3 Eye Diseases to Watch Out for When You Get Older

To call your vision important is an understatement, since you rely on it to move through the world. While your vision can naturally decline with age — you need glasses for reading, for example — there’s a group of eye diseases we want you to be on the lookout for, as they can rob you of your vision.

Between glaucoma, age-related macular degeneration, and cataracts, millions of Americans are losing their clear vision to these common eye diseases, which count age as one of their biggest risk factors.

At LaSante Health Center, our diverse team of health professionals provides eye care for our community, and we routinely help patients to navigate the world of aging and related eye diseases. Here’s what we want you to know.

Cataracts

Let’s start with the most common eye disease among older populations — cataracts, which affect more than half of Americans over the age of 80.

With cataracts, the lenses in your eyes cloud over as proteins clump together. As a result, you can experience progressively worsening symptoms that include:

• Blurry vision
• Trouble seeing at night
• Halos around lights
• Fading colors
• Double vision

The good news is that cataracts are easily resolved with a surgery to replace your aging lenses with clear ones. The even better news is that we can help you navigate this process with our cataracts comanagement services.

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD)

In the United States, more than 2 million people have advanced AMD, a condition that robs you of your central vision.

AMD affects the macula at the back of your eye, which is part of your retina. There are two types of AMD — wet and dry, with the dry form being the most common. 

With dry AMD, your macula slowly thins with age, and you find it increasingly difficult to see things in front of you. Wet AMD has the same result, but it progresses much faster.

Unfortunately, there are no early warning signs, but if you find that there’s a growing issue with your central vision, we want you to come in for an eye exam.

Glaucoma

This last eye disease is actually a group of eye diseases affecting your optic nerve. In all cases of glaucoma — the leading cause of blindness in people over the age of 60 — your optic nerve is damaged by increasing ocular pressure due to drainage issues in your eyes.

Under normal circumstances, the fluids around your eyes are balanced between production and drainage. When there’s an issue that affects the drainage, pressure can build and slowly damage your optic nerve, which can lead to blind spots in your vision that can eventually lead to total vision loss.

There are no early warning signs of glaucoma, so it’s important to keep up with your regular eye exams as you age. During these exams, we administer specific tests for eye diseases like glaucoma, allowing us to take action to preserve your vision. 

In fact, we can test for each of these three eye diseases quite easily during our routine eye exams. 

To schedule your eye exam, you can book an appointment online or call us at our Brooklyn, New York, clinic at 718-355-8616. We also welcome walk-ins during our hours of operation. 

Our team proudly serves the Flatbush and East Flatbush, Crown Heights, Park Slope, Little Haiti, Little Caribbean, and Prospect Lefferts Gardens communities.