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Keeping your eyes healthy begins with your overall health. Taking these 8 steps towards protecting your vision now will put you on a pathway towards a lifetime of seeing clearly.

If you have diabetes, you know controlling your blood sugar is important to your overall health. Here are 5 things you may not know about diabetes and your eyes:

Our eyes are sensitive to allergies, chemicals, and pollutants in the air. Living in the Central Valley, we know all about bad air quality days. Have you ever noticed your eyes are red or itchy on those days? Air pollutants usually cause temporary irritations and clear up as pollution reduces. People living in high air pollution areas are more likely to develop dry eye syndrome, which is when there are insufficient tears to lubricate the eyes. You can help your dry eyes by using a humidifier or by having food in your diet high in omega 3, antioxidants, water, etc.

Eating well, getting enough sleep, and exercising regularly are how we stay in shape, feel healthier, and get stronger. Another important benefit that we don’t normally think about is how all those things can help protect our eyesight. Regular exercise can reduce the risk of eye diseases like cataracts, glaucoma, and wet age-related macular degeneration. Exercise also indirectly helps prevent diabetic retinopathy by helping prevent diabetes. High blood pressure is another problem than can lead to eye diseases and exercise is a great way to prevent that. Regular exercise (three or more times a week) combined with comprehensive eye exams is the best way to prevent eye health problems or catch them early on.

Blurry vision is the loss of sharpness of eyesight, meaning objects appear out of focus or hazy. The primary cause of this is refractive errors. Refractive errors are nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism, or presbyopia. While those are the common causes of blurry vision, it can also be caused by more serious problems like sight-threatening eye diseases or neurological disorders. If vision becomes blurry suddenly, it could be a symptom of a serious eye problem.