When it comes to the eye, you can never be too careful, especially for those who do a lot of reading with phone’s and laptops.
You need to take extra measures to protect your eyes from the brightness of your screen. The eye is a very sensitive part of the body and wears out really fast when it’s being strained constantly. A recent study also shows that we read more from our digital gadgets than we do with hard copies, and there is no problem with this if we go through some process to prevent any eye defects.
The retina is a layer of light-sensitive tissue that receives the light coming into the eye and transmits signals through the optic nerve to the brain, so we can interpret what we see but when proper preventive measures are not taken, serious damage can be done to the eyes.
It is easy and common to wake up in the morning and attend to the phone, laptop or tablet first either checking email or playing games and even for some people the whole day is spent in front of gadgets, big or small.
Are these screens safe? Obviously, they are not, the blue lights emitted from every electronic gadget can be really damaging to the eye, body, and mind as well if in excess.
Ways You Can Stop Gadgets From Ruining Your Eye
The fact is a lots of people have become more dependent on gadgets of all types is also a reason to find out ways to stop it from ruining your eye. Spending hours on your phones/gadgets can be fun but at the same time, you are causing damage to your vision. Symptoms include itchy eyes, burning to blurred vision and there is also difficulty in concentrating, sore neck, sore back, neck, and even shoulder.
Protecting your eye is important and here are 5 ways you can do that to prevent further damage to your eyesight or body.
1. Use Anti-glare Glasses
Anti-glare glasses are a type of glasses with an anti-reflective coating which has been designed to help relieve eye strain that might have been caused by constant glaring at the screen of your gadgets. If you spend a lot of time in front of a laptop, Anti-glare glasses will help eradicate the discomfort of glare anywhere prolong staring has occurred, your lens will become calm and focused.
In a case where you use glasses, anti-glare glasses added to your glasses will make it more beautiful and enhance your vision more.
2. Position Your Monitor Properly
Many can’t help but have Netflix, playing while lying down or even playing games, some take the laptop to bed and that is very risky to the eye. Not only are you straining your eye during this process but your posture suffers as well. They screen ought to be at your eye level, that position strains the eye and hence why it was advised to keep your laptops on a desk that levels with your chair and sit up properly when using your phone.
3. Reduce Screen Brightness Or Use Inbuilt Light Filter
Not many people are aware of your screen brightness can be affecting your eye, if you plan to use your screen for a very long time, you need the brightness reduced, you can make use of the inbuilt light filter to reduce the brightness, this will also help you monitor how bright it is. The brightness of your electronic gadget is not important for use.
Make sure the room you are is well fitted to avoid any strain on your eyes.
4. Install A 20-20-20 Break
You need a 20 minutes break from staring at the screen to help the eyes take some rest, its a great way to keep your eye in shape, stepping outside briefly can help too. There are some extensions on chrome and firefox that remind you to take a 20-20-20 break. Try getting up from your sitting position if you can too, go outside, anything apart from staring at a screen for 20 minutes.
5. Enlarge The Text On Your Screen
Most people prefer very tiny text on their screen, but to avoid the risk of eye strain that can eventually lead to short or long sightedness, you should stick to using large texts. The eye can easily pick out bold words without straining the lens. Lowering the resolution on your windows screen can help too. it enables the text to appear lager.
6. Use A Dull Background
You need a background that does not emit too much blue rays to reduce the effect of the blue light on your eye. Some applications won’t let you adjust your screen background color but if it is possible to be adjusted, you should do so, a dull background like grey won’t come with too much brightness making it easier for your eye to focus.
7. Healthy Eating
Healthy eating might be the remedy to all eye problems, you need foods that are packed in nutrients to help keep the eyes balanced. Stay away from oily foods, processed drinks to enable your vision function properly. The food you consume has lots of impact on the eye and one of the recommended tips to keep the eye health from the use of phones, laptops, and other gadgets is to eat foods that are beneficial to the eyes.
Always have a cup of water beside you if you plan to spend lots of time in front of the screen, the eyes need water to keep it from getting dry and itchy.
8. Blink Often And Use Eye Drop
When you at the computer screen for too long, you forget to blink, it happens to practically everyone but during this process, you are straining your eye and causing damages to it and even the neck becomes stiff. Blinking is very important to help lubricate your eyes. You need to remind yourself to blink, keep a timer if you need to but the key is to remember to blink.
Eye drop will also help in this case to get your eyes lubricated, keep a bottle of saline eye drop with you if you plan to spend a long time in front of the screen. Re-wet every 1 hour or so.
When To See A Doctor
When the eyes become severe, it is usually accompanied by serious headache, fever or unusual sensitivity to lights. You need to seek the doctor if your vision changes suddenly, you might also experience nausea or vomiting. When it comes to your eyes, you do not need to take chances and when countered on time, you might just be adviced to get recommended glasses for correction or drugs for an infection.
In Conclusion
Your body and eyes will alert you when its time to stay away from your screen, and when this happens the best recommendation is to endeavor to limit the use of your gadgets as much as you can. The eyes need proper care and spending less time surfing the internets is the best place to start.
The blue light from your phones, laptops or tablets itself has no effect but the problem lies in when you are exposed to the excess of it, hence the advice to limit the time spend on your digital gadgets.
Written by Thrive Nigeria
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