Summer Slimmer Beach Tip: Protecting Your Eyes

Today's Summer Slimmer Tip is about protecting our eyes! While it's important to protect our eyes in summer, from the harsh rays of the sun, it's really a good idea to protect our eyes year-round, to help prevent a variety of eye-related health issues that can occur as we get older. So let's take a look at how to choose the right sunglasses, and some foods and supplements we can do as well. Keeping our eyes healthy and our vision strong - it's something we should all strive for!

Choosing Sunglasses

It's not just about what frames look good on what face shape, it's about what your sunglasses offer you in the form of protection. The American Academy of Ophthalmology suggests you look for the following when choosing sunglasses:

• Choose 100 percent UV blockage. Look for a tag or sticker indicating that the sunglasses offer 100% UV ray protection. If they don't provide this, move on - you are not protecting your eyes from UV light in the way you should!
• When it comes to fashion, know what matters. Size is important - the larger the sunglasses, the more coverage you have from harmful sun damage. Oversized is good, and wraparound even better as they protect against sunlight from the sides, as well. What doesn't matter? How dark and what color the lenses are. Also polarized lenses - they help with things like glare, but do not protect against UV rays.

The good news is that 100% UV protective sunglasses don't have to be expensive - cheaper options work just as well as more expensive ones.

Foods And Supplements To Help Protect Your Eyes

If you want to take some preventive steps against common vision conditions such as cataracts, glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration, consider the following:

• Eat plenty of foods with vitamin C. This vitamin is an antioxidant that helps prevent free radical damage to the eyes, so make sure to add foods such as citrus fruits, broccoli and cantaloupe to your diet, or take a vitamin C supplement!
• Take zinc in supplement form. Some research has shown that zinc supplements can help to slow the progression of age-related macular degeneration.

Finally, you can help to promote healthy eyesight through not smoking (it decreases the blood supply to the eyes) and eating a diet that is low in saturated fat, which can lead to a buildup of plaque and impede blood flow.

For more healthy eating and lifestyle tips like these, get my Stop The Clock Nutrition Plan! This downloadable, printable guide has suggestions of foods that can promote healthy aging, insight into preventive health tactics, and more!

Let's get fitter, together - inside and out,

Denise