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Eyesight is one of the most important senses that helps you interact with the world around you, and it’s vital for upholding a good quality of life. However, not many Brits follow the most essential practice for eye care: getting regular eye exams.
According to a OnePoll survey by Eye Health UK, over 36% of the country’s adults haven’t had their eyes tested in over two years. That’s roughly 19 million people. One of the groups more likely to have skipped an exam? Men. Of the survey’s 2,000 respondents, 44% admitted not getting one in the aforementioned period, compared to 36% for women.
Eye exams are crucial for bolstering your long-term vision health, preventing avoidable sight loss, and even giving you insights into other aspects of your overall health. If you’re among those who haven’t gotten a test lately, here’s more on what you’re missing out on—and why you may want to book an appointment with an optometrist soon.
Prescriptions for eyewear
Eye exams are important for testing visual acuity. They assess how far your eyesight is from 20/20 vision, and if it’s off, optometrists draw up a prescription you can use to buy corrective glasses. These are essential for correcting refractive errors like short-sightedness. However, foregoing eye exams means these conditions go untreated, and that can cause more than just headaches and inconveniently blurred eyesight. It can also lead to permanently blurred vision, potentially progressing into sight loss.
Unfortunately, this is another aspect of eye health that men overlook. Out of all the Brits who wear corrective eyewear, only 68% of men do so compared to 77% of women. Many choose to do so for aesthetic reasons, as glasses are often associated with intelligence but not attractiveness. As more eyewear designs provide form and function, skipping eye exams to avoid wearing glasses is not worth the increased risk of blindness it may bring.
Ray-Ban is one brand that offers prescription men’s eyeglasses in various stylish designs. As expected from the creator of the iconic Aviator sunglasses, its Optics collection includes attractive frames like the Wayfarer Ease and Clubmaster that look more like fashion accessories than medical devices.
Ultimately, that means you miss out on the vision correction and blindness prevention today’s visually appealing glasses provide when you skip an eye exam.
Eye disease detection
Men don’t just skip basic eye tests that check for refractive errors. They also forego the comprehensive eye exam—and this assessment is critical for preventing blindness in your later years. That’s solely because many sight loss-causing conditions don’t exhibit symptoms at all, such as glaucoma. It slowly causes sight loss by damaging the optic nerve. However, this nerve is located at the back of the eye, so it can’t be spotted with a regular eye test.
Instead, you need to consult the more specialised ophthalmologist, who will use the advanced medical equipment required to examine all parts of the eye thoroughly. This professional will use special artificial tears to dilate your pupils, allowing them to take a closer look at everything from your cornea back to your optic nerve. It also helps them measure intraocular pressure and gauge the strength of your eye muscles.
If you’re worried about how much these eye exams will cost you, don’t worry. The NHS offers them for free every two years, even more often if you’re over 40 and your eyes age enough to become vulnerable to several blindness-causing conditions. Stuck on a waitlist? The service’s partnerships with high street opticians mean you can book these exams even at your local Boots or Specsavers. That means there’s virtually no reason to skip them—and miss out on potentially spotting eye diseases early or even as they develop, something that can help you get the treatment you need as soon as possible and maintain healthy eyesight for longer.
General health assessments
The eyes are more than just the windows to your soul. They’re also windows to the overall state of your health, which means regular eye exams can benefit your eyes and the rest of your body. In particular, they can spot signs of diseases that men are more likely to be diagnosed with. One of the most concerning is diabetes, which 4.3 million people in the UK struggle with, as it requires lifelong management and care. Just recently, the British Medical Journal confirmed that men are more likely than women to experience severe diabetes, which can manifest through cardiovascular issues as well as leg, foot, and kidney complications.
Fortunately, abnormal blood glucose levels are also closely linked to eye damage—in fact, there’s a blindness-causing disease called diabetic retinopathy. Blood glucose-related damage is characterised by the breakage of the eye’s blood vessels and the rapid growth of new but weaker ones. An eye care professional can thus spot abnormalities as early as the prediabetic stage, which can help you ward off diabetes and its complications—or, at the very least, manage your existing diabetes better—to prevent adverse health outcomes.
Another chronic condition men are more vulnerable to is high blood pressure. It can similarly cause excess levels of intraocular pressure, something that’s associated with glaucoma. A comprehensive eye exam can thus spot high blood pressure early, especially if you get one regularly. By skipping out on these assessments, you may miss multiple opportunities to stay in the pink of health as time goes by.
