After This Comparison Photo Went Viral, So Many People Started Realizing That They Actually Have Astigmatism

You'll never truly be ready for what the internet has to offer

Ayoub

• Published in Interesting
• April 5, 2019

The internet is the gift that keeps on giving and you'll never truly be ready for what it has to offer. You might think that you're perfectly aware of all the flaws in your body, but how can you know that everything is in order when you're unable to experience that same feeling from another perspective. Or can you?

Well, the closest thing to that is a photo from the Twitter account @UnusualFacts6 – ‘which deals with the ‘most weird and horrific facts on the internet’- that went viral after showing the difference between how people with astigmatism see the world and what the rest of us without it see.

Astigmatism is basically when your cornea happens to be slightly curved and being able to see how people with this condition experience lights is truly fascinating.

Here's the original Tweet

The refractive condition called astigmatism occurs when the cornea or the lens within the eye happens to have mismatched curves. A perfectly healthy eye's cornea and lens are usually both curved in a rounded shape and when one of these elements happens to in an egg shape that's when you know that someone has astigmatism. A normal eye's round cornea and lens help refract all incoming lights in order to produce a perfectly focused image on your retina.

An eye with a refractive error can prevent light rays from bending properly and that's due to the mismatched curves within the eye and that results in a blurry image. Astigmatism comes in two different forms: corneal astigmatism and lenticular astigmatism; the first one is caused by mismatched curves in the cornea and the second by mismatched curves in the lens.

The end result in both cases is a blurry vision but it can also occur more horizontally, vertically or diagonally. Nearsightedness (myopia) or farsightedness (hyperopia) (also refractive errors) are commonly combined with this condition.

Astigmatism also has another symptom besides blurry vision and if you happen to have this condition, you will also experience discomfort or eyestrain, headaches and difficulty seeing at night.

Astigmatism is innate for some people and they may totally be oblivious to the fact that they have it unless they get screened for it while getting an eye test.

You can have a relatively hassle-free life even after discovering that you have astigmatism. In order to treat astigmatism, you can resort to wearing glasses, contact lenses, and refractive surgery.

In all age groups, refractive errors happen to be some of the most common ocular problems. The World Health Organization also released some studies and reports stating that 43% of global visual impairments are due to refractive errors which makes them the first cause of visual impairments and the second cause of visual loss across the world.

In 2010, 6.8 million people worldwide went blind due to uncorrected refractive errors and it occurs in 1 out of 3 people in the United States.

A lot of people who just discovered that they have astigmatism shared their thoughts with us:

Now you know

Wait what

It's not normal

My whole life is a lie

Life is just weird man

Just a dirty lens

It's not made up, it's real

It's been like this all along

Just a regular day in this person's life

No, it's definitely not normal

Ayoub