Many individuals are working longer days in office environments. And computer use often does not stop when the workday is over; many continue to work from home, catch up on personal e-mail, and surf the Web after hours. The increasing popularity of portable hand-held electronic devices like the Blackberry and the iPhone means that for many people computer access is never more than a few fingertips away. Hobbies and recreational activities, ranging from hand work (eg, sewing, embroidery, knitting, and crocheting), to working with models or miniatures, to various crafts, to making flies for fly fishing, may also entail hours of up-close work. Eyestrain, eye fatigue, and headaches may result from these activities, particularly if distracting or discomforting Glare is a factor. The proper near refractive correction is, of course, necessary to ensure good quantitative near vision, along with the eyeglass lens enhancements recommended in the customized eyeglass prescription to promote good qualitative vision and decrease troublesome glare.
It is important to remember that headaches have many possible causes ranging from the mundane to the life-threatening. However, most of the potential diseases and conditions associated with headaches are not related to the eye or vision. When “visual” headaches do occur, they are generally associated with inadequate refractive correction (especially at near), convergence insufficiency, glare sensitivity, or simple overuse of the eyes with prolonged intense reading and computer work.
What Is Eyestrain?
Eyestrain is a lay term referring to a constellation of nonspecific symptoms including pain in or around the orbits, blurred vision, ocular fatigue, bloodshot eyes, headache, and difficulty maintaining focus. The more technical term describing this symptom complex is asthenopia. Typical activities contributing to eyestrain include prolonged and intense reading, computer work, or tedious visual tasks, often without rest periods and under inadequate or uncomfortable lighting conditions.