The Long-Term Benefits of Prioritizing Eye Care in High-Screen Work Environments

“Our sensory organs love to lead us astray, and the eyes are the most deceptive of all”

-Jan-Philipp Sendker

Are you taking care of your eye? It is one of the most sensitive parts of the human body and let’s be honest, without it everything would be just black. We are on our phones or any other device most of the day, and it damages it. 

According to ResearchGate, “Some of these symptoms include eye strain, ocular dryness, burning, impaired vision, and discomfort. Abnormalities in the oculomotor and vergence systems, as well as dry eye, are the primary contributors to the visual discomfort that is linked with mobile phones.”

As you can see, it has a lot of negative impacts on our eyes, and that’s why I’m going to tell you about the long-term benefits of prioritizing eye care in a high-screen environment. 

Poor Sight

Screen time has become a daily necessity at this point; whether it is for school, entertainment, or work, we all grind out hours at a pace squatting in front of a screen, and with that, comes digital eye strain.

Luckily, you can alleviate the damage to your eyes early on by using blue light glasses, as seen at blockbluelight.com, to take proper measures to protect your eyesight before eyestrain sets in.

Anticipation is always better than a cure, and the sooner you protect your eyesight, the less damage they will take, at least from screens. It is also mandatory to have an eye checkup every once in a while, especially when you notice an issue.

Sometimes waiting will let a small, easily curable issue gestate into a much more complicated issue, so just go to the check-up and make sure everything is fine. In the work environment as well you need to take proper precautions as you can see in the infographic below. 

Migraines

Headaches, and worse, and more specifically, migraines, can turn everyday life into a living hell, especially where migraines are pertinent, and for seemingly no reason at times too.

It is certainly not easy to pinpoint the exact cause or give a precise diagnosis as to what caused it because there are so many variables at play, so many causes and side causes, and different factors, and consequently the cause and effect can be days or weeks apart, etc.

However, one common trigger is poor eye health, again, often because of too much screen time, straining the eyes, snowballing from the nerves in your eyes back into your brain, and causing incredibly painful headaches, depending on how badly your eyes are doing.

Vertigo and Nausea

Different yet similar, vertigo and nausea can also be a consequence of numerous problems, but all too often, eye issues turn out to be the culprits. Subtle Vision Misalignment, or SVM, is a common reason for nausea and motion fatigue, where one eye sees images occasionally a bit out of alignment, be it horizontally, vertically, or both, in contrast to the other eye.

This is easily remedied with glasses, but if left undiagnosed and untreated, it will affect your retinas and cause vertigo and nausea, and not exactly get better with time either.

Luckily, it is so completely fixable with a visit to an optometrist and getting proper glasses or lenses, but you do have to go to them if you want help; they will not just show up uninvited on your doorstep.

Glaucoma

Glaucoma is also referred to as the “silent thief of sight”, and much more does not need to be said after that. Generally, it does not even have any symptoms until it is too late.

The condition damages your optic nerve over time and can result in an ongoing loss of vision if not detected and treated early enough. Routine eye exams are the answer, letting your corneal specialist detect early signs of danger and enable early intervention to protect your eyes.

This is true for countless health complications, and countless people are currently undergoing surgery or living off of medication or with complications that could have easily been prevented if they had just visited a doctor in time.

Quality of Life

This is rather obvious, but good eyesight and clarity are a huge plus when it comes to day-to-day life, and there are millions and millions of people in Europe alone who are currently living with some kind of visual impairment, which affects daily routines and life.

Whether these are small frustrations like blurry distances or significant problems like being unable to read off the TV screen, they all affect our quality of life to varying degrees. These issues should be looked at and resolved immediately, instead of silently waiting and hoping they will go away on their own. 

PRO TIPTo help reduce eye strain, apply 20:20:20. Every 20 min, look at something 20 feet away from you for 20 seconds. 

Preventing Injuries

A very practical benefit of eye treatments is simply preventing injuries. Simple things like wearing sunglasses in bright sunlight to protect your corneas from UV rays to wearing glasses with protective lenses in front of screens.

There are many ways of helping to prevent injuries from happening, as much as possible in this uncertain world, of course. As an extra tip, even with sunglasses, don’t ever look directly into the sun; that is just a truly terrible idea for no reason. 

Safer Driving

Some people wear glasses only when they are driving, and with good reason, as a split second of unclear or blurry eyesight and sluggish reaction behavior can lead to disaster. When hurtling along the roads in tons of steel and wheels, anything less than clear vision and focus is quite literally lethal, not only for you but everyone else on the road too.

When getting your driver’s license, a mandatory eye check-up is there anyway, but if you have been driving for years, your eyes may have issues they did not have back then, which is why you should visit an optometrist at least once a year, annually, to see if everything is still in order and your eyes are healthy and strong.

Your eyes should not be anything less than healthy and strong. As soon as you feel, or even suspect, any issues with your equilibrium or your eyesight, you should visit an optometrist immediately. In the meantime, take some basic precautions to protect your eyes from any problems.