What is Professor Orange?

Wouldn’t it be good to have a best friend that is an industry expert on your eyes, your eye health and your vision?

Someone who can give you advice that’s worth its weight in gold and tell you everything you want to know about what’s happening to your eyes? 

Someone who bases that information on up-to the minute knowledge and expert advice to make sure you know how to look after your eyecare needs? 

After all, would you rather trust the answers that you find trawling the questionable leads on google, or your best friend who’s a leading eyecare expert in the field?

That's what the Professor Orange report is! It’s our insider’s guide that shares with you the scientifically-proven latest and greatest in vision care and eye health based on what’s what in eyecare that is hot off the presses.

Written by theeyecarecompany, Professor Orange is an insider's guide that shares with you the scientifically-proven, latest and greatest in vision care and eye health.

Sometimes, like in this inaugural edition, Professor Orange gives us a great megaphone to share some of the exciting insider stuff that our optometrists at theeyecarecompany personally get up to.
Professor Orange will also be lighthearted, just a chance to blurt out how excited we are about new eyewear collections!

So without further ado, welcome to the first edition of Professor Orange!

What's New with Eyes?

This past week has been really exciting! One of our optometrists that specialises in contact lenses Dr Margaret Lam has been working with Dr Emma Gilles and Dr Emmanuel Calligeros to present some very exciting findings to the Sydney, Parramatta and Canberra optometry audience about UV blocking contact lenses. 
These results are hot off the presses from the recent British Contact Lens Association (BCLA) Conference in late May 2012, and published just recently in June 2012 in various papers.

So for some background, one little known fact is that macular degeneration is currently Australia’s leading cause of blindness. Your macula is in the middle of your retina, on the back of your eye. When you look at something, your whole eyeball swings around to position that object onto the middle of your retina (right onto your macula) so that you can see clearly. 
It is critically important that your macula is working well so that you can see. Of course this also means it is important that it is always checked during an eye exam to make sure things are going right. (We always do, so make sure you get it checked!)

Things like giving up cigarettes, a diet rich in green leafy vegetables, reducing your vegetable oil intake, taking multivitamins and extremely good UV protection for the eyes have already been well established in lowering your risk of developing macular degeneration.  It’s also been established you can lower your risk by making sure you come in for an eye test at least once every 12 months.

However, for the very first time, certain contact lenses may now play a significant role in keeping macular degeneration away too.

What they’ve just been able to prove is that contact lenses that provide UV protection can help to preserve your macular pigment density.  Your macular pigment is a bit like your ‘internal sunglasses,’ the yellow spot that is protecting your eyes from damage from the sun or from blue light. Your macula pigment also helps to keep your macula functioning well.

Studies show that those that have low levels of macular pigment density are much more likely to develop macular degeneration. Macular pigment density can be preserved if your contact lenses have UV block in them. Certain contact lenses such as Johnson & Johnson Acuvue Oasys, Johnson & Johnson Acuvue One Day Moist, Acuvue One day TruEye and CooperVision’s Avaira contact lenses all provide virtually 100% UVA and UVB protection. 

This was only what we got up to in the first day of this week! This week Margaret flew from Conference to Conference to Conference, so more exciting stuff on the eyes to discuss in Edition 2 for Myopia Control and Edition 3 on More Exciting New Findings in Vision Care and Contact Lenses.

While we’re on the subject of new findings, a great post to share with you about one of our other passions, preventing your eyesight, particularly your shortsightedness and astigmatism, from getting worse is that first link in the references column just below.  And not based on old wives’ tales, but on scientifically proven results. 
This is one of Griffin Ngo’s, one of our other key optometrists,’ great passions. A full article is coming next week but if you’re interested, come in and see us before then.

Most of this technology is already available exclusive to theeyecarecompany, and a full article is promised in Edition 2, but if you’re interested, the best thing to do is to get yourself down to theeyecarecompany for an eye test under Medicare to discuss your vision and discuss how we can prevent your eyesight from getting worse, and to finally get it to stabilise!

References:
BCLA Conference Findings
UV Blocking Contact Lenses 
Nutrition for your MaculaMacular Pigment Density Testing