Posted in Useful Information

Protecting your eyes from harmful light

Posted on by One Vision
Cartoon girl has sunglasses on while the bright sun shines around her. She has a sad face.
Cartoon girl has sunglasses on while the bright sun shines around her. She has a sad face.
For everyone, continued exposure to light over time could lead to damaged retinal cells.

So everyone needs to wear protection from blue light, UVA and UVB. Even on cloudy days these rays are still going strong.

This can cause more damage to my already vulnerable macular and cone and rod cells.

Blue light is emitted from the sun, its all around us, including fluorescent and LED lighting and flat-screen televisions.
Most notably, the display screens of computers, electronic notebooks, smartphones and other digital devices emit significant amounts of blue light.
So, if you protect your eyes from all these elements as much as you can by less screen time, rests between working on a computer and wearing sunglasses with 100% UV protection and ideally a blue light blocker too. It will go some way to save your sight and mine too.
There are blue light blocking apps for your devices.
Pop one your phone to save your eyes from damage or eye strain. I have one from the Google play store. There are many eye conditions that you can be diagnosed with when older due to light damage. Even if your eyes are healthy now.

So, get your sunglasses on and a blue light filter.

Don’t take your eyesight for granted.

I did. Don’t now ☺

Phone screen showing the Google play screen for the blue light app
Posted in No category yet

World Sight Day 2019

Posted on by One Vision
Today is World Sight Day ☺

It is an annual day of awareness held on the second Thursday of October, to focus global attention on blindness and vision impairment.

Spread awareness towards find a cure.

Graphic with sunrise obscured by a grey disc with them words worldwide sight day
Posted in Before Diagnosis, The Medical Stuff

We are family – My Family and eye Genetics

Posted on by One Vision
One of the questions that I have been asked is will my family have this condition.

This is the hardest fact to face. More than me having this disease.

My parents didn’t have a macular condition. It would have presented itself at somepoint. But they must have been carriers of the disease.

So, they were each a carrier of one mutated gene and one normal gene ie carriers of the disease. This wouldn’t affect them personally.

So when they passed a copy to me, because you inherit a copy from each parent, I got the 2 bad copies from each parent.

I\’ve seen lots of posts on the facebook groups I\’ve joined and there are parents blaming themselves for their children having this condition.

Well if I may speak for someone in this position, there is no way I could ever blame my Mum and Dad for this. Nobody is to blame. As far as I’m concerned it’s just one of those things.

They never knew. I’m glad they didn’t and both of them passed on before I found out. So I didn’t have to tell them. Hopefully this condition in my family, and it is there, just dormant as carriers, as I’m not aware of any others, may die out with me.

Firstly, my sister (we both have the same parents) will have any of these 3 outcomes.

°Have macular dystrophy.

°Be a carrier.

°Be completely fine.

My sister looks to be OK though as my consultant said she’d would be most likely to be presenting symptoms now.

I’m going to ask about genetic testing next time I see my eye consultant.

My son. This is hard for me to face. Will be a carrier as he will have a mutated gene from me as I don’t have a normal eye gene to give him.

So if his paternal gene was a normal one he stays a carrier. If it was mutated he could have what I have.

This is how it is inherited.

You can have generations of carriers with no problems and then it just takes 2 of the same faulty genes, to be passed down and then bingo, the person has it from the day of conception.

This is why the condition is rare. 95% of people aren\’t carriers. Only 5% are. So, as you can see the genetics of this mean it’s quite hard for the disease to actually appear.