Moderate drinking and regular exercising may protect against age-related vision loss, found new research.

In new findings published online in the journal Ophthalmology, researchers from the University of Wisconsin reported the combination is so effective at preserving eyesight it may even help some people head off the need for glasses or contact lenses as they grow older, reports Newsmax Health.

To help determine ways to prevent vision loss, lead researcher Ronald Klein, M.D. and his colleagues examined the impacts of smoking, drinking alcohol, and staying physically active on vision. They tracked medical records of nearly 5,000 adults — aged 43 to 84 years — taken between 1988 and 2013.

In that time, visual impairment developed in 5.4 percent of the population, but the results also showed:

Physically active people, who engaged in regular activity three or more times a week, were 58 percent less likely to develop visual loss than those who were sedentary or inactive.

Occasional drinkers, who consumed about one serving of alcohol in an average week, were nearly half as likely to have vision problems as non-drinkers.

Heavy drinkers and smokers were more likely to experience problems with their eyesight than people who never drank heavily and never smoked.