EnSight Vision - Target Lubbock

How Lack of Sleep Impacts Eye Health
Most of us are familiar with a few of the symptoms of sleep deprivation over a night or two: drowsiness, grumpiness, and difficulty concentrating.

In the long term, sleep deprivation can actually weaken our immune systems, make it harder to lose weight, increase our blood pressure, and contribute to memory loss and mood changes.

We want to focus on how it affects our eyes.
It takes at least five hours of sleep per night for our eyes to replenish themselves so they can function well throughout the day. It goes beyond simply being able to keep them open. The less sleep we get over time, the more likely we are to experience symptoms like dry eye, eye strain, and even twitchy eyes.

Fortunately, our eyes are actually part of the solution to getting more and better sleep.

What does it mean to have 20/20 vision?
When we determine a patient’s visual acuity, we use fractions. A person who has 20/20 vision can see details pretty clearly from a distance of 20 feet.

The bigger the bottom number gets, the worse the patient’s vision is compared to that baseline. Some people are even lucky enough to have better vision than 20/20!

However, there’s more to good eyesight than 20/20 vision, which is why eye exams are so important!

Men and women aren’t just different in the obvious ways; their eyes are different too!

Women are more susceptible to many different eye diseases than men, but men have their own unique eye health concerns. What’s more, men and women don’t process visual information quite the same.

How Men Process Visual Information
On average, men tend to be better at spotting fine details and rapid movement than women, but they aren’t quite as good at distinguishing different colors. One theory as to why goes back to hunter-gatherer days. Men did the hunting while women did the foraging, so the men would have needed to spot game at a distance in order to be effective hunters, whereas the women would’ve needed to spot the difference between nutritious and poisonous plants.

Women’s advantage with color vision goes a little farther: men are sixteen times more likely than they are to be colorblind! Among other things, that means that a couple arguing over paint swatches might literally not be seeing the same colors.

How Hormones Affect the Eyes
Starting with puberty, changing hormone levels can actually affect the way the eyes grow. Teenage boys sometimes become temporarily nearsighted during a growth spurt because their eyes are getting longer, and sometimes the nearsightedness is permanent. Either way, glasses or contacts are an easy solution.

Men and Eye Injuries
Another way men and women are different when it comes to eye health is that men are more prone to eye injuries due to being more likely to play dangerous sports or perform labor-intensive jobs. What makes this more of a problem is that men tend to be less willing to wear protective gear than women. Don’t forget your eyewear! 90% of eye injuries are preventable with the right protective gear.