Tips for looking after your eyes

Every day we're bombarded with health advice. Messages urging us to safeguard our health are everywhere. But how often are you told to look after your eyes? We should all value them more. 

• Sight underpins our mobility, our safety and our independence — and it gives us huge enjoyment from simple things, such as reading a book, to lifelong pleasures, such as watching children and grandchildren change and grow.
• Yet thousands of people lose their sight needlessly, even though lifestyle changes and regular eye exams could save their vision or at least minimize damage.
• As children and young adults, many of us take our eyes for granted. We can read distant signs or even the small print on credit agreements with ease, and can't imagine not being able to do so. We get impatient with our parents when they can't find their glasses or ask us to thread a needle.
• But in middle age, something irritating begins to happen. Printed words may start to look fuzzy, we have to hold the newspaper at arm's length and we find driving at night increasingly uncomfortable. We gradually realize that our eyes — these wonderfully complex structures — are not infallible.

• Because changes tend to happen gradually, many people aren't aware of them — and others are unwilling to admit that their sight is deteriorating.
• In one study that tested people with no apparent sight problems, one in three failed a basic eye chart test — and 65 per cent of those who failed were drivers. A third of those who failed confessed that they had suspected that their eyesight wasn't perfect.
• Too many people wait for something to go wrong with their vision before looking after it. The first step is to be aware of your starting point: just how good — or bad — is your eyesight right now? According to the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, 250,000 Canadians have glaucoma and half of them are not aware of it. This sad statistic reinforces the importance of eye exams, so that a disorder such as glaucoma, which often has no symptoms, can be detected early; glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness in North America, after age-related macular degeneration.
• So if you haven't had an eye exam within the past two years, why not book one right away? If anything is wrong, you need to know and act quickly for the best chance of effective treatment. Just as important, eye exams can detect changes that signal serious health problems, such as diabetes, high blood pressure or raised cholesterol. So think of your eye exam as a potential lifesaver, and not just a vision check.