Are you starting to experience blurry or foggy vision? Do you find it difficult to drive at night? Have you recently needed to change your glasses or contact lens prescription more? These are all signs that you could have cataracts.
What is a Cataract?
Cataracts occur when the lens in your eye becomes foggy. Without cataracts, the lens is usually clear. Having cloudy lenses from cataracts is like looking through a foggy or frosty window.
When you have foggy vision from cataracts, it can be challenging to drive a car, especially at night. It also becomes more difficult to read or see facial expressions on a friend’s face.
As people age, cataracts are a very common eye condition for people to experience.
Vision Changes
For most people, cataracts progress slowly over time. In fact, you may not even know you have them at first! But as time goes on, your vision becomes affected by cataracts.
Having regular eye exams is important for many reasons, including looking for cataracts. The most common vision changes are having cloudy, blurry or faint vision.
In the beginning, cataracts are small, but the longer you have them the bigger they get. As cataracts get bigger, they cause your vision to become blurry.
From cataracts, you can also have a sensitivity to light and see glares and halos around lights. Your normal light levels could now be too strong. If you look at a light you could see light coming out of it like a halo.
Another common vision change is experiencing double vision in one eye. Cataracts make your lens cloudy, making it challenging for light to enter. This is what causes double vision.
Challenges Driving at Night
Cataracts make it challenging to differentiate between light and dark. Headlights and streetlamps can give you headaches from trying to drive at night. Additionally, you might see halos around headlights while you are trying to drive.
Requiring Stronger Light
When you are trying to do an activity that requires a lot of focus, you could need brighter lights. This is helpful for reading or other activities. In the beginning, more light might be helpful, but as your cataracts grow it will not be.
Color Discoloration
As cataracts get bigger, colors start to fade and become dimmer. For example, whites will begin looking more like yellow. It’s common for people with cataracts to see things as yellow or brown tinted.
Frequent Changes to your Glasses or Contacts Prescriptions
As your cataracts evolve, your vision changes too. You might not need your reading glasses anymore or you might need new prescriptions. Sudden vision changes are a sign that you have cataracts.
Can I Prevent Cataracts?
There’s no way to guarantee you won’t develop cataracts. But there are things you can do to reduce your risks of early development.
The biggest one is quitting smoking if you’re a smoker. You should also make sure other health conditions are under control.
You should do your best to live a healthy lifestyle and eat well and exercise often. Cataracts have also been linked to not wearing sunglasses, so it’s important to wear them.
If you have cataracts, most doctors recommend surgery when cataracts impact your vision.
Are any of these signs and symptoms familiar to you? You might have cataracts or need cataract surgery. Schedule a cataract screening at Loden Vision Centers in Nashville, TN to find out now!
