Does menopause affect your eyes?

Good question!  The answer is in untangling menopause vs normal ageing.  The changes with menopause are permanent reductions in esotrogen and progesterone, due to the ovaries stop producing these hormones.

The effect of these hormones is widespread across the body and for our eyes,it is commonly associated with tear film quality.  Dry eyes are a common symptoms with any hormone changes – pregnancy, menopause and then can change again with menopausal hormone therapy(MHT) or HRT as more commonly referred to. However dry eyes are also more common as we all get older. Managing dry eyes is part of primary eyecare that optometrists are well placed to help with.

Comments from ophthalmologists regarding eye health conditions such as macula degeneration glaucoma and menopause is that it is too complex with many other factors to incorporate menopause as a clinical risk.  For these common eye health conditions, the strongest risk factor is age and family history.

By our mid-40s it is normal to have changes with near vision focus, called presbyopia.  This occurs for everyone whether you’ve worn glasses since age 5 or you’ve been lucky to have great vision for 40+ years.  Thus this marker of aging, at the same time as having hormone menopause changes can be distressing.  Some people accept aging, and can embrace the changes, while for others there is a time of denial with their vision problems, and either they find work-arounds for the vision changes (eg giant font on their phone) or just fumble through.  As an optometrist we understand this and as long as the person has safe vision for driving, it’s ok until the person is ready for more optical help.

Does menopause affect your eyes? – yes in that dry eyes are more likely.  But the normal aging process of near focus changing and increasing risk for eye diseases is essentially just that – aging.
And as a 50-something aged female optometrist, I do get to hear many other women share they experiences of menopause and their eyes.
We might not like getting older, but accepting and maybe even embracing it, makes our lives much easier. And Doris Day said “the really frightening thing about middle-age is that you know you’ll grow out of it”.