Five great tips to protect your eyes from your screen(s)

Your eyes are tirelessly working throughout the day: turning your eyeballs, blinking, focussing… Eyes are never at rest. And if you do long stretches behind  a computer screen, they are even more burdened. You will experience blurred or double vision, focussing will get harder, your eyes get irritated, you get a headache… Most of these complaints are temporary; they are called Computer Vision Syndrome or CVS. In simpler terms: computer eyes. The solution lies in a couple of quick and easy exercices you can even perform behind your computer.

1.  Take a break

The most important things is to take timely breaks. The rule is to have a short 5 minute break per hour, or even a 15-second pause every quarter hour. For each half day, you have to provide for at least one fifteen minute break. This will help you counter eye fatigue.

2.  Don’t work in the dark

Make sure you have an adequate light source from the top or the side, but adjust them so the light doesn’t blind you and isn’t reflected in your computer screen.

3.  Stretch

Try to keep at least 40 or 50 centimeters distance between your eyes and your screen. Make sure your eyes don’t cramp. After all, they have to keep focussed on one distance the whole time, while eyes are really designed to focus on different distances continuously. Every 15 minutes, take a break to look out of the window or at a point in the distance. This will have the same effect on your eyes as stretching will have on, for instance, your leg muscles.

4.  Paper holder

If you’re working from a paper document, make sure to place it on a holder right next to your screen, at the same distance. If not, your eyes will be stressed from shifting back and forth between the page and your screen.

5.  Blink

Last, but not least: blink your eyes as often as you can. The eye fluids will clean the dust and other particles from your eyes.