Carrots don't improve your Eye-Sight !

Carrots are good for eyes, but they can't improve your eye sight. Usually we think that carrots are much rich in Vitamin A, thus improves our eye-sight, which is not true. Vitamin A is found in Milk, Cheese, Egg yolk, orange and yellow vegetables. Carrots are not better than any of these food products. Carrots can help a person only if a person is suffering from malnutrition, but gulping excess of carrots, just to improve eye-sight won't help. Vitamin A is good for eyes, but excess of it won't provide you superhuman eyes.

But how this myth is popularized around the world that Carrots can improve your eye-sight ? The answer to this question might make your laugh.

During second world war, Royal Air Force of UK used some secret Radar Technology to detect enemy fighter planes even during night. Usage of that technology was a success and they shot down a number of enemy fighter planes using it, but they were not in mood to reveal about this technology. So they popularized a myth that their fighter-pilots ate carrots to improve their night vision.
Further this myth popularized beyond imagination. Enemy nations started to add carrots in diet of their pilots. Even the general public believed this myth, and ate carrots to get ready with night vision to see during blackouts.

 At that time, when sugar was an expensive item, carrots were promoted as sweetener in desserts. Dr Carrot was also shown in advertisements to improve carrot consumption. A Disney cartoonist designed a whole family of carrots named Dr. Carrot, Carroty George, Pop Carrot and Clara Carrot.

What shall i eat to improve eye sight ?

Carrots or any other Vitamin A rich food item can definitely help you in improving eye sight only if it is degraded due to lack of Vitamin A in your diet. Eating excess of carrots won't help any better, as your body flushes out any vitamin or mineral in excess. To improve your eye-sight, a balanced diet with grains, vegetables and dairy products is must. Apart from that some exercises prescribed by your specialist can also help. You must know that our eye sight changes with age as our facial muscle change, so nutrient rich proper diet is must for kids.

You must be surprised to know that :

• Sweet potato contains 4 to 5 time more Vitamin A than carrot.
• Winter Squash have 3 times more Vitamin A than carrot.
• Kale and Collards have twice more Vitamin A that carrots.

But still Carrots got all the limelight. Carrots are good as a starter if your kids don't eat vegetables, but with time you should go for a balanced diet with all nutrients in mind, not just Vitamin A.

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Transplant of Eye is Impossible ! Truth about Donating Eyes

Have you seen advertisements that convince you to donate eyes ? What if we tell you that transplant of eyes is impossible. You must be thinking how can it be. What are they doing with donated eyes, if they are not fixed in someone else's eye sockets. There are various organizations working around the world to convince people for donating eyes and help someone else to see the world through your eyes. You must have seen the same thing in various movies, where a person on death bed donates eyes and the recipient gets the same eyes (even same color) as the donor, which brings tears in the eyes of audience. If you ask a specialist, then it can never happen. Enough suspense ! Lets tell the truth.

Only Cornea is Transplanted

Cornea is the transparent outer layer of eye, which is transplanted. Cornea is the only part of body which survives without blood supply or blood vessels. It gets oxygen directly from air. Other nutrients reach cornea through the liquid that surrounds it and tears that wipe down our eyes while blinking. This fact of no blood supply makes it easier to be transplanted in any recipient irrespective of blood group, unlike other organ transplants where donor and recipient need to be of same blood group.

More about Cornea Transplant

Cornea has six layers: epithelium, Bowman's layer, stoma, Dua's layer, Descemet's membrane and endothelium. All these six layer work together to focus the image correctly. Most of the blindness occur due to problems in cornea. Here are some facts:

• While transplanting the cornea, surgeon don't need to cut or join any blood vessels.
• Cornea transplant don't need any anti-rejection medication.
• Usually people suffering from conditions like Cancer can't donate organs, but cornea can be donated even by such patients after confirming with doctors.
• Very first corneal transplant was done in late 1800s and is being done routinely since 1960.
• Around 44000 corneal transplants are done every year.
• Artificial corneas are used in 400 to 500 corneal transplants every year.

Why Complete Eye Transplant is Impossible ?

An average Human Eye has got 2 million working parts and each eye is connected to brain through 1 million nerve fibers. These nerve fibers that connect eye to our brain is known as optic nerve, and it is one of the most complex organs to transplant. Even after so much advancement it would not be possible to transplant complete eye in near future.

What do they do with the rest of donated eye, if not transplanted ?

Most of the people think that eye donation means taking complete eye out of the eye socket, which is not true. In most of the cases it is just cornea donation. In such cases only the cornea of the deceased donor is taken by doctors within 4 to 8 hours of death. In very rare cases complete eyes are donated. Even in those cases only the cornea is used for transplant, while the rest of the eye is used for research purpose and training of medical professionals, before they work on live subjects.

Note: Color of eye never changes after corneal transplant, as color of our eye depends on iris which is  not transplanted in such procedures.

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Mysterious Lesser Known facts about Eyes

These facts about human eyes will make you understand the value of gift given to you by nature. Most of us take this precious gift as granted and don't even take proper care of it. However our whole body is a precious gift of nature, but our eyes are most important of them, as we can't look at this nature without them.
Our eyes evolved to capture light, the fastest known thing. We could have evolved to capture sound waves to see, like Bats. It took millions of year to evolve and a lot of natural selection before we become what we are today. Lets learn something more about our mysterious eyes and how they are different from others.

Evaluating Eye in Digital World

• You must know that each of your eye is a 576 megapixel camera.
• Human eye can focus on 50 things per second.
• An average human eye have 2 million working parts.
• Human eye can detect 500 shades of grey and 10 million different colors.
• Physiologically human eye has got a frame rate of 1000 frames/sec. But if  videos of different frame rates are played on a screen, then we can't tell the difference after 150 frames/sec.
• If you have faced "red-eye" effect in photos, then you must know that it occurs due to flash as the light bounces off from the back of eyes where a number of blood vessels exist and make it appear red.

Amazing Colors of Eyes

• Different Color of our eyes is due to Melanin, which is also responsible for our skin color. Brown eyes means more melanin (which is a dark brown pigment), while blue eyes means lesser melanin which makes it a bit see through and blue colored collagen on the inner end gives them a bluish touch. Very first human with blue eyes existed 6000 to 10000 years ago. 
• Only 2% humans have green eyes which is caused due to some pigmentation in iris.
• There are six colors of human eyes which occurs due to pigmentation in iris. These colors are amber, blue, brown, gray, green, hazel and red.
• Heterochromia is a condition where both eyes are of different colors. Alexander-the-great also had this condition.

Our Brain Sees, not Eyes

• Each of our eye is connect to our brain through 1 million nerve fibers.
• Muscles responsible for blinking the eye are fastest muscles in our body, so we don't miss a scene. We can blink our eyes five times in a second. We blink more while talking and lesser while reading. On an average we blink 17 time per minute.
• To compensate for the frame-loss during blinking our brain generates the intermediate frames, which our eyes actually doesn't see. In total this time is equivalent to 10% of our daily waking hours. So 10% of what we see is actually made-up by our brain, its not real. Our brain is the actual organ that see, eyes are just an input medium.
• Human eyes actually capture upside down image, our brain flips it to see objects correctly. If you wear some goggles that makes you see objects upside-down for a few days, then your brain can fix this glitch and you will feel normal vision through those glasses.

Some More Facts about Human Eye

• Light sensitive cells in our eyes are known as rods and cones. There are 100 million Rod cells which make us see in dark, while 7 million cones make us see the color and details.
• Cone cell are of three types to differentiate red, green and blue.
• Human eye can detect a burning candle from 30 mile (48 km) distance in a clear dark night.
• Eyes can heal scratches in 48 hours. It continuously cleans any dirt through blinking.
• Human eyes are so complex that they can't be transplanted.
• Cornea of eye is the only living part of body that don't need blood supply. It gets oxygen directly from air.
• A fingerprint may have 40 different characteristics while an iris have 256 different characteristics, which makes eyes a better option for bio-metric scanning.
• Night-vision goggles are green because we can see more shades of green than any other color.
• Our eyes take 15 to 20 minutes to adjust from a bright room to a dark room. This time is roughly equal to the time taken for sun set.

Animal Eyes vs Human Eyes

• However most of the other animals also have eyes, but they are usually different from humans. Most of the animals rely on their smelling sense to give more clarity to their vision. 
• There is a misconception that dogs and cats have grey vision, which is not true. Cats have more rods cells, so they see better at night and see lesser colors than humans. Cats can see blue and green, but shades of red are confusing for them.
• Dogs are also better at night vision and have red-green color blindness. But they can analyse shades of grey better than humans. Dogs are also very nearsighted, but their hearing sense and smelling sense works far better than us, thus we misunderstand that they see better than us.
• Horse's eyes are similar to dogs but they have a 350 degree monocular vision which gives them the ability to see behind them. But depth perception of horse is not as good as humans.
• Eagle's eyes are better than humans as they are evolved to track their prey from heights. If our eyes get as better as an Eagle then we can see an ant on ground from 10th floor of a building. Similarly sharks have 10 times better clarity in their underwater vision. Its evolution. Don't feel inferior if you can't see better than an Eagle or Shark. These beings evolved according to their surrounding and need. 

Today humans have extended their vision through telescopes, microscopes, satellites, radars and sonars. With these machines we can even even see those spectrum that we can't see through our biological eyes.
Take care of your eyes and keep scrolling though BetterHealthFacts.com .

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Color Blindness Test : Check your Color Vision Online

8% men and 0.5% women around the world are color blind, yet most of them don't even know about it unless they face some issue related to it. SOme people think that color blindness is having a grey-scale vision, which is not true. Color blind people are not able to distinguish between certain colors and thus it is actually color vision deficiency. Here betterhealthfacts.com has designed a test for you to check if there is some issue with the color vision of your eyes.

Before you go for the test you must know that 4.5 percent of population around the world is color blind. 99% percent of them are red-green color blind. Cone cells in our eyes are responsible for color vision and they are of three types to distinguish the three primary colors: red, green and blue. All colors are made by combination of these colors and thus evaluated by these perfectly balanced cone cells. But if certain type of cone cells are missing or have got their peaks shifted then it causes color-blindness. Even if one type of cone cells are missing then whole color spectrum is affected. Usually color blindness occur due to genetic reasons.

We have designed a test for you to check if you are color blind or not. Just fill in the numbers that can see in the images. Even if you are not sure then you may try your approximate idea or may leave it blank.

Color Blindness Test Online

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Online Vision Test : Check your Eyes using Smartphone / Laptop

Our eyes are one of the most important external organs in human body. A normal person can't even imagine a life without eyes. Yet most of us don't care much about them and never go for a vision test, unless they face some severe headache or focus related issue. We would suggest you to go for a vision test at least once in every 2 years if your are above 40. Prior to to the age of 40, once in every 4 years is sufficient if you are not facing any issue with your vision. In the mean while you can test your sight using the following test to check your vision at home.

How to use the online vision test

Step 1 : Keep your smartphone / laptop at a distance of 1 meter from your eyes.
Step 2 : Keep your left eye closed by placing the hand over it (don't press it) and try to read the alphabets. If you face any issue in reading the letter between green and red bar, then it means that you have got some focus related issue with your right eye.
Step 3 : Keep your right eye closed by placing the hand over it (don't press it) and try to read the alphabets. If you face any issue in reading the letter between green and red bar, then it means that you have got some focus related issue with your left eye.

Note : At any point if you want to check if you read it right, then bring the screen closer and then back to its previous position. Don't try to fool yourself while doing so, as here you are not appearing in any exam, but checking your own eyesight.

Online Vision Test

Result: If you are able to read all lines perfectly then you have got a perfect eye sight, which is better than 20/20 or 6/6. If you are unable to read last 3 lines then still your eye sight is good and can be made better by performing some yoga exercises for eyes. But if you are unable to read the letters between green and red bar then you must see an eye specialist and get your eyes tested by a professional. If you are unable to read the lines above green bar then there is a major issue with your eyes and you might need special care.

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Smartphones affect your Eyes more than you Imagined

Most of us know that smartphones and other screens affect our eyes in an adverse way, but still we don't care. The basic reason behind this ignorance in lack of information and understanding. Eyes are the most used external organ in our body, yet most neglected as well. We care about our weight, obesity, blood pressure, biceps, hairs and lot of other things but eyes. In this age of smartphones, if we still continue this ignorance then both our generation and our kids will face issues related to vision.

Always remember that if you are staring a screen (such as TV or Smartphone) for more than 2 hours per day then you can easily develop some vision related issue sooner or later.

How smartphones affect our Eyes

Dry Eyes: On an average normal human eye blinks 15 to 20 times in a minute. But the blink rate is greatly reduced when we continuously focus on an object. Continuously staring at your smartphone for hours can affect your blink rate drastically. When we blink our eyes, a drop of tear wipes down our eye to clean its surface and keep it moist. Reduced blink rate causes dry eyes which is most common issue among smartphone users and can be treated easily by reducing smartphone usage.
Computer Vision Syndrome: This health issue is known since computer age, as it commonly occurred due to over usage of computers. But still this syndrome is affecting people due to over usage of smartphones. Symptoms of this disease are eye strain, dry eyes, headache, blurred vision, and neck and shoulder pain. Computer Vision Syndrome is also connected to some other facts listed below.
Blue Light : Blue light is often linked with eye problems because blue light regulates the release of melatonin. Release of melatonin tells our body that it is still daytime and thus usage of smartphones in night time disturbs our sleep, especially if you operate your smartphone just before sleeping. Apart from this side effect, blue light damages and kills the cells of retina, which is the worst side-effect of using smartphones.
Brightness: Brightness of screen is often set to maximum by most of the smartphone users, so that you can watch the screen clearly in daytime. More brightness also helps in viewing photos and videos clearly and thus preferred. But this more brightness put stress on our eyes.

Understand your Eye

Usually we ignore what our eyes try to say us in everyday life. We neglect the stress they go through due to over usage of smartphones and due to lack of relaxation. Minor symptoms like tiredness in eyes, minor headache, dryness in eyes, burning sensation and shoulder/neck pain should not be ignored as they can lead to some serious health issue with our eyes. Apart from consulting a doctor in case of such symptoms, you should also give some time to your eyes from your busy life. Our eyes don't demand a particular time slot, you can perform some simple yoga for eyes at any point of time in a day. These yoga exercises just take a few minutes and provide enough relaxation to your eyes for the remaining day.

Some tips for Smartphone users to keep their eyes healthy

• Keep your Smartphone at about an arm's distance while operating
• Use increased text size
• Take frequent breaks while using your smart phone for long duration.
• Don't use smartphone in a position where screen glare is caused due to some lighting in room.
• Try to use low brightness settings.
• Use smartphone in light, using it in a dark room can be harmful.

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Yoga to Improve and Correct Eyesight : Yoga for Eyes

The value of correct eyesight is often understood when you face some problem with your eyesight or get spectacles to correct the focus. But still if you wake up on time then you can improve and correct your eyesight with the help of Yoga and balanced diet. Now a days  both kids and adults face issues with incorrect focus as both deal with increased on-screen time. Most of the time it occurs due to overuse of muscles in our face and eyes. Eyesight can be corrected by performing some yoga exercises to reduce the tension in these muscles. Here we have made a list of some yoga for eyes which can help in improving and correcting the eyesight.

Yoga to Improve and Correct Eyesight

Muscles in our eyes are eight time more stronger than necessary capacity. So we don't need to exercise them to strengthen them, but to stretch them, relax them and fine-tune them. All of these objectives are fully covered in yoga exercises. Yoga is not just something for our body, but for our mind and soul as well. Someone said "How you see is how you think", and this objective can be achieved through yoga, as yoga not just helps in improving your vision but also your mind and soul.

Yoga for Eyes

• Blinking Yoga: Make your eyes wide-open and then blink them ten times very fast. Then close them for 20 seconds. Repeat this yoga for four times.
• Palms on Eyes: This is a very simple yoga, just rub your palm till they become warm. Then put them on your closed eyes till they feel warm. This yoga gives a lot of relaxation and warmth to eye muscles.
• Eye Rotation: In the beginning move your eyes from left to right and right to left for a few times. Then rotate them in a circular way. If you feel it hard to rotate it in a circle then rotate your finger in a circular way and look at it. Make sure that you don't move your neck while doing so. There is one more way to do the same yoga while sitting in a room. Move your sight among the four extremes, upper left, upper right, lower right and lower left.
• Shoulder Stand (Sarvangna Asana): In this yoga you need to lie flat on your back and then lift your legs, waist and stomach upwards till your body become perpendicular to floor. In this pose your body will stand on your neck and shoulder with arms giving help to keep the body lifted upwards. In this pose blood flows towards eyes, optic nerve and brain.
• Bee Buzzing (Bhramri Pranayam): Sit cross-legged or in a comfortable position, then place your fingers on your closed eyes in a horizontal way. Keep your lips sealed and make a bee buzzing sound while inhaling. Apply a little pressure on your eyeballs while making the buzzing sound.
• Focus Shifting: Choose a distant and a nearby object around you and keep shifting the focus from one to other.
• Distance Gazing: Focus your sight on a distant object around you and try to view it perfectly as if it is the only object available to look at. Concentrate on that object as if you are meditating. Do it till you feel comfortable. In the end thank the god for giving you these precious eyes to see his creations.

Our eyes are the most used external organ in our body, but we care about it the least. What we usually care about is our weight, stomach, legs, arms and hairs. But in this screen-age if we don't give enough attention to our eye-health then sooner or later we can easily face problems with our eyesight. Apart from enough sleep, a few minutes daily for our eyes is sufficient for them to stay fit for your whole life. So make these yoga for eyes, a part of your daily life and lifestyle.

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Smartphone Blindness: Using Phone during night ?

If you are one of those who use their smartphone during night after turning off the lights, then here is something you must read. A new disease of modern world is discovered recently "Smartphone Blindness", where the patient uses smartphone during night after turning off the lights of the room and when he/she wakes up in the morning the eyesight was gone. However mostly it happened as a temporary problem, but nobody would like to experience it. Being blinded without a blindfold is something very scary. If you want to save yourself from this condition then you must read this article.

How eyes adapt between darkness and light

Before we tell you more about this recently discovered Smartphone Blindness, you must have some basic knowledge about how our eye helps us in watching things during day and night time. There are two types of cells in our eye. One is Rod Cells and second are Cone Cells. Cone Cells are responsible for viewing colors and bright things (thats day time vision), while Rod Cells can view better in dark (thats night time). If you are in a completely dark room from sometime and someone turns on the lights suddenly then it takes our eye 5 to 7 minutes to adjust to it, as cone cell in the eye activate themselves for it. But when the opposite thing happens and we go from a well illuminated room to a dark one then it takes 30 to 40 minutes for our eyes to completely adjust and activate Rod cells.

Smartphone Blindness

What we see is a joint output of our eyes and brain. Sometimes our brain works in a strange way, where the researches were not done yet. One such thing is Smartphone Blindness. Using your Smartphone in a dark room for longer duration is perfect condition for this medical condition to happen. Two such cases were reported in "New England Journal of Medicine". Two ladies of age 22 and 40 reported that they suffered from temporary blindness. Doctors tried to find the reason behind that. But to the surprise of doctors the reason was surprising. Both ladies used to work on their phone till late night after turning off the room lights and sometimes their one eye use to remain close due to pillow. Both of them used just one eye to operate their smartphone in a dark room. After finding these facts, scientists tried to find the reason.

The result they found is something new. When we use a smartphone with one eye closed (either by pillow or some other hindrance), then our one eye get adapted to brightness while the other adapt to darkness. Sometimes this thing can mess something in our brain and we can loose our sight for sometime either during night or for few minutes after waking up.

If you want to save yourself from this Smartphone Blindness, then never ever use your phone in a dark room with one eye. Using your phone till late night is itself something unhealthy. It not only disturbs your sleep but also disturbs your biological clock. Now a days mobile phone manufactures are increasing brightness of screens, so that you can use it during a sunny day, but its making extra stress on our eyes. Especially if you don't know how to set the brightness level to low, you are harming your eyes. Even some people who know about the brightness level, don't set it to low as they want to see everything crisp and clear. What such people don't know is that brightness can permanently damage their eyes.

Please use your smartphone with less brightness and use it less during night. Even if you have to use it during night, use both eyes to look at screen, not just one.

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