Do you use phones, and computers, watch TV, or work indoors every day? Is there a moment you feel an eye strain strongly and just need to close your eyes for a break? If your answer is all "yes", this article will be helpful for you to understand more about eye strain and how to protect your eyes. Additionally, people with low vision conditions will get tips for avoiding eye strain as well.
What is Eye Strain?
Before getting to eye strain definition, the first thing we should understand might be related to how our eyes work. The object reflects light to and along a straight line into the eye, the light passes through the cornea into the pupil and through the lens, focuses on the retina, is processed by the nervous system in the brain, and finally forms an image in the brain. This is the principle and mechanism of how our eyes see things.
The role of the eyes is crucial in almost everything, thus it possesses various abilities. The eyes help us see things, they can move for certain angles so we could have a field of view. Every blink of the eyes is also important because blinking helps our eyes to moisten so that we can perform all daily activities efficiently. We need to care for our eye health in order to ensure their operation since the eyes are the vulnerable organ of our body.
By knowing the job of our eyes, the definition of eye strain could be simply summarized as overuse of eyes. It’s not a disease of the eyes but just an uncomfortable situation our eyes would meet. Although currently there is no evidence indicating that long-term eye strain will cause irreversible damage to our eyes or vision loss, we shall not ignore the negative influences that eye fatigue brings, which might highly influence our work efficiency and quality of life.
Eye strain should be not an unfamiliar concept to most people. We always meet situations that our eyes feel uncomfortable. You may realize you are experiencing eye strain and want to relax your eyes for a moment. That is the basic symptom we usually feel when we have eye strain situations, and there are actually more eye strain symptoms we may meet.
What are the Symptoms of Eye Strain?
- Blurred vision
- Dry eyes
- Watery eyes
- Itchy eyes
- Red eyes
- Headache
- Hard to keep your eyes open
- Pain or strain in neck, shoulder or back
- Sensitivity to light
Listed above are some of the common conditions that can occur with eye strain, and sometimes these symptoms would happen at the same time. As we can see that eye strain does not only influence the eyes, but also the other part of our body. Usually, when we get enough rest, our eye strain and other discomforts of the body shall be relieved, so we could be about to back to using our eyes.
There are many causes of eye strain, but in general, eye strain is caused by excessive eye use. To be more specific, driving, reading books, using computers, writing for too long, and long-term exposure to bring light, or reading words that are too small, using electronic products in the darkness, and reading and writing in dim lights, can all cause eye strain condition.
What is Digital Eye Strain?
It’s worth mentioning a concept that is called computer vision syndrome, also known as digital eye strain. It refers to a condition about prolonged using electronic products like computers, cellphones, tablets, and so on. Take America as an example, according to statistics from American Optometric Association (AOA), most Americans would spend more than 5 hours on digital devices, not to say people who need to work with computers all day.
Also, based on the article from the Vision Council, more than 60% of Americans showed digital eye strain symptoms. 35% of these people have the symptom of pain in their neck or shoulders in common. Some of them also suffered from symptoms of eye strain headache, dry eyes, blurred vision, and so on. They are situations mainly found in adults. Children who are obsessed with e-products mostly might have attention reduction problems.
As we’ve talked about previously, nowadays people are harder and harder to quit using e-products, and they exist everywhere in our lives. For instance, many jobs would ask people to use computers to process their work, and many people start to shop online with the development of online commerce. Even in our spare time, we use our phones to chat or watch Tiktok to pass the time.
Furthermore, viewing the electronic screens in an incorrect position, being too close or too far to the electronic screens, and watching screens in a dim light, all are reasons that make digital eye strain. If you think carefully about your life, you may realize that sometimes you behave in the mentioned-above ways to use electronic products. It seems to be nothing serious since they are just mere trifles in our lives, but when we get used to this kind of lifestyle, the influence on our eye health will be continuous.
How to Treat Eye Strain?
Eye strain relief could be achieved in a variety of ways. Now we know that making our eyes rest for enough time is crucial, but how to rest our eyes specifically according to the symptoms of eye strain? Here we have some suggestions for you:
- Remeber to blink when looking at electronic screens or reading books
- Increase the room's humidity
- Make sure you are using your eyes in bright light
- Keep a certain distance to your looking target
- Wear proper glasses
- Use eye drops
- Do gentle eye massage
- Pay attention to posture when reading and watching
- Magnify the words on the e-reader
Eye drops, the room’s humidity, blink, mean to prevent dryness of the eyes. Certain distances, and bright light, can provide the proper environment for us to use our eyes. Some anti-blue light glasses are created, and wearing this kind of eye aid while using electronic devices helps us protect our eyes. Finally, a proper eye massage can help promote blood flow to the eyes, thus encouraging them to work more efficiently. It is important to note that the skin near the eyes is relatively fragile, so rough massage should not be available.
Generally speaking, the key point of eye strain relief is to keep the eyes moist, and avoid staring at one place for too long. If you are not sure when to relax your eyes, the 20-20-20 rule can be a good reference. That’s a rule telling people that your eyes should leave the objects you’re staring at every 20 minutes, toward something 20 feet away, and maintain your focus on this new thing for at least 20 seconds. In this case, the eyes could have proper time to rest and get back to work efficiently.
How Do Low Vision People Avoid Eye Strain?
People with low vision can be more vulnerable to meeting the same eye strain situation. Dry eyes, headache, itchy eyes, red eyes, and so on, could happen to them, and cause more uncomfortable situations to their low vision eyes. To avoid this kind of situation, visually impaired people shall take more care of their eyes. Particularly for people with low vision caused by some specific eye conditions, the frequent occurrence of eye strain may cause aggravation of eye diseases.
For sure, the listed-above suggestions could also be useful for people with low vision. It might be more essential for people with visual impairments to concentrate on preventing eye strain situation. A digital video magnifier could be a good option for relaxing the eyes in daily life. Digital video magnifiers would have helped low vision groups improve their vision and use their eyes more efficiently. With bigger words and more clear pictures, this equipment somehow helps people avoid excessive eye use, so the eye strain situation could be reduced.
To describe some specific scenes as examples, whether reading books or watching electronic screens, a digital video magnifier, like Zoomax Snow, could provide a brighter view of the field for people to watch, which reduces a lot of pressure on the eyes. It’s really a great indoor choice for office and study use. Although some electronics can bring negative effects on our eyes, there are always eye aids that are invented to free our eyes, aren't they?
Eye strain can be a big or small thing, depending on how you look at it. If you look at the WHO report, you would find lots of information related to eye health, therefore you can tell how important caring for your eyes is. The dangers of electronic devices to our eyes are mentioned repeatedly in the article, but that doesn't mean we should fear or resist them. We could gain a lot of joy from our eyes, but eye strain would make us tired and unpleasant. Thus, we shall protect our eyes healthily and appropriately.
References:
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/eyestrain/symptoms-causes/syc-20372397
https://www.healthline.com/health/eye-health/eye-strain#causes
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21059-eye-strain
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/eyestrain
https://www.medicinenet.com/eye_strain/article.htm
https://www.aoa.org/healthy-eyes/eye-and-vision-conditions/computer-vision-syndrome?sso=y
