Presbyopia

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.