Keep Your Eyes Healthy: Top Tips
About 12 million Americans aged 40 years and over have a vision impairment. This estimate includes one million who have vision loss. You cannot prevent all eye diseases, but you definitely can take some steps to keep your eyesight healthy. Here are the top tips on how you can reduce your risk of vision loss in the future.
Five Ways to Safeguard Your Vision
Never take your eyes for granted. Keep them healthy with the following tips:
Eat a well-balanced diet. Choose foods rich in antioxidants and vitamins A, C, and E. Citrus fruits and green leafy vegetables are highly recommended. Eating oily fish is also great for your eye health as these are rich in essential omega-3 fatty acids. A healthy, balanced diet can also help you prevent obesity. This disease can increase your risk of acquiring type 2 diabetes, which is the leading cause of blindness in adults.
Stay physically active. Regular exercise helps you focus and tone your muscles, but it can also help protect your eyesight. Exercise can keep you from developing diseases like diabetes and high blood pressure, which often lead to eye problems.
Give up smoking. Smoking tobacco has long been linked to lung cancer and heart disease. But, a lot of people are not aware that smoking can also harm a person’s eyes. In fact, studies show that smokers are twice as likely to suffer from eye deterioration than non-smokers. Besides dry eye syndrome, smoking can also increase your risk of certain eye conditions, such as optic nerve problems, uveitis, Grave’s disease, cataracts, AMD, and diabetic retinopathy.
Wear sunglasses and protective eyewear. Protect your eyes from harmful ultraviolet (UV) rays by wearing sunglasses that filter 99 to 100 percent solar radiation. Sun exposure can damage your eyes and put your more at risk of cataracts and AMD. To prevent potential eye injuries, wear proper eye protection when engaging in certain sports, doing home projects, or working in jobs, like construction or factory. Work hazards include spattered chemicals, tools that slip or malfunction, wood splinters, and flying shards of glass or metal.
Visit your eye doctor regularly. A regular eye checkup is necessary to determine how healthy your eyes are. Basic eye screening will tell your eye care professional if and when you will have to start using eyeglasses for the first time. It will also help them identify if corrections will be necessary based on your visual function over the years. Unfortunately, many severe eye problems show no early symptoms until vision loss has occurred. Also, many eye conditions are irreversible or almost impossible to cure once developed fully. But, you can slow down its progression with early treatment.
More than 75 percent of vision loss cases can be prevented once detected in time. Thus, a comprehensive eye exam once a year or every couple of years is critical. While a thorough examination of your lens, retina, and optical nerve has so much to offer, it is not of much use if not performed regularly. Do you have questions about eye health and proper treatment? At Maple Eye and Laser Center, we can help you find solutions to your eye problems. Call our clinic today in Manhattan or White Plains, New York, to make an appointment.
