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.