6 Easy Ways to Take Care of Your Eyes

Your eyes are one of the most important parts of your body and a truly unique and intricate organ. In the same way damaging your smartphone can limit your day-to-day activities, short-term or long-term injury to your eyes can restrict what you’re able to do in life.

Take a look at these tips to see if you need to take better care of your eyes. Even a small amount of damage every day can add up to serious impairment in the future, and this list can help keep your eyes healthy for a long time to come.

1. Avoid Rubbing

Just like with your eyes, you likely use your hands all day long. Touching your eyes after handling thousands of surfaces with dirt, dust, and bacteria can result in irritation and infection.

2. Wear Sunglasses

Aside from looking awesome, sunglasses are designed to keep a barrier between your eyes and the sun’s UV rays. Even a thin layer that blocks UV rays can reduce the risk of developing cataracts.

3. Eat Your Veggies

Though carrots won’t make you see like an owl in pitch black, certain foods help your eyes stay healthy:

• Carrots, spinach, kale, tomato
• Citrus fruits
• Oily fishes
• Non-meat proteins like nuts and eggs

4. Drink Your Water

Like most things in your body, your eyes need to be damp to be healthy. Staying hydrated helps your eyes from drying out, which reduced irritation and helps you avoid rubbing your eyes, exposing them to dirt and bacteria.

5. Break from the Screen

Today, bright LCD screens are on our desks, in our hands, and in front of our faces (just like right now!). All of that bright light at such a close range can cause straining on your eyes, leading to blurry vision, headaches, and sore eyeballs.

Make sure you’re blinking enough to keep your eyes moist, the font on the screen is large enough so you don’t have to squint, and the brightness is at a reasonably low level.

6. Get Eye Exams

One of the only sure ways to know if your eyes are healthy is to have regular eye exams. An eye care specialist can determine which problems you may have now, what issues may arise in the future, and how you can treat or prevent them.