Eye-care While Travelling

Travelling is a past time that many people enjoy, be it a relaxing two week break staying on the beach, away from the stresses of the office or something more intrepid and further afield. Whichever type of holiday you prefer it’s important to look after yourself while you are away. This includes eye care; especially as your eyes are a particularly sensitive part of your body which could easily be forgotten about.

When travelling by aeroplane, especially on long haul flights, the air conditioning and the atmosphere on-board leaves your skin feeling very dry. The skin around your eyes is particularly delicate which is why carrying a bottle of travel-sized, quality moisturiser with you on-board is essential and will help you to feel more refreshed during the long journey. You should also consider getting some good quality eye-drops from your optometrist. On long haul flights your eyes can become dry, tired and painful and therefore another key item to pack into your hand luggage is a small bottle of eye drops to help combat this.

If you wear contact lenses, consider switching to glasses if you’re travelling long haul. Firstly, this will mean that you won’t need to worry about the hassle of changing your contact lenses whilst travelling, especially if you happen to encounter any delays during your journey. Another reason to opt for glasses on a long haul journey is that you will be able to sleep in them and, finally, you won’t have to worry about your contact lenses drying out.

Once you arrive at your destination, you can relax and enjoy the holiday, however what happens if you run out of cleaning solution for your contact lenses, or you find that in the excitement of preparing for the holiday, you left it at home? It’s really important not to use anything else besides saline solution to clean your contact lenses. Water seems like a sensible option but as our eyes do not react well with water, it is best to seek out some saline solution locally to keep the contact lenses from drying.  If no saline solution is available, you can temporarily store your glasses in some clean bottled water but remember that they need to be treated with saline solution before you put them back in your eyes!

If you’re on holiday in a hot destination, you need to think about protecting your eyes from the sun. Even your eyelids can burn and so it’s necessary to take precautionary measures, like making sure that you wear sun cream on your face and around your eyes, even if you feel you don’t need to. You should also wear sunglasses to protect your eyes from the glare of the sun and to stop you from constantly squinting, which is likely to make you suffer from headaches. In a hot climate it’s also important to keep moisturising the skin around your eyes at night, which is likely to become dry after days spent outside enjoying the sunshine.

Finally, dehydration serves to exacerbate eye problems and thus, if you are staying in a hot and dry climate, you need to make sure that you are drinking enough water daily. If you look after your health and your eyes whilst travelling, you’ll have less to worry about while abroad and can concentrate on really relaxing and enjoying your holiday!

Image courtesy: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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