are you constantly surrounded by smartphones monitors and tablets for the
majority of us I strain from overuse a computer has become a major dilemma and studies have shown that eye strain and
other visual symptoms occur in fifty to ninety percent of users computer users
that is and problems range from physical fatigue decreased productivity minor
noises like a red eye or dry eyes and really that's what I want to talk about
today hi I'm dr. Lawrence what's meanest binary and today we're going to talk
with an expert who's going to give us some easy steps to reduce your risk of
this new thing this trending right now called dry eyes which is a company from
prolonged computer use and so without further ado I'm gonna bring on dr.
Bernadette so here we have dr. Bernadette and dr. Bernadette is an
expert system she's an eye doctor a pioneer in the field of dry eyes and
what we're gonna do is we're gonna go through what this is what this condition
is and why it's so prevalent today and things you could do right now to treat this and and by the way we're in Florida
if you're wondering where we are how sunny it is is we're not in Ireland
we're in Florida and we're a place called st. Augustine which is the oldest
country the oldest city in America in America it was founded in the 1500s by
the Spanish and it looks like a Spanish European town it's absolutely stunning
is the weather is just phenomenal and we I welcome you to our channel dr.
Bernadette and here we go so dr. Berta thank you for joining us today the big question is what is this dry eye
syndrome it's it's so prevalent today it seems like everybody I know has this
what is it and what causes it well thank you dr. woods for having me here and I'm
happy to be on your show dry eye syndrome is a situation where
the cornea doesn't get enough moisture years ago people had dry eye but is
typically related to age and women after 44 medication but now with the advent of
computers more and more people are getting dry eye about children and
children especially well so the technical term is computer vision
syndrome and basically it's an overuse of our eyes on the computer one of the first things you can do to help with
this is to have your eyes checked go to your local optometrist
and have them check your vision to make sure you don't have a stigmatism or
hyperopia or myopia for those who don't know what those terms mean could you
just just briefly explain what the each one of those three means so astigmatism
is the curvature of your eye and even low amounts of astigmatism even if you
don't think you need glasses if you have it a little bit of an astigmatism it
creates a lot of eye work and so that's the curvature of the eyes shaped like a
football nearsighted means theoretically that you
can't see far and far said it means you can't see near and there's they're loose
terms but basically that's what nearsighted a stick
and far-sighted me so after you get your eye exam you want to tell your
optometrist the range from yourself to your computer and the ideal work space
is 18 to 22 inches yeah so will you usually tell people like an arm's length reach would be something sounds like a
good good measure because it's hard to have a ruler everywhere you are so arm's
length is perfect that should be looking down looking up or looking straight
ahead they should be looking straight ahead a lot of studies as I looked down
is better for dry eyes but when you think about your neck and your
positioning of your body looking straight ahead will give you less neck
problems and back problems is it would that be would you agree that that might be due to like a forward head
translation which would put pressure on them on not only the nerves but the
lymphatics and the blood vessels absolutely the body works together but
when you lean forward like this you're putting a lot of strain on that neck and so that's the number two complaint I get
is headaches so a lot of headaches come from for neck pain just our positioning
in front of the computer sure so it's affecting all the same areas absolutely
so that goes into the second thing we should do is take frequent breaks after
20 minutes you should get up walk around but if you can't we do something called
the 20-20-20 rule and that means after 20 minutes on the computer look
something 20 feet away or across the room for 20 seconds and make sure you're
blinking quite often yeah that's kind of interesting because that relates that
correlates perfectly with the old the Bates Method oh I'm not sure if you're
familiar with dr. dr. Bates ophthalmologists yes nineteen forties I
believe yes he was trying to formulate ideas where we could get away from
glasses completely very interesting okay yeah I saw actually saw a Paul McCartney
doing on a YouTube video he was doing Bates Method eye exercises where he need
found that he didn't eat glasses anymore I'm doing that technique very interesting there's a lot of studies
being done in that it's controversial but I truly believe that if you do these
exercises you can reduce the need for glasses yeah personally I've dropped and
you've known because you've been testing my eyes over the years by my
prescription dropped oh yeah yeah in half yeah just from doing these
exercises and I'm not religious with these exercises by the way either but I
try my best so the other thing you want to want to think about is the energy
coming off your computer and the energies called blue light when you say blue light you're talking like in the
range if you're looking at there's scientific people out there in the range
between four or five hundred nanometers correct yeah so it's visible light as
shorter wavelengths and those wavelengths can actually penetrate through the entire eye so you
think about the little light we have out here is called ultraviolet radiation
ultraviolet radiation gets absorbed into the lens of the eye this is a little
technical but blue light can actually pass through the lens and then it can
actually do damage to the macula and the macula is like the brain of your eye and
so when that blue lights coming off the computer it can penetrate the eye and
affect the macula so later in life people have to be concerned with macular
degeneration but you can do a blue light filter on your glasses to block that
blue light and it also decreases that eye fatigue in the headaches
there's also apps I believe that you can download like flux FL UX will put the
link down below for people who want to see this but all your media devices it
sets to that your all your media devices to the circadian rhythm and as the day
goes down and starts reducing or diminishing the blue light that's
exactly right blue light reduces our amount of melatonin and so at nighttime if your children on computers you really
need to reduce their time because when you are on the computer melatonin
decreases when it should be increasing and so it's hard for them to sleep so
there's a lot of links between computer use and difficulty sleeping at night and
increase in Krita cells so these things are really important parents
you know really keep those children off after about seven o'clock at night three
hours before bedtime computer should stop Wow okay that's
great advice I read somewhere and I and I'm so happy to have a doctor here to
make me validate this but I heard and read that 90% of ultraviolet radiation
comes through the optic nerve which stimulates the pineal gland which
produces serotonin which then in turn makes this melatonin that's correct
so the Sun is actually a good thing the Sun is a good thing and so is blue light
but excessive amounts of it can cause damage great so so blue light in the
morning is a good thing again here we go back through the Bates Bates it said
this in the 40s I believe he said like 20 minutes a day with your eyes closed that the Sun hit the earth your eyelids
to stimulate the pineal gland for serotonin melatonin production that's
exactly right so another thing you can do is this is very easy but we never
think about is blinking when we stare at a computer our blink reflex slows down
we blink every 10 seconds and when we blink our I produce as three types of Tears oil tears mucus tears and water
tears when we don't blink those glands don't work and then our cornea becomes dry and then we get redness and burning
and irritation so blink blink more often blinkin is
something that is not we do it automatically but when you're in the
computer it just slows down that blink time so blink sounds easy but it works
okay and another thing I want to ask you while we have you here is nutrition a
lot of people talk about nutrition especially eye nutrition are there is
there certain foods that are are good for the eyes or are there supplements
you could take very good question dr. Woods so nutrition is vital
just like the rest of our body we need good nutrition but dry eye is an
inflammatory process and things that create inflammation
sources so sugars a big one the more sugar we eat the more inflammation
rehabs the eyes aren't separate from the body
so what you eat affects your eyes when we talk about macula Health where we
took that the blue light effect in the macular cells it's really important to
be foods that are high in lutein and zeaxanthin these are yellow
phytonutrients that are found in yellow vegetables and then you it's hard to get
them so you can take supplements with lutein and zeaxanthin and the milligrams you want are 20 milligrams of lutein and
4 milligrams as the advancing another important thing to take is fish oil you
want to make sure your fish oils are a pharmaceutical grade because there's a
lot of impurities in fish oil both fish oils are anti-inflammatories class again
and of course we're going to put these links down below for you so you don't
have to stop the video right now as usually we always put these down below
so let's just recap about what we learned today
computer fatigue syndrome more and more people are having problems with dry eyes
secondary to computer use so make sure you get your eyes checked make sure you
get glasses that blue light protection you can also get
anti reflective lenses because a lot of workstations have fluorescent lighting
that's not good for our eyes natural lighting is much better make sure you do the 20/20 rolls every 20 minutes
look out 20 feet for 20 seconds the link keep blinking blinking is an involuntary
but make yourself blink more often take breaks every 20 minutes you can get up
from your workstation walk around that really does make a difference with dry
eyes and computer fatigue hey folks I hope you enjoyed this video as much as I
did it was great information ok we're going fishing right now don't forget to
bring if you're out in the Sun it's good to wear glasses sometimes to cut the
glare specially if you're on water and and dr. Burnett anything you want to say
good bye Dublin Ireland we're going fishing I hope the weather's great over
there
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