Health, Beauty and Lifestyle with Denise McNamara

One of my enduring memories as a child is my mother using her ancient Claddagh ring to do eye exercises with me. After an operation to correct a lazy eye as a seven-year-old, she would spend hours making me train the eye to improve the muscle and as a result of her patience my wandering eye is barely noticeable, only straining sideways with a few too many wines or if I’m absolutely wrecked.

Of our five senses, I’d be most terrified about losing my eyesight.

In my fifth decade I got glasses for reading, which I put down to too many hours on a laptop during Covid.

I’ve resisted pulling them out too much and only use them if the writing is simply too small to see.

But is there anything we should be doing to ensure our eye health is the best it can be.

I recently read an excellent article in Harvard Health magazine which went through five myths about eyesight.

The first is whether eye exercise will delay the need for glasses. They reject this, saying eye exercises will “not improve or preserve vision, help your eye health, or reduce the need for glasses”. Whether we need glasses or develop eye disease depends on the shape of the eyeball and the health of eye tissues, which cannot be significantly altered with eye exercises.

My husband is always giving out about the dim light in our house saying it is destroying our eyesight – he has in his sixth decade 20/20 vision – but I absolutely overly bright light.

According to this article dim lighting will not damage our eyesight or eye health. But it will tire your eyes out more quickly.

“The best way to position a reading light is to have it shine directly onto the page, not over your shoulder.”

Another one I have always heard growing up is to eat carrots for eyesight. That apparently is true because of their high vitamin A content, but fresh fruits and dark green leafy vegetables, which contain more antioxidant vitamins such as C and E, are even better for eye health. “Antioxidants may even help protect the eyes against cataracts and age-related macular degeneration.”