Imagup General Magazine 2024
Five senses are crucial for our living. If we lose one, others need to adapt, improve, and change their work to help us live normal. The sight is one of those five crucial senses, and somehow, the eyes are the most endangered. It is possible to live without this sense, but it is not easy for sure.
In many surveys, people expressed that losing sight would have the most impact on the quality of their life. Some studies even showed that in case of losing one sense, that part of the brain responsible for handling those processes does not become unused as it gets rewired to start processing the remaining ones.
But the best you can do is to care about your eyes while they are still in perfect shape. That can be pretty easy if you think on time, and take some action.
Most often, it is the best thing to take care of something before you need medication, so here are some tips to protect your vision and prevent blindness:
1. Protect Your Eyes From the Sun
If you like sunbathing and outdoor activities, you should be aware that your eyes need proper protection. We and our skin can get used to the sun, but our eyes need adequate protection all the time. Ultraviolet (UV) radiation is very harmful so what we need to do to take care of our eyes is wearing sunglasses, and not just any kind, but the one that provides us with 100 percent protection from both, UVA (long wave) and UVB (short wave) rays. Another very significant thing is taking care of the skin around the eyes as it is one of the thinnest and most sensitive ones on the body. Proper facial sunscreen will help with that.
2.Protecting Your Eyes From Electronic Devices
It’s apparent that most of the time, either at work or at home, we are on our tablets, smartphones, or looking at the computer screens, and this can do much harm to our vision. One part of that is because we don’t blink as often when we do something up close, and that can lead to dry or tired eyes.
But what can we do about that if we know that today, we do most of our jobs digitally? For starters, there is a 20-20-20 rule where every 20 minutes, we should look at the object 20 feet away for 20 seconds, and this would help our eyes rest. Some things can help with dry or tired eyes, and one of them is using artificial tears. If you are spending a lot of time in front of a computer, holding the screen at a 30-degree angle can reduce the amount of blue light entering your eyes. Also, wearing blue light blocking glasses and using a screen filter can help you with that.
3. Regular Eye Exams
It is one of the most important things that someone can do for the health of their eyes. Scheduling regular eye exams are the best way to not only check your vision but also to prevent eye degeneration, and start with the right treatment if the case of any health problems. The exam can be either simple chart reading or a thorough inspection of your sight. Something that doctors recommend as the best eye check is the dilated eye exams, which can help specialists to spot any possible diseases.
4. Balanced Diet
The, now, famous saying We are what we eat can also be applied to the health of our eyes. Eating well and a balanced diet is vital for our overall health, and we need all the vitamins and antioxidants that we can get. What researches have shown is that fruits (strawberries, mangos, oranges) and vegetables (spinach, kale) are full of vitamins and nutrients that are good for our sight. Adding nuts, seeds, and fish that is rich with Omega 3 to our diet is also great for the eyes. All this mentioned is great not only because we provide our body with all the nutrients it needs, but also to prevent any possible diseases. The most severe is Diabetes Type 2, which is the leading cause of blindness.
5. Exercising
It is a big part of general health, and with regular exercise, you can reduce the risk of many possible diseases. Some studies state that with just brisk walking, you can reduce the risk of macular degeneration by 70%. And if this isn’t enough reason to be more active, with the regular workout routine, you can reduce the risk of high blood pressure, obesity, and diabetes. We can all agree that changing the lifestyle can be very difficult, but today there are so many ways that we can do that and stay healthy.
6. Smoking and Unhealthy Habits
Some of the habits that we all have can be good for us, and some of them can be very bad and can lead to many diseases. That is the case with smoking, that ugly habit that many people have. High amounts of toxic ingredients and carcinogens that are in tobacco can, in the long run, cause blindness as the cyanide from the cigarettes can destroy our eye’s cells. Smoking can also limit the amount of oxygen that our eyes need, which can lead to uveitis (eye inflammation), macular degeneration, or cataracts.
The eyes are the mirror of the soul, but they also reflect our overall health. Taking care of our health should be our prime goal, and with the knowledge of how important each of the five senses is, we should take good care of them. Having an eye exam is a good starting point, and with adjusting the work and home environment, and with proper protection of our eyes while outdoor, everything should be fine. There is no cure for blindness, but there are many things that we can do to prevent it.
