We expect too much from our eyes digitally
Home office often means even more screen time. Not good for your eyes in the long run. Pay more attention to your eyes.
More & More instead of Miles & More
Fewer business trips and less commuting – yet more stress. That’s how you can summarize the results of our little survey of GloriousMe readers.
The survey is not representative, yet we can imagine that many of the statements coincide with your experiences:
“My overall screen hours have definitely increased in the home office”
“At the beginning of the lockdown, I went running almost every lunch break. I’m not going through with this now”
“Lectures are often rearranged on very short notice. I spend a lot more time organizing constantly changing schedules of hybrid, online or physical lectures.”
“I understand that my colleagues want to take advantage of the greater flexibility in the home office. For me, this means that more and more e-mails come in at night or on the weekend, and then I do answer some, even though an intensive work week is already behind me”
This affects many things, but especially our eyes.
Our eyes are designed to hunt, not stare
Our eyes have evolved over thousands of years to constantly look both far and near. They are adapted for this in the best possible way.
The period of the digital age is only the blink of an eye compared to this long development time. However, viewing behavior has changed radically with increasing digitization.
It often consists of staring at the screen for hours at a consistently close distance when working at a computer in a concentrated manner.
Blinking absent
Blinking, which is so important for the wetting of the eyes by the tear fluid, no longer takes place automatically. Our movement (on the normal office chair) is more or less limited to the fingers and wrists.
The increasing share of home office usually increases the time spent at the screen. Instead of going to the meeting room, it’s a click to the online meeting.
Instead of meeting for lunch, people quickly grab something from the kitchen and check WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube or Twitter while they eat.
In the evening, the author’s film also beckons on the screen.
To maintain our vision, changing our gaze from looking at close things such as text on a screen, fixing an object at a medium distance, and looking at the horizon is hugely important.
Theoretically yes, practically rarely
At first glance, working more at home seemed to bring a lot more scope for combining exercise, healthy eating and work.
At second glance, it has often led to aching, burning, tired eyes for many, who sometimes find it difficult to still focus properly after particularly long and intense hours at various screens, elements are suddenly seen twice.
Frequent headaches, lack of concentration and sleep disturbances are just as preprogrammed with it.
The additional stress resulting from the continuous adaptation to all demands for individuality of working time and form of work also has a negative impact on our eyes.
5 TIPS FOR YOUR EYES
Home office light
Even though most have now converted the makeshift into a home office workspace, let’s be honest: Have you invested in optimal lighting for your home office?
An early morning or evening glance into the illuminated apartments of a city is enough to see many working at their computer screens, with light that comes from a purely private environment and is used as home office light.
The most common solution is spot light on the desk. A beautiful desk lamp, but it was designed more for writing some handwritten letters or primarily as a beautiful design object, instead of being the optimal light source for many hours at the desk.
Sometimes there is a ceiling light somewhere in the room, which is “shared” for the light at the desk.
The lighting solutions found in the professional office environment, which brings an optimal mix of direct and indirect light from above, directly onto the entire surface of the desk, is very rarely seen in the private home office environment.
Admittedly, until now there have also been few aesthetic-looking lighting solutions that you would have liked to see in your private environment. That’s slowly changing, thanks to Tobias Grau and a few other lighting designers.
30 minutes of outdoor exercise
Our ophthalmologist inculcates this in us at every visit: whether it’s a fast run, a bike ride, or gardening in the fresh air, it’s important to combine oxygen for the eye with exercise that counteracts the heavy strain on the neck muscles in front of screens.
If running in the rain doesn’t suit your taste and gardening in the city isn’t an option, there’s always Pilates or yoga with the window open in the home office.
There is no way around it
Exercise leads to better blood circulation in the body and thus also in the eye organs.
The cramping of the neck and shoulder muscles due to the so-called cell phone neck, as the neck is routinely bent down instead of holding the cell phone further up, equivalent to many hours on the train, bent over the laptop that is way too far down, also have a negative effect on the visual center in the back of the head.
Stress
Intense stress also causes our bodies to tense involuntarily. We instinctively make ourselves small, the famous tunnel vision begins and vision suffers.
In comparison, think of a first beautiful day of vacation, when you are examining the new surroundings with an open mind and involuntarily adopt a relaxed attitude and wear a joyful smile on your face.
Psyche and vision are closely connected. Everything that is good for the soul is also balm for the eyes. The forest bathing – the eyes love it.
Nutrition
The eyes also benefit from a healthy diet rich in vitamins and minerals.
Sea fish 2-3 times a week and the omega-3 fatty acids it contains are a boon for the eyes.
As well as dark and red berries, such as blueberries, blackberries, aronia ber ries or raspberries and red currants.
From dark green vegetables and carrots eyes can not get enough.
Even though you probably can’t hear it anymore: Drinking plenty of fluids during the day is also important for the eye fluid. The carafe on the desk helps to remember.
Eye training
There are trained eye trainers who offer to train your eyes with you. Also online. Sounds like a contradiction, even more screen, but the online training is intended as an introduction, then train independently.
Here are four easy exercises that can be effortlessly integrated into any daily routine. Try it out. What sounds almost ridiculously easy in the description will quickly make you feel that it is good for your eyes:
1 The tour of the room
Get up from the office chair, open the window and walk a few laps around the room. While doing this, blink as often as possible and try to look carefully at the objects in your office as you walk around.
While doing so, lightly tap your index and middle fingers around your eyes. If you yawn while doing this, you’ve already achieved a lot.
As simple as it sounds, in this way you provide a change in the rigid screen look, a slightly stronger blood circulation and stimulate the production of tear fluid.
2 The clock
While keeping your head in an unchanged upright position, take the positions of the time with your eyes, each in diagonals.
Start with the time 12 o’clock and try to look all the way up with your eyes only, blinking as you do so. Then it goes in the opposite direction, the clock hand position of 6 o’clock.
Then it continues: look at the time 3, look at the time 9, then 1 and 7 and 11 and 5.
After that, imagine the clock whose hand position you have just taken and then draw an imaginary circle around it with your eyes, clockwise and the other way around.
It can also be a window frame or a larger picture that you outline with your eyes.
3 Gaze jumps
Close your eyes. Hold your thumbs in front of your eyes at a distance of about 3 cm. Open your eyes and fix your thumbs. After that, stretch your arms long and look at your thumbs, then “jump” further towards the horizon.
With this simple exercise you train accommodation, the ability of the eye to adjust to different distances.
4 Palming
Rub your palms against each other briefly until a pleasant warmth is generated. After that, cover your eyes with your palms. There should be no pressure on the eyes from the hands, the space between the palms and the eyes is important.
The aim is to provide the eyes with pleasant darkness for a short time and relax them with gentle warmth and darkness.
There are numerous other exercises – if you want to do something good for your eyes, treat yourself to an eye training session with a specialized eye trainer. With other muscles, we are also prepared to train with specialists.
More glasses
Large-scale studies in China show that many more children and adolescents already need glasses, attributed to increasing time spent in front of screens indoors and greatly reduced outdoor exercise.
Our recommendation is the same: more glasses. What we mean by this is: good quality sunglasses should never be missing in strong sunlight to protect your eyes.
And for work at the screen is worth a special screen glasses, which allow a more relaxed view of the screen compared to varifocals or other glasses. We have had good experiences with screen glasses from Nannini.
The small, innovative company from Emilia Romagna has its roots in the development of special eyewear for sports, for example, to see the hollows on the ski slope or the greens on the golf course with greater contrast.
Special screen glasses are available from Nannini. If Italy is not on your itinerary right now – the online store works very well. Needless to say, we tried it out ourselves.
Your eyes are precious: give them more attention.
Forgotten the most important thing?
Perhaps you have missed the term Digital Detox up to this point. We simply consider it illusionary for many professions, and modern communication media are also an important tool for maintaining personal contacts.
However, targeted breaks and evenings without any screen are feasible for all. Not every email needs to be answered immediately.
By being more considerate of your eyes, you’ll help yourself to be able to answer emails with good vision in the long run.
Photographs
© GloriousMe