On/Off Switches Part One
Isn’t electricity great? You flip a switch and an appliance turns on or off. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to do something similar for our bodies, in particular our eyes. That way when an injury or disease comes along, something in the cellular level could be turned on or off and […]
Immune System & Eye Disease: More than Meets the Eye
Having an immune system is a good thing. It deals with bacteria and viruses, so that either we don’t get sick or if we do, our body fights them off and, for the most part, sickness isn’t fatal. Sometimes our immune system doesn’t work the way we want it to. That can range from an […]
Myopia Can Be Reversed In Children With Bifocal Contacts
True confession: I’ve been wearing glasses since I was 10 years-old. It didn’t bother me to wear glasses because I was so pleased to be able to see the chalkboard clearly. For me, wearing glasses was a simple thing I could do to maintain good grades. Many kids aren’t like me in that they aren’t […]
The Eyes Have It & Research Proves It
The eye is a cool organ. Our eyes allow us to move about our world and make sense of all that we see. In fact, many in the medical and scientific community view the eye as the front of the brain. (No pun intended.) That leads to two questions: 1) If the eye lens sustained […]
Light & Sleep (Or the Lack Thereof)
Getting up at night to go to the bathroom or just getting up in the morning can be difficult. Especially since we’ve been asleep for hours and the first exposure to light can blinding. Of course, our eyes adjust and we go about our tasks or go back to sleep. Exposure to light doesn’t just […]
Curing Inherited Blindness Genetically
Let’s say you bought a new car and you discovered that it is defective. Instead of going back to the dealer, there was a way to fix the defect in the car while you were using it. That’s right, you could be driving around town while under the hood, things are being fixed by the […]
Regeneration in the Retina
The human body has an amazing ability to heal itself. If you get a paper cut, the cut heals in seven to ten days. If you get a bruise, it heals within two to four weeks. If you get a broken bone, it takes three to ten weeks to heal. An injury to the retina […]
Retina Patterns Tell a Story
No one has to sell eye doctors on how cool the human eye is. One interesting area of the eye that is being researched is the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE). This is the layer of cells that is next to the retina. It acts as a conduit between the photoreceptors of the retina and the […]
Faulty Molecules Switches & Certain Genomic Regions Contribute to AMD
It is safe to say that no one wants to be blind. While age related macular degeneration (AMD) isn’t as well-known as glaucoma and cataracts, it, too, is a form a blindness that no one wants. It affects the straight on vision that is needed for activities like reading and driving and while medication can […]
Handheld Probe Provides Images of Photoreceptors
Photoreceptors are specialized cells in the retina that are responsible for converting light into signals that the brain can understand as images. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to actually see photoreceptors? Researchers at Duke University have developed a device that can produce an image of photoreceptors in adults and infants. This […]