Maintaining or achieving good ocular health involves taking a number of simple preventative measures to ensure your eyes continue to work as good as they possibly can. By eating a healthy diet, taking supplements when necessary, and regularly visiting an eye doctor, you can go a long way towards keeping your eyes disease-free and preserving your vision. If the eyes are otherwise healthy, corrective lenses or various surgeries can usually improve vision. So if you are able to see with 20/20 vision (6/6 in metric), either with or without correction, and your eyes are otherwise disease-free, you can consider yourself to have good ocular health.
The first step to keeping your eyes healthy is diet and nutrition. Proper nutrition will make sure your eyes get the nutrients necessary to function properly. For instance, vitamin A is necessary both for good ocular function and to stave off certain conditions, such as macular degeneration and cataracts. On the other hand, poor diet may contribute to certain conditions that can adversely affect the eyes. While conditions like diabetes and hypertension are often hereditary, in many cases they can either be avoided or at least managed with proper diet. If allowed to run their course they can potentially devastate the eyes, with diabetes possibly leading to blindness.
Annual visits to an eye doctor can help identify potential issues before they can affect your ocular health. Optometrists are a type of eye doctor that can test your visual acuity, and having this checked out once a year is a good way to catch problems early on. Ophthalmologists can also perform standard visual acuity tests, though they are also trained in the diagnosis and treatment of various conditions and diseases that affect the eyes. If you do develop a condition, such as glaucoma or diabetes, your ophthalmologist will be able to diagnose it so that it may be properly treated.
If you require corrective lenses, a yearly visit to an optometrist or ophthalmologist will also ensure that your prescription remains up-to-date. While wearing incorrect glasses or contacts usually will not harm your ocular health, it may lead to complications, such as headaches or increased eye strain.
You can also help maintain your ocular health by protecting your eyes from things like foreign objects and the sun. Wearing protective lenses when working around machinery or in other dangerous environments can keep harmful chemicals, airborne particulate matter, and other things from getting into your eyes. Substances like these may potentially damage your eyes, or even lead to blindness. Similarly, ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun can damage your eyes over time. Wearing sunglasses that have a UV-protection rating can stop a large percentage of this harmful radiation from getting into your eyes.
