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Macular Degeneration: The Complete Guide to Saving and Maximizing Your Sight - Softcover

Mogk M.D., Lylas G.; Mogk, Marja

 
9780345457110: Macular Degeneration: The Complete Guide to Saving and Maximizing Your Sight
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0345457110 ISBN 13: 9780345457110
Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

The acclaimed book on macular degeneration—now completely revised and updated with cutting edge research and the latest developments in the field.

More than fifteen million Americans have age-related macular degeneration (AMD), and the disease will strike 200,000 more people this year. It is the most prevalent cause of vision loss in the western world. Dr. Lylas Mogk, the founding director of the Visual Rehabilitation and Research Center of the Henry Ford Health System, has a unique professional and personal understanding of AMD. A doctor and loving daughter of a parent with this frightening though manageable condition, Mogk here explains exactly what it is and how to limit its effect on your life. Reassuring and comprehensive—complete with illuminating first person stories of people with AMD—Macular Degeneration will help you or someone you love with information on

• Reducing your risk factors
• Revolutionary new technology, including laser surgery and alternative treatments
• New research discoveries in nutrition—and eye-healthy recipes
• The latest low-vision computer software programs
• Coping with depression and frustration
• Active online communities of people with macular degeneration

Plus a Low Vision Living Rehab program to help you read better, see better, and live independently!

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Lylas G. Mogk, M.D., is a practicing ophthalmologist and founding Director of the Visual Rehabilitation and Research Center of Michigan, part of the Henry Ford Health System. Dr. Mogk is a member of the American Academy of Ophthalmology's Low Vision Rehabilitation Committee. She lives in Grosse Pointe with her husband, John, and her father, Charles R. Good, who has advanced macular degeneration. Despite his severe vision loss, Dr. Mogk's father lives a full and active life following the principles presented in this book.

Marja Mogk is a freelance writer and editor based in Berkeley, California. She worked for several years in social welfare counseling and maintains an active interest in this field. She is Lylas and John Mogk's daughter.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

The acclaimed book on macular degeneration--now completely revised and updated with cutting edge research and the latest developments in the field.
More than fifteen million Americans have age-related macular degeneration (AMD), and the disease will strike 200,000 more people this year. It is the most prevalent cause of vision loss in the western world. Dr. Lylas Mogk, the founding director of the Visual Rehabilitation and Research Center of the Henry Ford Health System, has a unique professional and personal understanding of AMD. A doctor and loving daughter of a parent with this frightening though manageable condition, Mogk here explains exactly what it is and how to limit its effect on your life. Reassuring and comprehensive--complete with illuminating first person stories of people with AMD--"Macular Degeneration will help you or someone you love with information on
- Reducing your risk factors
- Revolutionary new technology, including laser surgery and alternative treatments
- New research discoveries in nutrition--and eye-healthy recipes
- The latest low-vision computer software programs
- Coping with depression and frustration
- Active online communities of people with macular degeneration
"Plus a Low Vision Living Rehab program to help you read better, see better, and live independently!

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

What Is AMD?
A Portrait

This has become a true epidemic of our time.

–Jerry Chader, Ph.D.
Chief Scientific Officer
The Foundation Fighting Blindness

Ten years ago, when Zelda Grant discovered she had age-related macular degeneration, she was astounded. “Macular what?” she said. She had never heard of it before. Today most of us know something about AMD, but it still comes as a shock. “I couldn’t believe it,” Edina Williams told me, “I kept thinking: I need new glasses. A new pair will solve the problem. I still can’t believe it.” Age-related macular degeneration, or AMD, is the leading cause of adult vision loss in North America, Europe, and Australia. It affects the sight of more adults than all of the better-known eye diseases combined: glaucoma, cataracts, and diabetic retinopathy. According to the Beaver Dam Eye Study, 18 percent of seniors aged sixty-five to seventy-four and nearly 30 percent of seniors over seventy-five show early evidence of the condi- tion. One out of every twenty-five Americans over sixty-five, or nearly 1.5 million people, have already experienced significant vision loss from advanced macular degeneration, and 200,000 more Americans lose vision every year. Hundreds of thousands of people in Canada, England, Germany, and many other countries have lost vision from AMD, too. Clearly, if you have AMD you are not alone.

What Is Age-Related
Macular Degeneration?

Macular degeneration dismantles central vision painlessly and silently, leaving peripheral vision intact. As a result, people with advanced macular degeneration do not feel any discomfort in their eyes and they do not appear any different to
their friends and family, but their experience of the world and of their own capacities changes radically.

Because macular degeneration leaves peripheral vision intact, people with AMD can see whatever rests at the edges of their vision but cannot see clearly whatever they look at directly. They find it difficult to recognize their grandchildren’s photographs, for example, but can describe the check pattern of a black-and-white tile floor. They cannot read a bus sign but can see a green leaf on the sidewalk out of the corners of their eyes. This combination of visual ability and vision loss is enormously frustrating, not the least because it takes away what we most want to see, leaving visible what appears to be less important. As Carolyn See remarked dryly in her candid article in Modern Maturity about living with macular degeneration, “It begins in the center of your vision and after a while you can’t read or drive or recognize your relatives. They say you’ll always be able to pick up a thread on the carpet. But even with full vision, picking up threads on the carpet wasn’t high on my list of activities.”

Why Has Macular Degeneration Suddenly Become So Common?

“Ten years ago, when I met someone on a plane en route to giving a talk and told them what I
do, they would look at me kinda funny,” reflected Nikolai Stevenson, president of the Association for Macular Diseases, an organization run for and by people with AMD. “With a name like ‘macular degeneration,’ for all they knew it was contagious. Today, though, everyone seems to know someone else with it, too: a neighbor, a friend, or a relative.” Macular degeneration is no longer a stealth intruder but a known one. Why is AMD suddenly so common? Is this a new epidemic?

Doctors have actually known about macular degeneration for more than 100 years. AMD was first named by a German scientist in 1885, but the technology used to see it clearly was not developed until the 1960s. Unlike cataracts, which are visible to the naked eye, or glaucoma, which can easily be measured, macular degeneration was historically more difficult to detect, analyze, and treat. As a result, other eye conditions that were easier to understand and responded well to surgery and medication received much more attention from the medical community during the twentieth century. Macular degeneration fell to the bottom of the priority list, until now.

Are more people getting it today than ever before? Yes, but we aren’t exactly sure why. On the one hand, it may be a result of our eating habits, food production methods, and the effects of more than half a century of heavy-duty industrial pollution (see chapter 3 for a discussion of the causes of macular degeneration and what you can do to minimize your risk). On the other hand, there are simply more of us today and we are living longer and healthier lives than ever before. The longer you live, the more likely you are to develop age-related macular degeneration, which doesn’t usually affect people until they pass the age of fifty and increases exponentially every decade thereafter (hence the prefix age-related).

It’s also true that many of our parents or grandparents may have had macular degeneration, but we didn’t recognize their vision loss as a disease. We saw it simply as a sign of growing old. I remember my own grandmother stooped over in the garden wearing her black dress and black shoes, with her gray hair tucked in a bun. It was 1947 and she was only sixty-nine, but we thought she was very, very, very old. We also knew she couldn’t see well, but no one had a special name for that. Today sixty-nine is looking pretty young. The folks in their late sixties I see at our visual rehabilitation program in Michigan come in wearing very spiffy outfits and have a good fifteen to thirty more good years of reading, entertaining, traveling, and sports ahead of them. Some of them aren’t even retired. In fact, sometimes I see ninety-year-olds who fit that description. If I suggested that they wear black, put their hair in a bun, and act old like my grandma was, they’d probably slug me. Seniors today aren’t old the way they used to be, and they aren’t willing
to pass off age-related macular degeneration as something that “just happens” when you’re “old,” nor should they.

Macular Degeneration Gains Attention

In the last ten years, macular degeneration has become a major health issue. The National Eye Institute (NEI), a division of the National Institutes of Health, has made AMD its number-one priority, and Medicare has approved national coverage for visual rehabilitation for people with vision loss. Studies are underway at major research centers across the country to discover the genetic components of AMD and its environmental causes and to find a cure. Many new surg- eries and treatments are on the horizon. Chap- ter 2, “Medical Treatments, Research, and New Discoveries,” outlines all of the exciting new developments in the field. For the latest research updates, see the resources listed in appendix E. We now know for sure that nutrition can help prevent the disease: what you eat does make a difference. See chapter 3, “Genes, Greens, and Oils: The Causes, Prevention, and Natural Treatment of AMD,” for details and diet recommendations. Macular degeneration is complicated, and so far there is no single easy answer–but we do have some answers and we have a very strong hope that many more are soon to come.

Macular Degeneration Isn’t
Just About Your Eyes

Most people say they’d rather lose a limb than
an eye, and national surveys tend to place vision loss among the most feared afflictions, along with Alzheimer’s. Why? Because eyesight affects every aspect of life: mobility, physical activity, communication, appearance, perception, self-esteem, and psychological health. Macular degeneration is not just about how much you can or cannot see. It’s about your whole life: how you cope with...

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Verlag
Random House Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2003
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0345457110
ISBN 13 
9780345457110
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
480
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Buchbär
info@buchbaer.de

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