When most of us think of sunglasses, we immediately think of hot sunny days, with the sun high in the sky and a lovely big pair of cool looking shades. Who doesn't like a nice pair of sunglasses?!

We wear them for fashion, but, hopefully, mostly for the protection we get from the sun. The tint reduces the light levels, usually by about 85%, so that we are visually more comfortable in the full glare of the sun. There is also an ultraviolet (UV) block on the lenses to protect us from the harmful effects of the UV light from the sun. We know that sunlight can cause cataracts, it can damage the retina at the back of the eye, it can damage the cornea at the surface of the eye; all sorts of undesirable effects that the UV block can stop. 

In winter though- particularly for drivers- the low sun and weather conditions can make things tricky at best, and at times downright dangerous. 

Just such a situation happened to me last year. I was driving to Scarborough from Middlesbrough in November and I needed to be there for work at 9am. It was a lovely clear morning, but there had been rain overnight and the roads were all wet. So at around the time the sun eventually rose, I was travelling across the North Yorkshire Moors, due east, looking right at the sun. It was.....scarily dangerous. The sun extremely bright and straight in my eyes, and then a reflection of liquid sun coming off the road which was absolutely blinding. 

In this situation, normal sunglasses would have been an improvement, but not by much, as reducing the light by 85% would still have meant a huge amount of light, both directly from the sun and reflected off the road, still causing a really dangerous situation. 

But I don't have normal sunglasses; my sunglasses are polarised.  What that means for driving is that the lenses, as well as being dark like you'd expect sunglasses to be, also eliminate reflected light. So all that 'liquid sunlight' reflecting off the road suddenly disappears, as well as the direct light from the sun being reduced by the tint and UV block. My really dangerous situation was now pretty OK, but by the look on the faces of the other drivers on the road that morning, they weren't anywhere near as comfortable as I was.

Personally, I wouldn't have any other type of lens for driving in the sun. And I'd always recommend polarising lenses to anyone who want's to drive in their sunglasses. 

At IntelliSight Opticians we offer a 20% driver's discount for anyone who wants to purchase polarising lenses for sunglasses. 

Pop in and see the large range of frames specifically designed to take sunglass lenses, or alternatively, have one of our regular frames and have the polarised lenses put in.

Autumn! It's a funny old time of year. Cold mornings, crispy leaves, conkers and at the opticians, a rash of people of a 'certain age' who come to see us looking rather bewildered that doing something as simple as reading the paper is now really difficult if not impossible. 

So if you are amongst that group this autumn, take heart that everything is normal. It's irritating not being able to see thing up close all of a sudden, but it's entirely normal.

I suspect you're wondering what's gone wrong all of a sudden. 

It's all got to do with the LENS in your eye. This sits just behind your PUPIL and is the bit of your eye that provides a lots of the focussing power. It's also capable of varying it's power so you can see far away to do something like see to drive, and focus more strongly to be able to read things up close like a book, newspaper, iPad, that kind of thing. 

It's made of the same tissue as your skin and it behaves like skin ( only it's see through!), so it continues to grow all the time. Now your skin grows, and the top layer sheds and becomes dust, but your LENS is in your eye, within another membrane too, and can't go anywhere.....so it just grows thicker and thicker....and eventually (around the age of 40 or so) it gets SO thick that it's not springy enough to keep changing shape to focus on near objects any more, and THAT'S when people notice their reading vision starts to become blurred and difficult. Headaches are often a symptom too as the muscles that can usually change the shape of the LENS really easily start to strain and even then can't force the lens to change shape enough.

This becomes a particular problem in autumn because there's SO much less sunlight around as the nights draw in, and relying on indoor lighting as opposed to having sunlight to read by, means that the actual light levels are reduced a thousandfold. 

Sorting this problem out is quite simple with spectacles. We make up the missing power either with reading glasses, varifocal lenses, office lenses....we have quite a choice. Reading glasses are just one power so are only set for one distance; varifocals are a blended lens with a distance correction in the top of the lens, and the power gradually increases down the lens till the reading power is at the bottom; office lenses are set for PC distance at the top and lenses down to reading at the bottom. 

If your reading vision has suddenly become an issue, or reading has started to give you headaches, or if you know someone experiencing these problems. make an appointment with us today, and let us help to make reading a pleasure again.

At IntelliSight Opticians we recognise that the best quality varifocal lenses offer the best solution for the problem of not being able to see to read up close any more. So this autumn we have THE BEST FOR LESS, our best quality varifocal has £50 off. 

Yes! Really!  Well, we are in South Tees at any rate.

It's been a bit of an interesting journey to get to this point and I've become involved with some very remarkable people on the way , but in my role as Chair of the Tees Local Optical Committee ( LOC) together with the Macmillan Integration of Cancer Care Project for the South Tees Foundation Trust, we are just about to extend a pilot into Redcar and Cleveland that has been running in Middlesbrough for the past three months. 

It all started with a rather random phone call one miserable wintry afternoon. A lovely lady called Carol, the project co-ordinator I later discovered, wondered if I thought that local opticians would be interested in being part of a project to improve the speed of diagnosis of brain tumours. And I said "Yes, well who wouldn't ". 

And so I was introduced to an amazing and largely unsung group of people who are working to improve cancer outcomes in the South Tees Trust area. A hugely varied and committed board that aims to improve the journey for all sufferers of every kind of cancer and their families.  This board consists of hospital doctors and managers, nurse managers, Macmillan doctors from the community, those that looks after care homes and community services, patients whose lives cancer has touched, and loads of others. They are all working towards improving diagnosis, making treatment in hospital more streamlined, taking treatments out of hospital if possible, looking after the families of cancer sufferers, looking at end of life care and helping the increasing numbers of people who survive cancer but have to cope with the physical and psychological aftermath. All in an patch that includes areas of urban living, rural communities and some parts of severe deprivation. A huge undertaking I'm sure you'll agree, and with the inevitable limited resources, the board has prioritised it's activities.

One of the major concerns in Tees and the wider UK is the stage at which brain tumours, some of which are cancer, are diagnosed and treated. It seems that although the NHS' ' two week rule' has had a significant impact in the earlier diagnosis and treatment of many kinds of cancer, the same can't be said of brain cancer. These malignancies although, and I can't stress this enough, QUITE RARE, are too often diagnosed late when the cancer is severely affecting the sufferer, and the probable outcomes by that time aren't good. 

Some of the reasons for this are that the early symptoms can be quite general and non specific. For instance, a headache of a type that more often than not is associated with fatigue or dehydration or stress, when fatigue and dehydration and stress are all present in a sufferer's life. 

So why are opticians getting involved I bet you're wondering? Well, as I said some of the symptoms of brain tumour can be quite commonplace and general. However some of the SIGNS i.e. what is observed, are very specific and seen only in brain related problems. Two of these signs are easily found by opticians because we have the equipment in practice to find them. 

And that's what the South Tees Opticians Referral Project (STORP) is all about,  getting patients who arrive at their GP with symptoms that are suspicious, or people who come for a sight test with unexplained headache or the like, screened with both a visual field screener and have the backs of their eyes viewed in 3D. And if those results suggest a problem, to get the patient referred direct to neurology at James Cook University Hospital extremely quickly. 

The pilot and pathway has been running in the Middlesbrough area for the past 3 months. Results are rather hard to assess at the moment as I have previously said, brain tumours are thankfully rather rare ( an optician can have a whole career and only detect one or two), but we're confident that the mechanisms are in place to speed the process of detection and referral should it be appropriate. The rollout into Redcar and Cleveland means that more people have access to the service and we're more likely to see someone benefit positively from it.

On a national level, this is the very first collaboration between community opticians and secondary, hospital care to improve patient care, and the Department of Health are taking a keen interest. No pressure then!!

The official briefing for the opticians in Redcar and Cleveland is Tuesday 29th September, and we hope to have things moving very soon after that. 

Personally, it's great to see the skills and equipment that opticians have on every High Street being utilized in this innovative way.  I am working very hard, as are all those involved from the Macmillan Integration of Cancer Care Project, to make both these pilot studies a success as we would all like to see the speed of diagnosis and treatment of this rare but devastating group of conditions speeded up. We all want to see many more people who are diagnosed with brain tumours surviving and recovering.  With Macmillan Cancer Support the fight against cancer is always the top priority. 

National Eye Health Week is from the 22nd of September to the 28th of September 2015. 

On Saturday the 19th of September, IntelliSight Opticians is going to be officially opened by the mayor of Redcar & Cleveland, Brenda Forster. This Saturday morning will be a fun event for families and children, we will have an impressive bubbles machine and an amazing balloon crafting display, let’s hope they know how to make the Redcar penguins!

My goodness! I can hardly believe it’s been 30 years. But it has!

I was brought up in Redcar, just a stone’s throw away from the beach in Coatham. And I’ve lived and worked in the area ever since. After qualifying I started in Saltburn, and then worked all around the area, whilst also bringing up a family, until I opened the Specsavers in Redcar in 1998.  The many people that came to know me while I was there will remember the friendly, community feel that I strived to bring to the business. And that years of experience in an optician counts for a lot. Since Specsavers and I parted company in 2011, I have worked in all of the major opticians, taking note of the good things that they do, and now I feel is the time to return to Redcar, to the town I know best and where the lovely people know me. So here it is…..IntelliSight Opticians.  A place that reflects the local and the international. The team and I are friendly and caring as well as accurate and experienced.  We want you to be thoroughly satisfied, perhaps a little thrilled, with your experience. 

19-year-old contact lens wearer, Jessica Greaney, thought she only had a minor eye infection: her eye was sore and her eyelid kept drooping. "But, by the end of the week, my eye was bulging, and it looked like a huge red golf ball," Greaney said. "It was swollen, and extremely painful, and they admitted me into hospital."

Little did she know that there was a parasite, Acanthamoeba, living inside her eyeball. Left untreated, this parasite can cause blindness. To diagnose the problem, doctors had to scrape away a small sample of her eye tissue with a scalpel.

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