5 Tips For Looking After Your Eyesight In 2021

On a really bad day, you can feel convinced that the world is falling apart, but that conviction became much more common throughout 2020 — undoubtedly the most calamitous year the world has seen in decades. Things that had been secure suddenly seemed vulnerable. Life itself was on the line. We all had to stop taking things for granted.

And now that we’re in 2021, we should all share one goal for the year: to look after ourselves as best we can (and one another after that). Notably, you can’t see what’s coming if you don’t protect your vision, and the demands on healthcare systems worldwide are making it all the more important for you to be careful with your eyes.

To help you make sensible decisions as the year advances, let’s take a look at five important tips for looking after your eyesight throughout 2021. Here we go:

Pick up some protective eyewear

It’s easy to forget just how vulnerable our eyes are. Even a tiny speck of dirt can cause major irritation that snowballs into a serious problem. When you get out and take part in strenuous activities, you sweat a lot and expose your eyes to much more foreign matter, and that’s a serious risk — so safeguard your eyes with sports eyewear.

And if you think you can go without eye protection if you’re staying at home (which is somewhat understandable), think again. People keeping indoors have turned to DIY as a distraction, and that can also be dangerous: everything from filling holes in a wall to renovating an attic can go horribly wrong. Whatever you’re doing, don’t take any risks!

Eat more healthily

Has your diet become disastrous during the many lockdown periods? If so, you’re not alone, as so many people have turned to comfort food to keep their spirits high in recent months. But it has a negative effect on you in the long run. In addition to depriving you of vital nutrients, having a bad diet will lead to worsening health overall.

Get a bigger office display

Working from home has become incredibly common due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but home offices aren’t generally as finely-optimized as traditional offices. There are many professionals still working from their laptops at their kitchen tables, squinting at text in darkness and causing significant stress to their eyes. You need to do something about this.

Instead of working like that, you need a proper home office with a desktop-sized display that means you don’t need to squint. You can keep using your laptop: if it’s a Windows machine then you can use a regular HDMI cable, and if you have a MacBook then you can just find a Mac docking station (docking stations from OWC are particularly convenient). Either way, get as big a screen as you can afford, and sit back as far as you can. Your eyes will be appreciative.

Improve your sleeping pattern

There are two big reasons why improving your sleeping pattern is important for your eyesight. Firstly, getting better sleep helps your health in general, allowing your eyes to get the rest they need. Secondly, it allows you to get as much natural light as possible, something that isn’t easy during the winter (depending on where you live, of course).

More natural light during your working hours means less wear-and-tear on your eyes, and less time dealing with the rough glare of artificial light. It might not be ideal to rearrange your schedule in this way, but it will definitely help if you manage it. And when you need to use artificial light, consider investing in some blue light readers to prevent blue light from confusing your circadian rhythm and negatively affecting your sleep.

Take more breaks

Keeping your eyes open for a long time is clearly not a good idea, yet it’s something that plenty of professionals will do as they work at their computers. The solution to this is easy: take more breaks. Instead of working for an hour, work for fifteen minutes then rest your eyes for a short while. You don’t need to take a nap or lie down. Just stop staring at light sources! To take stress off your eyes, you should also follow the 20-20-20 rule: every 20 minutes, look at an object at least 20 feet away for at least 20 seconds. And when you’re working at a computer, sit as far away as you practically can. If you find that you need to sit right in front of the screen, you should get your eyes tested: vision can degrade without it being immediately