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Central Illinois Family Eyecare Blog

Learn more about optometrist care in our blog!

Encouraging Healthy Vision Development

Did you know that babies have to learn how to see, just as much as they have to learn how to walk and talk? That’s right, learning how to use their eyes and understand what they’re seeing is a process. There’s a lot we can do as parents to help them develop essential visual skills — every...


Smoking Versus Healthy Vision

The most common health effects that come to mind when we think of smoking are lung cancer and bad teeth, but it doesn’t stop there. Smoking is harmful to every system in the body, and it’s also harmful to our vision. A smoking habit can do more damage to our eyesight than disease can, in a fe...


Questions Our Patients Often Ask Us

Many of our patients come to us with the same questions without realizing it. These are some of the questions we hear most often, and we’re sure that more people haven’t spoken up but don’t know the answers either. 1. “How often do I need to visit the optometrist?” Every patient is uniq...


Diabetes and Vision

Diabetes is a disease that can negatively affect health in many ways, including healthy eyesight. Diabetes brings with it an increased risk of developing several different eye diseases. These are grouped under the umbrella term “diabetic eye disease,” and they include cataracts, glaucoma, dia...


Recognize the Signs of Retinal Detachment

Our eyes are amazing, complex organs, but there are a lot of ways for things to go wrong. One that we want to educate our patients on today is retinal detachment. This is a serious, sight-threatening condition that affects 1 in every 300 people at some point in their lives, but it can be treated ...


Glasses Lenses Through the Centuries

The earliest example of someone using a tool to assist with vision (that we know of) is Roman philosopher Seneca. He used a glass globe of water to magnify text when he was reading. Around the same time (60 AD), Emperor Nero was using an emerald to see gladiator fights better. Glasses have obviou...


The Connection Between Vision and Sleep

Sometimes it’s hard to get a full night’s sleep, but when we don’t, we definitely feel it. In fact, studies even show that not getting enough sleep has many of the same effects on the mind and body as alcohol. There’s an interesting relationship between our quality and quantity of sleep a...


The Different Degrees of Visual Impairment

Some vision problems are so extreme that simple glasses or contacts aren’t enough to completely fix them. These sorts of serious vision problems fall under the umbrella of visual impairment, and those of us with functional eyesight should be aware of these problems so that we can be ready to he...


A Word of Caution on Costume Contacts

Halloween is our favorite spooky time of year, but we need to talk about the potential dangers of costume contact lenses. The right pair of colored lenses will make a great final touch to an amazing Halloween costume, but not all contact lenses are created equal, and we want to make sure our pati...


Good Home Eye Safety Practices

Nearly half of all eye injuries each year occur in the same place: the home. That’s over a million eye injuries per year happening in the place where we should be safer than anywhere else! Fortunately, 90 percent of eye injuries are preventable, and there’s a lot we can do to minimize the ris...


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