Many people tend to take their eye health for granted, assuming that they’ll see well throughout their lifetime. The truth is that eye issues are very common and have the potential to steal your vision without warning if you aren’t paying attention to your ocular needs. The following are three ways you could be damaging your vision.
Wearing Old Prescriptions
It is very likely that if you are a person in need of vision correction, your prescription and correction needs will change from year to year as you get older. Wearing an incorrect prescription may cause you to squint and results in eye strain and headaches. Contacts that are too old are likely harboring undesirable bacteria plus may be misshapen and not operating effectively.
Skipping your Annual Eye Exam
Possibly the worst thing you can do to harm your vision is to neglect your yearly eye exam. This is your first line of defense — a chance for your eye doctor to spot any changes in your eye health and help you slow the progress of damaging diseases like macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, and glaucoma. Without warning, all three of these conditions can leave you blind or with severely impaired vision. Treating these early can prevent further progression of vision loss.
Bad Habits
Do you smoke? Drink alcohol or caffeine in abundance? Eat poorly? Go out in the sun often without sunglasses? All of these habits damage your eyes and can cause issues such as cataracts, optic neuropathy, poor night vision and eye irritation. Talk to your eye doctor on how your lifestyle may be impacting your eye health.
Your vision is more vulnerable than you might imagine, but you have the ability to protect it by making smart choices and seeing your Phoenix eye doctor on a yearly basis.
