Know any magickal treatments for "visual snow" that wikipedia does not?

Is kale, or other foods high in lutein and zeaxanthin, really good for your eyes?

Is this guy crazy?

Yup you're right. +1.00 isn't a massive prescription. However, there are other systems in the eye which are inter-related. For example, theres the convergence system (where you eyes move inwards and outwards) which is closely linked to the focusing system you correctly outlined.

It is normal that when you accommodate (or tense the muscles around the lens) to look up close, your eyes turn in. This is so both the focusing and the eyes are pointed at the same plane.

However, even small prescriptions (say +1.00) can throw this system out and you can get mild headaches or lose concentration when reading. Blur is usually another symptom if you persist with the close work.

This is just one example of many in which +1.00 would be prescribed.

Very possible. Could be a whole host of things. Your optom would be able to diagnose it.

How did you come to this conclusion? I'd say this is quite odd as red/green colour DEFICIENCY (no one is really colour BLIND) is hereditary and so occurs in both eyes, usually equally.

Some eye diseases cause changes in colour vision (e.g. cataracts) and so do some medications. Better check with your optom.

Oh sorry I missed your question! No it is not normal. Pain is always bad. See your optometrist and if your eye health checks out, get some good quality sunglasses.

Nope.

It is currently available in pill form:

http://www.blackmores.com.au/products/lutein-vision

and is recommended by ophthalmologists for people who have macula degeneration or are suspects.

There are other treatments for macula degeneration

http://www.lucentis.com/lucentis/index.html

...which is an injection into the eye and studies have shown some improvment in vision.

If you don't mention something, usually professionals don't check it. The standard eye exam only checks for common problems (e.g. blurry vision) and common eye diseases (e.g cataracts).

It may be something rare or unusual which is not detected by standard eye exams. Next time you see your optometrist, let him or her know about it.

More so than the pain?

I remember when I was younger, I could often notice a very different perception of colours in my left and right eye. Sometimes I still can. I think it has to do with the simple fact that both eyes have had a slightly different amount of light (and maybe light of different colour) for some minutes. Say you have a bright window to the left of you and the left eye is therefore exposed a bit more than the right one. Move from this position to looking at something colourful where both eyes are very evenly exposed. Switch rapidly eyes by covering them with the palm of your hand and you will notice a big difference in colours. The effect lasts only a minute or so. And you don't notice the different while looking with both eyes.

This might be a white balance thing, too. The eyes are temporarily balancing differently. In Finland we have this special moment we call "the blue moment". It's when there's snow outside and it's cloudy. When you are outside, you might notice that everything is blue, but especially when you're inside, surrounded by electric light (tungsten bulbs) and happen to look out from the window, you see an extremely blue colour on everything. It only shows how much our eyes adapt to the white balance. And I guess the eyes can do it separately to some extent.

When I was a kid we use to stair at a light in front of one of the churches. One of those sign illuminating ones that are ultra bright. We called it "going to purple world" because everything turned purple on us for maybe a minute or so.

.. am I going to get eye cancer? Or is that why I've got visual snow?

I have a pair actually. But its such a low prescription it seems more like a couple pieces of glass. The Optometrist also said I could skip them if I didn't think I really needed them, so most times I don't use them at all.

Here's a new question. I just recently got some new high resolution fundus images and the light reflectance inside the veins is causing me a lot of difficulty. Most of the reflection is in the red channel (of course) but there is still sufficient change in the green channel to screw things up. Is this a really common problem because so far I know that my data has been "hand selected" by experts for all kinds of various reasons.

That would be an ophthalmologist.

Hell no. For example in my case, due to my esotropia optometrists are not allowed to prescribe me glasses, I must always see an opthalmologist, which is about twice as expensive as seeing an optometrist.

Then there's also opticians, who actually manufacture the glasses.

The one where you have to read the numbers in the circles. My one eye only fails on the harder ones -- so it's not so bad.

I guess Matthew should give you a custom title because you have been pretty helpful around (^.^)

I am 31 and my eyesight is still changing. Two years ago it was around 5 in each eye, and now it is 7. Fault is kind of mine, though, I don't go often to the doctor, and now I am doing something nobody should do: during day I use my old lenses, and during night, the new ones. Playing with two different graduations surely makes my eyes tired faster. Also, do wearing smoked (almost black, no idea how they are called in English, imagine sunglasses but not as black) lenses during night affect eyesight in the long term?

Is there anything that, long term, can damage eyesight, like listening to loud music can do to your eardrums?

I think Bruce is talking about women who se a 4th genuine colour. Normal colour sight is based on the RGB model, believe it or not. We have red, green and blue cones in the retina. Natural visible light has all wave lengths between 400 and 700 nm (correct me on the actual values) but our RGB cones get trigged only on three different wave lengths, kind of. So when we see a yellow wavelength, our red and green cones get triggered (they are not that picky, there are overlapping bandwidths for red and green cones). So it's not a big deal if we look at a monitor, which emits red and green together and not real yellow. Unless we have yellow cones in the retina and have learned to percept the real yellow wavelength as yellow. In that case the red-green on a monitor will look like something else.