In the blink of an EYE
Not only are your eyes one of your primary sensory gateways to the outside world, they are also one of the first things people notice about you.
But while we know that our eyes give us signals to many areas of our health (read Dr Isa-Bella van Niekerk’s column on iridology on pg 18 to find out more about this), they also tend to be a part of our body we easily neglect.
Dr Dirk J Booysen, clinical optometrist and contact-lens specialist, explains that our current lifestyle is one of the biggest dangers to eye health. “People spend more time indoors, doing mostly near-work on digital devices,” he says. “This leads to near-point strain, and can be linked to the development of myopia and astigmatism, which have taken on epidemic proportions in the Far East. Dry eye is also on the increase, and we don’t have a handle on its causes yet, so treatment is difficult and chronic.”
In addition, our diets have changed to suit an increasingly busy lifestyle, and obesity is the order of the day. How this affects eye health is not entirely certain, but a great
