Cocteau Twins Know Who You Are at Every Age
Welcome to Aging Well, a SymptomFind series with tips to help yous protect your wellness and well-being as you lot go older. This get-go edition focuses on eye health — and throughout the series, we'll bring you trusted tips to aid you stay potent, healthy and contained for years to come up.
Many heart diseases are more than common in older adults. Just vision loss does non have to be a normal role of aging. In fact, y'all tin make uncomplicated changes to your daily routine to lower your gamble for eye diseases that cause vision loss.
In this guide, we're offer evidence-based tips to assist you protect your vision equally you get older. Learn how changes you make today can protect your sight for a lifetime.
Yeah, everyone'south vision changes slightly as they get older. After historic period 45, the lens of your eye doesn't focus as well — and that makes information technology harder to encounter things upwardly shut. That's why many older adults utilise spectacles to read.
If you're having trouble reading or seeing things up shut, see your middle doctor for an test. Your center doctor may recommend prescription reading spectacles or contacts, or yous may be able to use over-the-counter reading spectacles.
While this small-scale vision change is a normal and expected part of aging, more serious vision changes and vision loss are non normal. Come across your physician right away if you notice changes in your vision.
Am I at Run a risk for Centre Diseases?
Older adults are at higher risk for several eye diseases, including cataracts, glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration.
- Cataracts are cloudy areas in the lens of your eye. More than half of Americans over age fourscore have had cataracts. The practiced news is, a unproblematic surgery can fix cataracts.
- Glaucoma is a group of eye diseases that damages the nerve that connects your centre to your brain. Early treatment tin can stop the damage and protect your sight.
- Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is an eye illness that makes your central vision blurry. People ages 55 and older are at higher adventure for AMD, merely in that location may exist treatments that can help.
Diabetic middle illness is another main cause of vision loss in older adults. If you have diabetes, yous're at risk for diabetic eye illness — and your chance gets higher as you get older.
Your risk for eye diseases may also be college depending on your race, gender, family history of heart diseases and any other health conditions y'all have. Talk with your md about your personal risk for eye affliction.
And recall, while your risk for these heart issues goes upwardly equally you historic period, you lot can still have steps to protect your eye health. And then don't give up on your eyes!
How Tin can I Protect My Sight?
Taking intendance of your center wellness can be equally simple every bit eating your veggies and remembering your sunglasses when you leave the house. Follow these six tips to protect your vision.
i. Get Regular Eye Exams
Eye diseases that crusade vision loss often accept no early symptoms. So the only way to observe them early on is to get regular centre exams. Your eye md can test your vision and notice eye problems early, when they're easier to treat.
The National Eye Institute says that everyone over age 60 needs an eye exam every one to 2 years. Simply depending on your adventure for eye diseases, yous may demand to offset getting eye exams earlier or go them more ofttimes. For example, people with diabetes may need to get eye exams at to the lowest degree once a year. Ask your dr. how often yous need an eye exam.
2. Eat Right for Your Sight
Healthy eating is key to your overall health. It tin aid preclude conditions like diabetes that tin can impairment your optics. And certain foods have nutrients that can help protect your vision, including:
- Leafy green veggies, like spinach and collards
- Dark orange veggies, similar sweet potatoes and carrots
- Fish that provide Omega-3 fat acids, like salmon and tuna
So consume enough of colorful veggies and fatty fish as part of a healthy, balanced nutrition.
3. Stay Active to Keep Seeing Your Best
Regular physical activity is another key way to stay healthy equally yous get older. And it lowers your risk for health weather that can impact your vision, like high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
Try to get about two and half hours of moderate-intensity aerobic activity each week. That'southward annihilation that raises your heart rate and makes you breathe faster, like walking, biking or swimming. You could do xxx minutes on five days a week, or whatever schedule works for y'all. And at least two days a week, do an activeness that strengthens your muscles, like yoga, lifting weights or even carrying groceries.
If you're just getting started, do as much as yous can and work your manner up to more than! Even five minutes of walking a mean solar day tin make a difference.
4. Manage Your Other Health Conditions
Health weather condition similar diabetes and high blood pressure put y'all at higher run a risk for center problems. And so getting these weather condition under command is cardinal to protecting your sight.
For example, if y'all have diabetes, decision-making your claret sugar can lower your risk for diabetic eye disease. Talk with your doctor about the best mode to manage your health conditions.
5. Always Article of clothing Your Sunglasses
Ultraviolet (UV) calorie-free from the lord's day can damage your eyes and raise your risk for cataracts. So information technology'southward important to clothing sunglasses that cake UV calorie-free. Endeavour to habiliment your sunglasses whenever you leave in the daytime — fifty-fifty if it's cloudy outside.
6. If You Smoke, Quit
Smoking isn't just bad for your lungs and your overall wellness. It also raises your risk for AMD and cataracts. If you smoke, make a plan to quit.
Become Help Living with Vision Loss
If you already have vision loss, there are lots of services and devices that can help you make the almost of the sight you still have. These are sometimes called "low vision" or "vision rehab" services.
A specialist can help you learn to do everyday tasks more than easily. For example, you lot may need a magnifying device to help y'all read, or you may need to rearrange your article of furniture to aid you motion around your home better. Ask your doctor about services and devices that tin help y'all live better with low vision.
Resource Links:
- "Healthy Aging Includes Healthy Vision" via Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
- "Aging and Your Eyes" via National Found on Aging
- "8 Things Yous Can Practise Right Now to Protect Your Vision" via National Centre Found
- "36 Fabulous Foods to Help Protect Your Vision" via American Academy of Ophthalmology
- "The Low Down on Eye Exercises" via Harvard Medical School
- "How Much Physical Activity Do Older Adults Demand?" via CDC
Source: https://www.symptomfind.com/healthy-living/aging-well-how-to-protect-your-vision?utm_content=params%3Ao%3D740013%26ad%3DdirN%26qo%3DserpIndex