People experiencing severe eye strain often find themselves grappling for help in a world that does not even begin understanding what they are going through. Moreover, some inexperienced doctors end up thinking that the person is exaggerating, when certain methods aren’t able to cure the person.
The need to protect the eyes does not depend on the severity of eye strain. Everyone needs to be protected. Here’s how:
Think of the eye strain like a fractured leg
Do you motivate people with a fractured leg to run a little everyday to recover? Unfortunately, that’s what well-wishers do, when they tell eye strain patients to “do eye exercises everyday”. It’s what employers do when they think that all the employee needs is a little nudge and motivation to “just try working a little longer and get the work completed”. It’s what institutions do when they give short deadlines for assignments. It’s what family members and neighbors do, when they (often unknowingly) create situations that disallow people from getting eight hours of uninterrupted sleep each night.
Strained eyes need sleep and rest for recovery. A lot of rest.
Don’t ask for medical proof
Even during my chronic stages of strain, my eyes were not red. There were no physical manifestations of the severity of the strain (well, perhaps dark circles under the eye would count). Those were years when my extraocular muscles were sore and paining everyday, throughout the day. Doctors couldn’t quantify the strain or even identify the cause, and there’s insufficient research on how sleep and rest can cure fatigue-related strain (probably because it’s hard to measure strain of the extraocular muscles and probably because people don’t see the point of researching something so obvious as rest being the cure for fatigue). Everyone who uses the computer excessively faces eye strain. You don’t need medical proof that sleep and rest are necessary.
Be kind
All of us have been entertained with stories of heroic deeds of people who overcame adversity, people who went through sleep loss and pain and emerged victorious. All of us have had someone lecture us on how important it is to work hard. Often, these words reach us as uncompromising, patronizing, sharp criticism and sarcasm. This mode of speech gets passed on from person to person. Not surprisingly, when someone with eye strain asks for proper sleep and rest, the harsh response gets auto-activated and pours out…in an effort to quell what is perceived as laziness. Be kind to people who are suffering. Allow them to get the rest they need. If there’s urgent work to be done, assign the work to someone else and allow the person suffering from eye strain to switch over to tasks that do not involve too much strain on their eyes. Eye strain does not affect people’s intellect. There are a lot of other skilled tasks they can do.
It’s important to create a culture that allows people to heal.
Rest has to make up for sleep loss
Eye muscles get strained faster when a person has not got sufficient uninterrupted sleep (see the table below to know how much sleep one needs at various age groups). So when a person hasn’t had enough sleep, they should be allowed to take a short nap when sleepy or take more frequent breaks by closing their eyes to rest. It also helps lower their workload for the day.
Don’t force people to eat bad food
If someone wishes to avoid food at an office party or celebratory sweets or cakes and snacks at a birthday celebration or even at a canteen or restaurant or nearby bakery, don’t nudge or force the person to eat the food. The food from many sources are not fully cooked or poorly baked/fried. It results in digestive problems that result in sleep loss and cascades into eye strain.
Avoid unnecessary nudging
When I told an engineering director that I could use the computer only for a certain number of hours everyday, his conclusion was that I could be persuaded to do so for two extra hours. An ex-employer told me they’d do everything they could to accommodate my eye strain, and ended up giving me enough work that it’d take three people to do it. Many companies that claim to have work-life balance, don’t have it. Good companies will have managers who are competent enough to plan proper timelines, ask for the right budget, assess skills, manpower requirements, create buffers and manage client expectations. When projects get messy, they know to allow for time to pause and make fixes so that errors and stop-gap solutions don’t add up to eventually become the last straw on a camel’s back. This is the value that managers add, and this is why they are paid well. Good managers don’t need to overwork people.
Create a healthy work culture
“Please, sir, I want some more”. The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralyzed with wonder; the boys with fear. — an excerpt from Oliver Twist’s story, where he “dares” to ask for more gruel.
The astonishment of the “master” mentioned in the quote above, is what I saw on the face of an interviewer when I “dared” to tell her that I would not be able to work for longer than the stipulated time even if there’s a deadline. Somehow, most companies take it for granted that they can just make people work long hours. On top of that, there’s the bell curve that’s designed to motivate people, but ends up pitting team members against each other and ruining camaraderie. It’s time we acknowledged the pointlessness of such a work culture. It’s time we said no to overtime. There’s more to life than this. Work can be done with goodwill and greater efficiency in a healthy, sensible work culture.
Officially recognize RSI as a health hazard
Repetitive Stress/Strain Injury (RSI) is an injury that can have temporary or permanent effect on the body. In the same way that companies draw yellow safety lines on the floor, have “hard hat” areas and create various policies for safety, it’s necessary to create safety policies to protect people from eye strain, back pain, wrist pain, sleep-loss and any other such RSI’s. Without an official policy, the managers and employees won’t really be able to do much to protect themselves when deadlines approach. Policies also need to be created for schools. Unhealthy practices begin at school and home, eventually cascading into workplaces.
Start early
The problem begins from childhood, when children go to sleep late and are woken early for school. This continues with late-night study during exams, excessive computer use, lack of a well-balanced diet and other dietary problems that result in sleep loss.
 |
Hours of sleep required, as discovered by the National Sleep Foundation. Image attribution: Wikipedia. |
It would help to create a culture where right from childhood, the need for sleep, periodic rest and proper nutrition is emphasized and followed. At workplaces, ergonomics, periodic rest, proper planning, avoiding overwork and hiring people with an inclination to do the job well, would help.
It’s possible to have a sensible, kind, caring, healthy world. We just aren’t cooperating hard enough to create a heaven on Earth. Some countries are creating such a culture and it’s working well. Let us try too.
