Smoking and Eye Health

If you are a smoker, you have no doubt heard that smoking is bad for your health. It can cause lung cancer, heart disease, and other health issues. But did you think about what smoking might be doing to your eyesight? We at Lewis County Eye & Vision in Chehalis, WA, are an optometry clinic where you can get an eye exam and eye care for smoking-related conditions.

Smoking and Your Eyes

Whether you wear glasses or contacts or don't need any eyewear, every time you smoke, some of that smoke can get in your eyes no matter how far you try to blow it away. Even those who vape expose their eyes to a fog of chemicals.

What can smoking do to your eyes? It can cause dry eye, drying out your natural eye fluids and making your eyes feel itchy, burning, and red. Maybe dry eye is something you think you can live with, or an eye drop will help fix it. However, smoking can do more devastating damage to your eyes.

Smokers are more likely to get cataracts than non-smokers. Smokers are also more likely to get age-related macular degeneration (AMD). If you are diabetic and smoke, you increase your chances of diabetic retinopathy, which damages the blood vessels in your eyes. And, you may have a more likely chance of increasing your interocular pressure which may damage your optic nerve. This is called glaucoma, which can lead to blindness.

What Our Optometry Team Can Do

We know quitting smoking is hard. If you can't or are trying, we can check your eye health through a thorough eye exam. An eye exam can let us detect eye problems earlier and address them with eye care to help save your sight.

Contact Us for an Eye Exam and Our Optometry Services

If you are a smoker, visit us at Lewis County Eye & Vision in Chehalis, WA, for eye care to help reserve your eye health. Call us at (360) 748-9228.