How to IMPROVE Your Eye Health 3 Eye Care Tips

in this video i'm going to share with you three eye health tips that try to share with every single one of my patients in the eye clinic because with these tips hopefully you can keep your eyes seeing better and feeling better longer let's take look hey what's up this is Dr. Allen here from the doctor health show hoping to learn all about the eyes vision and finding the best vision products now today we're going to be talking about just three simple easy eye health tips that like to talk about and share with every patient that comes in to see me for routine eye examination these are just three tips that you can incorporate into your lifestyle and hopefully they can keep your eyes seeing better and feeling better the first tip is of course eating more fruits and vegetables huge part of eye health is the fact that the retina in the back of the eye that gives you your eyesight is one of the most highly metabolic tissues in your entire body and that means that nutrition plays huge role in how that retina is able to function now do hope to have more detailed videos going over nutrition and which specific vitamins and minerals work the best for parts of the eye in different eye diseases but the easiest thing that tell with most patients is to eat more green leafy vegetables and i'm not just talking about iceberg lettuce mean the dark leafy greens mean spinach kale arugula just anything with the bitter with the dirt taste it seems like know everybody thinks that carrots is like the super food for the eyes but in fact recent science has shown that green leafy vegetables is better because of something called lutein. lutein is an antioxidant that's found in very high concentrations in the center part of the back of the eyeball called the macula which is the center part of your vision that gives you things like your sharp reading ability your color perception all of that and not only is lutein one of the key ingredients in most eye vitamin supplements for diseases like macular degeneration but has even been found now to be helpful in patients who have diabetic retinopathy and overall having higher amounts of lutein is correlated with higher amount of macular pigment optical density or just higher amounts of protective pigment in the back of the eye from high oxidative stress from sunlight exposure and things like that so again eat your leafy greens and don't worry if you're not salad person like myself personally don't like to eat salad instead just make green smoothie or shake or something like that there's lot of great recipes for these things and yes try to drink or eat these as often as can yum now there are also vision and eye supplements that contain lutein and some people may choose to go that route do hope to have an entire video series going more in depth discussing the science of eye vitamins so stay tuned for that one personally think it's better to try to eat healthy foods and incorporate that into your lifestyle because it's going to help fuel your whole body rather than rely on supplements but at least if you want to know more about lutein specifically i'll put at least some links below the like button two specific studies that give really good review of lutein and benefits for the eye now outside of eating really healthy common thing that many eye doctors will tell you is to wear sunglasses when you're outside and don't just say sunglasses but also wide brim hats and anything just to add some uv light protection to your eyes as well as your eyelids because uv light from the sun over the course of your lifetime can contribute to development of different eye diseases things like cataracts pterygium and pinguecula which we've done videos on also thinning and aiding of your eyelids which can contribute to dark circles and eye bags again all topics that we have covered on this channel and you certainly don't have to reach for high-end expensive sunglasses there's many affordable brands of sun wear out there that offer hundred percent uv light protection just make sure that you look on the sides of your sunglasses and that you're looking for something that says 100 uv or maybe 400 uv and that's because 400 nanometers is kind of the cutoff of where uv light ends and then your normal eyesight kind of begins now the third tip that talk with my patients about is cleaning their eyelashes and eyelids on daily basis and that's because your eyelashes are meant to do what to block out dust sweat and oils from dripping into your eyes kind of like that brush on the bottom of vacuum you know how it spins and picks up stuff and eventually gets clogged up nasty hairs and whatnot your eyelashes end up kind of looking like that under microscope and unfortunately if it's not tended to on regular basis your eyelids can become red and inflamed something we call blepharitis which can be significant contributing factor for redness irritation dry eye lots of other issues with ocular surface disease now there's many different options out there for cleaning the eyelids and eyelashes i'll refer to other videos that i'll put again below the like button in the video description no matter which way of cleaning the lashes you find is best for you it's still just good to be doing it on regular basis so that you're cleaning all that gunk away now of course and as always these are three things that typically just try to talk with most of my patients about some people come in with serious eye conditions we have to kind of focus on taking care of those things first but think overall if people are to adapt these kind of three tips to start eating healthier taking care of their eyes protecting them cleaning things out their eyes are going to feel better and you're going to likely have better vision and at least have healthier eyes going forward and hey let me know in the comments section which one of these tips you found the most helpful and make sure you subscribe so that you don't miss my future videos about diets and supplements all that cool stuff otherwise hope this video helped you out again dr allen here from the dr eye health show keep an eye on it we'll talk to you soon