7 healthy tips for maintaining healthy eyes and vision

In our busy life, maintaining excellent eye health and clear vision seems nowhere possible to achieve. With computer screens taking up to 60% of our time and unhealthy eating habits, our eyes are exploited every day. 

The fragility of the eyes makes it even more prone to breakage hence protecting them at all cost is highly necessary. Naturally, our eyes age and the vision starts to deteriorate with time. But with our awful lifestyle changes, poor vision and eye damage arise earlier than we expect. Hence taking up a few healthy measures for maintaining eye health can help to manage our eyesight. 

Here are some of our tips to maintain healthy eyes and vision for ages:

1. Make your diet rich in antioxidants

A healthy intake of food reflects outwardly on the body. Just like for strengthening the bones, we need calcium, enhancing our vision requires your diet to be full of antioxidants. Antioxidants help to remove free radicals from our body. Free radicals cause various damage to our body and create a possibility to develop cataract and glaucoma in years to come. 

Antioxidants help to counteract free radicals and reverse its effect to eliminate chances of potential eye diseases. Hence for ensuring good eye health, antioxidant supplement is very essential. Hence make your diet more antioxidants-friendly by adding the following food items:

• Vitamin A: Dark leafy veggies, lettuce, winter squashes

• Vitamin C: Citrus fruits, broccoli and bell pepper

• Lutein and Zeaxanthin: Green leafy vegetables (kale, spinach, broccoli, peas and lettuce), eggs, durum wheat and corn

• Vitamin C: Citrus fruits (oranges, lemon), peppers, strawberry, broccoli. Potatoes and brussels sprouts.

• Vitamin E: Vegetable oils( wheat germ, soybean, corn, safflower and sunflower), nuts, seeds and spinach and other green leafy vegetables.

• Vital fatty acids: Salmon, sardines and mackerel

• Zinc: Oysters, red meat, beans, nuts and seafood

2. Give up smoking

Smoking is linked to the root of various lethal diseases but very few know that it also leads to vision loss.  Smoking has resulted in an increased risk of severe eye diseases such as age-related macular degeneration, glaucoma, cataract and dry eye syndrome. Hence it's highly recommended to give up smoking to ensure vision health and clarity. 

3. Stay conscious of family eye history

Around 600,000people in the UK suffer from sight loss caused by AMD while there are around 70,000 new cases every year. AMD and other severe eye diseases are often passed down in their families and it increases the risk of developing in their newborn. Hence it’s vital to identify your family's eye history to take the right precautions and stay prepared.

Here are some well-known eye diseases with genetic risk

• Cataract

• Glaucoma

• Diabetic Retinopathy

• Age-related macular degeneration

4. Get good hours of sleep

This tip is pretty easy to do. Just sleep for 8 to 9 hours every day and do a favour on your eye health. Poor sleep often results in eye strain, itchiness and not to forget very unpretty dark circles. Due to fewer hours of sleep, our eyes produce less tears which give free access to various eye infections. 

Hence the better you sleep, the better your eyesight would be for years. Make a routine and stick to it which allows you enough sleeping hours. Also, avoid using your phone or computer before sleeping, just a glass of water and off to bed. 

5. Give yourself a break from Screen time

Screen use has soared to maximum hours which causes eye problems and discomfort at the same time. We get it, now that everything is available on the internet, we are too.  However, there are major drawbacks of staring at screens for too long. It results in eye problems like eye strain, dry-eyes, itchiness, burning sensation and many more. The main culprit behind these problems is damaging blue light rays that are emitted from our screens.

In conclusion, to avoid the adverse effect of excessive screen time, take frequent screen time breaks. You can either follow the 20-20-20 rule which involves looking at an object 20 feet away after every 20 minutes for 20 seconds. Or get yourself blue light glasses, also known as computer glasses for enhanced protection off the screen. These glasses block the incoming rays and eliminate any type of discomfort and eye problems crossing your way. 

6. Go for regular eye test 

We still can’t crack this but people are not very diligent when it comes to taking regular eye tests. Most of us only visit if we experience any eye problems or a sudden defect has taken place. The major plotline behind a comprehensive eye test is to inspect out any potential risk of eye diseases. Eye diseases are mostly internal and can show symptoms after they've reached a severe stage which is difficult to recover. So to avoid such unfortunate events, people must go for an annual eye test. Specscart offers free eye tests for all groups so feel free to visit us and get your eyes examined. 

7. Wear sunglasses when out under the sun

We get it, sunglasses are fashionable. But it is also very functional for our eyes when it comes to barring UV rays from the sun. There's an equal level of harm from the sun from our skin to our eyes. UV rays extended exposure causes an increased risk of age-related macular degeneration and cataract. 

Sunglasses with UVA and UVB coating offer premium protection to our eyes against the sun. Hence always carry (chic) pairs of sunglasses around while travelling under the radar.