How To Improve Eye Care And Vision

There are about 50,000 people in the United States who lose their eyesight every year. Blindness ofter starts with a simple eye problem that goes untreated. Our eyes are extremely important. Without them, we can't perform everyday tasks well at all. It's time to pay attention to our eyes. Here are some helpful hints to help improve your eye care and vision.

Healthy diet

Start with a healthy diet. Add more fruits and vegetables to your diet. Strawberries and blueberries contain high amounts of antioxidants that can lower the risk of ARMD or "Age-Related Macular Degeneration." Green leafy vegetables, like spinach, contain lutein, a pigment that helps prevent the formation of cataract and ARMD. You can also improve your eye health by taking highly nutritious food supplements.

Exercise

Routinely preforming exercises on our eyes can serve to improve our vision further still. Well known eye exercises that you can practice are "near and far focusing," "palming" and "figures of eight." These exercises only take 5 to 10 minutes a day and can be done anywhere you happen to be.

Palming is done by cupping your palms around your eyes while resting your wrists on your cheeks and your fingers on your forehead. The goal of this exercise is to rest your eyes by relieving stress around them.

"Figures of eight" is performed by drawing an imaginary number eight in the sky with our eyes. The purpose here is to enhance the flexibility of the eyes.

"Near and far focusing" can be performed by alternately focusing on an object that is close up and then on another one that's further away. The intention here is to help strengthen your eye muscles.

Another tip to keep the eyes healthy is to blink often, especially if you spend a lot of time in air conditioned rooms. Blinking stops air from blowing directly into our eyes and keeps them from drying. Dried out eyes can be problematic in that they can cause corneal abrasions, which may also lead to poor vision, if not looked after promptly.

While on PC

When working long hours on your PC, try to angle the screen at 10 to 20 degrees at a distance of 24 inches from your body. Staring at computer screens for hours at a time can severely strain your eyes, debilitate your eye muscles and result in blurred vision. Therefore, be sure to take several short breaks throughout your work day to rest your eyes.

Your eyes are one of the most significant parts of your body. Therefore, taking care of them is vital. As they say, "prevention is better than a cure." We need to be on the look out for things that can give our eyes problems so that we can steer clear of them. To reiterate, we must always take even the smallest eye problem seriously and address it immediately.

Written by: Dr. Mike Zupp