Thrive: Protecting Your Eyes
Some wear them as a fashion statement.. some wear them to avoid squinting.. but everyone should wear them for protection.
"we know that UV light is damaging to the eye and it can worsen your cataracts, it can hasten their development, also your protecting you retina which is very sensitive to it and it can cause further damage especially people that prone to have micro degeneration it is very important to do so," Mankato Clinic Medical Doctor, Natalyia Danylkova said.
We use our eyes to complete our daily tasks, making it important to take care of them. If the retinal cells lose their function they are not renewable.
"There are certain conditions that develop sooner in life. Like cataract it's a normal age change but if you were exposed to the sunlight for a long period of time that would develop much faster and the same for micro degeneration it just hastens changes in the retinal cells and that will cause the retinal cells death much sooner in life than expected," Danylkova said.
Adding that it's the time of year when many choose to get some color in a tanning bed.
And although FDA regulations require eye protection to be worn, not everyone follows that rule creating long term damages for many starting at a young age.
"Its basically UV light. It's just much more intense so it can eventually burn a hole. If you're staring at sunlight directly there's some types that have tradition to greet the sunlight so they just go and look at the sun rising and a lot of times those people can have irreversible changes to their retinal cells that we can see later in life. Basically causing toxic effect and those cells are not functioning; they swell immediately because some distortion of vision but there's a long term effect where you can lose your acuity," Danylkova said.
For more on the thrive campaign, go to keyc.com/thrive.