“The lens that sits behind the iris helps our eyes focus. It changes as we age and becomes less malleable,” he said. “Because it can’t change shape as it once did, we may have trouble seeing things up close around age 40.”

So, it might be time for reading glasses.

“If the ‘cheater’ glasses you can find at a pharmacy help you see better, those are fine,” he said. “But you may get better vision correction from prescription lenses.”

It’s important to get your eyes checked regularly, Dr. Kertes said.

In addition to how well you see, he said, a visit to the eye doctor can help determine your risk for other age-related diseases of the eye:

Glaucoma: Glaucoma is a disease of the optic nerve that results in vision loss over time. But it can sneak up on you, so it’s important to keep up with your regular eye checks. Glaucoma can be controlled through special eye drops, surgical correction and regular eye exams to keep watch on progression.

Cataracts: Cataracts are the clouding of the lens of your eye (which is normally clear). Cataracts cause blurred vision. Basically, everyone who lives into older age will develop cataracts, Dr. Kertes said. They are very common and very treatable.

Macular Degeneration: This is the deterioration of the part of the retina that’s responsible for your central straight-ahead vision. Macular degeneration is common as we age. Usually there are symptoms like blurred or distorted vision or difficulty with central, straight-ahead vision. A family history of macular degeneration can raise your risk. A history of smoking cigarettes also increases your risk.

As for prevention of age-related issues of the eyes, Dr. Kertes says follow this rule: “What’s good for you is good for your eyes.”

• If you smoke, consider quitting.
• Eat a well-balanced diet with lots of green, leafy vegetables and omega 3s (from fish and nuts).
• Control your blood pressure and blood sugar. High blood sugar and high blood pressure can put you at risk for diabetic retinopathy, a complication that’s caused by damage to the blood vessels in the eyes. (Exercise and eat a well-balanced diet. Talk to your doctor about blood pressure and blood sugar if you want to know more).

The post What does aging do to our eyes? appeared first on Your Health Matters.

Answer: Most definitely. Optimizing hearing and vision for the person with dementia is a valuable and important contribution to care. It makes obvious sense that if a person cannot see, or struggles to hear, they are less likely to attend to information or understand it, and as a result they are less likely to remember. There is good research to suggest that hearing and vision problems are common sources of “excess disability” – a term meant to describe worse cognitive and functional impairment as a result of causes beyond the degree of dementia pathology per se.

Ensuring vision and audiology assessments have been completed is a simple and relatively painless process for most patients and caregivers. Wearing appropriate eye glasses is also a fairly simple intervention with good compliance. Arranging for cataract surgery, may be more challenging, but given the increasing simplicity and excellent tolerability of the surgery, mild to moderate dementia should definitely not be seen as a barrier to improving vision through this procedure. Dealing with hearing loss can be more problematic. Not all types of hearing loss can be improved by hearing aids, and hearing aids can be very difficult to use, or can be poorly tolerated for some people with dementia. While I always recommend consultation with an audiologist, for some patients however, use of a “pocket talker” can be a simple and inexpensive alternative that might be better tolerated than traditional hearing aids.

Regardless of the difficulty involved in optimizing hearing and vision, these interventions are well worth the effort. For example, a recent study in elderly people suggested that wearing hearing aids improved performance on cognitive testing compared to people who didn’t wear hearing aids, even though the group who wore hearing aids had worse hearing. Sensory impairment has also been associated with emotional symptoms like depression in people with dementia. Perhaps even more surprising, psychotic symptoms such as visual hallucinations (seeing things that aren’t there) and auditory hallucinations (hearing imaginary voices) have been associated with vision and hearing problems in people with dementia. Most importantly, there are reports that some of these symptoms can be improved when hearing and vision are improved.

The post Senses and Sensibility: Optimizing hearing and vision for people with dementia appeared first on Your Health Matters.