Our eye muscles do fast, precise work all day. Occasionally, they need a rest.
The experience is a common one. It’s late in the day, and you’ve been staring at the same line in the email you’re writing (or the book you’re reading) for the past fifteen minutes. You look up from your work and realize your eyes are tired and aching, and the soreness has spread to your temples too, forming the beginnings of a headache. Maybe your eyes feel itchy and dry, and all you want is to close them for a few minutes to rest.
Eye strain is the name for a collection of symptoms that can crop up when you’ve been focusing hard on a single thing for a long time, or in difficult conditions like dim light. Although it can be irritating and painful, eye strain is a lot like the muscle soreness that can happen in other parts of your body from hard work or overuse: it’s temporary, and will usually get better with time.
That doesn’t mean waiting is your only option, though. Below are a few things you can do to prevent eye strain from happening, and to ease the discomfort when it does appear.
What causes eye strain?
At any given moment, your eyes are doing a lot. Your pupils are changing size to let in the right amount of light. Your lenses are changing shape to bend the light and make a sharp image for your retina. And throughout all of it, your entire eye moves, staying pointed in the right direction.
Each of those functions is controlled by a system of tiny muscles. And like any muscle, they can grow tired or sore from overuse. When that happens, we call the pain and fatigue we feel “eye strain.” The term can also cover other symptoms caused by our eyes working hard—dryness, for example—and the downstream effects they can cause:
- Tiredness
- Pain
- Itchiness/grittiness
- Blurry vision
- Watery eyes
- Headaches
- Twitching or spasms
Much like the rest of your body, when your eyes start to get tired, there are ways to stretch and relax the muscles that can help you feel better and prevent more serious damage. We’ll offer specific tips below, but as a general rule, it’s hard to go wrong with a combination of gentle movement and rest.
1. Follow the 20-20-20 Rule to prevent pain.
Much of eye strain’s discomfort comes from holding your eyes in one fixed, unmoving position for a long stretch of time, like when reading or working on a computer screen. On top of that, when we are focused on something so closely, we tend to blink less, meaning the surface of our eyes gets drier than it normally is.
Moving and blinking frequently, then, can help prevent the beginnings of eye strain—and that’s what the 20-20-20 rule is designed to encourage. The rule suggests that when you’re focused on something in front of your face, like a screen or a book, you should take a break every 20 minutes, and use the break to look at an object at least 20 feet away from you for at least 20 seconds.
These breaks let the tiny muscles in your eyes stretch and move as you look around and refocus. They also encourage you to blink, moisturizing the surface of your eyes. Much like getting up and walking around does for the rest of your body, the 20-20-20 rule flexes your muscles and helps keep them from getting stiff in the first place.
2. Loosen your muscles with eye rolls.
Without moving your head, gently look to your right, as far as is comfortable. Then slowly roll your eyes up until you’re looking at the ceiling. Keep going until you’re looking to the left, then down to the floor, and then back to where you started. Then go in the other direction. Repeat a few times in each direction to loosen up the muscles.
You can also do this exercise in figure-8 shapes: for example, starting in the upper left corner of your vision, moving your eyes down to the lower left, then to the upper right, lower right, and back where you started (and then reverse). This adds a little extra up-and-down movement to activate and stretch the muscles further.
3. Change eye focus by looking at objects at different distances.
Use a pen, your finger, or any other object that’s convenient. Hold it at arm’s length, and focus your eyes on it. Slowly, watching it the whole time, bring the object toward your face, keeping your eyes focused on it for as long as you can. When you can’t look at it anymore, move it away from your face again, and follow it with your eyes.
This loosens up the muscles which flex the lens of your eye, and to a lesser extent the muscles that move your eyes themselves. You can also get similar benefits by picking a few objects around you, at different distances and in different locations, and switching your line of sight between them for a few seconds—similar to what you might do when following the 20-20-20 rule.
4. Palm your eyes to ease muscle strain.
More of a rest technique and less of an exercise, palming is more or less exactly what it sounds like. Close your eyes, and then gently rest the palms of your hands against your closed eyes. Don’t place any pressure on your eyes themselves—you don’t want to cause injury or discomfort. You can even cup your hands over your eyes rather than touching them, if you prefer. Just make sure your fingers are close together to prevent as much light as possible from getting in.
Palming warms the area around your eyes, potentially increasing blood flow and also helping to ease any muscle aches. Closing your eyes while you do it allows your pupils to adjust, stretching those muscles, and moistens the surface of your eyes.
5. Give your eyes a rest.
It’s easy to say and harder to do, but very often when we’re injured or sore, the best thing we can do for ourselves is just to rest. Set aside your work for as short or as long as you need to, close your eyes a while, and relax. Your eyes are delicate, but they have plenty of ways to maintain themselves, and resting gives them a chance to do that.
Your eyes work hard. Protect them with help from Heritage.
So much of what we do day to day involves our eyes. But as busy as they are, the eyes are also fragile, and they’re virtually guaranteed to change as we age. When something is both so essential and so delicate, it’s critical to have a strong support system in place.
Heritage Vision Plans is a family business—vision care is in our DNA. Our handpicked provider network has been a trusted resource for our members for decades. Talk to your benefits provider to learn more about joining the Heritage family and seeing the benefits of top-quality vision care in your life, learn more about our individual and family plans on our website, or talk to your employer benefits provider today.