Is Youthful Vision Without Reading Glasses Possible?
When you hear about a new age-defying treatment, it can sometimes come with a slew of catches like waring off after a few weeks or risks like infections and nausea or some obscure side effects.
This is the price we pay for trying to work against the body’s natural process of ageing, instead of accepting it and working with it. We’ve long followed this approach, relying on creams, tucks, injections, and other treatments to patch up problems so we can look good and forget about them. But today, we’re moving towards treatments and therapies that offer a more natural and therefore both safer and more sustainable approach.
One place you can see this is in the field of laser Vision correction. For a long time, the best course of action in treating presbyopia — shortsightedness caused by a loss of flexibility and the effects of ageing on the eye — used to be monovision contacts or glasses.
Monovision, as suggested by the name, takes a one-dimensional approach to addressing presbyopia by adjusting one eye to work best up close and the other to work best at a distance. This can help improve the sight of some, but it is only tolerated by around 60 percent of patients and as a result often leads to headaches or blurry vision.
Not forgetting, with monovision, you typically still have to wear reading glasses or infection-prone contact lenses.
The modern solution to presbyopia is a little different. Laser Blended Vision doesn’t restrict the focus of one eye to a distance and one to up close, but rather tapers each eye’s point of focus over the full depth of vision. This creates one seamless, ‘blended’ field of vision.
Laser Blended Vision works not by layering another lens on top of the body’s own, perfectly capable lens system, but by adjusting your corneas to perform at their best. The treatment is possible, and is safer and easier to adapt to than traditional methods, in large thanks to a revolutionary new scanner: the Artemis Insight.
The Artemis Insight VFH digital ultrasound scanner produces a 3D image showing the detailed profile of the cornea. It is able to detect the thinnest points with greater accuracy than other scanners (equal to that of 1/1000th the width of a human hair). Although this is only available in a handful of clinics globally, London Vision Clinic benefits from having utilised this technology for many years and is able to treat a higher number of patients – 98% in fact.
If there was ever any proof of the effectiveness of Laser Blended Vision, it would be that the pioneer behind the treatment, Prof Dan Reinstein, recently had it done himself.
Not only does Professor Reinstein rely on his vision for his career, but he couldn’t read music in dark clubs and indulge in his passion, playing the saxophone, without it. Plus, who would have Laser Eye Surgery from a guy who wears glasses?
Similarly, television personality Carol Vorderman, 57, still looks as young as ever. One of the ways she’s managed to hold back the clock is by circumventing the most obvious sign you’re getting old: reading glasses. In 2012, she had Laser Eye Surgery at London Vision Clinic to combat the effects of presbyopia on her near vision.
As well as wanting to keep up appearances for her many frequent roles on primetime television, Carol was having difficulty reading her notes and putting on makeup before shoots. She was also self-conscious wearing reading glasses in public.
After having Laser Blended Vision, she tweeted, “Dan Reinstein invented the blended vision technique. He is quite frankly a sax playing genius.” Today, like 90 percent of patients, she is able to read tiny printed instructions on prescription bottles.
