How to Protect Your Vision as You Age.
May 9, 2018 by ThySista
Filed under Health & Wellness, Opinion, Weekly Columns
(ThySistas.com) Your eyes are a hugely important asset, so it pays to keep them protected over time. This will help you to fight back against the vision issues that arise with aging.
Here are just a few tips to help you to preserve your vision and ensure your eyes stay sharp and healthy, year after year.
Get Regular Checkups
This is without a doubt the best piece of advice for every person, whatever their age or quality of eyesight. A visit to the optician on a
yearly basis is essential, as it will allow you to identify early signs of serious issues and allow experts to intervene before things get worse.
There are plenty of vision issues that arise from diseases that you can do nothing to prevent, such as glaucoma. Cataracts are another inevitability of aging which a specialist can spot sooner rather than later and recommend suitable treatment if necessary.
It is best to accept that you will suffer some form of eye-related health scare as you get older, and in doing so to remember that regular checkups will put you in the best position to benefit from preventative measures.
Wear Sunglasses
It might seem obvious, but a good pair of sunglasses can go a long way towards maintaining your vision and keeping the ultraviolet rays of the sun from damaging your eyes.
Not all sunglasses are created equal, so be sure to choose examples that come with 100% UV protection. And most of all be sure to wear them on sunny days when you are out and about, even in the winter months.
Avoid Smoking
Smokers have to face up to a wide range of health issues caused by their cigarette habit, with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) being one of the diseases that this can create in the eye. And with rates on the rise, the time to take action is now.
AMD is an inherited condition that is exacerbated by smoking and can lead to vision loss that happens imperceptibly slowly but does irrevocable damage. Some new treatments are helping to combat this, but the best option is to simply stop smoking and avoid catalysing AMD altogether.
Manage Device Use
Billions of people spend every waking hour staring at a screen, whether it be a computer monitor at work, their smartphone on the commute or their television at home. Using a device of any kind for extended periods can cause eye strain and will compromise vision in the long run.
The solution is to take a break once every 20 minutes, looking at an object that is at a distance of at least 20 feet for a full 20 seconds. These exercises during device use will not only help to avoid sight degradation but will keep your eyes feeling fresher throughout the day, even if you have an office job.
Eat More Vegetables
Healthy eating is a great way of reducing the risk of suffering a number of ailments as you get older, with the vitamin content of common vegetables working wonders for your vision.
Experts recommend the consumption of things like carrots and peppers, as well as root vegetables, seed, and nuts, for people who want to make sure that their eyes do not deteriorate at a quicker rate than is strictly necessary.
As well as vegetables, it is important to balance your diet with other healthy foods, such as blueberries and other vitamin-rich fruits, salmon and oily fish in place of red meat, wholegrain cereals, and products that are low in heavily processed ingredients.
Keep Fit
This ties in with all the other tips for protecting your vision as you age, since an active lifestyle is conducive to general wellbeing and will mean that you not only live longer but can enjoy yourself in later life.
Daily exercise of 20 to 30 minutes is all that’s required to maintain your body more effectively, so you don’t have to suddenly start running marathons if you want to see clearly and feel better as time passes.
Another advantage of staying active is that it will mean that you spend less time glued to a mobile phone, computer or tablet. Exercising your eyes, as mentioned earlier, is an all-important step to above-average vision.
Don’t Self-Diagnose
It might be tempting to either ignore the early signs of a vision issue, or to look up the symptoms online and assume that you understand exactly what is or isn’t wrong with your eyes.
As soon as you notice something, get in touch with a trained medical professional. It is no good waiting until your next appointment six months down the line; book a checkup immediately and don’t procrastinate or make assumptions. And if necessary, use low vision aids as prescribed to make coping with a vision problem less stressful.
Follow these guidelines, and you should have decades of good vision and eye health ahead of you, so you can really see what the future brings.
Staff Writer; DeLisha Brown
