HEALTH
I Can(not) See
Now
By Jade Tan
Instead of singing Johnny
Nash’s hit song, you are
starting to wonder why you
are beginning to trip over the
obstacles in your way. You
might actually be suffering
from presbyopia, or 老花
眼 (lao hua yan), one of the
most common sight ailments
affecting people above the
age of 40.
What had seemed so clear to her in the past morphed into a big, distorted mess
when she hit her late-forties. Heather Lim, Chief Operations Officer of Carl Zeiss
Southeast Asia, could no longer clearly see what was right in front of her. Like
many others her age, Heather suffers from presbyopia, otherwise known as
“I would struggle to read documents in the office, which was slowing down my
daily work and causing me a lot of frustration,” Heather recalls. “If I ever forgot
my reading glasses at work, my day would be very difficult.”
Also often called short-arm syndrome (named as such because sufferers tend to
hold the reading material at a distance to see it better), presbyopia has less to do
with our limbs as it does with our eyes.
When we are young, the le