The Eye Strain Epidemic

It’s clear we spend a lot of time on computers, laptops and tablets. In fact, if you look around right now, you will probably see more people with their face looking down at their hand held devices than actually having conversations. We utilize them at work, to communicate with our children and other loved ones, and we even amuse ourselves with the games on them. It is just inescapable!  Besides giving us neck and shoulder pain from always looking down, frequent use of digital devices is affecting our vision. You might even say we are in the midst of an eye strain epidemic.

If you are experiencing headaches, blurred vision and fatigue while working at your computer or laptop at work and home, you may have eye strain. Let’s look at why this is happening and how we can attack the eye strain epidemic.

Causes of the Epidemic

Of course you can experience eye strain if you drive for too long a period, or spend hours on end reading a book, but this kind of eye strain epidemic we are discussing is referred to as Computer Vision Syndrome. You are likely to experience its symptoms if you spend more than two hours per day using a digital device. In fact, your chances increase by 90%. There are ten million visits to eye doctors each year due to eye strain. So exactly how and why does this affect our eyes?

• Glare – The brightness and contrast of our monitors causes an indirect glare as we stare at our screens too long, giving us a headache. Direct glare comes from overhead florescent lighting and windows leading to fatigued eyes and headaches.
• Taxing our eye muscles – When we stare at a computer screen too long, our eye muscles sometimes tighten leading to eye irritation, blurry vision, red eyes, headaches, double vision and sometimes pain.
• Contrast differential – the contrast on our devices is less defined than the characters or letters in a book or magazine, making it more tedious to focus on for long periods of time.
• Tendency to blink less – When we are working intently on our laptops and tablets, we blink about half as much as normal, causing dry eyes. We need sufficient tears for our eyes to be comfortable.

Best Ways to Combat the Eye Strain Epidemic

It would be prudent at this point to acknowledge that computer vision syndrome is not just an issue for adults.  Children’s eyes are not fully developed, so parents should make sure to monitor how long their child uses digital devices each day.

We can’t avoid using computers in our daily lives, but we can find ways to minimize the strain. The best way to combat the eye strain epidemic is to make certain adjustments.

Adjust the glare factor at your place of work and at home. Never set your laptop with your back against or in front of a bright window. Try to sit with the window at your side. Also adjust the artificial lighting favouring dim or incandescent lighting. If possible, turn off fluorescents directly over your workspace.

Take a sufficient amount of breaks. This can take several forms:

1) Make yourself look out in the distance frequently. The 20-20-20 rule is a good one to adopt. Every 20 minutes, look 20 feet away for approximately 20 seconds. This helps your eyes to change focus, relax and reduce strain.

2) Another way to force yourself to change focus is to actually get up from you work station and drink water. As we mentioned earlier, we naturally blink less while on our computer, so we need to keep ourselves hydrated.

Change the settings on your computer screen. You can help ease the strain on your eyes by making adjustments to your font size and even the contrast settings. Find one that is more comfortable for you.

Re-arrange your work station. Sometimes some simple changes can make a difference, like setting your screen at approximately 18-30 inches from your eyes. If it is too close or too far away, it can add to your eye issues.

If resting your eyes and following all of these changes does not provide any relief from your eye strain, then there may be some underlying eye issues that need to be addressed.

Wearing contact lenses can dry out your eyes. If you are experiencing these issues, consider having LASIK surgery  to help relieve the discomfort that comes with their use.