Top 10 Tips for Healthy Eyes

Eye injuries, diseases and infections can result in permanent damage to our eyes and even blindness. To help support healthy eyes and reduce your risks for future eye problems, follow these top 10 tips for eye health.

1. Eat an Eye Healthy Diet: Foods which are rich in antioxidants and Vitamin A can help to reduce risks for macular degeneration and cataracts. For the best eye health, eat a diet which includes plenty of carrots, spinach, kale, mango, sweet potatoes, cantaloupe, oranges, grapefruit, almonds, peanuts and broccoli.
2. Follow Healthy Eye Make-Up Habits: To reduce your risks for eye infections associated with the use of eye make-up, never share make-up, store your eye make-up in the refrigerator, and throw out your make-up once it has reached the expiration date.
3. Protect Your Eyes from Damaging UV Rays: Prolonged exposure to ultraviolet rays can damage the retina and increase risks for cataracts. To help protect your eyes from damaging UV rays, always wear sunglasses that provide protection for UVA and UVB rays.
4. Visit Your Eye Doctor Regularly: Regular visits to the eye doctor can catch eye diseases early before they begin to affect your vision, and any prescriptions for glasses or contacts will remain up to date.
5. Don’t Ignore Unusual Eye Symptoms: Flashes of light, eye pain, sudden itching and redness and a host of other symptoms can indicate serious eye emergencies such as retinal detachment or bacterial infections. Always see a doctor right away if you experience any unusual eye symptoms.
6. Practice Good Hygiene for Contacts: Poor contact hygiene may cause eye infections, such as conjunctivitis, and could even damage your eyes. For healthy eyes, always practice good hygiene when you use contacts and never wear your contacts beyond their recommended wear period.
7. Protect Your Eyes from Injury: Goggles may not look cool, but millions of eye injuries which occur every year could have been prevented with goggles. If you are going to be participating in any sports, hobbies or jobs which pose a risk to your eyes, play it safe and wear your goggles.
8. Reduce Eye Strain: To reduce eye strain, always take short breaks if you are reading or working in front of a computer for long periods of time. Briefly looking away from a book or computer screen and moving your eyes up and down and side to side will help to reduce eye strain.
9. Try Not to Touch Your Eyes: Bacteria on your face and hands can easily spread to your eyes. To avoid bacterial infections in your eyes, try not to touch your eyes and use a clean wet cloth or tissue if you to need to clean your eyes.
10. Quit Smoking: Smoking will increase your risks for macular degeneration – one of the leading causes of blindness in adults. To help your healthy eyes stay healthy, try to quit smoking as soon as possible.