Non-Medical Remedies for Improving Eyesight
Besides using medical treatments, you can make adjustments in your home or diet to help care for eye diseases or conditions.
Studies show that to see clearly, the average 60-year-old person needs at least three times the amount of light as the average 20-year-old. To compensate for changes in aging pupils, use proper illumination. For example, you can increase the amount of ambient light throughout your home, use individual lights—or task lighting—for specific activities, or avoid glare, which can be disorienting, by using lamp shades to diffuse lighting instead of bare bulbs or clear shades .
For losses in up-close vision, use reading glasses, bifocals, trifocals, progressive lenses (no lines) or contact lenses, or shine additional light on close work materials to enhance your eyesight.
To help alleviate the effects of minor lens yellowing, use halogen or fluorescent bulbs specifically designed to improve color rendering; bulbs with a color-rendering index (CRI) above 80 may best help. In your home, use warm contrasting colors such as yellow, orange and red to help you know where things are and to make it easier to perform daily activities.
Studies show that a good diet may help protect the lens of the eye and reduce the risk of certain lens conditions that diminish sight. Vitamins A, C and E and minerals like copper and zinc are essential to eyesight. Anthocyanin-rich blueberries, grapes and goji berries have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties that can help improve your vision.
DHA, a fatty acid found in coldwater fish such as wild salmon, sardines and mackerel, provides structural support to cell membranes to boost eye health.
While exercising your whole body can help improve eye health, you can also work on just your eyes. Simple exercises to help maintain optimal vision include placing warm palms against your eyes for five seconds, rolling your eyes clockwise 10 times and then counterclockwise 10 times, and focusing your eyes on an object such as a pen at arm’s length, then moving it closer and farther. Perform these exercises first thing in the morning, before bedtime or any time your eyes feel fatigued.
Reprinted by Always Best Care Senior Services with permission from Senior Spirit, the publication of the Society of Certified Senior Advisors.
The Certified Senior Advisor (CSA) program provides the advanced knowledge and practical tools to serve seniors at the highest level possible while providing recipients a powerful credential that increases their competitive advantage over other professionals. The CSA works closely with Always Best Care Senior Services to help ABC business owners understand how to build effective relationships with seniors based on a broad-based knowledge of the health, social and financial issues that are important to seniors, and the dynamics of how these factors work together in seniors’ lives. To be a Certified Senior Advisor (CSA) means one willingly accepts and vigilantly upholds the standards in the CSA Code of Professional Responsibility. These standards define the behavior that we owe to seniors, to ourselves, and to our fellow CSAs. The reputation built over the years by the hard work and high standards of CSAs flows to everyone who adds the designation to their name. .
Always Best Care Senior Services
Always Best Care Senior Services ( Always Best Care) is based on the belief that having the right people for the right level of care means peace of mind for the client and family. Always Best Care Senior Services has assisted over 25,000 seniors, representing a wide range of illnesses and personal needs. This has established the company as one of the premier providers of in-home care, assisted living placement assistance, and skilled home health care in the United States.
January, 2014
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