Why Eye Exams?

Whether you wear corrective lenses or not, regular eye exams are critical for maintaining good eye health!

March is Save Your Vision Month, which makes it a great time to take a closer look at a few of the biggest reasons to make sure an eye exam makes it into our schedules at least every other year.

Look Sharp with Up-To-Date Prescriptions

Is the text on that billboard getting harder to read? Have you found yourself squinting more and more? You’re probably overdue for a new glasses or contact lens prescription, so what are you waiting for? Schedule your next eye exam and rediscover the sharp detail you’ve been missing in your daily life.

Prevention Is the Best Treatment

A lot of the chronic, sight-threatening eye diseases like glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration can take a long time to show symptoms. Without regular eye exams, there’s no way to catch them early on, and yet early diagnosis is the best way to slow their progress and keep vision loss to a minimum.

Eye Strain Is a Drain on Productivity

In this technological era, many of us have jobs sitting in front of a computer screen for most of the day. This, as well as additional hours looking at our smartphones, can lead to a lot of digital eye strain. If you’ve been experiencing symptoms like blurred visions, dry eyes, and frequent headaches, eye strain could be the culprit. At an eye exam, we can discuss ways to minimize the effects of screen time and make a plan for avoiding that strain.

Vision Health Is Connected to Overall Health

Eye exams aren’t just important for the sake of checking that your eyes are healthy and working the way they should, they’re also a great way to get a look at how you’re doing in terms of overall health. The eye doctor may be the first one to spot early symptoms of chronic conditions like high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, and even cancer — all from a standard eye exam!

Basic Vision Screenings Aren’t Enough

For parents, it can be easy to assume that the school nurse has your child’s vision care covered with those yearly screenings using the big E chart. However, that chart only tests visual acuity, but there are several other things it’s important to check for, because an undiagnosed vision problem can have a serious impact on a child’s learning. Only a comprehensive vision exam with an actual optometrist can test for all vision problems, not just whether or not they need glasses.

Happy Save Your Vision Month!

We celebrate Save Your Vision Month in an effort to increase public awareness of basic eye health practices we can all live by, especially keeping up with our regular eye exams. If it’s been a while since we last saw you, just give us a call to schedule your appointment!

We can’t wait to see you at our practice!

Top image by Flickr user Franklin Heijnen used under Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 4.0 license. Image cropped and modified from original.

The content on this blog is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions.