4 Tips For Maintaining Healthy Eyes

Eye health is a topic that many people don't think about until they are experiencing vision problems. Knowing a few simple tricks for keeping your eyes healthy can help you maintain good vision well into older age. Here are four tips that anyone can use to keep their eyes healthy.

Eat an Eye-Healthy Diet

You may be surprised to learn that what you eat can have a huge impact on your eye health. Supplying your body with nutrients and minerals that promote good circulation will keep your entire body, including your eyes, in better shape. Leafy greens and whole grains will provide your eyes with the oxygenated blood that they need to repair tissue damage and fight off infection.

Zinc and vitamin A are other essential nutrients for your eyes. Zinc assists your body in transferring vitamin A from your liver to your eyes. Vitamin A is responsible for creating melanin, a dark pigment in the iris that forms a protective layer against UV radiation that could damage your eyes. Kidney beans, beef, and spinach are excellent sources of zinc, and you will find high concentrations of vitamin A in carrots, melons, and garlic.

Avoid Smoking

Smoking can be just as detrimental for your vision as it can be for your heart and lungs. Tobacco smoke puts you at higher risk of several eye diseases, including macular degeneration and cataracts. Macular degeneration is a term describing deterioration of the retina that leads to vision loss. The retina is the region in the back of your eye that transfers visual information to your brain through the optic nerve so that you can experience sight.

Cataracts are fogginess on the lenses of your eyes that can severely reduce your vision and lead to blindness. It is thought that smoking contributes to cataract development through two mechanisms: reducing your body's ability to remove damaged proteins from your lenses, and increasing the number of tissue-damaging free radicals in your body.

Maintain a Healthy Weight

Obesity causes wide-ranging negative effects throughout your body that put your vision at risk. People who are obese are more likely to develop diabetes, which could lead to diabetic retinopathy. This is a term for visual cloudiness, dark spots, or complete vision loss in people who are suffering from diabetes, caused by damage to the blood vessels in the retina.

Maintaining a healthy weight also makes it less likely that you will suffer from hypertension, high cholesterol, and other pulmonary issues. These conditions can restrict blood vessels in the retina and lead to vision blurriness or blindness that is similar to the vision problems caused by diabetic retinopathy.

Attend Regular Eye Exams

Many problems that can lead to vision loss in later years may show no apparent symptoms now. The only way to ensure that you will maintain good vision for as long as possible is to visit an eye doctor for regular exams. Your optometrist will have the equipment and experience necessary to detect visual abnormalities that are not normally evident to the patient.

Most professionals recommend that adults should attend an eye exam at least every one to two years. These exams will assess your overall eye health, including visual acuity, the health of the muscles around your eyes, depth perception, and the condition of the retina and other structures inside your eyes.

Keeping your eyes in good shape is not difficult if you know how to avoid common risk factors for vision problems and understand what your body needs to maintain healthy vision. Use these tips so you can enjoy accurate vision for years to come and minimize the risk of common eye diseases.

And for more information and tips, contact an eye clinic near you, such as All About Eyes.