As technology takes over the world, children and adults both have become addicted to using devices like computers, laptops, smartphones, and tablets. The blue light emitted from these devices is potentially harmful to your overall health and eyesight. In fact, many people around the world have been experiencing eyesight problems more than ever before.
This can be owed to the constant use of electronic devices (while at work, throughout the entire day, or before sleeping at night). As a result, seeing an optometrist regularly for routine eye exams has never been more important to ensure optimal eyesight. Regular visits to the optometrist also ensure eyeglasses prescriptions are current and offer an opportunity to detect early signs of eye disease.
To understand this better, let’s look at the benefits of seeing an optometrist regularly:
Early Detection of Health Problems
One of the main benefits of visiting an optometrist regularly is health problems can be detected way before they actually occur, hence allowing you to take precautionary measures. Apart from diabetes, a visit to the optometrist may also detect other health problems. These include:
- High Blood Pressure – Patients who are experiencing high blood pressure usually have blood vessels in the back of the eye that may appear leaking or bent. This can go unnoticed if you don’t visit an optometrist. Conversely, if you do see an eye specialist, you can start taking medication immediately to bring the blood pressure back to normal.
- Eyelid Skin Cancer – Our eyelids are sensitive to ultraviolet rays. They may also be one of the first places affected by different types of skin cancers. Optometrists can easily spot the affected areas or spots before skin cancer can spread to other parts of the body. This ensures you can begin treatment right away upon detection.
- Rheumatoid Arthritis – One of the most common symptoms of patients with rheumatoid arthritis is they have dry eyes. This can be detected with an eye exam, if you visit an optometrist regularly.
- Brain Tumor – Of course, it may sound a little weird that eye exams can detect brain tumor. But, this is actually true. Patients with brain tumor often have a swollen optic nerve. This can be detected via an eye exam conducted by an optometrist.
Recognize Vision Loss
Never needed glasses? This could change over time with the use of electronic devices and it’s important for you to find out when. Often, people suffer from poor vision without even realizing it! For instance, maybe you read with the book close to your face unintentionally, or you have a large computer screen or TV, so you don’t notice if you can read from a distance or not.
The point is: if you don’t visit an optometrist, your computer use, reading, and driving could become even more dangerous. One of the benefits of seeing an optometrist is that they can test your eyes and notice the problems you may not. This ensures you can immediately start wearing glasses to restore balance in your vision and restore optimal sight.
Diagnose Eye Diseases
Another benefit of seeing an optometrist regularly is early detection of various eye diseases. Bear in mind, early detection is crucial for preventing loss of vision. In some cases, patients aren’t aware they have glaucoma and other degenerative sight diseases and they often find out too late. An eye exam from an optometrist will inform you if you need professional eye care or treatment.
This also ensures your eye condition can be treated instantly, otherwise if you wait too long it’s more difficult to reverse the damage. For instance, since there are really not many symptoms in the early stages, glaucoma can be hard to detect. Nevertheless, if you have your eye pressure checked after every 6 months, you can detect the disease early. This reverses the damage, which can cause serious side effects, such as permanent blindness.
Regular Treatment
In some serious cases where patients have to undergo surgery to restore optimal sight, getting an eye exam later on is no longer at the top of their priority list. There are few people who know the chances of retinal detachment increase significantly after surgery. This is why it is imperative to get a diagnosis as early as possible to save your vision. This is where visiting optometrists regularly proves beneficial, ensuring you receive proper and regular treatment to reverse the damage.
So, if you want to ensure your sight stays perfect minus any eye diseases or infections, it’s time you considered visiting an optometrist regularly as well.