Last Updated on August 17, 2024 by Asfa Rasheed
Common reasons for poor eyesight go way beyond health concerns and family’s medical history. Your everyday lifestyle and habits have a lot to do with your vision health and how well you’re able to see.
If we eliminate age-related sight problems (presbyopia, cataracts and macular degeneration), refractive errors such as nearsightedness and farsightedness are the major reasons behind vision decline in the UK. So, what causes these problems? Let’s have a look at some common lifestyle habits that might be ruining your eye health.
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What Leads to Poor Eyesight?
Low vision can be hereditary but there are certain habits that could impair your vision. The following are the most common habits that you must break right now if you want your eyesight to be good and functioning for years to come.
1. Too much screen time
Do we have to explain this? Screen time is never good for your eyes. The vicious blue light that’s present in your devices is damaging to your eye health.
As blue light has short, high-energy wavelengths, it flickers a lot. Thus, when you’re staring at a screen, it’ll reduce visual contrast and affects the sharpness of vision. When it happens, your eyes try to focus even harder and start to hurt after a while.
Working for long hours on your laptop or scrolling through social media can lead to dry eyes
and computer eye strain. These problems could be avoided by using blue light or computer glasses. And if you’re a gamer, you should use gaming glasses that cut down blue light and enhance the focusing ability of your eyes.
2. Not drinking enough water
The simplest thing you can do to detoxify your body is to drink a lot of water. And yet, many people fail to take even the minimum amount of water needed by our bodies.
When you don’t drink enough water, you feel hydrated which leads to dry or puffy eyes. While dry eyes could be hereditary or the side effect of certain medications, most of the time, your low water intake is the reason behind this problem.
3. Poor diet
Food is important for every aspect of your health. From your hair growth to skin health, you can make everything better by paying attention to what you eat. The same goes for your eye health. What you eat has an effect on your vision and ocular health.
Include fatty fish such as salmon and tuna in your diet. Take proper doses of vitamin A, C and E to give the required nutrients to your eyes so they can function well.
4. Not protecting the eye from the sun
Just like your skin, your eyes can get sunburned too. This happens when you don’t wear sunglasses. Your shades protect your eyes from harmful UV light but they also protect your cornea from direct sun exposure.
Not only sunglasses but your tinted round glasses or UV protectant prescription glasses are also able to block UV 400 and protect your eyes. So, if you’re stepping in the sun, make sure you are using glasses or sunglasses to block UV.
5. Rubbing eyes too often
Rubbing eyes is as harmful as spending screen time. It could either cause new eye problems or worsen the existing ones.
Rubbing your eyes can disturb the natural tear film and make your eyes dry. In certain cases, it could lead to eye infections as well if the germs and bacteria on your hands transmit to your eyes. Keratoconus is an eye deformity the stems from excessive eye rubbing. This occurs when the cornea is shaped like a cone when it should be round.
6. Skipping out on eye exams
Eye exams are the most efficient way to protect your eye health. These exams let you know the little details about your eye health and vision. They could detect symptoms of eye diseases even before the symptoms become apparent.
Regular eye exams are a must if you don’t want to face vision problems in future. Even when you have 20/20 vision, schedule regular appointments with an eye doctor.
7. Smoking
Smoking has a lot of terrible effects on your health. Your eyes are also a victim of excessive smoking. While you may think that lung cancer and heart problems are the worst that could happen from smoking, you probably don’t know the effects of smoking on your eye health. Smoking leads to major eye problems such as dry eyes, glaucoma, cataracts and macular degeneration.
8. Lack of sleep
Only a few of us sleep for 6 to 8 hours every day. Sleeping is important for our health as it helps us gather energy for the next day. Thus, if you don’t sleep for an adequate amount of time, you’re sure to develop health problems and this includes dry eyes as well.
When you’re sleeping, the lacrimal glands in your eyes restore the moisture level and replenish your peepers. So, if you’re losing out on sleep, you’re losing out on your vision as well.
Avoid these common lifestyle habits to keep your eye health in good condition all the time. You won’t be able to give up these habits at once. Make sure you use glasses and protect your eyes from the sun. Eat healthy foods to nourish your eye health from within.
Read more: How To Break Bad Habits & Improve Lifestyle?
