Have You Heard these Common Eye Myths?

Eat­ing car­rots will help and sit­ting too close to the TV will hurt your vision are a few state­ments all of us have prob­a­bly heard while grow­ing up. While it is impor­tant to keep an eye on your eye health and vision, there are some com­mon myths that have stuck through the years that might not nec­es­sar­i­ly be true. Always con­sult with your eye doc­tor on any issues you may have, but here are some of the com­mon eye myths that keep cir­cu­lat­ing around, some even are based upon a bit of truth.

Squint­ing does not make your vision worse- per­haps you have heard your grand­ma or some­one tell you to stop squint­ing because it will hurt your vision. Squint­ing may be a sure way to tell if some­one may need glass­es. By squint­ing, you are attempt­ing to focus more by mak­ing the pupil small­er (clos­ing your lids). If you suf­fer from a refrac­tive error (near-/far­sight­ed­ness), your lens can­not bend the light prop­er­ly to focus the image for you. So you squint, which reduces the light allowed in, and allowTs you to see a lit­tle bit bet­ter. The only side effect you may expe­ri­ence would be headaches from the mus­cles on your face to close your lids a bit.

Read­ing in the dark does not harm your vision- there is a great chance that you were yelled at as a kid to turn a light on while you were read­ing because “bad light­ing is bad for your eyes.” Dur­ing low light con­di­tions, your pupil will enlarge to allow more light in an attempt to help you to see. This does not dam­age your eye; you just will not be able to see as well. You can think about your eye as a cam­era. A cam­era won’t be dam­aged just because you take a pic­ture in low light; you just won’t be able to see as well.

Sit­ting too close to the TV or star­ing a com­put­er screen only affects vision tem­porar­i­ly- the major­i­ty of the time, peo­ple who sit too close or stare at screens, do not blink enough to keep the eye suf­fi­cient­ly lubri­cat­ed, which affects the vision. While only tem­porar­i­ly, peo­ple may think there is a seri­ous prob­lem if their vision becomes blur­ry or eyes become strained. How­ev­er, we may not have been designed to stare at screens all day, but no per­ma­nent dam­age will come from it. Just make sure to blink as you would nor­mal­ly.

If your par­ents have poor vision, you may not- while many eye prob­lems and con­di­tions may be genet­ic, it does not mean that you will auto­mat­i­cal­ly inher­it them. You may be at a high­er risk, but inher­i­tance is no guar­an­tee. The impor­tant thing is to remem­ber to get a com­pre­hen­sive eye exam reg­u­lar­ly to catch any prob­lems ear­ly on, espe­cial­ly if your fam­i­ly has a his­to­ry. For exam­ple, glau­co­ma is inher­i­ta­ble, cataracts is an age-relat­ed degen­er­a­tion of the lens that hap­pens to every­one.

Car­rots- every­one has prob­a­bly heard that you should eat car­rots to give you bet­ter vision. While this is not exact­ly true, there is a lit­tle bit of truth behind it. Car­rots are high in vit­a­min A and a defi­cien­cy in vit­a­min A can lead to poor vision. So by eat­ing an excess of car­rots or oth­er foods high in vit­a­min A, you will not enhance your vision fur­ther, but will pre­vent any defi­cien­cies.

Glass­es or con­tacts do not cre­ate a depen­dence- per­haps you use glass­es only dur­ing cer­tain sit­u­a­tions because you fear that overus­ing them will cause your eyes to become depen­dent upon them even more. This is not true and you should use your cor­rec­tive lens­es when­ev­er you feel the need. Wear­ing cor­rec­tive lens­es does not change the nat­ur­al phys­i­ol­o­gy of your eye (mak­ing your vision worse), how­ev­er as you age, your vision may begin to dete­ri­o­rate but that is not from wear­ing cor­rec­tive lens­es.

You should always con­sult your eye doc­tor regard­ing any ques­tions or con­cerns you have about your vision or eye health. If your vision has been an area of issue for you or you hate the con­fin­ing aspect of glass­es, have you con­sid­ered laser eye surgery to per­ma­nent­ly cor­rect your vision? Con­tact the pro­fes­sion­als at Dia­mond Vision (https://diamondvision.com/schedule-eye-exam/) today for a free con­sul­ta­tion to see if you would be a good can­di­date.