Dr. Rashi Jain

Most of us take our eyes for granted. It has been often noticed that an individual splurges on expensive sunglasses for looking smarter. But, when it comes to the health of eyes, he or she is either ignorant or simply reluctant to do anything. This tendency is bad for the health of your precious eyes.

Remember, how you use them to stare at the screens of your gadgets all day long. Take out some time from your busy schedule and take care of your eyes. They are precious and vulnerable too.

Follow the tips below to keep your eyesight intact till your dying day:

1. Eat right for a good vision: It is very important to provide the right and sufficient amounts of nutrients to your body for developing or maintaining a good eye sight. Include nutrients such as omega-3 fatty acids, lutein, zinc, and vitamins C and E in your regular diet to boost your eyesight. Food items like green and leafy vegetables, salmon, tuna, and other oily fish, eggs, nuts, beans, and other non-meat protein sources, oranges and other citrus fruits or juices and oysters and pork are excellent for the eye. The intake of a balanced diet keeps you away from diabetes, which causes blindness.
2. Give up smoking: Cigarettes or other tobacco products are bad for your eyes. They make your eyes more vulnerable to diseases like cataracts, optic nerve damage, and macular degeneration.
3. Guard your eyes from sunlight: It has been found that long exposure to sunlight leads to damage of the eyeballs. This happens as the UV rays in sunlight have an adverse impact on our eyes. You must put on sunglasses when you are outdoors for a longer period. You must choose sunglasses which give you 90 to 100 percent protection against sunlight. UV rays can cause cataracts and macular degeneration.
4. Avoid the screen: It is advisable to not spend long hours sitting in front of the computer screen or TV. Take breaks while working on the computer. Also, remember blinking your eyes while staring at the screen to avoid drying up of the eyes. Blinking increases tear production, keeping the eyes moist and healthy.
5. Use safety devices: If you work with hazardous substances, it is advisable that you put on safety devices on your eyes for their protection.
6. Hydrate your eyes: In order to have a good vision, you must hydrate your eyes by splashing water on your eyes wide open at specific intervals in a day. When you wash your face after returning from outside, don't forget to wash your eyes as well. As you splash water on the eyes, the dust particles on the surface of the eyelid, gathered from outside, gets washed away.

Glaucoma is a group of diseases that causes damage to your eye's optic nerve and gets worse over time. The optic nerve is a bundle of millions of nerve fibres which carry visual impulse from the retina at the back of eye to the brain. The increased Eye pressure, called intraocular pressure, can damage the optic nerve and fasten the natural nerve fibre loss. Since nerve cells can't regenerate this damage is permanent and irreversible.

Without treatment, glaucoma can cause total permanent blindness within a few years. Because most people with glaucoma have no early symptoms or pain from this increased pressure, it is important to see your eye doctor regularly so that glaucoma can be diagnosed early and treated before significant functional visual loss occurs.

If you are over age 40 and have a family history of glaucoma, you should have a complete eye exam with an eye doctor every one to two years. If you have any risk factors, you may need to visit your eye doctor more frequently.

What Are the Symptoms of Glaucoma?

For most people, there are usually few or no symptoms of glaucoma. The first sign of glaucoma is often the loss of peripheral or side vision, which can go unnoticed until late in the disease. This is why glaucoma is often called the "Sneak Thief of Vision" or "Silent Thief of Eye Sight".

If you have any of the following symptoms, seek immediate medical care:

1. Seeing halos around lights
2. Vision loss
3. Redness in the eye
4. Eye that looks hazy (particularly in infants)
5. Nausea or vomiting
6. Pain in the eye
7. Narrowing of vision (tunnel vision)

Risk Factors

There are several risk factors, which may lead to glaucoma, such as

1. Age of the individual
2. Ethnicity- African, Caribbean, Hispanics and Asians are at higher risk
3. Increased eye pressure or IOP History of glaucoma in family or relatives
4. Presence of Myopia or Hyperopia
5. Previous eye injuries
6. Use of steroids- as injections, tablets, eye or ear drops or ointments or protein supplements for muscle building in gyms or inhalers
7. Previous history of anemia
8. Individuals conditions affecting blood flow like hypertension, diabetes or high blood sugar, migraine etc are also at risk.

Treatment-

The treatment for glaucoma relies on the nature and seriousness of every case. Generally, glaucoma cannot be totally cured, but it can be controlled. Eye drops, pills, laser strategies, and means of surgery are utilized to maintain and prevent further harm from happening. Talk to your eye doctor to find out if you are at risk of developing glaucoma.

What Is Myopia (Nearsightedness)?

Myopia is a common refractive error of the eye that makes it difficult to focus on far away objects. People who are nearsighted will see objects close to them clearly, while those further away appear blurry. Myopia is natural. An overall longer shape of the eye usually causes myopia, so it is a naturally occurring visual problem that cannot be prevented. Nearsightedness tends to run in families, but you don't need to have a myopic parent to develop it. Myopia begins at an early age and worsens in the teenage years, but generally stabilizes in adulthood.

Here are the most common signs and symptoms of myopia:

1. Objects far away, like a chalkboard or road signs, appear blurry
2. Persistent need to squint or close eyelids to see clearly
3. Headaches due to eyestrain
4. Difficulty seeing while driving a vehicle, especially at night (night myopia)
5. Need to sit closer to the television, movie screen or the front of the classroom
6. Holding books very close while reading
7. Not able to notice distant objects

Causes of Myopia

Nearsightedness happens when your eye is longer than normal, or, less often, when your cornea is too curved. It’s a problem in the focusing mechanism of the eyes. However, the exact cause of myopia is not known. Research about myopia supports two key risk factors:

1. Family history. If one or both parents are nearsighted, the chance of their children developing it increases.
2. Working up close. Myopia may be helped along by how a person uses their eyes. Intense detail work, long hours in front of a computer or reading can also increase the chances of developing myopia.

Treatment Options for Myopia (Nearsightedness)

When treating myopia, the goal is to help your eyes focus on far away objects. The most common way to achieve this is through

1. Corrective glasses
2. Contact lenses
3. Refractive eye surgery, such as LASIK, is available for adults and those with moderate to high levels of nearsightedness

Adults who have developed cataracts may also have their myopia corrected with an intraocular lens (IOL) that replaces the human lens during cataract surgery. The most appropriate treatment depends on your eyes and your lifestyle. Nearsightedness can also be corrected as part of the cataract surgery procedure.

1. Contacts and Glasses: Eyeglasses and contact lenses can correct myopia. However, they cannot stop the eye from growing longer or cure the irregular curve of the cornea that causes your blurry vision.
2. Surgery: Surgery can decrease or eliminate dependency on eyeglasses and contact lenses. LASIK surgery is the most common type of surgery to correct myopia.
3. ICL (intraocular collamer lenses) or phakic lensesIn adults with cataracts, is an option for those myopic patients who are not suitable for lasik surgery due to either less corneal thickness or very high myopia.
4. Orthokeratology: A new type of treatment which offers an alternate solutions to people who are suffering from myopia. This is also known as Ortho-K. As a part of this procedure a person has to wear specialized lens overnight, to correct the vision for the next day. Orthokeratology is a process that uses specially designed GP contact lenses to temporarily reshape the contour of the cornea to reduce myopia (nearsightedness). In addition to the benefit of lens-free daytime vision, orthokeratology is starting to be appreciated for its ability to slow the progression of myopia. A number of published clinical studies have found that orthokeratology lens designs inhibit the growth of the eye's axial length, which determines the degree of myopia.

Bloodshot eyes indicate the reddening of the eye vessels. They can cause irritation and make the eye swollen. The condition may arise due to allergies, eye infections, allergies, fatigue and other illness of the eye. It does not signify a disease but indicates an eye condition which might have caused the eye to redden. Bloodshot eyes can be encountered in one or both the eyes.

Causes of Bloodshot Eyes:

One of the frequent causes of bloodshot eyes is irritants such as dry air, pollen, pet dander, dust and UV rays of the sun. Shortage of sleep also tends to make the eyes red. Inflammations of the eye can also make them red giving a bloodshot appearance. It can even happen with people who wear contact lens for more than 16 hours without soaking it in the disinfectant. At times excessive dryness can make the eyes red. Some other reasons for the eye to become red include conjunctivitis, blepharitis, glaucoma and corneal ulcer. Another concerning reason of bloodshot eyes is a subconjunctival haemorrhage. While the latter is not dangerous in nature, it can cause significant trouble if proper care is not taken on time.

Symptoms of Red Eyes:

Some of the common signs of bloodshot eyes include watery eyes, foreign sensation, burning feeling, dermatitis, falling of eye lashes, light sensitivity, swollen eyelid, itching of the eye and feeling of irritation of the eye.

The Complications Involved:

In most of the cases, bloodshot eyes do not imply serious complications. In case it happens from conjunctivitis, a person may not be able to go to work, wear cosmetics and come in public places since it is a communicable disease. If bloodshot eyes arise from a serious condition such as glaucoma and trauma, some of the possible complications may involve the following:

1. Eye scarring

2. Vision loss due to complete blindness

3. Spreading of the existing condition to other persons

4. Eye loss in severe cases

Preventive Measures:

Bloodshot eyes might arise from an array of reasons. While it cannot be totally dodged, some general preventive measures can ensure that such a condition does not arise:

1. Keeping hands clean by thoroughly washing them with liquid soap

2. Not sharing personal belongings such as washcloths, linen, and cosmetics

3. Get immediate medical attention in case of any eye injuries

4. Stay away from an environment that is full of allergens

5. Staying away from people who are suffering from infectious eye diseases such as conjunctivitis

6. Taking a shower immediately after getting in touch with an infected person suffering from conjunctivitis

7. Wearing eye glasses in a dusty environment

Are you suffering from eye pain? Well, rubbing your eyes is not a wise thing to do under such circumstances. Rubbing will only turn the white of your eye into a scarlet-colored surface. The eyes can get irritated due to the influence of foreign materials like dust particles, flies or remains of beauty products. The eyes also develop pain due to physical injury. Here are some tips to get rid of the eye pain or irritation:

1. Use Ice pack: In case of an injury, apply ice pack on the eyes. Cold compression on the eyes for 15 minutes reduces any sort of pain or swelling.
2. Cry to smile: Tears are known to have positive effects on the eyes. They prevent the drying up of cornea. It is advisable to bathe the eye with artificial tears.
3. Compress your eyes: It is advisable to soak a washcloth in warm water and compress your eyes with that to get relief from pain in sty. Sty is an infection of the eyelid, which reddens the lids and causes pain. Warm compression helps in liquefaction of the oils in the eyes.
4. Wash your eye: Irritation or pain is also caused by dust particles in the eyes. Therefore, it is best to wash your eyes with saline solution. Don't use normal tap water or distilled water for washing your eyes.
5. Get rid of the invader: Try to remove or dislodge any fleck or speck 'the cause of pain' by using a cotton swab.
6. Try the cold treatment: It has been found that dry eyes can be treated best by cold application. Apply a pack of ice on dry eyes for 5 to 6 minutes in every two hours. This helps in reducing the pain and forms tears to keep the eyes moist.
7. Flip your eyelids: Try to remove the painful particle inside the eyes by pulling the eyelids. Pull the upper lid gently over the lower one so that the foreign particle comes out.

In case you have a concern or query you can always consult an expert & get answers to your questions!