Aging Eyes Present Some Paradoxes

Here’s an interesting paradox, as your eyes age they begin to shrink, however as they are shrinking they are becoming more liquid. It’s one of those funny oddities in life. It is also the cause of some of the eye floaters you may be seeing, even as you read these words.

Floaters In Eye

Floaters are small inclusions in that tend to be concentrated right around the macula. The macula is an area of the eye that serves a two-fold purpose. It not only is the outlet for blood vessels and nerves of the eye, but it is also the focal point for your eye.

Even more interesting is the aging process, though it is the primary cause of floaters for most of us is quite natural, it is also accompanied by an interesting phenomenon as your eyes shrink, your normal eyesight changes.

If you have had farsightedness for years, you will suddenly find that changes in the shape of the eye, due to aging, which can also introduce inclusions of the eye or eye floaters, you will suddenly find that the focal spot for your eye has moved from the macula and that your suddenly good close-in vision has gone and you need reading glasses. The process also will cause small inclusions to sneak around the walls of the macula into the vitreous and you will likely find that, even if you have never had eye floaters before, you have them now.

Are they anything to worry about? No, but they do introduce an interesting paradox and that is as your eyesight changes, rending your farsightedness moot and potentially introducing floaters, if you have the opposite condition, nearsightedness, your focal point and the macula start coming together as your eyes begin to feel more pressure and they tend to change (farsighted people will have eyes that tend to shorten as they age, allowing for more inclusions to sneak in, while nearsighted people, whose eyes are short to begin with suddenly find their eyes are beginning to change an become a little less round, moving the focal point and improving their vision. Yes, this condition can introduce inclusions around the macula, too, so their floaters may also increase.

It is a funny contradiction that the very people with great eyes as kids will need reading glasses or even driving glasses as they age while those with lousy vision will tend to find they have to read screens from further away or if they read magazines, they will find themselves holding them out further or taking off their standard glasses. It’s equally as funny, though, that the changes brought on by aging that improve or degrade eyesight, will also cause floaters in the eye to potentially increase.

And, no floaters are no indication you are losing your sight. You are just seeing things floating across the vitreous that you’ve never seen before and, if your brain works right, you may never see again, unless a new one crops up for a day or two and it may disappear or it may become part of what you normally see and you’ll forget and look around it anyway.

Doctors Look at Aging as One Cause of Floaters

Although nobody likes to think about it, from the moment we enter this world, after floating around in mommy’s body for nine long months of gestation, we begin to age.

As babies and toddlers everything you do is geared toward learning and your little body is engineered so that if you fall down and bump yourself, there’s enough body fat around to absorb things.

However, as you get on in years toward adulthood things begin to change. Those bumps and bruises hurt more because the fat has gone away and things become a lot more stressful on all your body systems

By the time you enter your middle years things begin to happen – you and no one else has control over them, despite all the fish oil, special vitamins, salves, gels and anti-aging potions on the market. For example, about 40 or so you will likely begin to see little black things floating in your eye. They are eye floaters and have more to do with your eye changing and shrinking a bit hear and becoming a little more liquid there that causes them.

Eye floaters are a natural part of the aging process. As you get older, entering your 50s or so, you begin to notice them a bit more. They may appear as little bubbles, or dark spots or even spider webs. You can relax because its just Mother Nature playing her practical joke on your aging body because she is giving you a reason to worry about your eyesight.

Floaters In Eye

No one likes floaters, but they do happen, especially in the 50s when the area around the macula – the rear of the eye that is not only in the focal plane of the cornea lens and vitreous of your eye – begins to change. At one time or another, the area around the macula may actually shrink enough to allow clusters of cells or individual cells to enter into the vitreous body of the eye. They will tend, ophthalmologists say, to cluster right around the macula and so you will see them as part of your world as you look straight ahead.

As you age further, the nature of the eye may become slightly more liquid and larger clusters of cells may float into the vitreous from the walls formed by the sides of the macula and you may possibly see more of them. Indeed, when you close your eyes, you may even see flashes of light. Again, these are benign as are the floaters in your eye that have appeared as you age.

As you continue to age, the eye tends to shrink a bit and more floaters may be introduced through small – non-operable – tears in the retina. The tears are microscopic but are the result of aging and the ongoing shrinkage that your eye is undergoing. The flashes are also a benign result and are just another form of floater.

In all this, there is one thing of which you can be certain as your eye ages and shrinks a bit; little bits and pieces are going to become floaters as inclusion in the vitreous. Relax, there’s nothing wrong, but biology taking its course.

Sometimes Floaters Do Require Intervention

There are times when floaters in the eye may indicated that more drastic action is warranted, but only in a limited number of cases.

Floaters In Eye

Ophthalmologists recognize that if you have a large detachment or tear in the retinal wall (it may not be a detached retina, itself, but a large tear in the tissue), then action is called for. But how do you know if the eye floaters that are bothering you required intervention?

It’s quite simple really! If you suddenly have a large mass of floaters appear in your eye, then you may have a tear in the retina that has also introduced a small pool of blood as a bubble at the top of the vitreous (where these things most likely occur). You can tell if you are the victim of this if you suddenly experience a large number of eye floaters that seem to be floating around and getting worse.

For the most part, the floaters in your eye, if this is the case, though they may seem to be rising in your vision are actually floating downward from the tear in the retina. It is at this time that the ophthalmologist will look through his microscope device (it’s also the device that measures the pressure of your eyeball with a blue cone of light as the doctor tells you to sit still, “it will only take a minute”) and as he flips over to white light, he will scan the back and top of the vitreous for health which is when he will notice the small pool of blood collecting at the retinal tear.

 Eye Floaters

If this is the case, then a laser procedure is called for, most ophthalmologists agree.  They have to seal the tear and ensure that it is cleaned up and laser surgery is an excellent way to do this. Like most doctors, ophthalmologists don’t do this willingly because no doctor likes to operate unless he has to but, if the tear is there, intervention is called for.

On the day of the operation, they will numb your eye (as well as relax you with various drugs) it has to stay open for the surgery to occur. Not to worry because what you might see will be a small blue or green flash of light as the laser being used seals the tear in the retina and cleans up the pool of blood that has gathered and is causing this whole issue. It is possible, if the inclusions left are large enough, that the ophthalmologist may zap them as well to break them up and erase them. When you are finished you will likely have to avoid bright light for a day or two and may possibly need some antiseptic eye drops, however, when it’s all finished, your eye health will be restored.

This isn’t to say you may not experience eye floaters in the future, but, they will likely be the “normal” kind, you can ignore.

Eye Floaters, How Do They Occur?

Eye Floaters

Let’s say it’s a nice day and your just looking at a nice view of the sky and sea and you see this small dark eye floater appear in your line of vision. It seems to follow the central area you are looking at, but if you look off to the side of up or down, they will likely just disappear.

If it’s your first floater, then it’s quite natural to be alarmed by it simply because it was something that wasn’t there before. You might be tempted to call your ophthalmologist to schedule an appointment because your sure you might be slowly going blind, but you can relax because eye floaters (an industry term for inclusions in the eye that get in the focal plane of the cornea, lens, vitreous humor and macula) are quite natural. They will occur at, one time or another, estimates say, to 9 out of 10 people.

What do they mean? Floaters in the eye are just usually a natural part of aging where part of the rear of the eye, near the macula may shrink a bit and as it shrinks small inclusions or cells will break away and float in the eye’s vitreous humor. Floaters will also tend to concentrate near the macula or focal point (and nerve exit) of they eye and they will get in the way whenever you look in their direction.

When you see the floaters, which may be groups of cells that have gotten away and are floating around or bits that have actually come in through small tears in the retina (the wall that keeps the vitreous humor – the full name for your eye’s jelly part) and have become inclusions, as well, you have nothing to worry about because small tears in the retina are usually associated with aging eyes. Things begin to shrink as you age and the vitreous may shrink away from the retina, causing a tiny tear, letting the floater in.

Floaters In Eye

If you have several of them, it is likely that an ophthalmologist will see it, but only on serious dilation of the eye causing the lens to open widely, using special drugs, and only by using a very bright light and very large magnifying lens (the same setup also reveals cataracts, a more serious condition). Once the exam has ended, you may wonder why the ophthalmologist recommends doing nothing. This is simply because those floaters that so bother you are really no bother at all to your eye.

Indeed, many times, they will register with your brain only when you are looking at an object and they happen to be in the same focal line at the rear of the eye. Other than that those floaters won’t even bother you because your brain just forgets them and wants you to forget them, too, as your eyes go about their daily business of seeing the world around you. So, don’t be surprised, at all, if your ophthalmologist – if asked – will tell you he saw them, but just forget about them. They appear to most of us.

Floaters in the Eye, Not Dangerous, Just A Bother

The first time you see floaters in your eye, you’re probably worried your eyesight will soon be fading. Floaters in the eye can appear as black spots, spider web like spots as you look or sometimes they appear as little bunches of bubbles.

Floaters in the eye are not anything you have to worry about. It has been estimated that fully 90 percent of the population will have floaters in the eye at one time or another. They are more of a bother than anything else and interestingly, if you notice one on one day and it just seems to disappear the brain has a happy knack of forgetting things like that exist and your eye will work quite nicely.

Floaters in the eye occur right along the plain that leads to the macula at the back of the eye. This is the point where your eyes lens focuses the light and images it sees and there are some times where small pieces a cell can find their way through a small tear in the retina to introduce foreign bodies into the eye. You see them as dark spots that are naggingly in the way, or they may, as noted, disappear, if they stay in the same spot because the brain forgets they are there and tells your eye to move on.

Floaters in the eye are also called inclusions in the vitreous, the jelly-filled area that makes up most of your eye and they tend to appear along the focal plane of the eye because that’s what our eyes see. Ophthalmologists advise just leaving them alone because sometimes a little of the rear of the eye allow clusters of them through. It’s part of the pattern of aging, although floaters have been reported in teens. They are, for the most part benign, caused by the a little movement of the attachment point around the rear of the eye of even by tiny tears in the retina that let those inclusions through.

Again, ophthalmologists advised, just leaving them alone because it is a natural process going on in the eye. If you have them, as the author of this piece is seeing small bubbles and little almost thread-like looking things appear while this is being written and the author’s eye is focused on the screen, there’s no cause for concern because they are there all the time and about the only time they appear is on concentration. They are just benign and, even if you visit the ophthalmologist and he is able to see the tiny things you are talking about, they will usually counsel leaving eye floaters alone because they are quite natural and nothing to worry about.

What are they? Ophthalmologists will find floaters to be small cells, or bunches or proteins of possible even a little of matter let in through a small tear in the retina (they occur and do not mean detached retina) that become, sometimes, aggravating little things that can spoil your spotless eyesight.