Food and lifestyle habits that can weaken your eyesight

What you consume every day can have a lasting impact on your cardiovascular health and vision. A proper diet that includes whole foods helps ensure that individuals get the nutrients they need to maintain a proper vision and eye health.

These consist of antioxidant-rich citrus fruits, leafy greens containing phytochemicals, and oily fish that provide omega-3s. While a healthy, nutrient-rich diet promotes good eye health, eating highly processed and high-fat foods increases the risk of eye problems.

Let’s have a look at our everyday food items that aren’t doing any good to our eye health!

1. Bread and pasta: Simple carbohydrates found in white bread and pasta have a higher probability of causing age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a leading cause of vision loss in older adults.
2. Processed meats: Hot dogs and deli meats have a high amount of salt in them, which can cause hypertensive retinopathy, choroidopathy, and neuropathy.
3. Deep-fried food: Food cooked in trans-fat increases cholesterol levels and damages and kills cells, leading to various eye-related ailments
4. Sugary beverages: Aerated cold drinks are full of sugar, leading to related eye conditions like diabetic retinopathy and AMD.

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These are a few of the foods that can significantly damage the health of your eyes and cause several diseases. It is not just food but some unhealthy habits can also result in several eye problems. Let’s address them as well.

• Insufficient sleep: Everyone is on the phone or the laptop/desktop these days. And after an entire day of sitting in front of a computer screen, our eyes require rest. Excessive eye strain causes issues like dryness, irritation, and itchiness to the eyes.
• Rubbing eyes: oftentimes, rubbing the eyes harshly or with excessive strength can tear up the blood vessels present under the skin around your eyes.
• Improper eating patterns: Eating a lot of junk food, not eating at the right time and intervals, and avoiding a balanced diet can also weaken vision.
• Inadequate intake of water: Adequate intake of water prevents dehydration and ensures requisite tear build-up, which keeps our eyes moisturized thus, avoiding eye strain, itchiness, irritation, and redness.
• Staring at your smartphone for hours: Using your phone for hours at a stretch can also lead to blurred vision, dry eyes, dizziness, and nausea.
• Screen time: Looking at any type of screen right before bed in the dark, including your cell phone, e-reader, television and computer, leads to eyestrain, pain, headaches, dry eye, and redness.
• Not visiting the eye doctor regularly: Visiting a doctor helps detect serious eye issues that may not manifest with symptoms, but other signs of illnesses such as diabetes and high blood pressure can be diagnosed.

Apart from the above-mentioned habits, not wearing sunglasses regularly can expose your eyes to harmful high-energy visible (HEV) and Ultra Violet (UV) rays.

Being informed of ways and means of proper eye care and desisting from habits and foods which harm your eye health is a must. You only have one pair of eyes, and forming the right habits will lead to a lifetime of good vision.

If you have blurry vision or have constant headaches, consult an eye specialist. In case of any uncertainties or eyecare concerns, you can easily connect with the medical experts at Apollo Hospitals.