Netherton Eye Centre blog

Screens are central to our world these days… With some people spending 8 hours looking at their work screen, interspersed with checking their phone, then another session at home browsing online, can our eyes actually cope with all this screen work? Many of our tasks are screen based. Laptop, iPads, phones, and sat nav systems are just a few. The Stare Factor. Science has shown, that on average we blink every other second, so in a 30 second span, we blink 15 times. When we concentrate on a task such as screen work, research has shown that this blink rate drops significantly; to as low as just 2 or 3 times in that same 30 second span. Reduced blinking means the tear film evaporates which is wh

So it’s annoying isn’t it? Your eyes stream when you slice through those onions. Every time. And as your eyes fill, it’s harder to see, so you s l o w d o w n, Which is worse, because you just want to get it over with. Why is this? When you cut through onions, it starts a number of chemical reactions which results in a gas that irritates the eyes. Syn-propanethial-S-oxide, to be exact, So why do you cry more than others? Some people have better tears than others - a better more efficient tear quality. A bit like how some people have a more moisturised skin. So if you have a good quality tear film, it acts as a barrier to prevent much of the gas from reaching the sensitive nerve cells on the

During your sight-test our aim is to assess your vision and, if necessary, use spectacles (or contact lenses) to make your vision as clear as possible. Our other aim is to assess the health of your eyes and detect any defects – OCT (which stands for Ocular {or sometimes Optical} Coherence Tomography) is an invaluable tool used to achieve this. As technology has improved it has helped us to carry out our assessments with much more accuracy. OCT is a perfect example of this and it has been a major leap forward in helping eye-care professionals assess patients eye health. OCT is often not available in high street opticians, it is more commonly found in hospital eye departments so we are very fo