Our eyes are not made for screens
Whether you wear glasses or not, the hours spent every day in front of screens have multiple impacts on your eyes.
Today, over 90% of people aged 20-65 use digital devices daily, on average switching between four different devices. The use of mobile screens with close or very close viewing distances requires the eyes to make additional effort to adapt and generating new forms of visual fatigue.
The most common symptoms are: headaches, itchy eyes, neck pain or blurred vision.
The question is, what is causing all that?
Lets start with BLUE LIGHT: What is blue light?
Blue light, a normal feature of daylight, is also generated by a large number of screens equipped with LED or compact fluorescent lighting. It can be found in natural and artificial sources like the sun or tablets, computers, mobiles and LED lightbulbs.
While some blue light (blue turquoise) is actually beneficial to health because it regulates our biological clock, the other part (blue-violet) is harmful to the eye. It’s now identified as one of the risk factors of age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
Two populations are very important to protect from the harmful blue light:
*Children, because their crystalline lens is still highly transparent, its filters light less effectively.
*People aged over 45, because their eyes are weakening gradually and providing less protection for their retina with age.
Harmful Blue light is a major issue, and that is why we need to educate ourselves as better as we can on how to keep our sight safe.
On average, we spend more than five hours a day in front of screens. It is a strain for our eyes that are ill from shifting to intensive use of digital devices. Increasing and intense daily use of digital devices is a big impact on our visual system.
Blinking our eyes less in front of screens increases dry or itchy eye symptoms and blurred vision. Smartphone users tend to hold them very close to their face, which requires a major adjustment effort - a source of visual fatigue or headaches.
BLAME THE SCREENS?
According to many specialists, yes. Our visual system is not naturally designed for near vision, which is supposed to be limited to a short accommodation reflex. Because we are fixing our eyes on digital devices way more then we should, we actually increasing the common symptoms for visual fatigue for ourselves.
Too much exposure to blue light produced by screens can affect sleep quality. Eye fatigue can also affect productivity and may lead to other problems such as stress, anxiety or mood swings.
What can you do to help your eyes?
Set your screen brightness to low
Clean the screen
Increase the text size
Lower ambient lighting
Blink more often to combat dry eyes. (Follow the 20/20/20 rule - every 20 minutes take a pause of 20 seconds and look at something 20 feet away).
Limit the amount of time spent on a digital device.
Among these preventive actions, glasses can help the eye to adapt to the intermediate distance of objects such as computer screens and effectively reduce the effects of eye strain.
There are lenses and coatings that were designed to reduce and block the harmful blue light and help the good light to transmit and benefit our well being.
Come see us at the store and we will be more than happy to assist you and tell you all about the wonderful options that will keep your eyes happy and healthy!