subject: Keep Your Eyes Young! [print this page] Unless you are born with an unfortunate rare eye condition, usually our eyes are not built to fail us until we get to an old age. However, many things can come along, throughout our own aging process, that that will slowly deteriorate the gift of sight. There are specifically age-related eye diseases that can even cause complete blindness in older adults, such as macular degeneration and cataracts. However, while unfortunately we cannot slow time, we can help to delay the aging process. Like many other necessary attributes of our systematically-working system, good nutrition and an overall healthy lifestyle is an important part of prolonging your young, fresh eyes!
Our eyes, much like most of the other systems throughout our body, need a healthy mix of nutrients to get us through the day, and in turn, lifetime. In fact, many of the main standards for ensuring the best vision possible are fairly typical of a healthy life, in general. Most experts say that when it comes to making healthy food choices, many of the same rules apply. To keep your sight in top shape, try eating much more whole grains and wheat, versus white breads. They say that its important to choose good sources of protein, and to ingest healthy fats. It is truly imperative to stay hydrated, whether that be with water, tea, milk [for extra calcium], fruit juice, or one-hundred percent vegetable juices. Believe it or not, keeping the proper hydration helps relieve dry eyes. Lastly, its said that high levels of sodium can actually increase your risk of cataract formation. Therefore, try to minimize your sodium intake, and do not go beyond two thousand mg of sodium per day, to ensure better vision safety.
There are some vision-specific health foods and vitamins for you to invest in as well. One extraordinary nutrient, crucial for ones eyesight, is called lutein. Lutein is primarily found dark leafy vegetables, like kale, spinach, and even broccoli. Lutein is just about the best known eye-protection antioxidant known to man, and with a healthy amount of intake should facilitate longer, healthier vision. Vitamin A is also very vital to the health of our eyes. Vitamin A is usually found in yellow and orange fruits and vegetables, like carrots; and nutrients with Vitamin C, like oranges, are also crucial. Make sure you stock up on naturally healthy foods, as well as vision-specific nutrients!
If you are a glasses wearer, of course it is imperative to the health of your eyes that you always ensure your eyeglasses prescription is up-to-date, and suitable for your needs! While prescription glasses do affect the temporary state of your eyesight, having any notable difference in your lenses can actually cause serious, and more-permanent damage than might be expected! Therefore, you truly should go off of the expiration date written on your prescription, and update your eyeglasses accordingly.
