March is Save Your Vision Month

Did you know that more than 20 million Americans have severe vision loss? We know you can’t completely prevent all causes of vision loss and eye disease, but there are several things everyone can do to maintain healthy eyes and reduce their chances of vision loss in the future.

Because March is Save Your Vision Month, I’d like to talk about some of the most important things you can do to encourage strong, healthy eyesight for many years to come:

Wear your sunglasses. You can delay the development of cataracts and prevent retinal damage by wearing UV blocking sunglasses regularly when you’re outside or in your car. Make sure your sunglasses block 100% of both UV-A and UV-B rays.

Don’t Smoke. One of the best things you can do for your eyes is to steer clear of tobacco smoke. Studies show that people who smoke or who have smoked have a greater chance of developing age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and cataracts, in addition to many other adverse health issues.

Get your eyes checked regularly. Even if you have no obvious vision or eye-related issues, you should get your eyes checked so that we can create a baseline and catch any early signs of disease.

Wear eye protection. Every year, we see an estimated 2.5 million eye injuries each year in the U.S. It’s very important to actively prevent eye injuries by wearing proper eye protection during sports activities such as hockey and baseball and home projects such as home repairs, gardening, and cleaning.

Eat right. You’ve probably heard that eating carrots will help your vision. There’s definitely some truth to that, but you should also try to eat a variety of other vegetables and fruits on a regular basis. Vitamin deficiency can impair retinal function, and studies have found that people who ate more food containing antioxidants (see my blog post from last week to learn more) were less likely to develop early and advanced AMD.