Eye exams are an important part of maintaining good vision, but they can also be a valuable tool to overall wellness.

Eye exams include an assessment of the retina and its blood vessels, giving optometrists a good idea of what's going on in the rest of the body.

“We can see signs with the blood vessels, sometimes we can see little hemorrhages in the retina. We also assess the optic nerve, we assess to see how your eye muscles are working which could be, if you have something, for example, like a brain tumour that could affect your eye muscles and we can sometimes see signs of that,” says optometrist Dr. Carol Doman.

“Most commonly we would see things like diabetes, high blood pressure, sometimes even certain kinds of cancer, thyroid disease, autoimmune disorder, multiple sclerosis.”

Regular eye exams are part of Willard Townsend'shealthcare routine. He wears glasses and has no major eye problems. However, that wasn’t the case three years ago.

“I would wake up in the mornings and about once or twice a week, I couldn't see out of my right eye,” says Townsend.

He assumed he was developing a cataract and, after several weeks, he scheduled an appointment with Doman.

“When I sat down in front of her equipment, she looked into my eye and she said 'you're a long ways from having a cataract,' she said. ‘It's my opinion that you have a blood clot going through into your eye artery,’” recalls Townsend.

Doman recommended he see a doctor, who discovered that the artery going from his heart to his eye was 87 per cent blocked.

Within days, Townsend underwent surgery.

“They opened that up, cleaned out the artery, and sewed it back up and restored my vision,” he says.

Doman says eye exams are an important piece of the preventative healthcare puzzle, yet many people skip regular testing.

“Studies have shown that over 50 per cent of people who don't get their eyes checked it's because they think that they can see fine and because they can see fine, they don't need their eyes checked,” she says.

Eye disease and underlying conditions like Townsend's can be present even with good vision, making regular checkups even more important.

“A lot of these things, if they're detected at an early stage, they are going to be able to be treated better and be able to stop damage from happening further down the road,” says Doman.

“It's obvious, you know, that if she hadn't diagnosed this probably I wouldn't be here today,” says Townsend.

The Canadian Association of Optometristsrecommends people between the age of 19 and 64 have their eyes checked every two years and those over 65 should be checked yearly.

Eye exams are recommended at six months - once before school and annually while in school for children.