China has started to enter an aging society, and with it, more and more geriatric diseases keep appearing. The author is an ophthalmologist and will talk to you about cataracts and some misconceptions. What is cataract and is it scary to have cataract? First of all, we need to know what cataract is. Cataract is a transparent sphere called crystal in human eyes, which slowly becomes opaque, and in layman’s terms, it slowly becomes white, that is, cataract. Cataracts are a natural aging process, just like gray hair, which means that the parts called crystals in the human body are aging. Therefore, cataract is not terrible, it is only a manifestation of natural aging of people. Can cataracts be cured with eye drops? For this point, we see a lot of TV commercials, such and such eye drops, all saying they can treat cataracts. I believe you will also be a little confused, this medicine really works? I don’t want to explain the principle of these drugs, because there is no point, but simply say that there are no drugs that can really cure aging (if there is, it shouldn’t be called medicine, it should really be called the magic pill), the answer is no, there can’t be, this is against the law of nature. Then cataract is a kind of aging, those drugs if useful, will not become a miracle drug that can reverse aging. It is recommended that you do not buy any medication for cataracts, basically it does not work, it just costs you more money, don’t worry, no eye medication is needed, wait for it to grow old and then surgery is good. When it comes to surgery, I’d like to say that I believe many people are very afraid of surgery and will grab this so-called cataract treatment medicine as a lifesaver. I want to make it clear that cataract surgery is very simple nowadays, and it takes less than five minutes to operate, and it is really painless (you can consult the hospital if you want to know more about this, so I won’t be tired of talking about it). Third, this is what I want to say the most, the cataract choice surgery time problem. In the hospital, I encountered a lot of grandparents who had cataracts that were so heavy that they could not see anything until they came to the hospital for surgery. Is this right or wrong. Many people told me that the experience that people know is that cataracts can’t be operated until they can’t see, because our country is quite backward in promoting medical care, so the experience that people know is from 30 years ago. Because of the backward technology at that time, cataracts were required to be removed only when they were so severe that they were very hard. According to now, the lighter the cataract, the faster the surgery will be done and the better the result will be (the standard in the U.S. has reached the point where cataracts can be considered when the vision is below 0.6, while the standard in our hospital is still vision down to 0.3), because nowadays, the cataract is broken up by ultrasonic waves, you think, the lighter and softer the cataract is, the easier it is to break up, and too hard will make the surgery take much longer. Therefore, I hope you can spread the word to your elderly family members that they should not delay cataract surgery until they can no longer see.