Avoiding smoking and second hand smoke—or quitting if you are a smoker—are some of the best investments you can make in your long-term eye health.

Smoking – even in your teens or twenties when your senior years seem far away – increases your future risks for cataract and age-related macular degeneration (AMD). And the more a person smokes, the higher the risks. The good news is that after people quit smoking, their risks for these eye diseases becomes almost as low as for people who never smoked.

Smoking also raises the risks for cardiovascular diseases that indirectly influence your eyes’ health. And tobacco smoke, including second-hand smoke, is an irritant that worsens dry eye, a very uncomfortable eye condition that is most common in women after menopause.

Smoking increases the risk of serious vision loss in people with other eye diseases. And when women smoke during pregnancy they are more likely to give birth prematurely, putting their babies at higher risk for a potentially blinding disease called retinopathy of prematurity as well as other health problems.

The American Cancer Society has resources to help people who want to quit: www.cancer.org

(From the American Academy of Ophthalmology)