Will you soon be visiting your eye doctor?
Like appointments with any medical professional, it might be stressful. You may forget to ask important questions. It happens. In the interest of maintaining healthy vision, let’s talk about how to make the most of your visit to the optometrist.
Agnosia is a rare condition that affects the senses. Imagine smelling a rose and not being able to place the smell. Imagine eating mom’s chocolate chip cookies, but finding out you don’t recognize the taste.
While it’s likely you know someone who temporarily lost his or her sense of smell or taste as a result of Covid, it seems almost impossible for someone to no longer be able to look at a common object, word, or even face, and be unable to tell what or who it is. However, that’s exactly what happens when someone is afflicted by a rare condition known as visual agnosia.
According to the United Brain Association, agnosia is a communication disorder that disrupts and impairs the brain’s ability to process sensory cues, most commonly visual and auditory cues.
Visual agnosia specifically disrupts your brain’s ability to process and understand what you are seeing with your eyes. In other words, your eyes are working correctly and as they normally would, but your brain is not.
As the medical community learns more about visual agnosia, they have come to understand there are actually several different types of the condition, including types that specifically affect your ability to recognize common objects (akinetopsia), words (alexia), colors (achromatopsia), and even familiar faces (prosopagnosia).
Although the negative health effects of drinking alcohol have been well established, nearly 65% of U.S. adults continue to consume alcoholic beverages on a regular basis. Considering there is a direct correlation between health issues and the amount of alcohol consumed, the issue becomes more concerning, knowing that over 25% of U.S. adults report binge drinking (having six or more drinks in a sitting) in the last month. One of the serious, but rarely discussed, alcohol-related health issues is the connection between alcohol and eyesight.
In fact, regular consumption of alcohol has been directly associated with a number of serious short and long-term vision issues that range from blurred vision to damage to the optic nerve, resulting in permanent vision loss.
You live a busy life. With the responsibilities associated with your job, family, and well, everything, you may not get enough sleep.
More than one in three Americans don’t get enough sleep—defined as seven or more hours each—on a regular basis, according to the CDC. It’s been well established a lack of sleep can increase the risk of a number of serious health issues including high blood pressure, obesity, and depression, but does it contribute to serious or long-term problems for the health of your eyes?
Lack of sleep can leave you looking worn-down and with dark circles or heavy bags under your eyes. While this isn’t an ideal look, it’s usually nothing that a good night’s sleep can’t fix. However, as doctors learn more about our vision it has become abundantly clear that a chronic lack of sleep can have significant, and in some cases lasting, effects on your vision and the overall health of your eyes.
The harmful effects of the sun’s ultraviolet rays have been well documented. However, one of the most important, but often overlooked, areas of concern is the possible sun damage to eyes.
A recent report from The Vision Council estimates nearly 35% of the adult population has experienced eye or vision damage resulting from prolonged exposure to the sun’s ultraviolet rays.
To shed light on the importance of protecting the eyes from ultraviolet rays, it’s important to understand the various types of ultraviolet rays, the serious eye conditions that can occur, and how to protect your eyes and your vision from damage caused by exposure to the sun.
