10 Medical Myths That Just WonГў?t Go Away.Pass it on: Spending too much time staring at bright screens from our laptops, smartphones and tablets can cause tension headaches, eye strain and dry eye. To remedy this problem, look away from the screen a few times an hour to give eye muscles a break and avoid strain, he said.

White text on a black background is far easier on my eyes. (2) Another major cause of eyestrain is the position of the computer screen. Personal taste seems to matter a lot here, but for me the simple solution is just not to have a bright computer screen. The eyes are generally more comfortable when they are parallel (your eyes are parallel when you look at far distances). Glare leads to eye muscle fatigue, for the eyes have to struggle to make out the images on the screen. Spending hours on a computer or hand-held device keeps the eyes converged and strains the eye muscles to cause headaches, he said. 'The pupils get smaller, muscles in the eye adjust the size of the lens, and the two eyes have to converge. Not only does blink rate decrease when you look at things up close, but your eyes also converge slightly, Shugarman said. So for people who already have drier eyes than the general population including contact lens wearers whose lenses sit on top of the tear film staring closely at a screen for long periods can exacerbate dryness and cause itching, strong blinking and grit collection in the eyes, Shugarman said. 'You don't have that sort of windshield-wiper effect of the tears around and keeping a sharp, glossy, comfortable surface' on your eyes, he said. However, blink rate slows down when you look at things that are closer to your face, Shugarman said, which means tears evaporate more quickly than when you were blinking more frequently. When looking at something in the distance, your eyes automatically blink a certain number of times. 'Black on gray is easier for reading versus black on a brighter white,' Shugarman said, so it's important to decrease the contrast if you find yourself developing headaches from trying to read off a screen. Use a larger font to keep your eyes from working hard to see letters. Use a matte screen filter (about 10) to reduce glare on your smartphone, computer screen, or tablet. Reading e-books made for e-readers on a cellphone, where the screen contrast is not made for long reads, can also produce headaches. Make sure the center of the computer monitor is slightly lower than eye level four to eight inches. That's why e-readers like the Amazon Kindle or the Barnes & Noble Nook, which are made for long reads, have black text displayed on a gray background, he said. Reading dark print on an extremely bright background can lead to spasms of the muscles at the temples, which causes stress headaches, he said. Extremely high contrast from lit screens can cause headaches, Shugarman said.

Brighter screen affect eyes