Eye Doctor Answers Eye Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED

I'm ophthalmologist Ashley Brissette let's answer some questions from Twitter this is I support [Music] Stephen Murphy asks how does LASIK eye surgery even work like what how does that just let you see well I'll tell you how it works I perform Lasik and I even had Lasik done on myself what Lasik does is it helps to remove microscopic layers of tissue on the surface of the cornea to better direct the light as it enters the eye so that it's focused in your retina the biggest risk is risk of infection although it's quite rare less than one in one thousand people would ever develop an infection at jjd gmn asks what do eyeballs feel like I mean the closest thing I can think that it feels like is a grape if you peel back a layer here you can see how delicate this tissue is so if you were going to squeeze an eye it would kind of have the same squishy consistency of a grape it's filled with a jelly which is called the vitreous and then the tissue layers of the eye are really really thin almost like this thin outer layer of the grape when we're learning how to do surgery sometimes we practice certain techniques on things like grapes at Junior Barnaby asks how to ophthalmologists know babies need glasses one way we can tell that babies need glasses is their eyes are crossing turning in or turning out another reason we can tell that babies can't see or might need glasses is if they're rubbing their eyes a lot sometimes babies rub their eyes a tongue because they're trying to stimulate Vision another reason is if babies are tilting their heads or if they're not fixating on objects usually by about three months babies should be able to see a toy or an object and kind of fixate on it and follow it if you move it around at Mark's Fisher asks what is the anatomical purpose of eyelashes eyelashes actually exist to help trap all the dust pollution bacteria allergens that exist in the environment so they don't hit the surface of the eye it's actually proven that eyelashes should be a specific length if your eyelashes are too long it's trapping too much of that in the environment and it can sit there and cause irritation on the eyes that's why it's so important to be washing over your closed eyelids every morning and evening to remove all that's been trapped in the eyelids and lashes at trans Regina L asks my right eye twitches is this anxiety or nervousness twitching is what's called myokymia eyelid switch for a number of reasons the most common is because of lack of sleep to too much caffeine or stress the muscles that are around the eye are very delicate and very sensitive to stressors at our dab Dao asks what are the dangers of wearing contact lenses while sleeping I always sleep with contacts on I don't see any side effects so far I have seen terrible damage to vision from people that sleep in their contact lenses our eyes get their oxygen from the environment and when you wear your contact lenses for too long you deprive the eyes of oxygen and that can leave you really prone to developing an infection and you can develop what's called a keratitis which is an infection on the cornea which is the surface layer of your eye can lead to scarring and permanent damage to your vision at Kevin Clark NWS why does eyesight deteriorate with age eyesight deteriorates with age mostly due to cataract it happens to all of us as we get older the Cataract is the clouding of the lens which is on the inside of the eye this gets more yellow big and thick as we grow up and that changes the prescription and also causes the vision to be blurry cataract is actually the world's leading cause of blindness but it's reversible with the surgery it's actually the most commonly performed surgery around the world I go inside the eye remove the cloudy Cataract and then put a new lens implant in its place that has your prescription in it it's an artificial lens but it's really well tolerated it's biocompatible and can help to restore Vision add keelnut wants to know what does 2020 vision mean 2020 Vision refers to how we measure your vision on a vision chart so most vision charts are set for 20 feet away if you can see the 2020 line that means that at 20 feet away from the eye chart you can read that line and we refer to that as normal or perfect vision about 35 percent of the population can only see that 2020 line without glasses or contact lenses so say if you had 20 50 Vision which would be this line here what that refers to is that what you would be able to see at 20 feet being this line here someone with perfect vision would be able to see at 50 feet away some people can even have better than perfect vision so we would refer to that as 2015 Vision if you were standing at 20 feet from the eye chart the person with normal vision would only be able to see what you see if they stood closer at 15 feet to the eye chart no Amano Thotties asks what does legally blind even mean like can you be illegally blind like can you get arrested for being blind so legally blind refers to a vision that is 2200 or Worse 2200 is this Big E on the chart if you're standing 20 feet away from the vision chart this is the only letter that you can read while somebody with perfect vision would be able to stand 200 feet away and also be able to read this e this would be vision of 2200. at null z27s do carrots actually improve your eyesight or have my parents been lying to me my whole life carrots actually improve your eyesight they have beta-carotene which is an important part of the vitamin A pathway there's actually big studies that we've done that look at nutrients and how they affect your vision the main nutrients that are recommended are vitamin A vitamin C vitamin E lutein and zeaxanthine these vitamins that are recommended are really important in the metabolic pathway of the cells that are in your retina which is that Vision sensory organ of the inside of the eye at access wants to know how do people know they're colorblind you might know it's not right because you'll start to sense that there aren't as many differences in colors most people who are colorblind it's not that they can't see color it's that colors are much more muted we can actually test it though these are what are called ishihara color plates so if you're colorblind you might not see this red number six in the sea of green similar to this one you might not be able to see the green s in the sea of red the most rare form of color blindness is blue color blindness so you might not be able to see the ton here in the sea of blue at Fair b14 wants to know seriously though where do eye floaters come from eye floaters are a natural part of the eyes Anatomy your eye is filled with a jelly it's called the vitreous this jelly starts to liquefy as we grow up when it liquefies you get clumps of cells and collagen which are in this jelly that Clump together and then cast a shadow on the retina so the floater that you're seeing moving around is just kind of a clump of cells in this now liquefied vitreous jelly casting a shadow in the back of your eye at Miss Claire 18 asks where do these tears come from tear years come from the lacrimal glands it's a gland that is in the upper outer corner of your eyelid the purpose of Tears is to help keep your eyes lubricated our eyes need to be lubricated for us to see clearly through that's why people that have dry eye feel like their vision is blurry and their eyes feel really uncomfortable at Meg stand asks I hate having to get my pupils dilated at the eye doctor what is the purpose of that other than giving me a migraine the reason we need to dilate your eyes is to take a look inside the back of your eye as you can tell the pupil it's really hard to see through it if it's small so by using the chemicals phenylephrine and tropicamide they help to dilate that Iris muscle so that I can actually see into the back of your eye that's why it's so uncomfortable when you leave the office your pupils are really dilated so much light is getting through the way that I can see in the back of your eye is by using a light on a microscope device such as this which can then magnify the view into the back of the eye we can tell a lot about your total body health so I can learn if you have high blood pressure if you have diabetes even Sometimes some autoimmune conditions this is showing a normal eye this is the retina which is like the back wall paper lining layer of the eye these are all the blood vessels which look really normal and healthy here is the nerve that's the cable that connects the eye to the brain that sends the visual signals to your brain in contrast this is actually a photo of an eye with diabetes there's some bleeding spots the blood vessels look what we call tortuous which means that they're a little bit twisted and all of these yellow deposits here are swelling or what we refer to as exudates as you can imagine all of this here can actually cause damage to the vision at sea party 25 wants to know what's the difference between an ophthalmologist an optometrist and an optician so an ophthalmologist goes to medical school they perform any medical procedures and they do surgery on eyes as well such as Lasik cataract surgery glaucoma surgery optometrists go to Optometry schools so they do General Eye Care glasses prescriptions and contact lenses prescriptions and an optician is someone who makes the glasses that Serena males as our eyelash extension safe so my answer is sometimes if you have the Lash extensions on and they're too long it's keeping too much of the bacteria and dust and pollution that gets trapped in them that just leads to bacterial overgrowth and eventually infections I also see a lot of damage that people get from the chemicals that are used in terms of gluing them onto your natural lashes and sometimes I've seen People's Natural lashes fall out because of an issue with an allergy to the glue the lashes can grow back so if your eyelashes fall out it takes about two months for them to come back if you're really going to play around with beauty trends only do it for a special occasion and then give your eyes a break at Liam Paws underscore FFXIV wants to know what's the difference between near and farsighted nearsighted is when you can see up close but it's really difficult to see far away that's actually the most common prescription error that most people have farsighted is when you're able to see somewhat far away but really difficult seeing up close at a Lexus k97s question for optometrists out there why do I see shapes and colors when I rub my eyes what actually is that the eyes filled with a jelly and when you press on the eye the jelly then presses on the retina and it stimulates it similar to like if light entered the eye to stimulate it this is where those rods and cones those photoreceptors are so it's why it's important not to be rubbing your eyes because you're kind of just squishing your eyeball at dodgson is here as I've never understood how marijuana can be an effective treatment for glaucoma like how is Extreme paranoia supposed to help your eyes marijuana is not a recommended treatment for glaucoma yes marijuana can have a very small very temporary effect of lowering your eye pressures we know that high eye pressure is a risk factor for glaucoma but marijuana only lowers it for a really short period of time and not enough that would actually be of any benefit at Yash archive wants to know how did the eye test work I mean they do so many seemingly random things the first thing that we test when you come for an eye exam is the vision so they'll flip back and forth between the different prescriptions to see what prescription do you actually need what these lenses do is they help to focus the light so that it lands right on the back of the eye so that it brings everything into Focus for you then we test your eye pressure that's that puff of air test that everybody hates having done when the air puff test hits the front of the eye it's actually measuring how much it decompresses the front of the eye and the rebound and that gives us a general sense of the pressure on the inside of the eye we know that high pressure in the eye can lead to damage in the nerve the nerve is the cable that connects your eye to your brain and that's what gets damaged in glaucoma the last thing that we're going to do is look at your eyes underneath a microscope which is called a slit lamp it's this big machine you're going to put your chin on the chin rest so we can actually look inside the back of your eye if the nerve is getting bigger that's a sign of glaucoma damage a phenomenal underscore Nissa asks is the blue light filter actually good for eyes there is no evidence that using the blue light blockers helped with eye strain with computer use it was a great marketing tool but a big research study came out that showed no benefit for eye strain using the blue light blockers most of the eye strain occurs because of glare so you can get an anti-glare cover for your screen and that can help add D Palmer 216 as what kind of drugs is Zuckerberg on that his pupils are always dilated I never noticed that and I don't want to get on his bad side but there's a few reasons why your pupils dilate one is if you're in dim lighting and that's to allow more light to enter the eye another reason pupils can dilate is from some medications or some drugs stimulants such as cocaine MDMA sometimes even some antidepressants it's a side effect of the medications lastly your pupils sometimes dilate if you're in love or if you're aroused so if you see somebody that you love the pupils dilate and that's because you get a release of dopamine and the dopamine leads to the dilation at just simply Sally asks what happens when you look directly at the Sun so you can sunburn your eyes UV damage can occur on the eyeballs it can cause something called photokeratitis which is a sun damage to the surface of the eye but it can also cause damage to the retina in the back of the eye it damages those fine photoreceptors which are used for sensing Vision if you look at the Sun for say longer than 90 seconds that can cause this damage flavor of Gabby asks did you know that we actually see things upside down but the sensors that connect our brain and our eyes flip the image yes I did know that and not only does it flip the image from up and down it also flips it from left to right thinking of the eye like a camera it actually travels through the entirety of the eye the first thing it hits is the cornea which is the a clear cover layer of the eye then it travels through the lens which helps to direct the light rays into the macula which is the back part of your retina this nerve here is made up of 1.3 million little axons which are connections that allow the image to be distributed through the brain all the way into the back of your brain called the occipital region so by having lots of different input lots of different connections from our visual world that helps to provide depth of field depth of focus and gives you really great clarity for your vision next question is there a thing where your eyes can change color my eyes have never been this light before your eye color is pretty set by about one year of age your eyes can appear to look different colors it usually has to do with the amount of lighting colors that you're wearing the reason why people have different eye colors is the amount of melanin or pigment in their Iris which is the colored part of the eye so people with blue eyes have less melanin and people with brown eyes have more melanin at only one lvm asks how do people become cross-eyed we call this strabismus strabismus means a turning in or a turning out of the eyes you have to be able to see clearly for your brain to use the two eyes together and if one of the eyes isn't seeing very well then the brain starts to ignore one of the eyes ignores those muscles and the eye starts to drift or turn so those are all the questions for today those were some really great questions my biggest pieces of advice make sure you're washing over your closed eyelids eating well and just stay healthy thanks for watching I support

Channel: WIRED

Views: 640,917

Keywords: cataracts, eye doctor, eye health, glaucoma, healthy eyes, healthy vision, how does lasik work, how to become an ophthalologist, how to have healthy eyes, innovation, lasik, oculoplastics, ophthalmologist, ophthalmology, ophthalmology explained, ophthalmology match, ophthalmology residency, optometrist, science & technology, should i become an ophthalmologist, surgical ophthalmology, take care of your eyes, vision health, wired, wired tech support

Id: LwO086rYjEQ

Length: 13min 30sec (810 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 22 2023