Many things exist that can compromise your vision, and many of them can be prevented by simply making a few life changes that aren’t that difficult to make. As any doctor would tell you, a few small changes early on in life can make a lot of difference down the line. And since human beings use eyesight for so many things, the following are bad to do for your over quality of life regardless of just your health.
Smoking and Cancer
Forget about just making your eyes water, smoking has far worse health detriments than that and these can affect your vision in a big way. Firstly, you can increase your odds of developing cataracts and other types of eye related diseases including those that affect your retinas. This is all in addition to the fact that smoking can only make problems such as macular degeneration even worse than they already are. If you have optic nerve damage or cataracts, this is an even better reason to put down the cigarettes and never pick them back up again. Even hanging around with smokers is a habit best left in the past.
Skin cancer is a powerful reason to use sunscreen, but it is far from the only reason. What a lot of people forget about the sun’s ultraviolet radiation is that it also damages the eyes. The reason this happens is because of the damage that this radiation does to DNA. At the cellular level, the body can only repair so much damage. Once it becomes bad enough, the body can no longer compensate. Both the surface structures of your eyes and your retinas can become damaged and in time this damage becomes too great to be healed correctly and can cause your vision to suffer.
Poor Contact Lens Management
What a lot of people don’t realize about their contact lenses is that these need to be used extremely carefully. With a million medical or more visits every year in America that are a direct result of eye infections caused by contacts, this is a significant problem that many people are not taking seriously enough.
Are you replacing your contacts recommended? If you aren’t, you are most likely inviting a lot of bacteria, viruses and fungi into your eyes. Are you routinely washing your contact case and then replacing it at least every three months? Do you have glasses for if and when something goes wrong with your contacts? If you do not, you are essentially asking for trouble. Since any infection in the eyes can literally lead to blindness that is a game of Russian Roulette that you do not want to play.
Eating Fattening, Overly Sugary and High Salt Foods
The American diet is not a good one. With salad dressings and mayonnaise that are chock full of fat, pickles that are saturated in sodium, and jelly that is little more than a sugary goop, even salads can be unhealthy. These contribute to hypertension, diabetes and heart disease that hurt eyes.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/22/eye-care-tips_n_3294210.html
http://www.menshealth.com/health/worst-thing-youre-doing-your-eyes
Sugarland Eye & Laser Center leads in providing premium LASIK technologies to Houston, Sugar Land, and the surrounding region. The Center’s award-winning medical director introduced revolutionary technologies such as iLASIK to the region. This technology is used by NASA astronauts, Navy SEALS and Air Force fighter pilots. At Sugarland Eye & Laser Center, you can now receive the same treatment. For more information, please call (281) 240-0478 or visit us at www.houston-lasik.com.
About the Author
Amjad Khokhar, M.D. is Chief LASIK Surgeon at Sugarland Eye & Laser Center. Add Dr. Khokhar on Google+ here.
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