Common Signs of Keratoconus
Vision changes — blurry, cloudy, or other vision issues — can stop you in your tracks. This month, learn the signs of keratoconus, an eye disorder that can impair your vision if left untreated.
Understanding the Parts of the Eye That Affect Your Vision
Vision is one of the many miracles in the design of your body. It’s a combination of your eyes and brain working together — your eyes have millions of tiny receptors that send impulses to your brain, and your brain reads and interprets them to allow you to see the world around you. It’s easy to take your vision for granted, but it’s important not to.
Just as with the health of the rest of your body, it’s critical to ensure your eye health. Dr. Stephen Khachikian — a cornea, cataract, and refractive specialist in Rapid City, South Dakota — provides expert advanced eye care, including treatment for eye diseases and eye injuries as well as a variety of vision correction surgeries.
Familiarizing yourself with the parts of your eye helps you to understand how your vision works. These are the parts of the eye that have an impact on your vision.
Cornea
Your cornea is the clear protective covering on the visible part of your eye. It helps stop dirt and debris from going deep into your eye and helps focus the light passing into your eye. Due to disease or damage, cornea problems can stop or blur the light coming into your eye, harming your vision.
Iris
Your iris is the colored part of your eye. It regulates how much light enters your eye and helps you see with clarity.
Pupil
Muscles in your iris control your pupil, the dark center of your eye. The pupil expands and contracts automatically in response to light conditions to allow the right amount of light to enter your eye and flow to the retina.
Lens
The lens in your eye is just behind your pupil. It relays the light from your pupil to your retina at the back of the eye and helps focus the light coming in.
Retina
Your retina sits at the back of your eye. Once light reaches it from the lens, the retina transforms that light into electrical impulses that signal your brain. Your brain makes sense of what you’re seeing. Your retina has cells that help you distinguish color and cells that help you see when there’s low light.
Retinal diseases affect your vision. If you have diabetes, you’re more at risk for diabetic retinopathy, a disease in which the blood vessels in your eye begin to leak, impairing your vision. A retinal tear can lead to a retinal detachment, which can cause partial or complete vision loss.
Macula
Your macula helps you distinguish between colors and see all of the details in everyday objects in your environment. Your macula controls your central vision, what you see when you look straight ahead. Macular degeneration causes loss of central vision, a condition more likely to occur as part of the aging process.
Optic nerve
Your optic nerve sits behind your retina. It’s the passage that carries impulses from your retina to your brain. Your brain transforms the signals into understandable images.
When you need advanced eye care to protect or correct your vision, call Dr. Stephen Khachikian or book an appointment online today.
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