How significantly?

The data shows that the incidence of myopia in Americans ages 12 to 54 is up from 25 percent in the 1970s to 41 percent this decade. That’s an increase of 66 PERCENT!

What is nearsightedness?

If you are part of the nearsighted nation, your eyes focus incorrectly, making distant objects appear blurred. As a result, someone with myopia tends to squint when viewing faraway objects. This gesture is the basis of the word “myopia,” which comes from two Greek words: myein, meaning “shut,” and ops, meaning “eye.”

What causes nearsightedness?

In the past, if you asked your doctor or ophthalmologist what caused nearsightedness, almost certainly he or she would’ve responded, “Genetics.” While it’s true that nearsightedness runs in families, this recent study — covered by everyone from Good Morning America to the New York Times — seems to suggest that environmental factors play a significant cause.

When interviewing Dr. Richard Besser, senior health and medical editor for ABC News, Good Morning America’s George Stephanopoulos pointed out that last year alone, there were 110 BILLION text messages sent, double the amount of the previous year.

The dates of the study correspond almost perfectly with the rise in near-point stress in American life, as we spend more and more of our time surfing the Web, texting on cell phones, watching TV, and playing video games. As the Times put it, “Higher levels of education are often associated with nearsightedness, and people are more likely to have jobs that involve focusing on nearby objects, believed to be a leading cause of the condition.”

A dramatic effect on children

While the rise in nearsightedness is certainly alarming for the nation as a whole, it is even more so in the case of children. Prevent Blindness America says, “Since so much of a child’s learning is done visually, healthy vision is critical to success in the classroom.”

The problem is that, although the CDC estimates there are 12.1 million American school-age children with vision problems, only one in three receives eye care before the age of 6. Dr. Roy Chuck, chairman of ophthalmology at Montefoire Medical Center in New York, notes that “nearsighted work can really affect the development of young eyes. If that is exclusively the kind of work that you are doing, it is equally important to be outside playing, stimulating your far vision.”

The National Eye Institute plans to dedicate $10 million dollars to future studies, in order to figure out what caused the rise in myopia. But in the meantime, we here at Rebuild Your Vision will be getting regular eye exams, for ourselves and our children; following our solid program of eye exercises; eating a nutritious diet and supplementing with the Ocu-Plus Formula; and trading the cell phone, computer, and TV, at least once in a while, for a romp in the great outdoors with our families.

“But I don’t practice yoga!” we hear you saying.

Our response: As a member of the Rebuild Your Vision program, you’re aware that regular performance of your eye exercises has myriad health benefits, right? Well, it might interest you to know that eye exercises have been an important component of yoga for as long as it’s been practiced — from around 3,000 B.C., to be exact.

According to the website Holistic Online, yoga practitioners attach special importance to eye exercises, for two reasons:

1. A lot of eye problems in later life are due to a loss of tone in the eye muscles. [Eye] exercises tone the eye muscles up and keep them elastic.
2. Any eye tension present will tend to produce a general feeling of tension, due to the eye’s connection to the brain via the optic nerve. The eye exercises will reduce tension in the eye muscles, as well as reduce general tension.

Even former Beatle Paul McCartney has gotten in on the fun; he released his own eye yoga video, claiming the exercises have helped him retain his 20/20 vision. McCartney says, “When I was in India there was a guy at one of the hotels who offered to teach me eye yoga exercises. He told me eyes are muscles just like any other, and they need exercise to keep them working properly. Spending so much time at computers or the TV or reading books, we are only using one set of muscles in our eyes. The yoga gives a workout to the other ones. It is really good for your eyes and keeps them in shape.”

While there are many eye asanas (as exercises are called in yogic practice), several well-known asanas are close cousins of exercises you are already familiar with from the Rebuild Your Vision program. Take this one, for example, called “palming”:

Sitting on your mat, draw up your knees, keeping your feet on the floor and slightly apart. Now briskly rub your palms to charge them with electricity and place the cupped palms over your closed eyes. The fingers of the right hand should be crossed over the fingers of the left hand on the forehead. The elbows should rest on your raised knees and the neck should be kept straight. Don’t bend your head. Do deep breathing while palming your eyes.

Sound familiar?

The word “yoga” comes from the Sanskrit and means “to join or yoke together,” as it brings the body and mind together into one harmonious experience. Although many people think that yoga is just stretching, yoga is really about creating balance in the body, and its benefits go beyond increased flexibility, strength, blood circulation, muscle tone, and serenity. Aetna’s InteliHealth website notes that:

Yoga has been shown to reduce heart rate and blood pressure, increase lung capacity, increase the amount of time you can hold your breath, improve muscle relaxation and body composition, cause weight loss and increase overall physical endurance. Yoga may affect levels of brain or blood chemicals, including monoamines, melatonin, dopamine, stress hormones (cortisol) and GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid). Changes in mental functions such as attention, cognition, processing of sensory information and visual perception have been described in some research studies in humans.

With so much to be gained, we won’t call it “cheating” if you resolve to take your Rebuild Your Vision practice to the next level. After all, what’s good enough for 15.8 million people (and Sir Paul McCartney) is good enough for us.

You can even download the full text of the complete works of Shakespeare – for free. If that sounds better to you than lugging a heavy, dusty tome around, you’re in good company.

But is reading War and Peace on an inches-long, backlit screen really a good idea? As millions of us migrated from the page to the phone, will our vision suffer?

Yes, and it’s already happening, says Dr. Karen Bassichis Saland, a Dallas ophthalmologist. About a quarter of her patients suffer eyestrain from staring at digital screens. She expects that percentage to increase as smart phones become increasingly popular.

“Right now it’s not talked about much,” said Saland in an article in the Dallas Morning News. “But when people stare at anything too long they forget to blink, which means they don’t moisten their eyes. That leads to dry eye, which, if unchecked, can impair vision. Dry eye can also cause eyestrain.”

Trying to read on tiny smart-phone screens can cause the same symptoms as reading on bigger laptop, iPad, Kindle and desktop screens: headaches; focusing difficulties; burning, aching, dry, and/or tired eyes; double vision; blurred vision; and light sensitivity.

And these symptoms may be exacerbated by the fact that, because the phones are backlit and portable, people tend to use them in places they wouldn’t normally read, such as darkened movie theaters or dimly lit bars and restaurants.

The problem with this is glare. Whereas most of us know we should use an overhead light to minimize glare on our home and work computers, we don’t think twice about reading on our smart phones in the dark.

The solution: Don’t use your phone to read in any place you wouldn’t normally read a book.

More solutions for using your smart phone smartly:

• On a Kindle, iPad or computer, you can increase the font size to make reading easier. For smart phones, a device called a digital magnifier allows you to magnify the text on the page to an easy-to-see level. There are many apps available (for example, Windows Mobile Magnifier), which vary based on your device.
• It may sound like common sense, and it is: Hold your phone some inches away from your face instead of reading it with your head tipped down to your lap. (This will not only save your vision, but also your neck.) 
• Women, take note: Apply artificial tears if you’re looking at the screen for more than 30 minutes at a time. Men should do this as well, but, according to Dr. Antoinette Dumalo, vice president of the British Columbia Association of Optometrists, women are more prone to dry eyes than men. “It has been speculated that the reason women are more prone … is that hormones play a part in tear production, so perhaps hormonal changes that occur in perimenopause and menopause explain why older women are more susceptible.”
• Look for fonts developed especially for handheld devices, such as Microsoft Reader’s Frutiger Linotype and ClearType, a setting that smoothes the edges of screen fonts to make text more readable.
• Follow the 10-10-10 Rule: Take a break every 10 minutes and look at an object at least 10 feet away for 10 seconds.

While phone-induced eyestrain is not as bad as what happened to a 26-year-old French security guard – who was injured when his iPhone screen suddenly exploded, sending shards of glass up in the air – it’s certainly something we need to be aware of.

Next time you’re tempted to download a book onto your smart phone, you might want to visit an old-fashioned bookstore or read it on your iPad or Kindle instead.

Failing that, at least remember to blink!

The good news is, you’re not alone, according to U.S. News & World Report. “The unavoidable reality, however, is that driving skills deteriorate as we age … and by 2030, according to U.S. Census Bureau data cited by AAA, one in four drivers will be age 65 or older.”

The bad news, however, is that many states are beginning to revamp their vision requirements for older drivers in advance of the coming “gray wave” of Baby Boomers.

Currently, driving regulations are decided on a state-by-state basis. Although the standard vision requirement for most states is 20/40 in at least one eye with or without eyeglasses, the crucial variable of how often that measurement is updated with the Department of Motor Vehicles is, well, all over the map. Some examples:

• Arizona issues a lifetime license up to age 65, but applicants must come into a license office every 12 years to apply for a duplicate license and have their vision rechecked.

• In Florida (where the standard vision requirement is only 20/70 in at least one eye with or without eyeglasses, presumably because of that state’s large elderly population), applicants may renew by mail twice if they have a clean driving record and may not undergo vision screening for a period of 18 years.

• In Iowa, initial and renewal drivers must take and pass a vision test to be licensed. The renewal cycle is every 4 years, up to age 70, when the renewal cycle is reduced to 2 years.

• In Vermont, only upon initial application for a driver’s license (but not upon renewal) must a vision test be given.

Yet the new reality of not only a growing senior population, but also the stuttering economy, which is forcing many to put off retirement and keep working into their 70s, is forcing states to rethink the rules.

USA Today reports that “California is analyzing results of a pilot project in which drivers who failed an initial written or vision test were required to take additional tests, sometimes including an eye exam and a road test.”

Further, “Maryland state law allows police, doctors, and residents, including relatives, to refer potentially unfit drivers to the Motor Vehicle Administration’s Medical Advisory Board. Police refer about 700 people annually; about 60% of them are drivers over age 65.”

In Maine, the interval between license renewals was shortened from six years to four years after age 62 and a vision check is required with each renewal. And a 2004 Florida law requiring that older drivers pass a vision test before getting their license renewed has helped cut the death rate among drivers 80 and older by 17%.

Of course, knowing when to give up driving is a sticky issue. TheBangor Daily News notes that “the big difference between the elderly and the rest of the population is that the elderly often do not realize their driving skills are deteriorating.”

AAA has designed a program, “Roadwise Review: A Tool to Help Seniors Drive Safely Longer,” that measures eight physical and mental abilities shown to be the strongest predictors of crash risk among older drivers and provides feedback to guide the user’s decision about their ability to drive safely.

Of those eight, half relate to vision, including High-Contrast Visual Acuity, needed to identify pavement markings, as well as detect many types of hazards in or near the road, and Low-Contrast Visual Acuity, which is vital for driving in low-visibility conditions such as dusk, rain, or fog.

So the next time you’re too tired to do your Rebuild Your Vision exercises or you’re debating about whether to include your Ocu-Plus Formula vitamins in your food budget, think about your aging eyes and remember, driving is not a right, it’s a privilege.

Across the globe, women are more likely to suffer blindness and vision loss. Of the common eye diseases, dry eye syndrome is two to three times more common in women than in men at any age because of differences in hormones.

Autoimmune diseases, such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, and certain forms of cataract are more prevalent in women than in men. (More than half of Americans age 65 and older have a cataract, but for unknown reasons, women are at a higher risk of getting the cortical form of cataract.)

These risks, as well as age-related afflictions such as macular degeneration, increase with age, affecting women more often because women tend to live longer. In developing countries, infectious diseases such as trachoma are more prevalent in women, perhaps because in those regions, women have less access to medical care than men.

As if that weren’t bad enough, the Mayo Clinic ophthalmology department found that sleep deprivation can lead to blurred vision and eye discomfort; if those conditions are allowed to persist, in chronic stages they can bring about major vision problems, such as glaucoma, the second most common cause of blindness. While men as well as women suffer from sleep deprivation, Health Day News reports that women are in a category of their own.

Dr. Meir Kryger, director of the Sleep Disorder Clinic at St. Boniface Hospital Research Center at the University of Manitoba, notes that, “There are many sleep problems that men don’t ever have, like the sleepiness of pregnancy, waking up for breast-feeding, and hot flashes. Further, the most common sleep problem is insomnia, and in every single age group beginning at adolescence, women are two times more likely to have insomnia than are men.”

To help protect your vision and keep your eyes healthy, Kaiser Permanente recommends the following:

• Do not smoke
• Wear a hat or sunglasses when you are in the sun
• Avoid sunlamps and tanning booths
• Maintain a healthy diet, including lots of green vegetables
• Limit alcoholic drinks
• Keep diabetes under control

a. Wisps of cloud moving across the sky
b. Air-filled mattresses for summertime fun on the lake
c. Insects that have accidentally fallen into your lemonade
d. None of the above

If you chose “d,” then you are correct.

If you’ve ever noticed small specks or shadowy shapes moving in your field of vision, then yes, you have seen what are commonly called “floaters.” Floaters are not optical illusions, but rather, tiny bits of gel that occur within the eye itself.

They can appear in many forms, such as dots, lines, particles, strands, or webs, and because they are inside your eye, they move with your eyes when you look at them (thus the name floaters).

Floaters follow eye movements, such as blinking, and stop a few seconds after the eyes cease moving. They are most apparent when you are looking at a plain background: for example, a blank wall or blue sky. People may experience one or several floaters in one eye or both. Floaters are not the same as the spots you see after looking at intense light, such as from a camera flash.

What causes floaters?

Inside your eye, there is a clear, gel-like fluid called the vitreous. As you age, the vitreous begins to liquefy and contract. Some of the gel in your vitreous may form clumps or strands inside the eye. Small flecks of protein or other material that were trapped in the vitreous when your eye was formed can also cause floaters.

The floaters you see are not the clumps or strands themselves, but actually the shadows these cast on the retina, the light-sensitive part of the eye. The retina then sends visual signals to the brain, resulting in an image.

Floaters may also result from eye surgery, eye disease, or crystal-like deposits that form in the vitreous.

If I have floaters, should I be worried?

Floaters are a natural part of the eye’s aging process. Most spots and floaters in the eye, although annoying, are harmless. Many will fade over time and become less bothersome.

However, the sudden appearance of a significant number of floaters, especially if they are accompanied by flashes of light, could indicate a detached retina or other serious vision problem, such as eye inflammation, high blood pressure, or hemorrhaging caused by diabetes. See your doctor if you are experiencing light flashes.

Is there a “cure” for floaters?

There are no medications available that are effective in treating most floaters, nor will your eye exercises help, as floaters are not caused by near-point or other muscular stress. People with floaters due to inflammatory eye diseases may be helped by medicines to treat the inflammation; however, the floaters may remain after the treatment. Surgery to remove floaters is rare and only suggested for very severe cases.

Besides ignoring them, one way to deal with floaters is to move your eye around when one appears in your field of vision. This causes the fluid inside your eye to shift and allows the floater to move out of the way. Looking up and down may be more helpful for moving floaters than looking side to side.

a) You both enjoy the weather in Arizona?
b) You both will watch this year’s Pro Bowl —you from your couch, him from the field?
c) You have both improved your vision using eye exercises?

If you answered “c,” you may already know why Larry Fitzgerald broke records for most catches, most yards, and most touchdowns by a receiver in single playoffs postseason in 2009. Called the “best pass catcher in the NFL today,” Fitzgerald credits vision training he received as a child from his grandfather, an optometrist, for his amazing success.

According to the Quincy, Massachusetts, Patriot-Ledger, Fitzgerald has “an uncanny knack for lifting his 6-3 body off the ground at precisely the right moment, at the right height, so he can be exactly where he needs to be to grab the ball.”

This ability was not ingrained; as a boy, Fitzgerald was fidgety and hyperactive. But his grandfather began to use vision drills, such as asking his grandson to balance on a board while trying to track a dot, or walk on a wood rail while focusing on an object.

This vision training, similar to what you do in the Rebuild Your Vision Program, was designed to improve perception, hand-eye coordination, reflexes, focus, and more.

Here’s an example.

Those with poor binocular vision, whose eyes don’t look at one spot at the same time, may have poor depth perception. According to the Visual Fitness Institute, baseball outfielders may have trouble judging a fly ball that momentarily gets lost in the sun. In football, they may not be able to catch a pass over the shoulder.

If there’s a problem in this area, training can help, says Sue Lowe, chair of the American Optometric Association’s Sports Vision Section. She likens it to military fighter pilots who can learn to judge distances at altitudes where there are no background cues. They teach themselves to judge the distance by training themselves to rely purely on how the eyes must adjust to focus on a distant object.

Vision trainer Ryan Harrison, who works with athletes in many sports, including beach volleyball, uses a string with five plastic baseballs attached to it for one of his exercises. You hold one end up to your nose and focus on the first ball until the string changes into two strings that intersect at the baseball.

Sounds like the “string bead” exercise in the Rebuild Your Vision Program to me.

“Essentially, you’re doing curls with your eye muscles,” notes Ryan, in an interview in Beach Volleyball Magazine. “This exercises the eyes’ tracking muscles. There are seven muscles in the eyes and we are working six of them to get them to track better. If the strings intersect before the ball, everything looks closer to them than it actually is, and you’ll react too quickly. If it’s behind the ball, you’ll react too late.”

Today’s aspiring athletes routinely incorporate eye exercises into their training. “Sports vision training,” as it’s called, is used to hone visual skills in every sport from archery to wrestling. Visual alignment, depth perception, peripheral vision, and tracking are just a few areas of concentration. Sue Lowe notes that the field of sports vision training goes back 75 years. “It’s all based upon the fact that vision is learned, just like walking and talking,” she says. “And because vision is learned, it’s something that can be rehabilitated.”

Athletes themselves say vision training helps, says Barry Seiller, MD, director of the Visual Fitness Institute in Chicago (which developed some of the first vision training programs for Olympic athletes).

Of the athletes who went through the Georgia Tech sports vision program, 77 percent reported it helped their athletic performance. So the next time you’re thinking about skipping those eye exercises, pretend you’re playing in next year’s Super Bowl.

But do good things repeatedly, and voilà! You’re on your way to a healthy, happy new year. Here are 7 ways to enhance your vision in 2012: practice them daily, and they’ll soon become the kind of habits you won’t want to break.

1. Follow the 10-10-10 Rule

If we here at Rebuild Your Vision seem to stress the 10-10-10 rule a lot, it’s only because it’s so easy to forget, yet this simple practice can repay you, well, 10-fold. For example, yours truly often gets caught up in deadlines, the kind that have me in front of the computer for hours on end. In a classic case of “practice what you preach,” I’ve noticed that, when I’m glued to the screen, at the end of the day I’m tired and cranky and practically cross-eyed. But when I take a break every 10 minutes and looks out my window for 10 seconds at an object at least 10 feet away, not only do my eyes feel better, but I’m also in a much better mood!

2. Eat More Vegetables

We know. Eating more vegetables is one of those common-sense things that we realize is good for us, yet it sounds so boring we never quite get around to doing it. This writer calls it a “tomorrow.” As in, “Oh yeah, I ate a cheeseburger for dinner today, but tomorrow I’ll have a salad.” Except by the time “tomorrow” comes, it’s been a week… or a month. Eating your veggies is one of the easiest good habits you can form — good for your eyes, good for your whole self — and it’s far cheaper than dealing with the effects of glaucoma or macular degeneration. Look for more healthy eating tips and recipes in this year’s Rebuild Your Vision blog.

3. Hate Vegetables? Then Love Vitamins

While ideally all of us would get the nutrients we need strictly from our diet, we can’t quite see kale and carrots surpassing pizza and burgers in the meal popularity contest. So taking a good multivitamin is essential. The Rebuild Your Vision Ocu-Plus vitamin is a low-cost, proven formula of 17 minerals, vitamins and herbals that not only enhances everyday vision but helps protect against cataracts, glaucoma, and macular degeneration.

4. Take a Hike

No, not metaphorically — we love our customers — but literally. As the AARP’s Web site notes, from controlling your blood pressure to lowering your risk of heart attack and glaucoma to relieving arthritis and back pain, walking every day, even if it’s just for 15 minutes, is hands-down one of the best things you can do for your health.

5. Wear Sunglasses with 99 to 100% UV Protection

Notice we didn’t just say, “Wear sunglasses.” We know you probably wear them already. But are your sunglasses shielding your eyes from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays? Or do they just make you look good? Take the time this year to figure out what kind of protection your sunglasses are really giving you — and if they’re not certified as having 99 to 100% UV protection, invest in a new pair.

6. Get Some Shut-Eye

Ophthalmologists at the Mayo Clinic found that sleep deprivation and sleep irregularities can lead to blurred vision and eye discomfort; if these issues persist, they can lead to major vision problems. Lack of regular sleep can also cause papilledema, a swelling in the optic nerve that eventually leads to gradual vision deterioration. In addition, sleep deprivation can lead to glaucoma, the second most common cause of untreatable blindness.

7. Maintain Overall Good Health

Remember that old kids’ song, “The foot bone’s connected to the leg bone / the leg bone’s connected to the knee bone,” and so on? Well, it’s true: the body is an interdependent system: conditions seemingly unrelated to your eyes, such as diabetes, sleep apnea, and cardiovascular disease, can have profound effects upon your vision. Getting regular checkups and staying healthy overall can help you maintain your eyesight.

We here at Rebuild Your Vision wish you all a happy, healthy, prosperous 2012!

You’ll read more, watch TV less; take up sailing or knitting or golfing or whatever “ing” you’ve always wanted to try but never made time for; forgo your daily latte to save for that Caribbean cruise. Ah, New Year’s resolutions!

We’ve written this article in hopes of inspiring you to dust off the eye-patch, grab the string-beads, and get back to (or start for that matter) improving your vision with the Rebuild Your Vision Program.

Just 25 minutes a day is all it takes.

As Webster’s puts it, a resolution is not just a promise you make to yourself but also “the process or capability of making distinguishable the individual parts of an object, closely adjacent optical images, or sources of light” – in other words, reducing things to a simpler form, so you can see them more clearly.

Because when you see your goals clearly, you can more easily achieve them.

Need further incentives?

Improve your vision and you improve your life. An Australian study found that “after the age of 40, the amount of eye disease, visual impairment, or blindness increases threefold with each decade. Even a moderate level of visual impairment – that is, less than 6/12 (20/40) – has a significant impact on the ability of people to enjoy healthy aging.”

Save hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on eye care.

Last year, Americans shelled out $15.4 billion for eyewear, according to the nonprofit Vision Council of America. All About Vision notes, “Expect to pay about a dollar a day for continuous wear contacts,” and “the overall average price of LASIK had risen to $1,710.”

So what are you waiting for? Start now with this list of multilevel goals:

• Goal 1: Prevent further deterioration of your vision and reduce your dependency on glasses or contacts. This can be done in the first few days of the program using our simple techniques.
• Goal 2: Improve your vision to a desired level, including not using your glasses at all, which is a very reasonable expectation for many.
• Goal 3: Maintain your visual improvement by doing the exercises between 20 and 40 minutes (or 1 to 2 days) per week for the first few months.
• Goal 4: Perform a session once or twice per month on an as- required basis to keep your vision stable.

Kick-start 2012 with the Rebuild Your Vision Program. It offers clear goals and dramatic vision improvement. While you’ll still have to save for that cruise, the turquoise water, lush green foliage, and azure skies of the Caribbean will never have looked so good.

Whatever your tradition, you’re sure to associate the holidays with seasonal treats. But how to treat yourself the other 11 months of the year? As Rebuild Your Vision has reported, nutrients such as lutein, quercetin, zeaxanthin, and vitamins A, C, and E are beneficial not only to your overall health, but especially to your eyes. Don’t believe me? Check this out.

A study published in Archives of Ophthalmology showed that in nearly 5,000 Europeans, those with the lowest levels of antioxidants were most at risk of developing advanced macular degeneration due to blue light. What is “blue light”?

The visible part of sunlight that penetrates to the retina and allows us to see. Turns out that — yup, you guessed it — protection against the harmful effects of blue light is provided by the antioxidant vitamins C and E; the carotenoids (lutein and zeaxanthin), which filter blue light; and zinc.

Problem is, there’s no lutein aisle in the grocery store, and the foods that most often contain these nutritious benefits — vegetables such kale, chard, collards, and turnip greens and fruits such as oranges, papaya, and blueberries — don’t come in a prepackaged microwavable box. In our rush-and-timetable world, we’ve forgotten how to cook even these simple fruits and vegetables.

But never fear. Here for Christmas are 6 simple preparations and 6 superb cookbooks to help you give your eyes the treats they need (just call them “eye candy”). So cook up a healthy holiday meal and slip some eye-saving recipes into your loved ones’ stockings. It’s the best way to ring in the new year.

The 12 Ways of Christmas Vision

1. Just about any greens you can think of, whether they be kale, chard, or mustard, can be steamed with a little water or stock (1/2 cup or less), a pinch of sea salt, and some minced garlic or shallot in a large sauté pan. Just make sure to remove the tough stems before cooking. A squeeze of lemon just before serving brightens the flavor.

2. Greens, Glorious Greens! by Johnna Albi and Catherine Walthers (St. Martin’s Press, 1996) is a fantastic resource for the greens impaired, with more than 140 delicious recipes and descriptions/illustrations of each plant, from arugula to watercress.

3. During the summer months, young tender greens can be eaten raw in salads: if the idea of a kale salad scares you a little, try mixing unfamiliar greens in with traditional lettuce.

4. Chez Panisse Vegetables (William Morrow Cookbooks, 1996) by Alice Waters, one of the country’s preeminent chefs, is a beautifully illustrated and knowledgeably written guide to everything you need to know about vegetables: umm, her Spicy Broccoli Vegetable Sauté sounds good right about now.

5. Want to get more berries in your diet but don’t want to eat fat-laden muffins? Try them as a topping on oatmeal in the morning. Trader Joe’s sells a prepackaged mix of raisins, cranberries, cherries, and blueberries that, along with some walnuts (an excellent source of omega-3 essential fatty acids), is the perfect way to get your vision on without any hassle.

6. Fruit is not just for dessert. The venerable Alice Waters also has a fruit cookbook, Chez Panisse Fruit (William Morrow Cookbooks, 2002), featuring both sweet and savory dishes, including main courses: Middle Eastern-Style Lamb Stew with Dried Apricots, anyone?

7. Better yet, combine your fruits and veggies: a handful of currents or raisins makes a perfect accompaniment to everything from broccoli rabe (a classic vegetable in Italian cooking, now more widely available in the States) to kale (throw in some toasted pine nuts for an extra treat).

8. While Marcella Hazan’s seminal Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking (Knopf, 1998) is not exclusively devoted to fruits and vegetables, you’ll find enough interesting, new, and simple recipes (Beet Tops Salad, Swiss Chard Torte with Raisins and Pine Nuts) to last you for long while.

9. Face it. Unless you’re from the Southern U.S. or Africa, you probably don’t eat collard greens and have no idea how to prepare them. Which is a shame, as collards are a nutritional powerhouse: low in calories and loaded with vitamins A, B and C, calcium, beta carotene, and fiber. Eating them can reduce the risk of developing age-related macular degeneration and cataracts. You can get a quick, easy fix of collards by slivering them and adding them to soups and bean stews.

10. The Collard Patch by Mary Lou Cheatham and Paul Elliott (Blue Moon Books, 2006) is a treasure trove of information about this misunderstood green and features what the authors claim is “the most popular collard greens recipe in the world.”

11. Here’s a salad secret: It’s not just lettuce anymore. Salads taste a lot better when you add stuff (and by “stuff,” we don’t mean high-calorie dressing). If you think salad is boring, try adding one of each of the following: nuts, cheese, and fruit. Think apples, pecans, and smoked Gouda, or figs, hazelnuts, and goat cheese. Let the lettuce be your canvas, and don’t be afraid to get a little crazy with the paint.

12. Want more salad tips? Try Jennifer Chandler’s Simply Salads (Thomas Nelson, 2007). Think making salad is too much work? Here’s the book’s subtitle: More than 100 Delicious Creative Recipes Made from Prepackaged Greens and a Few Easy-to-Find Ingredients. No more excuses!

Merry Christmas and a Happy Holidays to you and yours!