SkyVision Blog Posts Now On New SkyVision Website

SkyVision now has a new website at the same address www.skyvisioncenters.com.

SkyVision blog posts are now posted directly to the blog on our website!

Enjoy our new website and when you are there, Like our Facebook page too!

More Dry Eyes in the House/NY Times Article

Dry-eye syndrome is growing, and doctors blame smartphones, office buildings.

Click on the link below to the interesting article from the New York Times.

Why Are We Having So Many With Dry Eye?

Smart Glasses by OrCam Can Help Those Who Can Not See

The new Israeli start-up company, OrCam, has recently created a device that is getting a lot of buzz in the optical world as a unique and amazing way for visually impaired people to “read” the world around them.  The camera based system is designed to be of help for replacement or helper of eyesight and for the wearer to be able to read "easily" and move freely.  

While many other devices and apps have come out in the past which claim to help visually impaired people “see” better or translate any text that they encounter, most of them have had very limiting capabilities and didn’t quite work in the ways that they were promised. 

With the OrCam smart glasses, you go right to reading the different objects that are in front of you!  A small camera is attached to the arm of the glasses frames with a thin cable. This cable supports a portable computer than has been designed to be small enough to fit right into the wearer’s pocket. The camera system works by clipping it onto your glasses, then the wearer is able to point out different words or objects in their surroundings and the bone-conduction speaker on the device will read it aloud for them.  OrCam smart glasses are also designed to recognize and speak “text in the wild.” This means anything from a magazine or newspaper that a wearer picks up, to a diverse object in the area such as landmarks, traffic lights and the faces of your friends.

“What is remarkable is that the device learns from the user to recognize a new product,” said Tomaso Poggio, a computer scientist at M.I.T. who is a computer vision expert. “This is more complex than it appears, and, as an expert, I find it really impressive.”

The price range of about $2500 is quite attractive and makes owning the system reasonable for someone who wants the gift of sight.  The price is about the same as an average pair of hearing aids for an older adult.   

In the United States, 21.2 million people over the age of 18 have some kind of visual impairment, including age-related conditions, diseases and birth defects, according to the 2011 National Health Survey by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics. OrCam said that worldwide there were 342 million adults with significant visual impairment, and that 52 million of them had middle-class incomes.

Look for more exciting updates regarding this new technology.

excerpts taken from recent article by John Markoff/NYTimes and an EyeCare20/20 blog

Dry Eye Disease Awareness Month

Learn more about Dry Eye

Skyvision Center is an accredited Tear Lab Dry Eye Center

   

In Partnership with the 

Sjögren's Syndrome Foundation 

  

TearLab®  is proud

to bring awareness to this often

undiagnosed disease.

Please visit 

www.tearlab.com

and

www.sjogrens.org

for more information.

For every LIKE in the month of July on allaboutdryeye's Facebook page, and Sjogren's Facebook Page, TearLab Corporation will donate $1 to the Sjogrens Syndrome Foundation.  Please participate and do your part to help raise awareness for this disease.

Restasis and Dry Eye

It's hard to believe, but if our math is correct the magnificent Dry Eye medicine Restasis is going to be 10 years old this year! It's hard to imagine any more how terribly difficult it was to treat severe forms of dry eye before the introduction of Restasis.

Dry Eye takes many forms, has multiple causes, and produces many different types of symptoms. Restasis has turned out to be a brilliant treatment for the inflammation that underlies a common cause of Dry Eye, not producing enough tears. Whether the inflammation comes first and causes the dryness or vice versa, a vicious cycle begins where one cause the other. Chronic Restasis use unwinds this vicious cycle and revs up a virtuous cycle.

Dr. White at the Dr. Whiteboard - Video

At Skyvision Centers we have taught our Cleveland patients for years that if Restasis is effective one must continue to take it in order to feel well. Thankfully, once it starts to work Restasis is a really easy eyedrop to use. Deciding what type of Dry Eye you might have and then determining what the best treatment will be is one of our strengths!

As an accredited Dry Eye center, SkyVision will help you to determine the best treatment for your Dry Eye symptoms.

Patagonia's Plant-Based Wetsuit

Interesting new technology to keep your "eye" on  . . .

The technology behind the eco-pioneering company's prolific green innovation

by Hans Aschim in Tech on 20 June 2013

With a committed mission to reducing their environmental impact, Patagonia has partnered with eco-friendly biomaterial firm Yulex to create the first plant-based wetsuit material. "Performance, natural rubber has not been used in wetsuits, ever," says Patagonia's director of surf projects Jason McCaffrey, adding, "the manufacturing process is almost entirely green." The natural rubber is made from organic matter derived from the little-known Guayule plant, which grows in dry, arid environments and produces terpene resins that act as a natural pesticide. Requiring few resources and rendered inedible, a rise in the plant's demand will not adversely impact food equity, as can be the case with some biofuels.

Once the Guayule plant has been harvested, it is mixed with water as a solvent for extracting rubber. "Traditional rubber plants and synthetic rubber production both use environmentally harmful solvents and create a vast amount of non-biodegradable byproducts," McCaffrey says. Yulex's Guayule-based rubber production creates only organic byproducts and uses only water solvents. As the plant pulp is mixed with water, the sap rises which becomes the rubber and, eventually, your new wetsuit. "The suits themselves are also biodegradable," McCaffrey says.

Patagonia has spent several years developing the technology, but they don't plan on keeping it to themselves for long. "There's no point—from an ecological perspective—to develop this technology and be the only ones in the industry using it," McCaffrey explains. Patagonia will share the Yulex wetsuit technology with all of the major wetsuit manufacturers in hopes of having the greatest environmental impact. "Eventually we want every suit from every company to be Yulex, but that's a ways off," says McCaffrey. Educating producers and customers about the traditional wetsuit production process is the first step in changing people's minds, McCaffrey says. For Yulex, their collaboration with Patagonia is just the beginning. "Yulex’s Guayule-based biomaterials can replace petroleum-based synthetic materials," says Yulex CEO Jeff Martin of his company's plan to expand into various consumer and industrial products—further illustrating the far-reaching possibilities for the new technology.

In addition to being far more sustainable than traditional wetsuits, the plant-based suits perform the same in terms of warmth, flexibility and durability as their petroleum and limestone-based counterparts. "We've given wetsuits to a few friends to test without telling them it's made from plants," McCaffrey says, "the only difference they notice is the smell." The Guayule-based suits naturally have a eucalyptus-like scent, a welcome change from traditional neoprene's peculiar chemical smell.

Keep an eye on Patagonia's wetsuit line as they integrate a Yulex blend into select suits this fall. Custom-made full-blend Yulex suits will be available from select flagship Patagonia surf stores in the coming months. In the meantime, enjoy today's holiday as International Surfing Day.

How Do We Treat Astigmatism?

Astigmatism is an optical or focusing problem caused when one or more parts of the eye are shaped like a football instead of a basketball. This causes a situation where TWO points of focus are created inside the eye, and sometimes neither of those points is focused right on the retina (the part of the eye that "sees"). This makes your vision blurry.

We can correct astigmatism in several different ways. Let's introduce them today. Of course, the easiest way to correct astigmatism is to wear a pair of glasses. Your prescription will not only correct for SPHERE (nearsightedness or farsightedness), but also for CYLINDER (your astigmatism). For all but the most extreme cases of astigmatism a pair of glasses might be all you need.

There are two types on contact lenes that will correct your astigmatism, both soft (toric) and hard (gas permeable). Soft Toric contact lenses from companies like Bausch & Lomb and Acuvue are much better now than in years past, giving good vision and lots of comfort. Many people still see better with glasses but strongly prefer their contacts because of the freedom they have with the contacts.

We can also treat your astigmatism with Laser Vision Corrections like LASIK where we literally put the correction right on the surface of your eye. There are also new implants called Toric IOL's that can correct astigmatism if you have cataracts. We'll talk about these two things in detail another time.

So if you live in the Cleveland area and you have ASTIGMATISM, call Skyvision Centers in Westlake so that you can see how you can See What's Next(R)!!