1. Vision is so important to humans that almost half of your brain’s capacity is dedicated to visual perception.
2. The most active muscles in your body are the muscles that move your eyes.
3. The surface tissue of your cornea (the epithelium) is one of the quickest-healing tissues in your body. The entire corneal surface can turn over every 7 days.
4. Your eyes can get sunburned. It is called photokeratitis and it can make the corneal epithelium slough off just like your skin peels after a sunburn.
5. Ommatophobia is the fear of eyes.
6. You blink on average about 15 to 20 times per minute. That blink rate may decrease by 50% when you are doing a visually demanding task like reading or working on a computer – and that’s one reason those tasks can lead to more dry-eye symptoms.
7. Your retinas see the world upside down, but your brain flips the image around for you.
8. If you are farsighted (hyperopia) your eye is short, and if you are shortsighted (myopia) your eye is long.
9. An eyelash has a lifespan of about 5 months. If an eyelash falls out it takes about 6 weeks to fully grow back.
10. All blue-eyed people are related. The first person with blue eyes was thought to have lived 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. All people before that had brown eyes.
11. One in every 12 males has some degree of “color blindness.”
Article contributed by Dr. Brian Wnorowski, M.D.
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