Keeping your Eyes in Tip-Top Shape
- Posted on: Feb 15 2017
As we make our way into this new year, many of us are still hard at work keeping our resolutions that revolve around health and wellness. You may be keeping up your commitment to eat well and exercise on a regular basis. You may even be gaining more activity in your life by engaging in some type of sport. Whether or not this is your routine, exercise has a lot to do with keeping your eyes in tip-top shape. Here, we will point out a few of the ways that you can work out those peepers, and why you may want to do so.
Stretching
Most people know that stretching can a good pre-workout activity. Where we forget about stretching is when it comes to our eyes. The fact is, we spend a fair amount of time in front of some type of screen on a daily basis. Many of us are spending 8 or more hours looking at a screen. This is a recipe for eye strain. To reduce the impact of screen time, the eyes can be stretched, and this is an easy task.
To stretch eye muscles requires focus – literally. Start by focusing on an object that is sitting nearby, maybe within a foot or so of your position. Look at the object for a few seconds, and then move on to an object about a foot or two farther away. Make sure to focus clearly on the object before then moving your eyes to an object 20 or more feet away. The key is that each object should be clear, not blurry, when you observe it.
Playing
Play is a great way to stay in shape, and this applies to your eyes as much as the rest of your body. Some of the ways that you can play for eye health include engaging in a good game of ping-pong. What this does is get your eyes and body working together to achieve a goal. Hand-eye coordination is about more than playing a sport, it is about maintaining a healthy quality of life as you age.
Another way to play with body-eye coordination is to perform a task with one eye open and the other closed. This could be bouncing a basketball or tossing a tennis ball a few inches up in the air.
Eye health is our specialty! To schedule an exam with Chester ophthalmologist Dr. Niki Silverstein, call 908-879-7297.
