6 simple ways to maintain good eyesight | Manipal World News

May 25, 2013: Your eyesight deteriorates from the time you are born. Your eyesight at two years was better than your eyesight at 10 years. Your eyesight today is better than your eyesight will be next month. But the changes are too gradual for any of us to notice unless we take a vision test.

Even though eyesight deterioration is inevitable, you can slow down the process. Here are six easy tips for you to maintain good eyesight.

Eat carrots
During World War II, the British Royal Air Force spread a story about how a skilled fighter pilot named John ‘Cats Eyes’ Cunningham had a steady diet of carrots and how it helped him see in the dark while flying at night. This story sparked the belief that carrots “improved” or “cured” eyesight problems.

Even though that has been classified as an old wives’ tale, carrots are in fact beneficial to your eye health. Carrots contain beta-carotene, a nutrient that the body turns into vitamin A, which will in turn help preserve your eyesight.

Pop vitamins A, C, E, and zinc
If you can’t stomach the thought of chopping down a single baby carrot, let vitamin pills come to the rescue! While vitamins won’t restore your eyesight, they will definitely slow down aging of your eyes, especially cataracts or macular degeneration. Doctors believe that any type of vitamin is beneficial for the health of your eyes, but vitamins A, C, E, and zinc have definitely been proven to help keep your eyesight healthy.

You can score a bottle of zinc capsules on ebay.com

Exercise your eyes
Exercising the muscles behind your eyes will help strengthen your eye movement and increase blood circulation to your eyes. While the exercises won’t miraculously improve your eyesight, they will reduce eyestrain and help your eyes work better. Livestrong.com has an excellent list of eye muscle exercises you can try at home.

Wear sunglasses with high UV protection
UV rays – and even sunlight that bounces off reflective surfaces like snow or sand – can harm your eyes. They’re known to increase your odds of getting cataracts, macular degeneration, or pterygium (when the tissue that lays over the white of the eye grows into the cornea).

The best way to prevent any of those eye-related problems from happening is to wear sunglasses with high UV protection. Opt for sunglasses that block 99% to 100% of both UVA and UVB rays. Not only would those sunglasses protect you from harmful UV rays, they’ll also reduce eye strain from bright conditions and protect your eyes from flying debris.

Keep the light right at all times
It’s pretty much common knowledge that if the room is too dark, your eyes will strain to read or see whatever you’re doing. If you find yourself having a hard time seeing or reading something, brighten up the lighting in the room. That will immediately relax your eyes.

What many people don’t know is that bright light can do just as much damage to your eyes. Prolonged exposure to bright light can damage your eye tissues and help speed up the deterioration of your eyesight. You can reduce the brightness of the room by dimming the lights, using a softly-lit lamp in your immediate area, or closing the blinds during the day.

Adjust your computer monitor
Staring at a computer screen all day can degrade your vision, but many of us can’t avoid it. Your job may require you to work on the computer all day, but all is not lost. You can definitely adjust the brightness of your monitor (or smartphone screen) to accommodate the brightness of the room. A dimmer computer screen at night is definitely better for your eyes than a brightly-lit computer screen. If you don’t want to go through the hassle of adjusting the brightness of your computer monitor every morning and night, you can always download f.lux, a free computer software that will “make the color of your computer’s display adapt to the time of the day: warm at night and like sunlight during the day.”

Always remember that you’re the one who’s responsible for your own eyesight, so be sure to treat your eyes well!

(Data Courtesy: Anita Brayer, a professional writer for Macys.com. Anita enjoys writing in basically all niches, but her favourites are Healthy living and Fashion)