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.