Keeping Your Eyes Healthy

    BELLEVUE, WA, June 30, 2010 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Keeping your eyes healthy for as long as possible is important. Many take their eyesight for granted and believe that failing eyesight will not happen to them, or that it will happen late in life. The truth is, besides genetics, your eyesight can be damaged beginning in your youth. The sun, lifestyle choices and nutrition all play a part in keeping your eyesight. And some people who had perfect 20/20 vision may wake up in their 40s needing reading glasses, due to presbyopia.

If you sit in front of a computer for more than two hours a day, you're damaging your eyesight. Intense focus and strain will hurt your vision and can lead to myopia or hyperopia very quickly.

Because of the way things are in life and work at the beginning of the 21st century, there are certain basic things you need to know in order to keep your eyes healthy.

- Wear sunglasses - Exposure to ultraviolet light, and UVA and UVB light can damage your eyes. There is some evidence that UV light exposure can lead to cataracts.

- Quit smoking - There is an increased risk in a common eye disease called macular degeneration, which can destroy your vision and lead to blindness when you smoke. Women are more likely than men to develop macular degeneration.

- Healthy nutrition - Low fat, low cholesterol diets keep eyes healthy, as do diets high in certain vitamins such as A, C, E, selenium and zinc.

- See your eye doctor regularly - Some diseases like glaucoma are incremental and can be diagnosed by your eye doctor. Vision tests and a yearly dilation done by your eye doctor can head off serious eye problems before they begin.

If you work in front of a computer monitor all day long, you may notice some of the following symptoms of computer vision syndrome:

- Blurry vision
- Double vision
- Tired eyes
- Neck and shoulder pain
- Headaches

Some things you can do to keep your eyes fresh and the strain at a minimum include:

- Blinking often
- Looking at an object 20 feet away for 20 seconds every 20 minutes (20/20/20 rule)
- Take breaks
- Adjust the brightness and contrast of your monitor to reduce glare

It is important to keep your eyes healthy to reduce the chance of macular degeneration, glaucoma and cataracts. Even those who seem to have perfect vision can find that environmental conditions can wreak havoc on their 20/20 vision

If you would like more information on how to keep your eyes healthy, please visit the website of the experienced ophthalmologists at Bellevue LASIK & Cornea (www.bellevue-lasik.com) in the Seattle, Olympia, and Bellevue, Washington area.

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