I’m 49 and My Eyesight Is Not Like It Was in My 30s, What Can I Do?

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I'm 49 and my eyesight is just not like it was in my 30s. What can I do? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutrition expert and fitness hall of famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. Karen from my Facebook community asks. I'm 49 and my eyesight is just not like it was in my 30s. What can I do? Hey, it's JJ and I want to know the answer to this too. So I've brought on Dr. Ronnie Bonick. She is board certified neuro optimal ophthalmologist and an associate professor at Mount Sinai in New York City. And when she's not out helping improve our vision, you can find her on the dance floor doing everything from salsa to classical Indian dance. Or off the beaten path exploring far off places like Rwanda or Namibia. All right, we will be right back with the answer. Stay with me. Hey, it's J.J. here. Now, let's be honest. The holidays are basically a financial ambush. Travel, hosting gifts, surprise holiday school, things. Suddenly you're wondering how December turned into a spending spree. If you want to keep your finances under control this holiday season, you need to be using Monarch. It's rated the Wall Street Journal's best budgeting app of 2025. Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean inter on your laptop or your phone. What really grabbed my attention is how fast those little holiday expenses pile up with Monarch. Seeing everything in one place makes it a lot harder to accidentally overspend. And honestly, I appreciate anything that keeps me from starting January with a money hangover. You'll love exploring the holiday spending category. Imagine how good it will feel to actually see what's happening before your credit card statement does that whole dramatic reveal thing. Monarch basically shows you exactly where the money is going in real time. And that level of clarity could change everything, right? Don't let financial opportunity slip through the cracks. Use the code virgin@monarch.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year@monarch.com with code Virgin.

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Well, first of all, I would like to say that you are not alone. Many people experience changes in their vision, particularly as they reach their 40s, myself included. I happen to be 49 as well, and I can tell you that my vision is not the same as it was when I was back in my 30s. So what are some of these changes that happen in the eyes as we get older, particularly beginning in our 40s? I tell my patients that there are three things that happen to most people and they're pretty much unavoidable. These things are natural, a natural part of the aging process in terms of our eyes. So these three things include presbyopia, which is the medical term for not being able to read very well, cataracts, which is an opacity of the lens inside the eye, and then finally wrinkles around the eye. So let me talk about each of these things and each of these conditions and things you can perhaps do to delay the onset. So again, we can't necessarily prevent it altogether, but perhaps we can do things to delay the onset of these natural aging changes in our eyes. So for presbyopia, there are a couple of simple hacks that you can do. So the first thing would be just to simply hold your reading material a little bit further away to make it easier to read. Most of us read at about 12 to 14 inches, but if you hold things a little further away at, let's say, 16 or 18 inches, that may be sufficient. Eventually, your armist won't be long enough. So there are other things you probably will end up needing to do as well. You can enlarge the font size on what you're reading. For example, if you're on a device or a computer, you can simply enlarge the font size. And then there are some great apps that I love to help you magnify what you're reading. So, for example, if you're in a restaurant and it's dim and it's really, really difficult to read the menu, you can use an app like Big Magnify or Glasses. These are free, downloadable apps that not only allow you to change the magnification, it can make you help you to enlarge things up to six to Eight times. But also it will also put a light on the reading material. So that also helps as well with increased illumination. And then the option that most people use for presbyopia is simply to get reading glasses. Now, there's a range of different types of reading glasses. You can get different strengths. You can get them over the counter. You may also want to get prescription glasses, reading glasses, or even bifocals to help you have that range of vision from distance to intermediate, to up close. The other option that I really like are multifocal contact lenses. Now, this is the option that I chose for myself. I do wear multifocal contacts. And it's basically like having a prescription progressive lens inside your eyes. So based on what you're looking at, you may be in focus for distance or the computer or up close. And this has to do with the way the lens is made and the different powers within that contact lens. It's pretty wonderful technology to be able to put progressive lenses inside a contact. Now, there's a couple of other options that you can discuss with your ophthalmologist, your eye doctor, about how to manage presbyopia. These may include monovision, which is where one eye is corrected for distance and, and the other eye is corrected for up close. And that works for many people. The upside is that you have a range of vision. The downside is that you lose some depth perception. So again, talk to your doctor about whether you'd be a candidate for monovision or not. And then finally, there are some surgical options for correcting presbyopia. Special types of implants that can be put into the eye called accommodating implants. But that is a surgery, and most of us would probably try to manage it without doing surgery and trying. One of the other options, I decided now, the other two things I had mentioned that happen to everyone as we get older, cataracts and wrinkles. So again, a cataract is an opacity inside the lens. It happens to all of us eventually. What I tell my patients is if you live long enough, yes, you will develop a cataract. But it happens to different people at different ages. So for some people, it may begin in their late 40s or early 50s. For others, it may not begin until they reach their 60s, 70s, even 80s. But eventually everyone will get cataracts at some point in their life. So how can you prevent against this? Well, there are plenty of studies to show that proper nutrition with plenty of antioxidants will help fight off cataracts, meaning delay the onset of cataracts. So a diet that's rich in fruits and vegetables that will give you the vitamin C, vitamin E, and vitamin A that you need are very important for prevention of cataract. Also, many studies have shown that UV light exposure is a risk for cataracts as well. So remember to protect your eyes against UV light. So either wear UV blocking glasses, UVA and UVB 100% blocking, or also the label may say UV 400, which is equivalent to UVA and UVB blocking. So we are sunglasses when you're outdoors, especially when it's a bright sunny day or if you're on the water and there's a lot of glare, or if you're skiing and there's a lot of glare, make sure to wear your your UV protection. You can also wear a wide brimmed hat that works very well as well. And then again going back to the nutrients that are really important. And the same really holds true for wrinkles, which all of us get at some point, usually in our 40s, and some people not until they reach their 50s. But for wrinkles around the eyes or bags under the eyes, it's really important again to have a proper diet that's rich in phytonutrients. Again, those vitamins that I talked about, vitamin C, A and E, are really important to get from fruits and vegetables. Also, hydration is really, really important to help prevent wrinkles as well.

This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com.

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