Love Your Eyes

Given the great importance most of us place on sight, it would seem to follow that we’d give them the best care possible, but sometimes we get too busy or we forget to do a few simple things than can keep our eyes healthy.

For Valentine’s Day, Virginia Eye Consultants presents you with some eye care tips that will help you show your eyes just how much you love them.

Protecting Your Eyes

Whether it’s a bouncing ball or campfire sparks, many settings present serious eye-injury risks. The best way to play it safe it to be alert and stay aware of things going on around you.

Sports-related eye injuries number at least 200,000 a year. When you’re on the field, court, or rink, wear protective glasses that protect you from the front and all sides.

And when it comes to yard work and home improvement projects, safety glasses, safety goggles and full-face shields are all great options for protecting your eyes from flying debris.

Preventing Eye Problems

While your eyes are amazingly resilient, there’s only so much abuse they can take. Simple day-to-day actions can cause damage over the long run.

UV Exposure

Sunglasses cut down exposure to UV light, the portion of the sun’s rays that can cause such eye diseases as cataracts and macular degeneration. The American Academy of Ophthalmology recommends that you protect your eyes whenever you’re in the sun long enough to get a suntan or sunburn. Additionally, wearing a brimmed hat cuts sunlight exposure to your eyes by about half.

Keep in mind that dark glasses with no UV blocking give you no protection whatsoever. In fact, they may boost your risk of eye damage because they dilate your pupils.

Diabetic Eye Care

The major eye-disease risk for people with diabetes is diabetic retinopathy, in which abnormal blood vessels grow across the retina, damaging and sometimes permanently destroying vision.

Diet, medication, and exercise are key to controlling diabetes and reducing the risks of retinopathy. Anyone with diabetes who’s at risk should be screened at least yearly for this eye disease, even if there are no vision symptoms. If caught early, advancement of retinopathy can sometimes be halted by laser treatments.

Regular Checkups

Don’t wait until your eyes are bothering you before getting a checkup. Often times, people have eye diseases without know it, and by the time they get to an eye-care specialist, they’ve lost valuable time for treatment. Catching an eye problem early can boost the chances of successfully treating it.

Treating Eye Problems

Whatever your eye problem may be, an eye doctor or surgeon can likely help.

Virginia Eye Consultants can help people suffering from eye infections, cataracts, glaucoma, uveitis, macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, retinal diseases, connective tissue diseases, and other problems related to the retina and cornea. And we frequently hear patients say they wish they came in sooner.

The gift of sight is precious. And at VEC, we want you to love you eyes.

50-for-50

If you know someone who is in need of an eye procedure, please nominate them for our 50-for-50 Campaign. We’re celebrating our 50th anniversary by providing 50 charitable eye procedures during 2013. The “50-fo-50″ effort is our way of giving back to the community that has provided us so much support over the past 50 years.

Keep in mind, we don’t provide optometry services such as contacts and glasses, our 50-for-50 campaign is for those needing complex eye care. Examples might include cornea transplants, glaucoma or cataract surgery, or someone with eye disease or trauma

Source: Discovery Fit and Health