Dr. Nadia Sledge

The eyes are the window to the soul, and I am an optometrist, a doctor of optometry.

We do now four years of undergraduate and then four years of optometry school, and we focus on everything on the eye.

The literal only thing we do not do is surgery, but I can do your eye exam to check you for glasses or contacts.

I can diagnose eye diseases.

There's over 270 systemic diseases that we can diagnose in the eye itself.

We really should have our eyes examined annually.

And as we do get older, all our risk factors go up just no different than the other body part that we have.

And things start to break down as we get older.

Your eyes are no different.

A lot of people just don't even know that they're not quite seeing what they should be seeing.

And kids, young individuals, generally as well, and they'll compensate.

They'll move a little closer.

They'll squint their eyes.

And, you know, how many stories, you know, have I heard or I've been doing this for 30 years and how many stories of kids just putting on glasses and going, wow, I could see the leaves on a tree.

It was a big green mass.

You didn't know it should have been identifiable to see every single leaf on that tree.

We're definitely seeing shifts in the trends of nearsightedness over the last 10, 15 years.

More and more of the population is nearsighted.

By 2050, it is anticipated that half of the world will be nearsighted.

And by 2030, 50% of the United States alone will be nearsighted.