Summertime can be hard on your eyes. Its not just the exposure to Ultraviolet rays either! Summertime brings allergens, chemicals and a host of other eye irritants to deal with too. Advanced Eyecare Optometry can help you protect your eyes during summertime with just a few common sense tips!
Protecting Your Eyes During Summertime
Getting Proper Rest
In the summertime days get longer, weather gets warmer and people are up and outside more often. Between work and summertime play, the eyes can suffer.
Research shows that visual cognition decreases after 18 hours. It may not seem like a big deal but simple everyday tasks such as caring for children, driving and cooking are dependent on visual acuity for a successful. Being tired makes your eyes feel tired, dry and encourages you to rub your eyes more often, which can increase the likelihood of exposure to irritants and diseases. Getting a full nights sleep will help ensure adequate vision for your day.
A Healthy Diet and Plenty of Water
Eating a healthy balanced diet can do wonders to keep your body and eyes healthy. Many nutrients can help vision and ensure that age related diseases such as macular degeneration are prevented or slowed. Many nutrient rich foods high in Vitamin C, E and zinc and antioxidants like lutein, zeaxanthin can help prevent long term vision problems.
Additionally, its easy to get dehydrated in the summertime with warmer temperatures. Serious dehydration can affect the eyes by reducing tears leading to dry eyes and more serious eye issues. Drinking plenty of clean water not only helps to keep the body’s organs hydrated and the eyes too!
Wearing Sunglass Eye Protection
The best way to protect your eyes against the sun and its reflection off surfaces is to purchase and consistently wear sunglasses with 100-percent protection against both UVA and UVB rays! Many inexpensive brands off this protection so be sure to invest in a pair and wear them even on cloudy days!
Too much exposure to Ultraviolet Rays (UVR) can cause photokeratitis or photo conjunctivitis (more commonly known as “snow blindness”) in the short-term. Continual UVR exposure, particularly exposure to UVB rays, may cause cataracts development, pterygium (a non-cancerous growth over the cornea) or skin cancer of the eyelids.
Wearing Goggle Eye Protection in Pools
Research revealed that frequent exposure to chlorine negatively affects your corneal epithelium. The epithelium provides a layer of protection to your cornea from irritants and pathogens. If that protection is compromised, you have an increased likelihood of corneal abrasion or other eye injuries.
The easiest way to protect your eyes from chlorine is by wearing goggles every time you go in the pool! But you should also wear goggles when you are swimming in the ocean or other body of water to protect from salts or other pathogens.
Wash Your Hands and Don’t Rub Your Eyes
Washing your hands in the first best way to protect your health and your eyes! Research shows that you can avoid many illnesses or the spread of germs by regular and frequent hand washing.
Keeping your hands off your face and out of your eyes will help from spreading any germs that you may have come into contact with into your eyes!
Washing your hands thoroughly before applying any eye treatments after procedures like LASIK, Cataract or Glaucoma shunt surgery will also help the spread of disease and infection.
Wearing Hats
Even if you are wearing sunglasses with full UVA and UVB coverage you are still not getting blocked completely. There are gaps between your lenses and your face. Wearing a hat with at least a 3inch brim will help to protect your eyes and the skin around them from UVR exposure.
Protection Against Chemicals
Most people will think of swimming pool chlorine when you think of summertime chemicals. But many common household and body products also contain chemicals that can hurt your eyes as well!
Being sure open cleaning solutions and body products facing away from your face to avoid them spraying into your eyes.When using spray paint be sure to pick a windless day or face upwind from the can while spraying. As always wear eye protection when you are handling anything that may be considered an irritant to your eyes.
These are just a few common sense tips that can save your sight and avoid any unpleasantness or worse, emergency care, during the summertime! As with all eye related issues please call us at Advanced Eyecare Optometry for more information or to make an appointment. We look forward to seeing you!
Reference: eyecare.org
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