How Can Less Blinking Affect Your Eyes? – Arohi Eye Hospital

1. Just as much as technologies of smartphones, laptops, and tablets have improved our lives, with digital technology becoming a regular part of our everyday lives at both work and home, they also bring with it some drawbacks. An individual almost spends 9-10 hours a day using digital devices, which means the eyes being hooked onto these screens. So, while these smart devices positively help us complete our work in a matter of few seconds or minutes, they also negatively affect the qualities of our eyes. Blinking is the natural phenomenon of our eyes to clean the ocular surface of debris, while protecting our eyes by bringing up fresh tears and necessary protective oils on the surface. Thus, blinking keeps our eyes moist and comfortable. But, when we sit in front of our “smart” screens, we almost forget to blink! This results in eye strain as our eyes are not naturally cleansed as often as required, which reduces the regular replenishment of tears and oils that is necessary for a healthy vision. The eyes, as a result, dry up and cause eye strain and many other problems. Once your eyes start adapting to such dry eyes and eye strain, you can’t even imagine the damage it can do! Starting with affecting the eyes only while you are using these digital screens, it starts to impact the quality of your eyes and vision even when you are off the screen. The dry eye disease is the most common eye issue observed. And, it is not only adults who are being affected who use the screens for professional use, but also the children who are using smartphones and video games to keep themselves entertained.

2. Now, even if we suggest you to stop or reduce the use of these screens in your everyday lives, you are not going to obey because you are so addicted to these digital devices. But, you can at least follow one rule while you are on your screens, if you want to keep your eyes protected and vision healthy. Remember that a healthy blink rate ensures that debris is cleared from the eye surface. With lesser blinking, debris gets collected along the eye lids, thus blocking the openings of the tiny Meibomian glands in the lids, hindering the glands from functioning properly, as a result of which, over time the oil in these glands hardens, ceasing the functioning altogether! Thus, it is essential that while you are on your screens, you make sure that your eyes are regularly blinking. In addition, you must also follow the 20-20-20 rule, wherein you must look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds, every 20 minutes of using your digital screen. If this is something that you cannot afford to do, be ready to have your visual comfort seriously impaired, because lesser blinking can bring long-term effects and a lasting damage! In addition, you must also have your eyes checked regularly at an eye checkup clinic to look for any faults within the eyes that you may have not noticed. Catching up an issue early and treating it there and then itself can prevent serous future problems. Arohi Eye Hospital is where you can have a professional eye specialist in Andheri West Mumbai test your eyes to look for any problems and treat even the most serious problems like dry eyes, eye floaters, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, and other retinal diseases.