How to protect eyes from mobile screen?  

The use of mobile phones has been rampant nowadays. It has reached every nook and corners of the world and nevertheless, mobile phones especially recent generations of smartphones have become a part of life. Most of you reading this article are also probably from the mobile phones and has been staring it since quite long, may be since minutes and even hours. Let’s talk about the long time use of mobile phones and its effect on our eyes. 
Mobile phones, laptops and television may lead to a common condition affecting the eye called as computer vision syndrome. It can present with wide range of symptoms and may land up with different complications.

What’s harmful on screen affecting your eyes?

Staring on the screen for a long time may affect our eyes by various ways. Few of them documented by scientific findings are:

Less frequent blinking: Blinking helps to spread the tear to all parts of our eye and helps to keep it moist. Our eyes should normally blink for 15 times per minutes. While looking the screen for long time, we often blink less than normal. So tear can’t moist our eyes and it becomes dry. 

Glare from the screen: The glare and light from the screen for the long period of time may strain our eye and make it weak. A preliminary research conducted in University of Toledo has found that blue lights emitting from the screen may cause harm to retina of eye leading to the condition called macular degeneration. 
More researches are ongoing and still a lot to discover how the long time stare on screen affect our eyes.

Image source: Galalitescren.com

How do you know your eye is affected by mobile use?

The symptoms that your eye is fatigued from long term mobile use can vary according to the person. Few of them common among many are as follows:

• Blurred vision
• Eye pain or strain
• Dry eyes
• Irritated eyes
• Headache
• Dizziness
• Seeing objects double (diplopia) or more (polyopia

Image source: Npr.org

Prevention and treatment of straining eye from mobile phone use

Lower the glare: You can lower the brightness of the mobile phone or any other screen devices so that it emits fewer glares. Setting an optimal brightness may be a good option of preventing and reducing the eye strain.

Blink frequently: As mentioned earlier, you should blink your eyes 15 times per minute to set the tears to all parts of your eye. It keeps the eyes moist and helps to reduce the strain. So keep blinking the eyes while staring in the screen for long period of time.

Take a break: While looking on your smartphones for around 20 minutes, take a rest for 15-20 seconds and look somewhere far. This helps to focus your eyes and somehow help in reducing the symptoms.
Use artificial tear drops: If your eyes are dry, use the artificial tear drops containing methyl cellulose and keep lubricating your eyes. This may help somehow.

Eye glass: Various forms of eye glasses are available in market with feature of anti reflection coating and blue ray cut. It may help to reduce the glare from the screen, if you need to be on computer screen or mobile for long time.

Keep your kids away

Keep your kids away from mobile phones, tablets and computer screen for long period of time. A child’s eye is in developing phase and they are more prone to strain and develop so called “lazy eye”. Thus, it’s better to discourage the habits of kid being on screen for long time.