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Take This At Home Eye Test - If You Fail, See an Eye Doctor · See Better without Glasses by Dr. Scott Spector

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: There are five signs your eyes are changing, and one test I'll share at the end that tells you whether or not they already have.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: If you're over 50, I bet you recognize at least one of the five signs.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Most people recognize three, and they've been living with them for several years without mentioning it to anybody because everyone just thinks it means I'm getting older.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, I'm Dr.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Scott Specter.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm an eye surgeon with offices in Manhattan, Westchester, and Norwalk, Connecticut.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: These five signs are what people tell me about all the time.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Great news.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: There's something we can do to fix every one of them without having to wear glasses for the rest of your life.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: The test you could do at the end takes about 15 seconds and a sheet of white paper, and it finds the one thing on the list you can't feel happening.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: So let's dive in and count how many signs you recognize.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, reading glasses.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: This happens to everyone as they go older.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: The average age of people needing readers is 44.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Over the years, they get stronger and stronger until you have a pair in the kitchen, a pair at the bed, a pair in the car, and you are frantic if you can't find them.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, night driving.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: For years it didn't matter what time of the day you drove.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now if you're driving at night, the headlights coming toward you have spikes coming off them.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Not a glow around them, spikes.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Chances are you're blaming those new car headlights.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, driving in the rain again.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Once again, if you notice that driving in the rain is getting harder, that may be a problem.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's especially difficult at night.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's the worst set of conditions there is for a human eye.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Wet roads throwing reflections back up at you, oncoming lights, and lane markings that just disappear.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people have stopped driving in the rain because they're scared.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Number four, and this is very common, the computer offers a whole new set of challenges.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: You can see across the room relatively well.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: You can see your phone if you hold your glasses.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: The laptop or the monitor sits in the middle of your near and far vision.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: The middle distance, usually 18 to 26 inches, is what I call no man's lands, distance where nothing you own quite works.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: And number five, glare.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is most noticeable when you go from a dimly lit space into a brightly lit environment.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: For instance, you come out of a store into a parking lot and it takes you a couple of seconds to adjust.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Low winter light through the windshield and you're done.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: You're not squinting because it's bright, you're squinting because the light is getting scattered before it can even focus into your eye.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's the five.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: One of those five on its own isn't really significant.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Three of them together tells me something has changed enough that you've started working around it.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Take a moment and think about the changes that you have made.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: What have you started or stopped doing?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you move the lamp closer to the chair.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you have your spouse or your kids drive at night.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you pick a restaurant with better lighting.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: When you start buying the reading glasses in the three-pack, you know something is changing.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: The challenge is that it's easy to slowly rearrange your life around these small inconveniences and then forget to share this with your eye doctor.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've rearranged anything like this in the last two years, it's time to start paying closer attention.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: One thing, do me a favor, hit the subscribe if you want more of these.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: I do one a week.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the one you can't feel.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Before I give you that one, here's why you'd have missed it.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Your eyes don't age at the same rate.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: One is almost always a bit further along than the other.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And your brain doesn't show you two pictures, it shows you one built out of whichever side is giving you better information.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the test.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: This wonderful system, except that it hides something from you.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: A person can lose a good amount of vision in one eye and carry on normally because the other one is compensating for it.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: I see people find this out completely by accident.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Usually when something gets in one eye and they cover it up for a second.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: So any check you do with both eyes open, you're checking with a systems that's designed to cover for the bad eye.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And your lens doesn't just get less clear as it ages, it picks up a yellow cast and it does it over years, slowly enough that your brain adjusts as it goes.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: So white still looks white to you because your brain is correcting the picture before you see it.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Which means you can't catch it by looking around the room.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: You need something to compare it to.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Here's how you do it.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: You can do this test tonight at home.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Get a sheet of white paper and put it under a good light.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Cover your left eye and look at it.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Then cover your right eye and look at the same sheet again.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: For most people, the two eyes aren't exactly at the same stage.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: And if one of yours is further along, one of those sheets is going to look slightly more creamy than the other.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Slightly dirty, some people say.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing my patients say to me afterwards, over and over, once it's been dealt with, is that they had no idea they'd been looking through a filter until somebody took it off.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: So five things plus the test readers, rain, headlights, the monitor, glare, and the color differential.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: They're not five problems, it's one problem.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: The lens sitting behind your pupil.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: That lens starts out clear and flexible, it stiffens into clouds, and it changes the way we see things a little bit at a time, and it does that in everybody.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now people hear that and say, well, that's just aging.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, but everybody's lens ages, but it happens at different rates for different people.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't a disease you catch, and it isn't something that's gone wrong with you.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's the aging process, like gray hair.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: The best thing about modern eye care is that it can be fixed at any time that you want to see better.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: In the past, the eye doctor would decide when to remove a cataract.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Nowadays, the patient decides when they are ready to fix it.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: I often tell people that you will know when it's ready.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: In the modern era, I replace the lenses in many people, and their ages vary from mid-40s to 90 and above.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: So what does failing this color test acuity mean?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean you need an operation.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody watching this needs an operation immediately.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: It means you need to have a comprehensive eye exam with a variety of different measurements.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Once this is done, we're able to help you understand what the problem is and how it can be treated.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: So do the paper test tonight and find out if one of your eyes has been overcompensating for the other.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: And if you experience three or more of these and you're sitting there thinking that means you're getting old, watch the video I did on what's actually happening to that lens.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's the one that explains why nobody needs this operation or why that's a completely different thing from nobody wanting it.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Go watch that one next.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: And subscribe.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: There's one of these every week.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: You came here to find out what's been happening to your eyes.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now you know where it's coming from and how to test the part you couldn't feel and probably didn't know was happening.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Go get the paper and check your eyes.