Eye Strain

 
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EYE STRAIN

Eye strain is a common condition experienced by people when their eyes are working too hard for too long. This is usually caused by extended periods of time concentrating on objects within arm’s length, as our eyes have to work harder to see things that are close. However, it can be amplified by having a prescription that is uncorrected. Eye strain is becoming increasingly common as the majority of our study & work lives revolve around close up work like using a laptop or reading. 

Eye strain presents with symptoms such as:

  • Blurred Vision

  • Headaches/Migraines

  • Tired or Sore Eyes

  • Watery Eyes

  • Double Vision 

  • Increased Light Sensitivity 

  • Difficulty Concentrating 


Reducing eye strain often requires a mix of helping to relax the eyes, changing your habits and environment;

GLASSES: these can be prescribed to reduce how hard your eyes have to work while doing close up work, especially if you already have a prescription that is long-sighted (hyperopic), age-related (presbyopic) or an astigmatism (uneven focus). An anti-reflection coating on the glasses is also beneficial in reducing the glare you can experience from the computer screen and therefore how hard your eyes have to focus. 

REGULAR BREAKS: taking regular breaks from close up work is really important to allow your eyes to relax and refocus. The 20-20-20 Rule is a good guide; every 20 minutes look 20 feet away (about 6 metres) for 20 seconds.

LIGHTING: eye strain can be reduced by something as simple as adequate lighting. If you are reading a book in a dim room, your eyes have to work a lot harder to focus, so increasing the ambient lighting can make reading easier. 

AIR CONDITIONING & HEATING: having air conditioning or heating blowing directly on you can exacerbate eye strain as well because  the air has less moisture which can dry out the ocular surface of your eyes. Moving these units further away or not having the air blowing directly on your eyes/face can reduce eye strain. 

 

DIGITAL SCREEN TIME & EYE STRAIN

Lots of digital screen time can exacerbate eye strain as there are usually long periods of close-up work, requiring lots of concentration and without many breaks. The actual computer screen itself does not make eye strain worse than when reading a paper book, but since on a computer we can accomplish so many different tasks there is much less reason to look away from the screen resulting in long periods of concentrating at a single distance.  When we concentrate, our blink rate decreases - sometimes by up to 60%. This in addition to the possibility of needing glasses for close up work all combine to provide more eye strain than non-digital tasks. 

REFERENCES

Blehm C, Vishnu S, Khattak A, Mitra S, Yee RW. Computer vision syndrome: A review. Surv Ophthalmol 2005;50:3: 253-262.

 
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