Curious about Hyperopia and its meaning? Here are your answers.

Refractive errors like hyperopia can add meaning to our life as it blurs away our vision. Among other vision problems, it makes us realise the importance of our eyes and their strength. With that, let us tell you what hyperopia means, what causes hyperopia how can it be corrected and the ultimate hyperopia cure. Keep reading the article to unravel the condition called hyperopia. Don't confuse yourself. Other names people use for them are hypermetropia or farsightedness.

What is hyperopia and what causes it?

Your eyes work just like a camera. When light passes through a transparent film, which we call the cornea, it then refracts with the help of the lens and focuses at the back of the eye on the retina. It is the retina that sends signals to the brain through our optic nerves and shows us the image in front of us.

So, what is the hyperopia definition in short? When the light after refraction is not focused on the retina but far behind it, we call it hyperopia. Due to this, you might be able to see objects at a distance with ease but objects that are close by look blurry.

Hyperopia causes the person to squint their eyes using their muscles and lenses to focus on the thing they wish to see. This reason makes it evident how hyperopia in children is usually overcome due to their strong eye muscles and lenses. But in adults, squinting may lead to pain and headaches.

But what is hyperopia caused by? Experts say that it happens because of three primary reasons:

• The eyeball is too short, which means the distance between the retina and the lens is small. The refracted rays focus at a position as if it were a normal eye but the image forms beyond the retina instead.
• The cornea (the curved transparent film) at the front, is too flat. And thus unable to direct light correctly.
• The lens is misplaced or in a wrong shape to refract properly. This condition is usually a result of an injury.

In most cases, the reason is that the eyeball is too short. Now you might wonder the cause for that. Is hyperopia genetic? Well, yes, the genes you inherit from your parents can be the reason.

The most common type of hyperopia is latent hyperopia. It is when your eye muscles are capable of adjusting and can help you see close up things without blurring the image. Doing this for long may result in a lot of pain. Also, as the years go by, the muscles get stiff and cannot help you overcome your refractive error. At this stage, the hyperopia is known as manifest hyperopia.

The hyperopia most children have is termed as mild hyperopia by many. It can be defined as farsightedness that needs about +2.00 D of correction.

Hyperopia signs and symptoms

As must be clear by now, the hyperopia prognosis includes a blurry vision and inability to see close up objects properly. But you may also face.

• Eye strains and teary eyes due to overusing your eye muscles to help you focus.
• Neck aches because the neck plays a good role in helping you focus again and again while squinting to see things.
• Headaches due to so much squinting efforts and eye strains.

Most latent hyperopia symptoms are the same. In children, however, another sign i.e, the crossing of eyes can be observed.

Hyperopia Prevention

Now because hyperopia is mostly genetic, there are no remarkable ways to prevent it from happening. But in cases when it's not genetic and to slow it down from progressing, here are 5 things you can do.

Play more sports or workout to increase blood circulation to the brain. Doing this will ensure that more nutrients reach the eye cells and help your vision improve.

Practice Pranayama.

• Take sufficient breaks when working and follow the 20-20-20 rule. It suggests that you take a break from work every 20 minutes and look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. This way your eyes will get an opportunity to relax.
• Eat nourishing meals rich in vitamin A.
• Get yearly eye tests done.

Hyperopia Treatment

Myopia or presbyopia both can be corrected with lenses. This fact makes people ask that hyperopia can be corrected with what type of lens. The answer is the hyperopia convex lens. You can utilise it in the form of eyeglasses or contact lenses. For this, you’ll need a comprehensive eye test that will find the right hyperopia prescription that your glasses should have. About +2.00 D is for mild hyperopia and more for the Manifest kind.

If you need more than +2.00 D as the strength of the lenses for your vision correction, you may go for high-index lenses that are lightweight and more comfortable to wear than normal heavy lenses.

If eyeglasses are not something you admire, contact lenses might be your saviour. However, note that they are a little difficult to handle and need to be taken good care of and have to be used hygienically. Contact lenses also make you prone to infections like conjunctivitis because of which maintaining proper hygiene with them is even more important.

Another option is refractive surgery for hyperopia. It involves LASIK (laser-assisted in-situ keratomileusis). The procedure helps to change the curvature of the cornea by burning some parts of it to reshape. The doctor does it so that the light rays refract the right way and make sure that they focus on the retina to form the image. The procedure happens under 30 minutes of anaesthesia during which the specialist makes a cut, raises a layer of tissue and then burns away the parts that make the cornea flat. He then replaces the tissue to finish the procedure. This surgery has been quite popular in the UK since the 1990s.

As must be obvious, LASIK is not as safe as eyeglasses. It can lead to infections or dry eyes and you might experience halos or starbursts when around lights. Sometimes it may also lead to an under-correction or overcorrection of your vision which is quite problematic.

Another method of treatment is artificial lens replacement, which is usually done in the cases of cataracts.

• Hyperopia exercises can also be used to improve the situation. One such exercise is the Bates method. It involves palming and sunning.
• Palming here means closing your eyes and keeping your palm over them for a few minutes. This exercise can be repeated a few times as it is quite relaxing. Sunning refers to letting your eyes absorb the sun’s energy by keeping them closed and in the direction of sunlight.

This exercise can also be seen as a hyperopia treatment in Ayurveda which believes in the miraculous power of sunlight for our body.

Make sure if you do perform sunning, it should be in a controlled manner to avoid the sun's harmful UV rays from affecting your skin and eyes.

Myopia vs Hyperopia

Be it myopia or hyperopia both are refractive errors of the eye. To compare and contrast myopia and hyperopia all you need to know is that they are totally opposite.

People with myopia can see nearby objects pretty clearly but not distant objects. Reason? Big elongated eyeballs. After refraction, the light rays aren’t able to reach the retina so that it can send the signals to the brain. The rays fall short and focus somewhere in between the eyeball. But in hyperopia the eyeball is short, and thus the refracted rays focus beyond the retina because of which it becomes difficult to see distant objects.

Hyperopia is mostly genetic, but myopia can develop through childhood, adolescence and adulthood. In hyperopia, the child’s eyeball starts growing as he ages and the refractive error starts resolving. But, myopia keeps on developing until adulthood.

Here’s a question that many people have been asking. “Is myopia more common than hyperopia?” The answer is yes. And that can be because humans use their vision to focus on near objects more, and thus it wears out with every use.

Both myopia and hyperopia corrective lenses have opposite strengths as well. While hyperopia needs a vision corrective power in plus (eg. +2.00 D for mild hyperopia), myopia corrective lenses are usually found in minus power.

Another question that many people have is whether a person can suffer from myopia in one eye and hyperopia in the other. Well, yes. Specialists call this condition with the term antimetropia. The symptoms include feeling unequal blur in the two eyes leading to hazy vision, poor depth perception, headaches and nausea.

Eyeglasses are not a great way to treat this condition as it may lead to objects looking smaller or larger from one eye than the other. This particular condition has a different name - aniseikonia. It can also lead to much more headaches, dizziness, and problems with perception of depth.

Myopia hyperopia and astigmatism explained

Now, you know what myopia and hyperopia mean. While myopia is the inability to see distant objects clearly, hyperopia means the inability to see the near objects. Astigmatism, on the other hand, is when there is a defect in the shape of the cornea because of which light doesn’t get refracted properly. That means part of the light doesn’t reach the retina causing a clear image with some blurred parts visible. Also, Astigmatism can happen along with myopia and hyperopia.

Can you have both hyperopia and presbyopia at the same time?

This question is frequently asked by people. The answer is yes. Not only can you have hyperopia and presbyopia at the same time, but you can also have myopia and presbyopia at the same time. The reason is that presbyopia is a result of growing old. It has nothing to do with the refractive error your eyes already have.

To understand this, let’s first define presbyopia for you. It is a condition in which the eyes aren’t able to see the objects up close clearly. The reason behind is that the natural lens gets old with time. The muscles lose their elasticity and it becomes difficult for the eyes to focus on stuff like smartphones, telephone numbers, and menu cards, that are right in front of the eye.

For this, presbyopic patients are usually recommended bifocals or varifocal glasses. Otherwise known as progressive glasses, varifocals help people see both near and far off things clearly while improving intermediate vision as well.

Now we are sure this question might have made you curious about yet another thing. Are presbyopia and hyperopia the same? Well, no. Hyperopia is usually caused genetically. A child can also have it. Presbyopia, on the other hand, is a result of getting older. Because the natural lens loses its capability and it's difficult to move eye muscles and focus.

You might have guessed the answer to the main query by yourself now. If a person has hyperopia since he was a child and then his natural eye lens becomes stiff as he grows old, we say the person has both hyperopia and presbyopia. And this can also be hyperopia with presbyopia of both eyes.

Because presbyopia increases with age, Hyperopia and presbyopia progression grows as your age increases. Especially if your eyeballs don’t increase their size when you grow. Because that is the very way nature treats hyperopia.

Now that you know the meaning of hyperopia, other conditions related to it, its symptoms and methods of prevention and treatment, it's time you take action. It’s time you protect your eyes from further harm that can happen from UV light from the sun and blue light from digital devices.

That’s the reason why Specscart brings to you polarised sunglasses with UV400 lenses made with advanced technology at nominal rates. We also bring to you X-blue lenses that block all the damaging blue light from screens and keep your eyes healthy. We do so to help you keep yourself away from cataracts, conjunctivitis, and sight-threatening diseases like macular degeneration.

Moreover, all glasses bought at Specscart offers free premium anti-glare lenses with anti-UV, and scratch-resistant coatings for free. That’s because we believe they are essential for each one of us.

We suggest you visit our store in Bury or Walkden and get a free eye test done. If that’s not possible, know that we also offer eye tests at homes and workplaces. Once you get an eye test done, you don’t have to worry about your finances much. The pricing of frames at Specscart starts with a mere £25 and you can also get your glasses reglazed if you want. Our only goal is to get you the best of vision with the best of style without pinching your pockets.

Get going, call us for a comprehensive eye test right away.