SAVE YOUR VISION: Healthy lifestyle choices that help avoid eye diseases

Prevention and early detection of a serious eye disease can help preserve your eyesight. Commit to achieving good eye health by scheduling regular comprehensive eye exams at Lighthouse Guild.

In addition, you can help save your vision by committing to healthy lifestyle choices. Here are a few examples of how you can take care of your vision on a daily basis:

• Follow a nutritious, balanced diet of fresh and high fiber foods. Eye-healthy food choices include antioxidant-rich, dark green, leafy vegetables such as spinach, kale or collard greens. Eat cold water fatty fish like salmon, tuna, and halibut. Also include legumes, egg, carrots, avocado, wheat germ, vegetable oil, nuts and citrus fruits (not juice) in your meals.
• Reach and stay at a healthy weight. If you’re overweight or clinically obese, it increases your risk of developing diabetes and other systemic conditions. These disorders, in turn, can lead to vision loss due to diabetic retinopathy, cataracts or glaucoma. If diets don’t seem to work, seek professional help from a dietitian.
• Be physically active. Regular exercise improves your physical and mental health, including your vision. Government health agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommend 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity exercise for adults. One option would be to exercise 30 minutes a day over five days. Choose physical activities you enjoy: brisk walking, climbing the stairs, yoga, stretching or dancing.
• Don’t smoke. The direct link between tobacco smoking and adverse health effects includes eye diseases such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD), cataracts, glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy. If you smoke, you are twice as likely to develop AMD, and you’re two to three times more likely to develop cataracts. Dry eye syndrome is also more than twice as likely to impact smokers.
• Maintain healthy blood glucose, blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Maintaining healthy levels helps prevent or delay chronic conditions such as diabetes and its complications. Diabetic retinopathy can cause damage to the eye’s retina, resulting in vision loss.
• Get plenty of sleep: The National Sleep Foundation recommends we should get between seven and nine hours of sleep every night. As we sleep, our eyes enjoy continuous lubrication, which rids the eyes of dust, allergens or smoke that accumulates during the day.

Save your vision! Schedule a comprehensive dilated eye exam at Lighthouse Guild.

Lighthouse Guild’s full service Optometric and Low Vision Clinic:
212-769-6313
ColumbiaDoctors Ophthalmology’s Robert Burch Family Eye Center:
212-305-9535
Both conveniently located at 250 West 64th Street, New York, NY 10023