It is important to start eye care regime from young. However, it is not too late to begin now regardless of where you are, to maintain or improve your eyesight. Our eyes are intricately linked to our liver and also our state of wellbeing.
Do you recall feeling very tired from long hours of straining your eyes or even feeling dizzy as your vision blurred? When our eyes are rested, we also do have a general sense of restfulness and ease.
Eye care does not only include doing eye massage and exercises. In particular, I find the following tips useful in maintaining a healthy vision
- Taking food that contains beta carotene (precursor to Vitamin A) nourishes the eyes and benefits our vision (including night vision). Examples of such food includes carrots, goji berries and pumpkins. However, too much vitamin A is harmful to the body so moderation is key.
- Rest when my eyes feel tired. This means sleeping more when I need.
- Reduce the glare from the sun during the day. You can use graded UV filters for windows when working indoors or a good pairs of shades when you are outdoors, especially if your area receive a lot of sunlight throughout the day, like most days in Singapore. Whether it is working on your laptop or mobile devices or reading, or watching TV, you need to protect your eyes from glare to prevent astigmatism. An early tell tale sign for me if my eyes are exposed to too much glare is having a headache whereas uncorrected long or short sightedness can manifest as dizziness for some. Headache and dizziness can also be indicative of other underlying conditions or lack of sleep.
- Do eye rotations nightly during bedtime. I find this very helpful to keep my vision healthy. In fact, you can warm your palms by rubbing them together and cup them over your eyes for better results. This can be done anytime throughout the day, as and when you need. This is an instant relaxation for tired eyes.
- Temple massage/ rub. Gently place the pads of your finger onto your temples on both sides and massage in small circular motions for about 3 mins with deep breathing. Keep your eyes gently closed. This also helps to relieve headaches due to strain in the eyes or tension in the muscles around the head.
- Do not strain your eyes. When you are straining your eyes, it means you need to adjust something. It could be lighting, brightness of the devices or the objects you are watching, cut out glare, distance from the book/ screen or object that you are looking at. It may also be that you need to rest your eyes. If all else fails, you may like to see an optometrist for an eye check.
- Look at green objects. It is especially helpful to look at trees and natural greenery during sunrise before it gets too glaring. Green helps the eyes relax.
- Look at objects in the distance to relax the eyes. Look far every hourly (if possible), especially if you are looking at near objects for prolonged periods. If not, do a quick eye care routine (see recording).
- Use large fonts - when you read or type. I used to borrow books with large fonts because they are easy on my eyes. Even now I still prefer to read books with large prints. Printing out to read on paper instead of squinting on the screen also help. And use large fonts.
- Yawning. Tears are natural lubrication and cleanses the tear ducts and the eyes. In addition, yawning relaxes the body and calms the nerves.
- Wash your eyes with clean and cool water to rinse away dirt when they are itchy. Try not to rub yoir eyes as that would usually do more harm than good. If there is dirt in the eyes, rubbing them could result in scratching your retina. Yawning to generate natural tear is a good and natural way to rinse out dust and dirt in the eyes.
- Be mindful of what you feed your eyes. You cannot unsee what you have seen. Whatever you feed your eyes will affect your emotions and mental wellbeing so choose wisely.
- Enjoy the eye care routines! Enjoy your eye sight.
