A survey by YouGov commissioned by Specsavers showed that 70 percent of adults between 40 and 59 put off getting their sight checked by more than a month when having trouble with their vision.<\/p>\n
Longer delays weren’t uncommon with almost half waiting for more than six months to get help, and one in five stalling for more than two years.<\/p>\n
Chair of Ophthalmology NZ Dr Sonya Bennett told RNZ it was “probably human nature” to avoid confronting health problems.<\/p>\n
“It’s not uncommon for us to hear the story that they’ve put off getting seen until they’ve got quite significant issues.”<\/p>\n
She said people would find ways to cope before seeing an optometrist “because they actually don’t want to wear glasses” out of vanity or perceived impracticality.<\/p>\n
And YouGov’s survey found one in five avoided wearing glasses despite needing them because of social perception.<\/p>\n
It found half of respondents simply increased texts and display settings on their devices to cope – with a third simply missing out on certain activities because of their eyesight.<\/p>\n
Dr Bennett explained that “presbyopia” was the most common age-related cause of eyesight loss, often setting in around middle age.<\/p>\n
“It gradually affects your ability to read at near [distance]. Distance vision is usually in most cases okay, but you just lose the ability to see things up close.<\/p>\n
“And that’s because what we call ‘accommodation’ – which is the ability to focus – reduces with ageing due to changes in the lens, inside the eye and changes in the muscle that moves the lens.”<\/p>\n
The survey found nine in 10 had never heard the medical term for this common condition.<\/p>\n
She recommended seeing an optometrist as the first port of call when struggling with eyesight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A survey by YouGov commissioned by Specsavers showed that 70 percent of adults between 40 and 59 put…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":598150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[138,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-598149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/598150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}