Your eyes are an early warning sign of many health conditions. If your doctor spots a severe eye condition, like cataracts or glaucoma, they’ll refer you to an ophthalmologist for medicine or surgery.
Family optometrists offer comprehensive eye exams, myopia control, specialized contact lenses, and more for adults and children. Follow these five tips to maintain optimal eye health.
Get Regular Exercise
It’s no secret that regular exercise offers countless health benefits, including improved heart health, stable blood sugar levels, sustainable energy, weight management and disease prevention. What may be less well known is that exercise also promotes healthy eyes, helping you avoid a number of common eye conditions and vision problems.
Companies like Hillside Optometry provide comprehensive eye care services with a focus on family-friendly care. A family eye doctor ensures personalized attention for all ages, from children to seniors, offering routine exams, vision correction, and eye health management. Their commitment helps maintain long-term eye health for the entire family.
It is vital that you and your family get regular exercise to maintain good eye health. This means going for a walk, climbing the stairs instead of taking an elevator and even just dancing around your house are all great ways to keep your body moving.
These types of exercises will help strengthen your heart and lungs, improve your mood and even reduce stress. These are all important factors for maintaining a healthy lifestyle, which can help prevent eye diseases such as glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration.
Getting regular exercise will also help you manage chronic conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure, which can cause serious eye problems if left untreated. Keeping your body in better shape will help you avoid these life-altering conditions by catching them early through routine checkups with a family eye doctor.
Other steps you can take to protect your eye health include wearing sunglasses whenever you go outside, regardless of the season, to keep harmful UV rays out of your eyes, and always practicing the 20-20-20 rule when using a digital device (look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds every 20 minutes). You should also be sure to blink often to help with lubrication and to prevent dry eye symptoms. Finally, it’s important to quit smoking if you do smoke and to wear protective eyewear when playing sports or working with tools.
Understand Your Risk Factors
It’s important to understand your family eye health risks and to keep up with your regular visits to the eye doctor. The eye doctor will want to know your family history of eye problems because many eye diseases have a genetic component. In addition, a patient’s lifestyle choices can also greatly increase or decrease his or her risk of developing an eye disease. Taking care of yourself with a healthy diet, exercising regularly and refraining from smoking can greatly decrease your risk for eye diseases.
It is important for adults to have routine eye exams every two years, up to age 40, to catch any eye issues before they develop into a bigger problem. Those with certain health conditions like diabetes or high blood pressure or who take medications that can affect the eyes should visit the eye doctor more frequently than others.
Children should also have a comprehensive eye exam before starting school. Undetected or uncorrected vision problems can have a huge impact on a child academically, socially and athletically. If they have trouble focusing, reading or teaming their eyes together, it could cause learning and behavioral problems. It’s also crucial that parents talk to their eye doctor about any family history of hereditary eye disorders so they can be monitored closely and treated early on.
Reduce Eyestrain
Staring at a computer, tablet or smartphone screen for too long can result in eye discomfort and even vision problems. Common symptoms include itching, redness or watery eyes; blurry or double vision; and headaches. Eye strain can also lead to neck and shoulder pain. Children, especially, are at risk for eye discomfort from excessive screen time. They may complain of head, back or neck pain and rub their eyes to relieve the discomfort. They might squint or blink more frequently to see clearly, leading to dry eyes and dry, itchy skin.
Taking steps to prevent eye strain is critical for everyone, including adults. Follow the 20-20-20 rule, which means that every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for about 20 seconds to give your eyes a break from the screen. Set a timer or use the parental controls on your child’s device to schedule regular breaks and limits to screen time. Avoid bright lighting, both from outdoor sunlight and harsh interior lighting.
Use a matte filter or screen protector on your screens to reduce the glare. Stay hydrated, as this will help reduce dryness and irritation. Practice good posture, sitting at arm’s length from the screen and keeping your feet flat on the floor. Limit screen usage before bedtime, as the blue light emitted by devices can interfere with sleep patterns.
The best way to manage eye strain is through a comprehensive, professional eye exam. Our optometrist will assess your needs and recommend solutions that are tailored to your specific situation. This includes proper screen settings, incorporating eye breaks into your daily routine, using the right type of blinking, exercising your eyes, staying hydrated and avoiding a diet high in fatty or sugary foods.
Get Regular Eye Exams
If you aren’t sure if your vision is up to par, you should get a full eye exam. This will cover a wide range of tests, from basic visual acuity to examinations of your entire ocular system (your eyelids, tear ducts, the lymph nodes just behind your ears and the outer tissue that surrounds your eyes).
It’s important to schedule regular family comprehensive eye exams so that we can catch any signs of an underlying condition early on. Many of these diseases, such as glaucoma or cataracts, don’t have any symptoms in the very beginning, which means they can easily go unnoticed.
When you come in for your appointment, we will ask you about any health or vision problems that you are experiencing and when they began. We will also review your family history and current medications as well as any work-related or environmental conditions that might have an impact on your eye health and vision.
We will then conduct various tests to check your visual acuity, including reading charts with letters and symbols that get smaller and smaller as you move down the chart. We will also measure the field of vision in each of your eyes to make sure they are lining up properly and that you don’t have any blind spots. In addition, we will check to see if you are having any eye movement problems or are experiencing floaters (tiny specks that appear to float in front of your eyes). If there is an underlying issue, we can often spot it at this stage and recommend appropriate treatment. We will also advise you on the frequency of your future eye exams depending on your specific needs and risk factors.
Featured Image Source: https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2020/04/08/07/23/eye-care-5016078_1280.jpg