Taking good care of your body can prevent developing serious chronic medical conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. By taking care of your eyes, you can prevent diseases like glaucoma or macular degeneration.
Here are seven tips for maintaining the health of your eyes.
Get Regular Eye Exams
It’s important to check your eye health every year or two regardless of wearing wear corrective lenses. By dilating the eyes and having a refractive examination, an optometrist can spot problems early and treat or correct the issue.
If the prescription for your contacts changes, you can use the information to order the correct lenses, along with the appropriate eye care product, online.
Stop Smoking
If you’re a smoker, it is best for your eyesight, as well as overall health, to quit. Smoking causes blood vessels to contract, and it can lead to eye problems like cataracts, macular degeneration, and cause damage to the optic nerve.
Protect Your Eyes
To prevent injuries to your eyes, wear goggles when working with chemicals, commercial cleaning products, and materials that can fly around. Also, wear them when participating in sports that can result in eye injuries like football, ice hockey, or lacrosse.
Sunglasses can also protect eyes from the glare of the sun and debris on a windy day. Excessive exposure to the sun’s ultraviolet, UV, rays can lead to cataracts and macular degeneration.
If it’s sunny or you’re going to be on the water or snow, wear sunglasses with UV protection.
Practice 20-20-20
If you work on a computer most of the day, you can protect your eyes from the glare of the monitor and eyestrain by resting them for several seconds a few times a day.
The 20-20-20 rule for eyes is that for every 20 minutes of computer work, look at something about 20 feet away for 20 seconds.
Eat a Healthy Diet
Add more fresh fruits and vegetables to your diet to ensure your eyes get the nutrients they need to stay healthy. Foods rich in Omega 3 fatty acids, antioxidants, Vitamins A, C, and E, zinc, and the carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin will help keep your eyes healthy.
Eat dark green leafy vegetables, citrus fruit, sweet potatoes, salmon and nuts to make certain that these nutrients are available in your diet.
Manage Your Health
People with chronic medical conditions need to do everything they can to manage their diseases. Having high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and some autoimmune diseases can affect your vision.
However, by taking your medications, exercising, and eating healthy, you can prevent most eye problems.
Know Family History
Many eye diseases are hereditary, so it’s important to know if family members have had eye conditions like glaucoma, macular degeneration, and retinitis pigmentosa.
These diseases can cause vision loss, but with early diagnosis and treatment, the loss can sometimes be avoided or minimized.
These seven tips can protect your eye health and prevent injuries or disease-related damage to your eyes. Most of these tips can also improve your overall health by managing chronic diseases, eating healthy foods, not smoking, and exercising.
