.

And it would kind of, if your macular degeneration or your challenges are detected earlier enough, it would almost kind of track a linear thing. It would go from 3 to 4 to 5 to 6, and it would just kind of keep going until you ultimately need to transition to some other form of reading. So what that might look like is an audiobook or something like that, but that's way down the road right now.

Let's talk about what a plus four might look like. So more a plus six since that's what I have in my hand. So, so what happens is you have to, us most most people have to us. And what happens with your two eyes is those two us. So you have two eyes, but then you only see one thing.

Some people have double vision, but for the most part, the way your eyes are intended to work is that you have two eyes and you see one image. So what's happening when you're close up is your eyes do a thing called converging. So your eyes kind of turn inwards to create a triangle that looks at that single image.

And as you bring things closer, your eyes have to work harder to make that triangle. So what you'll notice, and you can try this at home. It's not going to hurt you. So if you look at your finger, you can see one finger. And what you'll notice is if you bring your finger in and in, eventually you just can't see one finger anymore.

Your eyes just can't converge to that distance. So that's why when we make high-powered recent readers, we add a thing called prism. So what prism does is it bends the light appropriately to assist you in converging. So what you'll notice is if you look at these glasses, they're kind of thick in the center. And what that is, is the prism helping you converge.

So what that allows you to do is where maybe you're only comfortable seeing a single image here. But then with the prism, you might be comfortable seeing a single image here instead. So as the power goes up, the focal distance decreases. So as so as your first level of a high-powered reader, which would be a plus four, your focal length is about 25cm, which is a little bit less than a foot.

So that's about right here. But then as it goes up, as it goes to a five, it's then one-fifth of a meter. So it'd be 20cm, six would be 16.7cm, seven would be approximately 14.3cm, and eight would be 12.5cm. So if you think about an eight prism reader, the focal length on a plus eight prism reader would be about 12cm, and 12cm is a little bit more than four inches.

And it's very close. And what happens when you're looking at a very close distance? Your eyes get super exhausted super quick trying to see one image. So if you put on the prism reader, you'll notice that you can focus at this closer distance and just see one thing and see it more comfortably. So that is what a prism reader does.

Take a look at our Near Vision