Eye Health

Omega 3’s Don’t Help Your Eyes? Not So Fast…

Last week, the much antic­i­pat­ed first round of results from AREDS 2 were pub­lished. AREDS stands for “Age-Relat­ed Eye Dis­ease Study”, a cross-sec­­tion­al, mul­ti­cen­ter, years-long set of stud­ies set out to deter­mine whether the pro­gres­sion of age-relat­ed eye dis­eases, such as mac­u­lar degen­er­a­tion could be curbed by the intake of cer­tain nutraceu­ti­cals. The orig­i­nal AREDS results taught us that … Con­tin­ue read­ing

Posted in Dr. Ben's Blog, Eye Health

iTips For Spring Training

So, I saw this patient last week who was blind in his left eye. Oth­er than a con­gen­i­tal form of blind­ness in that eye, his ocu­lar and visu­al health were essen­tial­ly nor­mal. He asked me why I pre­scribed glass­es for him, and it led to a great and mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sion regard­ing eye safe­ty. First of all, I pre­scribed glass­es with poly­car­bon­ate lens­es to … Con­tin­ue read­ing

Posted in Dr. Ben's Blog, Eye Health

No Marijuana For Glaucoma Any Time Soon

Ok, so we’ve all heard the anec­do­tal tales of the guy who gets to smoke mar­i­jua­na to treat his glau­co­ma, but is there any truth to this wives tale? The answer is a resound­ing “sort of, but not real­ly”. The sto­ry goes like this: some­one some­where fig­ured out that some­thing in hemp low­ers intraoc­u­lar (eye) pres­sure. So, a series of … Con­tin­ue read­ing

Posted in Dr. Ben's Blog, Eye Health

Transitions Now Better Than Ever

Tran­si­tions lens­es are light-acti­­vat­ed lens­es that turn dark in bright light. This tech­nol­o­gy has been around for sev­er­al years, but now Tran­si­tions lens­es are avail­able for vir­tu­al­ly all walks of life, from avid out­doors peo­ple to those who spend most of the day inside. Tran­si­tions lens­es pro­tect from UV radi­a­tion, as well as pro­vide a com­fort­able light lev­el … Con­tin­ue read­ing

Posted in Dr. Ben's Blog, Eye Health, News

When Time’s a Factor

The advent of Spec­tral Domain Opti­cal Coher­ence Tomog­ra­phy, or SD-OCT, has giv­en us the abil­i­ty to per­form in vivo ( or “in the body”) his­tol­ogy of the tis­sues of the human eye with a res­o­lu­tion down to just a few microns — a tremen­dous feat that has led to key devel­op­ments in the under­stand­ing of cer­tain ocu­lar dis­eases. This case … Con­tin­ue read­ing

Posted in Dr. Ben's Blog, Eye Health

More than Seeing Clearly

Most peo­ple know hyper­ten­sion, or high blood pres­sure, as the “silent killer.” It can build for decades with lit­tle to no symp­toms and can cause irre­versible dam­age and even death if left untreat­ed. How­ev­er, most peo­ple do not think of glau­co­ma as the “silent blind­er,” but it can build for decades and cause irre­versible dam­age … Con­tin­ue read­ing

Posted in Dr. Ben's Blog, Eye Health

The Enigmatic “Dry Eye”

Dry Eye Syn­drome has made its way to the fore­front of chron­ic eye dis­ease in the past few years (thanks in part to new eti­o­log­i­cal dis­cov­er­ies yield­ing nov­el treat­ment strate­gies — and the ever-aging pop­u­la­tion). How­ev­er, I have very few patients actu­al­ly com­plain of their eyes feel­ing “dry”. Most patients with dry eyes will com­plain of excess tear­ing, … Con­tin­ue read­ing

Posted in Dr. Ben's Blog, Eye Health