Eye Health: How to Maintain Good Sight (Before It's Too Late)

How to protect your eyesight in the digital age.

Eye health is something we don’t think about until we see (or rather don’t anymore) a problem.

Take care of it before it’s too late.

What’s even bad for your eyes?

A few years ago, summer break. I spent another day playing Witcher 3 for 12 hours (no regrets). I started to get headaches, so I just popped a few paracetamols and kept playing. I became concerned after my vision began to blur. Sometimes my eyes acted like the autofocus on a bad camera.

Was it because of the light flashing into my eyes? Not exactly.

What is bad for your eyes is not the light itself, it’s looking at the same distance for too long. Humans did not evolve to stare at a 6-inch glowing box for a few hours a day.

Being outside, you are constantly changing the target you are looking at. Those targets are at various distances, which is good.

Causes and fixes (no particular order)

Causes:

• Eye strain: caused by looking at nearby objects for extended periods. Your eye muscles tire.

• Dry eyes: If someone will ever cause you a pretty unpleasant experience of cutting off eyelids, your eyes will dry out to a painful level within hours. Staring at a screen, you don’t blink as often as you should.

• Headaches: primarily caused by bright lights.

• Early developed Myopia (nearsightedness) in the long run.

Fixes:

• Get a lamp behind your monitor.

• Get sunlight (go outside, windows filter some) right after waking up.

• Buy blinders or a blindfold for sleeping. I talked more about this here. Not only good for your eyes but for the quality of sleep.

• Take a walk, spend some time outside, and look at objects in the distance.

• If your work requires staring at a monitor, take regular breaks. 5-10 minutes every hour should be fine. Just walk away from screens entirely.

• + I use “dark reader” Chrome extension.

• Try the exercises below.

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Exercises - grab a pen

To leave the obvious behind - visit a doctor if you see (or rather don’t, hehe) any eye or general health-related issue. Just get a check-up.

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Check out the post about my book!

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