Most of us will experience some effects of presbyopia as we age. It’s a normal part of the ageing process and presbyopic symptoms develop gradually as we get older. Most people start to notice changes to their close vision from around the age of 40.
What is Presbyopia?
Presbyopia is the gradual loss of your eyes’ ability to focus on objects up‑close. It’s a natural part of ageing which usually becomes noticeable in your early to mid‑40s and continues to worsen until around age 65. If you experience presbyopia, your optician will check your vision to assess whether you’re ’presbyopic’, just as they would if you were short‑sighted or ‘myopic’.
As a common condition, it’s nothing to worry about, and it’s easy to work presbyopia around your lifestyle. Most people with presbyopia wear reading glasses, multifocals, multifocal contact lenses, or a combination of both, to correct their vision — depending on which they prefer.
What are the symptoms of presbyopia?
Have you started to notice that text is getting harder to read? Do you have trouble seeing clearly when using your phone or laptop, or when doing close‑up work? You may be experiencing the first signs of presbyopia. It’s perfectly normal, and most of us start to experience it around the age of 40.
Common symptoms include:
Having difficulty reading small print
Needing to hold reading material at an arm’s distance to focus properly on it
Experiencing blurry vision at normal reading distance (approx. 35cm)
Having eye strain or headaches after reading or doing close work
Needing brighter lighting when reading or doing close work
Overall problems seeing and focusing on objects that are close to you
Squinting to bring objects into focus
Blurry vision up close
Glasses, contact lenses and treatments
If you don’t already wear glasses, it may be that all you need is a pair of prescription reading glasses to improve your vision for close‑up tasks. Or, if you already wear glasses, you could benefit from multifocal lenses, which help you to focus clearly at multiple distances by having more than one prescription in a single lens. Multifocal lenses include varifocals, bifocals and occupational lenses.
Your optician will take your prescription, lifestyle and occupation into consideration, as well as your preferences and needs, when recommending the best lenses to help correct your presbyopia.
Glasses aren’t the only treatment for presbyopia — you may prefer multifocal contact lenses. They’re designed to accommodate varying vision types in one lens (near, mid‑range and distance) just like a pair of multifocal glasses would.
If wearing glasses or contact lenses isn’t right for you, then surgery to correct presbyopia could also be an option. During the surgery, the natural eye lens is removed and a multifocal lens implant is inserted in its place. Think of multifocal lens implants like permanent multifocal glasses or contact lenses.
There are also laser‑based techniques that operate on the cornea to give some additional near focus in one eye.
Eye exercises can never reverse any progressive vision changes. However, if they’re practised carefully and regularly, certain exercises may be able to help delay the onset of some conditions for certain people, and reduce symptoms of digital eye strain.
For instance, convergence exercises may help to avoid convergence insufficiency, a condition that occurs from the weakening of the eye muscles, making it difficult to focus both eyes on a close‑range object.

What causes presbyopia?
To form an image, your eye relies on the cornea and the lens to focus light onto the retina at the back of the eye. When you look at something at a distance, the circular muscle around the cornea relaxes. When you look at something nearby, the muscle constricts, allowing the relatively elastic lens to curve and change its focusing power.
In younger eyes, the lens is usually softer and therefore easier to curve and flex. But, as we grow older, the lens can harden. Presbyopia is caused by this hardening of the lens of your eye, which is a natural part of the ageing process. As your lens becomes less flexible, it becomes more difficult to change shape in order to focus on close‑up objects, which in turn affects your vision. Even if you’ve never needed glasses, you might find that you need to begin wearing glasses later in life for close‑up tasks such as reading, looking at your phone, or even driving.
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