Eye Care Guide: 5 Tips for Better Vision

You’d be clueless without your eyes.

Research shows that your eyes make up 85% of your total knowledge.
If you want to keep your eyes strong and effective, you have to know the ins and outs of preventative eye care.

For instance, did you know that learning your family’s medical history can help you keep your eyes safe? Since you can inherit eye diseases, a medical history can help you determine whether or not you’re at risk of developing certain vision problems.

What other tips can help you have better vision? Read on to learn about 5 things you can start doing today to protect your eyesight.

1. Practice Everyday Eye Maintenance

To have better vision, it’s helpful to know how to maintain your eye health daily. Here are a few tips for everyday eye care:

• Pay attention to headaches
• Blink often
• Allow tears to flow freely
• Give your eyes a chance to rest
• Sleep enough every night

First, headaches can be a sign that you have some type of serious eye health issue. If you find yourself reaching for headache medicine on a daily, or weekly basis, it’s time to get an eye exam.

Next, pay special attention to whether or not your eyes are tearing up more than usual. While tears can be a good way to hydrate your eyes, excessive tears could be the result of an outside force.

For instance, certain medications or outdoor allergies can cause itchy eyes to tear up. If you start tearing up at random times, begin exploring what environmental factors could be the cause.

Moving on, remember to blink frequently to prevent your eyes from becoming fatigued. Finally, make sure you’re giving your eyes the rest they need.

Throughout the day you should take frequent breaks from electronic screens so your eyes can recharge. Getting enough sleep at night is another way to naturally restore your eyes.

The experts recommend adults get anywhere between 7 to 9 full hours of sleep each night. Healthy sleep patterns can also help with preventing unsightly dark circles or bags from forming under your eyes.

2. Benefits of Eye Exams

Moving on, you can also invest in the health of your eyes by keeping up with routine eye exams. Be careful to not mistake vision screenings for eye exams. A vision screening is a cheap, fast test that’s usually done by a volunteer.

An eye exam on the other hand is more comprehensive. During an eye exam, an expertly trained optometrist or ophthalmologist will conduct the tests. Routine eye exams can expose serious health conditions such as cataracts, glaucoma, detached retinas, and macular degeneration.

By getting an eye exam at least every few years, you’ll have a better chance of detecting serious eye issues early on. By detecting the problem before it progresses, you’ll have more effective treatment options to rely on.

If you have a family history of eye disease, or you’re already wearing corrective lenses, you should get eye exams more frequently than other people. Talk to a professional like the Eye Doctor Riverdale, to find out if you’re overdue for an exam.

3. How to Maintain Eyesight With Your Diet

The foods you eat play a major role in maintaining healthy eyes. Here’s a shortlist of foods that can maintain and improve your vision:

• Coldwater fish
• Dark leafy greens
• Eggs
• Citrus fruits
• Nuts
• Legumes
• Fish oil
• Sunflower seeds

Look for fish that are rich in omega-3 fatty acids to help protect yourself from dry eyes and macular degeneration. If you’re a vegetarian, or you don’t like fish, try taking omega-3 supplements, like fish oil gelcaps.

Next, be sure to add dark leafy greens like kale and spinach into your daily diet. Leafy greens contain plant pigments, like lutein, that helps keep your eyes strong. Finally, legumes, like black-eyed peas or lentils will help you stock up on minerals, like zinc, that help your retinas.

4. Wear Sunglasses for Better Vision

If it’s sunny outside, wearing sunglasses will instantly give you better vision. If you have vision issues, like being farsighted, you can also look into getting prescription sunglasses. Here are a few of the ways both regular and prescription sunglasses can benefit you:

• Block out harmful blue lights
• Reduce the risk of cataracts
• Prevent macular degeneration
• Slow signs of aging
• Protect your eyes from foreign objects

Thanks to the sun, there are both UV light rays, as well as blue light all around. Since blue light is almost invisible, your eyes aren’t very good at blocking it out. In addition to the sun, blue light rays also come from electronic screens and fluorescent lights.

Ongoing animal research is showing that extended exposure to blue lights can cause irreparable damage to the eye’s retina. When your eye’s retina becomes damaged, problems like vision loss can start to form. Luckily, sunglasses can block out both natural and artificial blue lights.

5. Exercise Your Eyes

You probably don’t think about your eyes when you’re heading to the gym, but the reality is eyes need exercise too! Daily eye exercises can help prevent eye strain, while also helping you with general eye maintenance.

If you spend a large portion of your day staring at a computer screen, you need to create an eye exercise routine. Here are the steps to follow for a simple eye exercise:

1. Close your eyes
2. Move your eyes up
3. Move your eyes down
4. Repeat 3 times
5. Move your eyes left
6. Move your eyes right
7. Repeat 3 times

As you practice the eye exercise above, move your eyes slowly. Don’t rush the exercise, and instead, focus on maintaining deep breaths, as you gradually complete each step.

Keep Your Vision Sharp

Now you know the top tips to practice to have better vision throughout your life! Which one of our tips are you going to try out first?

Will, you be investing in a pair of UV rays blocking sunglasses? Or are you ready to start incorporating vision-enhancing foods into your diet?

We suggest that you try using all of the tips in this article to have the best eye health possible! For more articles like this one, check out the rest of our site.

To read more on topics like this, check out the Lifestyle category