Breaking Pandemic Habits for Healthier Eyes

Like one of our members recently posted, “it’s not cancer, and we’re not dead!" - harsh, but true. I try to remind myself of remarks like this when I start to lament my declining vision. It helps.

Hang on, everyone, hang on. Let’s not throw in the towel when there are still actions and steps we can take to prolong the vision we have.

Changing our habits for healthy eyes

If you want something you’ve never had before, you have to do something you’ve never done before.

What the heck does that mean? To me, it means many things. Let me rattle off a few of the topics I’m trying to stuff into my own stubborn head.

Diet

Diet’s a huge one for me. I have been trying to adopt better eating habits. I bought a Mediterranean diet cookbook. My success with “changing my ways” has met with less than perfection. It’s tough fighting 72 years of eating habits, I tell ya!  But you know what?  I’m ahead of where I started from, and that’s progress.

Eye protection

Sunglasses, and I mean good ones! My old sunglasses were prescription, but they did not protect my eyes from bright sunlight from the tops or sides.
Through articles and comments by members of our site, I discovered Cocoon sunglasses, the fit-over type. And I love them! They fit right over my regular glasses and come in different tints with different properties. These sunglasses gave me some contrast and clarity help and also shade me from the top and sides. It was quite noticeable how much better they were than my old sunglasses, so much so that I bought 2 pairs with different tints and properties.

Exercise!

 
Oh man, what a toll the COVID-19 “shelter in place” edict had on my exercise regime! Before all this crazy stuff happened, I was going to the gym at least 5 times per week.

There were 2 different classes I was enrolled in for several consecutive years.  Silver Sneakers (a great low impact class for those of us with a lot of years) and Body Pump, a very popular class that is way more strenuous than the first class I mentioned. But kudos to Silver Sneakers as it got me in good enough shape to advance to the harder class.

Breaking pandemic habits

Recently on a national newscast, the anchorman said that many if not most people had gained as much weight as 2 pounds per month during the lock-down!

Gadzooks! Maybe it’s not true for you or me, but it is true I’ve gained weight and lost muscle tone. My resting heart rate has climbed, and my blood pressure numbers are not as good as they were before the pandemic. In my case, my binge-watching Netflix and Amazon Prime went up (infer sedentary here), and my snacking and boredom eating increased.

So let’s “lean in”

By the term leaning in, I mean let’s identify things we can do to improve our situation.  The natural human tendency, when faced with something scary, is to lean back or away from the threat. It’s the old “fight or flight” response.

Now that I’ve been fully vaccinated, I’m going to strap on my fighting gear (gym shorts, T-shirt, and sneakers) and “lean in.”  I’m back in the fight y’all!  It’s good to be doing something positive while we wait for science to find us a cure.  It can be done, just look at current events. There’s always hope. I wish us all well on our shared journey.