No longer are the fridge and pie warmer the only stops for blokes who pull into the local servo to fill up the car - you can add the now-commonplace spectacle stand to that list.
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But Richard Lenne, a partner at Echuca's Horsfalls Optometrists, warns those who choose a pair of “magnifiers” from the chemist or service station that a short-term solution was not a long-term answer to vision problems.
”A lot of men will delay a visit to the optometrist by buying a pair of magnifiers at the chemist or service station.
“That’s been the biggest change in the last while, I don’t see as many men in their mid-40s,” Mr Lenne said.
He explained the short-term fix as exactly that, but warned that it could be putting off treatable problems for those same men later in life.
“Nowadays, a lot of men don’t rock up until they are a bit older. Glaucoma is a disease that affects your side vision and you won’t know about it unless you get tested.
“I’ve met fellows that have well-entrenched glaucoma and don’t know about it. It’s only been picked up because they finally came in and had their eyes tested.
“It’s a treatable disease. If untreated they will lose a lot of side vision,” he said.
Mr Lenne, who speaks regularly to men’s health groups, service clubs, diabetes groups and other organisations where its membership slips through the cracks of the vision health network, regularly has clients who underline his concern.
“A 77-year-old man came in for his first ever eye test. He was wearing Plus 250 chemist glasses and could read ok.
“He had only come to see me because his doctor had diagnosed diabetes and recommended the visit,” he said.
The man had end-stage glaucoma, which the optometrist of two decades said was an extreme example, but if he had been seen 20 years earlier he could have been helped.
Corey Hart may have been on to something when he hit the charts with Sunglasses at Night in the early 80s, though you’ll be hard-pressed to find an optometry reference to the Canadian heartthrob.
While Mr Lenne didn’t reference the hit single in his assessment of Campaspe Shire’s eye health, he did tick off the suggestion that sunglasses were a necessary accessory for continued clear vision.
With a quarter of a century's experience, Mr Lenne is well-placed to give advice on eye health and explained his hope that the popularity of sunglasses would stem the tide of macular degeneration in his future clientele.
“I’m quite hopeful we will have people with less eye problems because they’ve worn sunglasses all their life. Their role in reducing UV damage to the eye is important,” he said.
Mr Lenne had the perfect professional parent combo to enter the optometry field - his mother was a nurse and his father a scientist at Kyabram Research Station.
“I wanted science as a career, optometry was a science degree back then with health care as a focus.
“I had perfect eyesight at the time, but it was only when I finished that degree that I realised one day I would need glasses.
“It’s a funny thing when you have a room full of healthy people and suddenly it dawns on them that some day they will need some help with their vision.”
Hank (Henry) Horsfall set up Echuca’s first optometry practice in 1953, later expanding to Kyabram. The business now has four partner optometrists and since 2000 has developed both its locations.
Mr Lenne said his clientele was mostly children and older people.
“Maternal health nurses pick up kids they are worried about at their four-years-old check. Even if there is no history kids should get tested before they start school.
“Eye health and genetics are linked very closely.
“There’s a few things to open people’s eyes too. Particularly with men, who often have that attitude, ‘if I don’t know it won’t hurt me’.”
Mr Lenne said traditionally his clientele would be people in their forties who were starting to struggle with their reading.
Optometrists start testing for glaucoma in people at age 40.
“There was a great catch there, people couldn’t read in their 40s and they had no choice but to see an optometrist and we’d start testing them for glaucoma.
“Now they can avoid that first test (with magnifiers) and they rock up when they are 70. And it's too late.
“If your distance vision is perfect at 40 you are going to have reading problems at some stage, generally, and it only gets more obvious from there. That’s Mr and Mrs average.”
The leading cause of vision loss is macular degeneration, which tends to happen in older people.
Diabetes is a threat to younger people; following diagnosis one of the first stops is the optometrist.
“In Campaspe we do have a reasonably high rate of diabetes.”
He said most people would suffer from a cataract, even if they were lucky.
“Anyone 65 years old and older should have a check up every 12 months, but if they have a history or diabetes they should be coming in annually anyway.”
Last year, fortuitously for the optometry community, it being 2020, it was easy for a national public service announcement, and Victorian group Vision 20/20 continues to spread the message for people to have their eyes tested.