The eye is an extraordinary piece of optical equipment and the extent to which it has adapted over millions of years to make sure that different types of animals have the capability to see proportional to their needs is quite extraordinary. The different vision demands of the numerous mammal, bird, fish and insect species are provide their owner with the appropriate sight for their environment.

At its most basic, an eye detects light and alters it in an appropriate fashion so that it means something to the creature whose eye it is. So how does the human eye really work? As you would think, our eyes are a lot more complicated than the basic eye. The light reaches the front of the eye, which then uses a diaphragm to amend how vivid the light is and aims it at a lens to make an image. The image is then converted into electrical instructions and forwarded to the brain through the optic nerve, and then the brain can make a decision about what to do with the information it has obtained about what the eye is seeing.

So, instantly, the human eye will see which shapes are available to see and what colours those shapes are, and the whole method of assessing the information so that the brain works out how to react takes so very little time we don’t even realise that there is any such process going on.

It is obvious that it is very sensible to protect your eyes as well as you can, and to remember that things like too much light from the sun or spending too many hours in front of a computer screen without allowing your eyes a rest can cause a negative impact on them. But, along with the rest of the human body, the eyes themselves can be, or can become, defective. Some vision problems might be genetic defects passed on by your parents. Some can be caused by or aggravated by environmental factors. And some simply develop over the years as the human body gets older. After all, the impact of wear and tear applies just as much to parts of the body including the eyes and ears as it does to other areas.

The positive message here is that most eye complaints are less difficult to treat than a damaged spine or arthritic knee joints. Many people wear corrective lenses if they are diagnosed with short or long sightedness – both of which can also be treated using Laser eye surgery. These complaints, along with astigmatism, are caused by the front of the eye (the cornea) being slightly the wrong shape so that the light which reaches it becomes distorted and by the time the image is converted and directed to the brain, the image is unclear. Because the cornea is an accessible part of the eye it is easy to use Laser eye treatment to change its shape so that it works better.

Other eye complaints, such as cataracts and presbyopia generally develop later in life. With a cataract, the eye lens begins to get cloudy so that seeing becomes a problem. Presbyopia is a condition where the lens doesn’t focus as well as it used to and things which are near to the sufferer will be blurred.

At the moment, the primary solution for a cataract is to take away the cloudy lens completely and replace it with a plastic one. This is a very straightforward procedure with a very high success rate. Presbyopia, though, is usually treated with corrective glasses. However, Laser eye surgery processes are in use that can help the sufferer, dependent on other health factors relating to the eyes.

So it is comforting to understand that, unlike many parts of the body, the eyes are a relatively simple thing to diagnose and treat to make sure that we can still carry on with our daily activities and be capable of seeing what we are doing. And the numerous treatments available, such as simple reading glasses, contact lenses, surgery and Laser eye treatments, mean that quite often there is even a choice of solutions to solve your vision problems.