After four decades of bringing top quality eye care to the city of Orillia, there is still nothing that motivates our doctors like helping you protect your eyes.
While treatment options are available for more eye problems than ever before, we can’t stress enough to our patients the importance of preventative eye care. If you want to have great vision into your nineties, then being proactive now can make all the difference.
Let’s check out three easy ways to protect your eyes, and the considerable benefits of implementing them.
Shield Your Eyes from Harm…Literally
There are two sides to this entry, but we can still pretend it’s only three easy ways to protect your eyes… Proper use of sunglasses and protective eyewear could prevent tens of thousands of Canadians experiencing eye problems every single year!
Sunglasses and UV Radiation
In winter, just as much as summer, ultraviolet light shines down, tanning our skin and potentially damaging our vision. There are two types of UV (imaginatively called UV-A and UV-B) and both can accelerate the onset of common eye diseases such as age-related macular degeneration and cataracts.
Quality sunglasses will absorb 99-100% of UV radiation, so if you’re spending considerable lengths of time outdoors in the sun, make sure your eyes are protected.
Protective Eyewear at Work
If you’re chopping logs or doing some metalwork at home, you should know to wear appropriate protective eyewear. However, there are still 700 Canadians who suffer an eye injury every single day at work, where safety regulations ought to be (or are) in place.
Turns out that most of these injuries were preventable, with many of the injured claiming that they “didn’t think goggles were necessary”. If you’re working with chemicals, projectiles (like bits of wood or shards of glass) or heavy machinery, you must protect your eyes at all times. You only get two eyes, so it’s probably worth the hassle!
Visit Us Every 12 Months
You might not know, but many vision-threatening eye diseases can develop without presenting any symptoms until your sight is actively impaired. An annual eye exam is the only way to know that your vision is truly free from risk and that your eye health is up to scratch.
Even when eye diseases don’t have symptoms, they do leave signs of their presence; signs that our doctors and their state-of-the-art equipment can readily spot weeks, months or even years before your vision would normally be compromised. You should visit our practice at least every 12-24 months to protect your eyes from any problems which you might not be able to detect yourself.
Put Your Smartphone and Tablet Down
Don’t worry, we aren’t cautioning anyone to stop using incredible modern technology. However, paying prolonged attention to digital screens causes irritating or painful eyestrain for people all year round. To read text clearly on screen, your eyes must focus intently and this can fatigue your focusing muscles.
Try taking a short break every twenty minutes or so and give your eyes a breather. Talk to someone, or even just close your eyes for 30 seconds and let them relax. The 20:20:20 method can work wonders: take a 20 seconds break every 20 minutes, and focus your attention on something around 20 feet away. It relieves a bit of pressure and keeps your eyes nice and healthy.
