Do your eyelids ever look red, feel sticky, or sore? Do you have a constant itch in the corner of the eye that you just can’t scratch? Maybe it feels even worse when you wake up in the morning. You may be one of the estimated 25 million Americans who suffer from blepharitis. Here’s what to know about blepharitis symptoms, causes, and treatment options.
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).
Lazy eye is misunderstood. What does having one really mean?
A true “lazy eye” is not an eye that is fatigued or has a high corrective prescription. The definition is an eye with reduced vision due to abnormal visual development.
Individuals with lazy eye depend heavily on their normal eye to see, while the weaker (amblyopic) eye will worsen over time from a lack of stimulation from the brain. Why is an eye considered lazy?
Lazy eye presents in only 3 out of 100 children. However, it is the leading cause of decreased vision in children. Also, understand that you are born with lazy eye. You cannot develop it later in life.
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.
In the U.S., there were 24.4 million cases of cataracts in 2010, and the number is expected to double to 50 million by 2050, according to the National Eye Institute.
A cataract is a clouding of the crystalline lens inside the eye which leads to a decline in vision. Aging is the most common reason for a cataract, but other factors include disease, trauma, and certain medications. Most cataracts grow slowly over decades, but some may progress more quickly.
The crystalline lens is the structure located in the middle of the eye, in front of the retina, but behind the iris (colored part). All light that enters the eye goes through the cornea and the lens to get to the retina. If a cataract is affecting the lens, distorted vision is the result. Glasses and contacts are unable to correct the vision until the cataract is removed.
