Your Eyes Complain
You have been working on your computer for about two hours continuously. Very recently, you started complaining about your physical health during the working hours.
Your eyes are tired with burning sensation; of course you get afraid of the reddening of the eyes. The eyes become dry and more sensitive to light; your vision gets blurred and vision doubled; you are loosing the focus. Besides head ache, your neck, back and shoulders also get pain. You feel some sort of disturbance in viewing through your contact lens.
Computer Vision Syndrome
To be frank, your complaints are the symptoms of this Computer Vision Syndrome. The CVS is a symptom complex consists of your vision and posture related problems due to prolonged computer usage.
Causes
It is caused by the differences in reactions of the eyes and brain while seeing the characters on the computer monitor screen. The printed pictures and letters on a news paper or a magazine are fixed with high contrasts and well defined edges. But the pictures or written pages on the computer screen do not have sharp and well defined edges. These pictures are not fixed; they also have brightness at the center and low intensity at the edges.
Your eyes do not maintain a focus on the screen and maintain with these images. Instead, they drift out to a point called resting point of accommodation. The eyes strain too much to regain focus on the screen. This continuous flexing of the eyes and focusing of the eye muscles create fatigue and the burning, tiresome feeling on the eyes.
People who wear the bifocal lenses will have problem in viewing the lower and the higher half of the screen. This will make them to view up and down by adjusting their head and neck. This is a painful exercise.
When you have the CVS, you will not blink enough. You will tend to open your eyes wide. The lighting of the office and the natural diffused sunlight falling on the screen may cause a glare and reflection on the monitor.
What to Do
- Take a break several times per hour. Take a look at the surrounding at varying distance from the computer. You may see a scene outside the window or the objects on the wall inside. Take a break about 15 minutes per hour.
- To avoid the glare and reflections on the monitor, position the computer at sides of the windows, not against or behind the window lights.
- Adjust the contrast of the monitor for a comfortable viewing. Monitor should be placed below the eye level.
- Adjust the window blinds in your room so that the sunlight is away from the screen and your eyes. The over head lights should be with minimum brightness. The table lamp if any should not cause reflection on the monitor or shine on your eyes. You may attach a glare blocking hood or glare filter.
- The mouse and the key board should be placed below the elbow level, preferably on an extension board.
- The monitor should be kept a little low for easy reading just like in book reading.
- The bifocal lens users can go in for progressive lens.
An Exercise to Guard Your Eyes
- For every 20 minutes on the computer make a shift to see the objects at a 20 feet distance
- See the objects for 20 seconds
- Just blink 20 times for every 20 minutes of working on the computer
- Take a break once in an hour of working on your computer
