When doctors and healthcare workers remind you about following a healthy lifestyle and taking good care of your body, make sure you don’t forget to pay attention to your eyes, too, during the process. Your pair of eyes is a vital part of your overall health. You rely on your sense of sight to see the world and interact with everything around you. However, as you age, not only would it cause you to have wrinkles, gray hair, hearing loss, or creaky knees. Aging would also make your vision deteriorate, forcing you to wear eyeglasses or contact lenses.
While it’s no secret that aging worsens your sense of sight, eye problems related to aging could be prevented. The health of your eyes doesn’t only rely on genetics or age. It’s also significantly affected by your daily activities, lifestyle, and diet. If you want to keep your eye health in its best shape even as you age, there are certain habits you need to change or incorporate into your daily life to keep your eyes healthy and away from any disease.
Here are five tips to help you maintain your eye health and keep your vision sharp as you age.
1. Maintain A Balanced Diet
Good eye health starts with the type of food you eat. Nutrients like vitamins A, C, E; zinc; and omega-3 fatty acids could help reduce your risk for eye-related problems like cataracts, glaucoma, and macular degeneration. You could get these nutrients from specific food like eggs, nuts, beans, green leafy vegetables, citrus fruits like oranges, oily fish like salmon and tuna, as well as pork and oysters.
Remember, your eyes have their own set of nutritional requirements because they’re unique. And they’re especially sensitive to high-fat diets brought by their small blood vessels.
A healthy and well-balanced diet would also help you maintain a healthy weight. The healthier your weight is, the lower your chances would be of becoming obese, which is also another cause of blindness in seniors.
2. Attend Regular Eye Exams
Aging is expected and is part of life’s natural phase. So eventually, you’d need prescription glasses sooner or later for your eyes. However, some seniors tend to ignore this fact and don’t realize their need for glasses until their sense of sight has already deteriorated in its worst condition. To ensure you’re up to date with your eye health, it’s essential you schedule regular eye examinations with your doctor.
This way, you’d be able to detect potential eye problems at the earliest time possible. Moreover, your optometrist could recommend you to schedule appointments for an anti-aging spa every once in a while. This could also help you keep track of your eye health. Whether you claim to have a healthy pair of eyes or not, scheduling eye exams annually could significantly help you keep your vision in its best state and monitor any potential eye condition.
3. Quit Smoking
It’s said that former and current smokers are four times more at risk of contracting eye problems that lead to blindness than people who never smoked. Even if you stopped smoking years ago, your risk for blindness is believed to remain high. That’s why maintaining your eye health has to start not during your senior years but rather way back during your younger years.
Your eyes are said to be at risk of high levels of cellular changes and oxidative stress when you smoke. Moreover, smoking could damage your optic nerve, therefore increasing your chances of getting cataracts and muscular degeneration. If you’re having a tough time quitting smoking, don’t hesitate to either ask your doctor or a popular online chemist for help.
4. Exercise
You might be confused as to how exercise is linked to good eye health. But the thing is, when you exercise, your body pumps more blood. This means it increases your blood flow circulation, including in your eyes. When enough oxygen and blood are circulated into your eyes, it’d improve the quality of your vision and help get rid of any toxins existing in your bloodstream. Any type of exercise could help maintain your eye health. You could go for morning walks, perform yoga, do some jogs, or engage in light activities.
5. Wear Sunglasses
While it’s true that your body needs regular sustenance of vitamin D from sunlight, you must keep your eyes protected during your sunlight exposure. Direct exposure to sunlight could severely damage your eyes and even cause cancer and other eye-related health problems. Ensure you always bring your pair of sunglasses with you whenever you decide to spend some time outdoors.
Wearing sunglasses would reduce your risks of getting eye problems as well as help you see things clearly and better. It’s best if you wear sunglasses that are prescribed by your doctor. When choosing sunglasses to buy, go for a pair that could block 99–100% of ultraviolet rays for even better and greater protection against the sun.
Change Starts Now
Eye-health problems appear to be prevalent among senior adults. While you can’t prevent aging, these tips would help you avoid experiencing eye problems as you age. It’s still not too late to look after your eyes, so the best time to start changing your habits is today. Go ahead, get started, and keep your eyes as healthy as possible.
