5 Important Tips to Keep Your Eyes Healthy

It is never too early to start caring about your eye health. By paying attention to your surroundings and implementing some easy, but important tricks, you can help prevent vision degeneration and other eye related issues that arise from improper eye care.

Maintain a healthy lifestyle

The first step to good eye health is maintaining good health all around. This includes having a well-rounded diet full of vitamins, zinc, and more nutrients! It is easy to get these beneficial nutrients from healthy foods such as spinach, kale and tuna. Keeping your diet balanced can also prevent certain illnesses and diseases such as Type 2 diabetes and cancers that can lead to vision loss.

Having a vitamin deficiency from nutrients such as vitamin A & D can lead to retinal damage from macular degeneration and cataracts, diminishing your eye health drastically. Combining a well balanced diet with routine exercise is beneficial to your whole body - including your eyes.

Protect your eyes

It’s an easy concept and something you should adhere to. Physically protecting your eyes from debris and UV rays is an easy way to keep your eyes safe and avoid potential damage.

Sunglasses can block harmful UV rays. UV blocking sunglasses delay the development of cataracts, since direct sunlight hastens their formation. They also prevent retinal damage; but it’s important to make sure the pair of sunglasses that you purchase have 100% UV protection.

Ensure you wear safety and protective glasses while working in risky environments, during sports and when working on projects such as home repairs or gardening. If you are cutting wood or often work in an environment with debris flying around, it is important to protect your eyes to avoid any potential eye injury.

Don’t smoke

Besides the very obvious damaging effects of smoking, smokers are twice as likely to develop debilitating eye conditions such as optic nerve damage, accelerating age-related macular degeneration, uveitis and cataracts. Smoking can also trigger extremely dry eyes which can result in pain and discomfort. Not only will your lungs suffer, but you’re also putting your vision at risk when you smoke.

Schedule regular eye exams

You wouldn’t go years without seeing your normal physician, so why would you go years without seeing your eye doctor? It is vital to check on your eyes as you grow, as you age and with general life changes. These visits are beneficial if a change in prescription is needed, but regardless it is a good opportunity to check on your overall eye health.

Your doctor can test for glaucoma, optic nerve damage and other issues you may not have noticed. Just like any other diseases, eye problems are much easier to treat if recognized early, and the best way to prevent those is by having an eye check regularly.

Take blink breaks from your computer

After hours of staring at your computer, you can experience dry eyes, eye strain, neck pain, headaches, blurry vision and other types of discomfort. When staring at something on the screen, combined with the damaging blue light emitted by digital screens, eyes will start to go into fatigue. This issue has become increasingly relevant as more technology becomes available, coining the term digital eye strain.

By blinking more, you spread more tears throughout your eyes and hydrate them. A good rule of thumb is to take a screen break every 15-20 minutes to basically allow your eyes to breathe. However if you have to use digital devices frequently, you can still aid your eyes by turning your screen brightness down, using an anti-glare screen cover, and keeping your screens smaller in size.

Protecting your eyes should start from a young age and the benefits will be seen for the rest of your life. You only get one set of eyes, so it’s important to protect them by living a healthy lifestyle, visiting an eye doctor regularly, wearing sunglasses, avoiding smoking, and limiting your digital screen time. Following these precautions can make a world of difference to your long-term eye health.

Each member of the vision care team at Medical Arts Eye Clinic & Optical is carefully hand-selected by our doctors and management to provide you with the best ophthalmology care in the Auburn-Opelika area. Contact us today on 334-821-3838 to schedule your appointment and discover how we can assist your eye health!