Germs, Computers and Your Eyes

Your eyes are sensitive to germs from surfaces, and from eye strain from uninterrupted screen time. Here are some tips to keep your eyes healthy.

• Germs: Washing your hands is important considering everything that you touch everyday; door handles, ATMs, railings, elevator buttons, movie theatre arm rests, everything you touch has germs on it. The most common way that people catch the flu is by rubbing their eyes with a hand that has the virus on it. Washing hands is even more important for people who use contacts, as they come into contact with their eyes daily. Washing your hand regularly will help prevent you from getting sick, and your eyes from getting infected with whatever you are carrying on your fingers.


• Screen time: After watching movies or working on your computer for a long period of time, your eyes can feel tired or sore. Computer and television screens are not made of one solid image, they are composed of tiny dots that come together to create the image that you see. Because of this, there is not one solid item that your eyes can focus on. This causes stress on your eyes, which can be painful. There are some things you can do to reduce the stress on your eyes.
• Take a break every 15 minutes to focus on something further away for a bit to let your eyes relax.


• Keep you computer screen a bit below eye level, so you aren’t looking up and stressing your eyes.


• Turn on other lights around you to limit the glare, your eyes adjust based on the total amount of light in a room, not just what you are looking at. A brightly lit screen in a dark room is harder on your eyes than a bright screen in a bright room.