A GUIDE TO THE ADULT EYE

No matter how hard we fight it, certain unavoidable things happen to the body over time. Our skin starts to sag, for example; our bones begin to thin; so does our hair.

And inevitably, just like the rest of the body, our eyes age, too. But because these changes are often much more subtle and incremental—in other words, because the eyes staring back at us in the mirror still look about the same as always—it's difficult for most people to detect them immediately.

This chapter is designed to help acquaint you with the parts of the eyes and how they work together so that we can see. In the next chapter we'll take a look at what's been happening to your eyes over the years, and later in the book we'll cover specific problems—and what you can do about them—in much more detail. Now, let's begin with a quick review of the eye's basic anatomy and the changes that most of us can expect to encounter as time goes by.

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