Protect Your Eyes from Strain

June 15, 2004

Protect Your Eyes from Strain

Overworked? Tense? Spend hours in front of the

computer screen? Do your eyes feel achy, unable to focus? Is it

hard to see after hours of sewing? Does the print on the magazine

in front of you seem to blur?

You may be suffering from eyestrain, a type of ocular stiffness

that can occur when you focus on something for a long period of

time without a lot of eye movement. The source of that stiffness

is rigidity in the extraocular muscles surrounding the eye. The

socket of your eye is a cone-shaped hollow that contains the eyeball

and optic nerve, tear gland, extraocular muscles, orbital fat, and

many blood vessels and nerves. The tiny, sensitive extraocular muscles

move the eyeball in various directions. Like your other muscles,

if you don’t move your eyes, blood and oxygen levels decrease and

your eye muscles start accumulating waste and can become acidic.

To alleviate eyestrain, make sure you rest your eyes periodically

as you’re working. Close them and just relax, and then look out

the window or on an object far away. Get up and walk around. These

small measures will help you to relax your eyes and restore oxygen

flow.

Range of Motion Exercise:

To help you rest and relax your eyes, try the following exercise:

1. Visualize a huge 5-foot clock sitting in front of you.
2. Move your eyes in a circle as if you are following the hands

   of the clock from noon all the way around to midnight.

3. Do this five times, and then go counterclockwise five times.

Read More on Vision:

Getting Started

Age-Related Macular Degeneration

Cataracts

Glaucoma

Diabetic Retinopathy

Keep It Simple Tip: Palming

Nutritional Therapies

Lutein and Zeaxanthin for Age-related

Macular Degeneration

Antioxidants for AMD and Cataracts

Help for Dry Eyes

Protect Your Eyes from Strain

Complementary Therapies

Red Light Therapy for Macular Degeneration

Ozone Therapy for Macular Degeneration