You need to protect your eyes. Sunglasses whether for fashion or prescription glasses should be a regular piece of clothing like your tops, bottoms or dresses.
The lighter your eye colour the more necessary the glasses, light eyes such as blue, green or grey are more sensitive in sunlight and more likely to get sunburned.
But remember that ALL eye colours need the protection that sunglasses can bring.
Sunglasses are a great fashion accessory, but their most important job is to protect your eyes from the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) rays. Some of the sun’s effects on the eyes include: Cataracts, a clouding of the eye’s lens that can blur vision. An estimated 20% of cases are caused by extended UV exposure.
People should look for sunglasses that block out 99 percent of ultraviolet A and ultraviolet B rays. Although buying sunglasses from a doctor’s office is the best guarantee of getting a pair of sunglasses that are effective in protecting eyes from ultraviolet rays, some low-cost sunglasses are now carrying optometric “seals of acceptance,” which guarantee their effectiveness.
To protect your eyes from harmful solar radiation, sunglasses should block 100 percent of UV rays and also absorb most HEV rays. Frames with a close-fitting wraparound style provide the best protection because they limit how much stray sunlight reaches your eyes from above and beyond the periphery of your sunglass lenses.
Here are the top 5 reasons to wear sunglasses according to Eye Clinic London:
1) Protection from UV
The sun’s UV rays are not only harmful to our body but also to our eyes. Overexposure to UV rays can attribute to cataract formation, photokeratitis (snow blindness) and benign growths on the surface of the eye (pterygium).
2) Vision
Being in the sun can cause glare, which makes you squint. This can cause your eyes to be uncomfortable, become watery, and impair your vision. Wearing your sunglasses can therefore make your vision more comfortable when in the sun and also make you safer when driving in sunny conditions.
3) Skin Cancer
When we go out in the sun we should use a high factor sun screen to protect our skin from the sun’s harmful UV rays and wearing sunglasses acts as this for our eyes. Eye lid tissue and tissue around the eyes is very thin and sensitive, therefore it can be one of the quickest places to get skin cancer if not protected.
4) Macular Degeneration
Long term overexposure to the suns UV rays could also attribute to the development of macular degeneration, due to the ‘blue light’ from the solar spectrum. This is a preventable disease but is also one of the top reasons for permanent sight loss.
5) Light to Dark
If you are in the sun, even for a short time, without sunglasses and then go indoors you will find your eyes take a while to adapt to the darker light. The same effects also happen if it gets into night time and you have been in the sun, therefore could affect your driving.
Do you wear sunglasses? Do you wear them for fashion, protection, or both? I’d love to see YOUR sunglasses so shoot me a selfie with your favorite sunny specs on Facebook,Twitter, and Instagram.
