”Doctor: I now feel uncomfortable with my eyes after working for a long time, with symptoms such as redness, congestion, feeling dry, a little afraid of light, sometimes burning pain, foreign body sensation and discharge”. This is now a common complaint of white-collar workers in the office when they visit the eye clinic. With the dramatic increase in the use of video terminals in offices, more people are suffering from visual discomfort.
Usually, as an ophthalmologist, when a patient has such a complaint, he or she will first ask the patient in detail about his or her age, work environment, eye time, refractive status, and even eye distance, and a series of other eye-related issues. Then, through examination, a reasonable recommendation is provided to the patient.
Video terminal syndrome definition
Video terminal syndrome (VCS) is a series of syndromes such as eye fatigue, dry eyes, red and itchy eyes, and blurred vision that are often experienced by people who spend a lot of time using computers.
The American optometric definition: the eye syndrome caused by working in front of a computer for a long time at close range is called Computer Video Terminal Syndrome, or CVS.(Computer Vision Syndrome)
Studies have shown that computer users are at high risk for dry eye syndrome. People who look at TV screens and game consoles for long periods of time may also experience dry eye to varying degrees.
Clinicians are now finding that people with visual fatigue often have complaints of dry eye, and clinical examinations reveal a coexistence of dry eye and refractive problems. Severe cases are even accompanied by dizziness, forehead headache, neck, shoulder and waist pain, visual fatigue, loss of appetite, constipation, insomnia and a series of other symptoms of plant nervous disorders. The use of computer microcomputer has almost become an inevitable part of modern life and work status, when the reality of survival can not change the situation, what we have to do is to change what can be changed.
Then the next questions are.
1.Change the way we look at our eyes
2.Change the refractive state of our eyes
3, change the local environment of the eye
4.Changing our working environment
1.How to change our way of looking?
Most of the office displays are placed on the desk, and we tend to use the way of gaze will be flat or slightly tilted, resulting in head forward, jaw up, neck, shoulder muscle tension increased, the accumulation of this persistent work state, will cause pressure on the cervical spine, shoulder, neck, back muscle spasm, compression of the surrounding blood vessels, nerves, resulting in brain and eye ischemia and hypoxia and eye discomfort or even Recommended corrective measures are: adjust your seat, or lower the computer monitor, forming a line of sight down about thirty degrees, such an angle can make the neck muscles relax, more in line with the state of human mechanics, improve the blood supply to the brain, and the state of downward gaze, eyelids slightly drooping can reduce the surface area of the eye surface exposed to the air caused by the evaporation of tears.
2. How do we change the refractive state of our eyes?
When ortho-optic eyes or glasses wearers after correction, when looking at close objects, the corrective lenses are in the over-corrected state and the brain commands the ciliary muscle to contract to focus to ensure clear vision. Therefore, it is necessary to wear a suitable pair of glasses for near use (lighter than distant glasses), or use bifocal lenses to improve the fatigue of near work, or use ciliary muscle relaxants to improve the symptoms of eye fatigue under the guidance of an ophthalmologist if the symptoms are severe. But the negative effect of ciliary muscle relaxants is inferior to the positive significance of active telescope.
3.How to change the environment of the eyes
The surface of our eyes also has a layer of tears to provide moisturizing and cleaning effects, the number of blinks per minute in a normal state is 16-20, each blink, the eyelids spread the tears evenly on the surface of the eyes, so it is very important to maintain a reasonable and effective blink to complete the eye moisturizing, cleaning and stable refractive state, when people are staring at the fluorescent screen, the number of blinks will be reduced by 10%. A prolonged state of concentration can lead to dysfunction of the vegetative nervous system and affect the normal constant secretion of tears; plus the state of looking up increases the surface area of the eye surface exposed to air and water evaporates too quickly, both accelerating the incompleteness of the tear film on the corneal surface, and the unstable refractive state increases the regulatory pressure on the eye muscles, causing dry eye discomfort and fatigue, and if the symptoms of dry eye are severe, there will be Foreign body sensation, eye redness, burning pain, tearing and other symptoms. Therefore, active blinking, changing the state of looking up and ensuring the stability of the tear film layer are the correct ways to use the eyes. If damage to the tear film layer is not corrected in time, it can cause damage to the corneal epithelium. Timely consultation with an ophthalmologist and the use of eye sprays (Johnson & Johnson) or preservative-free artificial tears are also measures to stabilize the tear film and assist in moisturizing the eye. Do not use bottled eye drops for a long time, not only can it not solve the problem, the preservatives in the bottled eye drops will also cause more damage to the eye surface.
4, how to change the work environment and the way
Office air quality, air conditioning temperature, indoor humidity and ventilation directly affect the comfort of the patient’s eyes, so put some green plants, promote air quality improvement, maintain a certain degree of humidity in the air, but also make the eyes in a more excellent environment work, pay attention to the frequency of continuous eye use, appropriate rest, look away to relax can make fatigue in time to relieve. Easy music by the ear; moderate chewing is also not lost as a way to regulate the plant nerves to relieve physical and mental fatigue.
While computers bring people a new way of life and work, video terminal syndrome is also getting closer and closer to you, perhaps you are not aware of it, but it has been gradually affecting your vision, if you have similar symptoms of eye fatigue, you can try to answer the following six questions.
1, feel dry eyes, lack of tears.
2.Feeling that your eyelids are heavy and sagging, unable to open them.
3.Feeling a burning sensation in your eyes.
4.Sight is unstable, sometimes clear and sometimes blurry.
5.Feeling the presence of foreign bodies in the eyes.
6.Feeling sore and swollen eyes, forehead discomfort or pain.
If more than half of the answers are yes, then it is time to seek help from an ophthalmologist.