Myopia vs Hyperopia

Talking about refractive errors of the eye, a topic that is recurrent is the differences between Myopia vs Hyperopia. Together with astigmatism these problems are not illnesses, but for the regular people is common consider them like they were. Considering that 20% of the children suffer some of these conditions, is helpful to know that myopia is the most seen of them, and easily treated with the help of both kind of lenses (contact or regular eyeglasses).

Even though, most of the people suffer from some level of these conditions usually the eye is able to adapt its shape to focus the light more accurately onto the retina.

In this case there is a difference between normal sight and a perfect one. People don’t even need a perfect vision to have an adequate one that allows them to perform their activities in a away absolutely normal, nevertheless overtime when people shows some degree of long or shortsightedness, there is a good chance that in some moment they will need to use some kinds of glasses or lenses..

To understand better the features of the errors of the eye is a good idea to revise them one by one in a deeper manner.

Individual Reviews of Errors of The Eye


Hyperopia (farsightedness)

When people see objects, that are near them, in a way that seem blurry, it is because they are suffering of this error of the eye,  meaning that because the focus of the object is from behind of the retina they appear blurry.

When people are Long Sightedness in an extent that becomes too difficult to work on a PC or tablet, the solution is obviously to use some kind of helping device like lenses, nevertheless these kinds of people are rewarded with a privileged vision of objects that are too far to be seen clearly by persons that don’t display this kind of specific visual error of the eye.

When the condition is too accentuated and the persons have problems to have a regular vision too often, another great alternative to correct it, is the laser eye surgery which is used with the intention of repair the imperfections that can appear in the eyeball or the excessive flatness of the cornea.

Another issue that is helpful to understand is that the errors of the eyes have a genetic origin, meaning that they are hereditary and there is no way that can be prevented.

Myopia (nearsightedness)

In the contrary than the problem that happens with people suffering from farsightedness, myopia is the error that makes distant objects to look unclear.

The origin of this error of the eye is when a person shows a cornea that is too sharp, and or, an eyeball that displays a stretched form.

Severe cases of short sightedness are the ones that present more than -6 diopters (which is the unit in that the severity of the condition is measured), and mild ones are -3 and lower.

The unit of measurement explains in a quantifiable manner the intensity that a lens can release, and also help to determine the distance in which a patient can easily see things.

Being sometimes a progressive condition myopia can be stay unrecognized for an extended period of time, and in many case persons that in their childhood didn’t have any apparent difficulties to for example to read when they were at school, after in their twenties started to show some signals of the condition, making them to decide to have their firsts visit to a specialist.

Also an interesting fact about myopia is that scholars have found some relationship between this condition and the level of intelligence of the people.  The evidence comes from China which is the country that shows the biggest Intelligence quotient (IQ), and coincidentally the most intelligent people there, have some degree of short sightedness.



This condition is a combination of both errors of the eye that we have analyzed before. The effect is that the person have focus problems with distant and also nearby objects, due an unnatural bend of the cornea.


The error of the eyes are widely extended in most countries in the world, but many people get confused when  talking about Myopia vs Hyperopia. After a detailed explanation of what are both condition about, there are a very good news, and they are that both  errors of the eyes can be treated with Lasik laser eye surgery  which is cover extensively here.

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