The Real Cure for Eye Strain

W hen faced with eye strain, should you use eye drops, new spectacles, do eye exercises and work harder or should you take rest?

Consider it this way: If you ran a marathon everyday even if your legs were paining and cramping, would you do more leg exercises, use crutches and apply oil on your legs to continue the marathon, or would you take rest? The marathon is an analogy to the way we use our eyes without taking rest. The crutches and oil are an analogy to how we use spectacles, eye drops, eye exercises, blue light filters etc., hoping that it would cure us (blue light filters were researched and there was no evidence of it being effective: paper1, paper2, and more citations here).

Sure, if the strain is mild, some remedies do appear to give a little relief, but they are only treating the symptoms. We should not pretend that it is working. We need to treat the root cause and cure it. I realized after a decade of chronic eye strain, that there’s an obvious, common-sense first-step to the healing process.

How I know all this…

In my case, it began with a burning feeling at the front of my eyeballs. Then came the light sensitivity, occasional sharp pains at the sides of the eyeballs, which became sharp stabbing pains all around and behind my eyeballs. I ignored that too and continued working.

Doctors tend to focus on intraocular muscles. A less considered fact is how extraocular muscles (shown in red) are affected. I’ve felt excruciating pain in those areas for many years.

Then came severe pain all over the eyes, light sensitivity, eye muscles twitching, tightness at the cheek muscles that even spread to the forehead muscles. The sharp stabbing pains continued, and my eyes were paining every waking minute of the day. I found it difficult to even keep my eyes open for too long. This is what chronic eye strain feels like. During the next few years, I consulted plenty of doctors (even at highly recommended eye specialty hospitals). They examined my eyes and found no defect other than myopia. No doctor had even heard of such a severe case of eye strain. They tried their genuine best to help, and I could see they felt bad, because they wanted to help me recover (bless them), but they didn’t know how to cure me. Medical science doesn’t seem to have given enough attention to the root causes of fatigue-related eye strain. Practitioners of ancient traditional medicine couldn’t help either.

My eyes just continued aching and burning every single day, throughout the day for six more years, and I continued using the computer for many hours as usual, despite the pain…because I thought I had no other option. Added to that was the mockery from many who thought I was exaggerating.

The persistent pain finally drove me to note down daily experiences. Over a period of few years, multiple experiments, correlations and keen observation, coupled with consultation with a doctor, I finally found the cure and started recovering (fully recovered in October 2022).

The Cure

It’s necessary to follow these points very strictly. Depending on the level of strain, it can take anything from a few weeks to many months to get cured, but this is the only way to cure fatigue-related eye strain. Nothing else works.

1. Eight hours of uninterrupted sleep every night: This is the foundation. If you don’t get proper sleep, nothing else will cure the strain. We assume we are getting enough sleep because we feel refreshed when we wake up…and then don’t notice that we still feel sleepy during the day. Before my eye strain became chronic, I hadn’t noticed I was getting only 4 or 6 hours of sleep for many months (a polysomnography didn’t help either). During my own experiments, I noted that it was only after 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep, that my eyes felt fine. Interruptions in sleep or short duration of sleep does not seem to allow the muscles and tissues to heal sufficiently. Strain appears to accumulate everyday due to lack of proper sleep. You’ll also notice that you are able to see much clearer than usual, after you get 8 hours of restful sleep. Children need more than 8 hours of sleep, and noise etc. disrupts sleep. Some people point to polyphasic sleep and say that people’s sleep requirements vary. From my experiments, I believe such notions might stem from the fact that there’s a lack of specific research that examines how poorly cooked food and lack of nutrients affects sleep. (Sure, there can be other medical conditions and medication which can interfere with sleep, but I’m referring to a normal situation). You need the 7 to 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep. If you can’t get proper sleep and your eyes remain strained, try reducing work that strains your eyes.
2. Closing the eyes after 20 minutes of strenuous work: Twenty minutes (or lesser) of work followed by closing the eyes, relaxing the face muscles and neck muscles and waiting until the strain subsides (the way we maintain tension in our muscles is a part of the problem). It helps to install software that reminds you to rest at intervals. Even if you don’t feel strained, stop after 20 minutes and rest. It’s necessary. The “20” is not some random number. It’s from many years of experimentation. Still, rather than blindly follow a number, pay attention to how much time it takes for your eyes to get strained, and try resting your eyes before the pain starts. There is no work that is more important than your eyes. I’ve tried eye drops, an eye gel, anti-reflective coatings, blue-light reduction, eye exercises, washing the eyes, the 20–20–20 rule, expensive eye glasses and all the other advice that doctors and common folk think is a cure for eye strain. Nothing worked. At my level of severity, even minor differences were noticeable. The ONLY way to rest the eyes and get relief from fatigue-related strain, is to keep the eyes closed until the strain subsides.
3. Stop using wrong spectacle lenses: Over many years, I noticed that for strained eyes, computerised eye tests or even a manual eye test were not necessarily sufficient to determine the correct power. When spectacles caused strain, it was important to stop using them, and find out what the eyes felt comfortable with. More details are mentioned in the “Precautions and Observations” below.
4. A well balanced diet of properly cooked food: It’s extremely important to know that when food is not properly cooked or even slightly burnt, it causes discomfort in the digestive system (most of the time you won’t even notice this discomfort) that leads to sleep loss (I’ve mentioned more about this in my Stomach Test article [click link]). Take some extra time to chew your food well. Also, ensure you search the internet and understand what a “well balanced diet” means, and why it’s important. Instead of searching only for foods that can help the eyes, make sure your entire body gets the nutrition it needs. Bodily functions are highly interconnected. When muscles go through strenuous activity, they need a proportional amount of protein (There’s a wide variety of proteins, and meat proteins worked best for me. I have no clue about what protein sources would work for vegetarians). The body also needs natural foods that help with long duration sleep and deep sleep.
5. Disbelief in magic: If you wish for a quick magical cure, you will get cheated by people selling such “cures”. It’s like having a fractured leg and using a bandage that promises to cure leg pain, while running a marathon everyday, and complaining that the leg pain isn’t going away. If your eyes are burning/paining frequently, you’ve likely entered an acute (recovery takes weeks or months) or chronic (recovery takes months or years) stage of strain. You may recover faster, but since my strain was extremely severe, it took 3 years for the constant soreness of my eye muscles to stop, and it stopped only because I strictly followed the points mentioned above. Prior to the 3 years, I suffered the pain for 6 years because I didn’t stop the long hours of computer use and didn’t ensure that I got proper sleep. To recover, you need patience and discipline. Not magic. The earlier you start, the faster you’ll recover. When the body needs rest, give it rest. Any other work can wait. Else, you’ll end up with a severe burnout that will prevent you from working anyway. It’s not worth permanently damaging health for any company that’ll fire you without hesitation. Definitely not worth damaging your eyes for gaming either.

Table created by Hirshkowitz M, et al. (March 2015)

Eye strain and myopia can be caused by many other factors too. Those are best diagnosed and treated by a qualified ophthalmologist. Everything I’ve mentioned here, is only for eye strain that’s caused by excess fatigue to the eyes and lack of sleep.

Precautions and Observations

• No eye exercises: Tired muscles need rest. Not exercise. When your eyes are strained, do not do eye exercises. Just close your eyes to rest them. Eye exercises are ok when the eyes are not strained.
• Full body exercises: It was of no use in curing or reducing eye strain, and it resulted in better sleep only during the first week. However, full body exercises are very necessary for general health.
• The “SCREAMING”: The pain/burning/discomfort is basically your eyes screaming at you, begging for rest. Never ignore or delay it.
• Prevention better than cure: Instead of allowing eye muscles to cross the threshold of endurance and enter a state of pain, and then using eye drops or warm compresses to soothe the pain, it’s far better to rest your eyes before the pain starts. I have not needed eye drops ever since I ensured I took periodic rest and got proper sleep.
• 20–20–20 rule is wrong: The right way to do it is to close the eyes, relax all muscles, and wait for as long as it takes for the strain to reduce. Later I found out that the creator of the rule himself said it is flawed.
• Digital screen settings: It helped a little bit when I reduced my computer and smartphone brightness to the lowest level I was comfortable with, and used the monitor’s preset “warm” setting. Alternatively, the free night-filter/red-shift apps are also good, but these won’t cure strain. What also helped, was using matte displays or positioning the screens in such a way that reflections on the screen did not cause glare. Anti-glare coatings did not reduce my strain even a little bit because digital screens or blue light was not the root cause for strain. Strain was caused by the lack of periodic rest and sleep.
• “exact power” myth & “wear always” myth: My eye power is measured -4.5 (right) and -4.75 (left), but my eyes feel comfortable only if both spectacle lenses are -4.5. Also, for near-work (like computer use or reading the newspaper), my eyes are a lot more comfortable with lenses of power -2.0 (ordinary glass lens spectacles without any coatings, purchased in 1998, and I’ve had absolutely no problem). When eyes are strained, lenses of a power lower than the measured eye power have been a lot more comfortable. Sadly, many doctors are not being taught that severely strained eyes are a lot more sensitive. They remain stuck with the wrong belief that the lens power needs to be exact, and followup treatments revolve around lens power instead of realizing or checking that the primary cause of the strain may be the severe lack of sleep/rest/nutrition. I’ve also realized that it isn’t necessary to wear the spectacles always. When reading a book or viewing my phone, or walking around my house, I don’t need spectacles. However, when safety is important (like driving, etc.), I use spectacles of -4.5.
• Dry eyes: It was extremely rare, and happened only when I lost sleep or when my eyes were over-strained. When I took rest, it always got resolved on its own within a few hours. Doctors found my tear film to be normal. Don’t forget to drink sufficient water and blink.
• Coffee/tea: When the body badly needs rest and you feel sleepy, you should sleep. Drinking coffee or tea to remain awake is silly.
• Proper lens alignment: Even some expensive frames seem to be designed wrongly (or are sometimes fake. I purchased a foreign-sounding brand’s frame from a reputed shop, and when I wrote to the manufacturer about the frame misalignment, they said the frame isn’t theirs, the brand name is an imitation and they don’t even ship to my country). Even some experienced opticians fit lenses at incorrect angles. It is astonishing how many of them don’t care, and tell people that nothing will happen, apparently, just to make a sale. Ensure that the lenses are properly aligned. Make a full payment only after they fix all issues. People who use binoculars, would know of the ‘headache’ caused by misaligned lenses.

It’s necessary to build guidelines for all spectacle manufacturers and opticians. Some of their unapologetic carelessness, ignorance, refusal to accept responsibility to fix incorrectly fitted lenses and gaslighting us, hurts our eyes (really, how did we accept being charged so much for a few pieces of metal or plastic screwed together? And improperly aligned, on top of that!).

• Incorrect diagnosis: Doctors assumed astigmatism, or that my eye power was higher than what it actually was, when I complained of eye strain. A dry-eye specialist jumped to the conclusion that I had dry eyes, even though I didn’t. Strained eyes can result in significant variations in eye power. It does not mean that one needs to immediately switch to new lenses. Doctors need to create/follow a standard practice of first ensuring the patient reduces the strain by getting proper sleep and rest for many days, and only then do a refraction test. During severe strain, even a refraction test done after pupil dilation can show the wrong power. There exists a phenomenon where the cramped/strained muscles cause the power to rise a little, and many nights worth of proper sleep relaxes those muscles and the power returns to what it was before the strain became severe. The power won’t reduce lower than that though. I was even prescribed cylindrical correction lenses which I couldn’t tolerate for even a few minutes (I detected the discomfort early because my eyes were already very severely strained. Like how simply touching a wound, hurts badly. I wonder how many people with lesser strain end up trying to tolerate such lenses because they don’t realize that it’s the wrong power). Even computerized eye tests and the pupil dilation test showed astigmatism and the wrong power. Oddly, various doctors gave me a slightly different eye power prescription, and the cylindrical correction angle was different from the previous reading each time. I started spending most of my days either not wearing spectacles or using spectacles of a lower power (which didn’t cause any issue, by the way. It actually gave more relief), and when I started getting better sleep and rest, the strain reduced. Then, after getting a good night’s sleep, when I went to the doctor with well-rested eyes, my eye power was diagnosed correctly. Three doctors eventually concluded that I didn't need cylindrical correction. Over a period of time, my high level of strain helped detect and eliminate many misconceptions.
• “Is this lens better or this one?”: For me, as long as the spectacle lenses felt right, that was the eye power to stop at. Years ago, when my eye power was -3.75, and the doctor added another lens to make it -4 and asked whether the higher power was better, it appeared clearer and sharper to me (I didn’t realize it was too powerful), so I chose -4. I shouldn’t have done that. -3.75 was the correct power. Some people recommend wearing spectacles even if it feels uncomfortable or if it gives a headache, saying that the eyes would adjust after a few weeks. When you aren’t dealing with severe eye strain, the ‘adjustment’ advice is true, but the adjustment shouldn’t take more than a few days, and normally you wouldn’t feel pain during the adjustment period. Approximately after the age of 24, the eyes become a lot less adaptable to this ‘adjustment’. If the burning and discomfort is constant and prolonged for more than a few days, you should immediately stop using those spectacles. When the eyes are severely strained, the eyes will start “screaming” immediately. There are two scenarios I know of that causes this. 1. The lens power prescribed is wrong, or 2. The lenses are not aligned correctly, as shown in the image below. In both situations, I learned not to wear those spectacles. It caused more strain. Doctors need to look beyond the theory they studied, and get feedback from patients to understand the reality and that the evaluation methodology of many researchers, lacks knowledge about the ground realities (more info here).

Sometimes, the spectacle lens ends up at a slightly incorrect angle. This image shows one axis. The angle variation can happen along other axes too. This causes eyes to get strained faster. Don’t try to adjust to it. Ensure that an optician fixes the error or get a new frame/lens. Also, there are a lot of measurements that need to be done accurately when selecting the focal point, frame width and fitting the lens to the frame (Google it).

• Low power or cylindrical correction: I’m hearing of a lot of people being prescribed -0.25 or -0.5 prescriptions for one eye or both eyes. Even a cylindrical correction, just because they complain of eye strain. Please consider that these powers may just be a result of excess strain and/or lack of sleep (and having those ‘powers’ does not make them a superhero :-) ). Wouldn’t wearing spectacles constantly prevent them from recovering to normal sight? It’s wrong to give spectacles to normal-sighted people. We need to do better research and make life liveable, to rescue people from poor habits that lead to weak vision, instead of providing people with spectacles at the slightest excuse.

IMPORTANT: Do not attempt to self-diagnose. A physical examination by an honest, experienced doctor is necessary. During my eye strain and even after I found the cure, I regularly consulted doctors. What you read in this article is not a substitute for proper medical advice. However, search for experienced doctors. They are the ones who know it’s not necessary to get new spectacles frequently, and they check your sleep sufficiency, nutritional deficiencies, prior health issues, medication, and lifestyle. They learn that from experience and feedback from patients.

• Bad habits from childhood: For goodness sake, please don’t mess up children’s sleep cycle. Not even during exams. Hard work is good, but losing sleep repeatedly to do hard work is foolish. Right from childhood, we have been taught to ignore discomfort and persevere, but we should have also been taught to recognize when we should stop and give our body the rest it needs.
• Work environments: Even in the most well-meaning work environments, bosses are pushed to deliver results quickly. But that doesn’t mean you need to damage your health in the process. Six hours of computer use a day is what I’d say is the safe-limit, but when recovering from chronic strain, don’t exceed 4 hours. The entire world is realizing this necessary truth, and you shouldn’t be ashamed to take rest. Being a responsible person who gives their body the rest it needs is one thing. Laziness is an entirely different thing. Any sensible boss or colleague will know the difference.
• Online classes and smartphone/TV use: Teachers and parents need to ensure that students get some necessary breaks during online classes, smartphone use or while watching TV. Kids by nature won’t listen, but please ensure they get their rest, sleep and nutrition. Their disappointment at not being able to play video-games for long, is tiny compared to the disappointment of having to wear spectacles lifelong. The need to wear spectacles itself shows that the eyes are seriously affected. Don’t make it worse. Better still, don’t even allow it to reach a stage where anyone needs spectacles. Protect the eyes.
• Daytime sleep: If you couldn’t get proper sleep at night, you will feel sleepy during daytime. It is extremely important to take those naps. It gives some very essential rest for the eyes that’s even more effective than just keeping the eyes closed.
• The angle: If you extend your hand in front of you and hold a heavy object for long, your muscles will start aching after a while. When it starts aching, if you raise your hand to hold the object above your head, some of your arm muscles will be spared of the weight and get a chance to relax. The extraocular muscles holding the eyeball, are like the arms holding the object. Closing your eyes and lying down facing the ceiling helps those muscles relax a little bit (it gives just a slight bit of relief). The main point is to not hold the eyes in a single position for too long.
• Spectacles are not a cure: Some people assume that if they constantly wear spectacles or contact lenses for a few years, they will get cured to normal sight. It won’t. I’ve never tried “print pushing” though, but in the case of strained eyes, the first priority should be to allow the eye muscles to heal by getting proper sleep and rest.
• Glass lenses are better: The medical and optical community seems largely unaware of how distortions in refraction affects severely strained eyes. During my chronic levels of strain, plastic lenses always caused my eyes to get strained quicker than when I used glass lenses. For some years, the discomfort was instant. Even Jack reports similar issues. Not wearing spectacles gave the most relief. Now that I’ve recovered a lot, I experience the strain a bit lesser, but long hours of strain add up quickly, so I still prefer glass lens. Glass is well known for offering better visual acuity and lesser distortion (provided it is of good quality). Of course there’s a safety benefit to plastic lenses, but while sitting in front of a computer, glass works best for me. Opticians bluff, saying that glass lenses are not available, and they also bluff about the price. Glass lenses are available and are less than half the price of plastic lenses.

A certain company handbook mentioned that employees were only entitled to a ten minute break every two hours. A classic example of how rules are formulated from poor knowledge on Repetitive Strain Injuries. Please realize the seriousness of the matter and establish processes that help in creating a nation of healthy people.

The human eye was not evolved to handle this kind of strain. Too many people are getting incorrect advice and hurting their eyes. Please show them this article and tell more people to get proper sleep, rest and better nutrition. Not enough of doctors are emphasizing this.

“If you do not give time for wellness, you will be forced to make time for illness” — Anonymous.

p.s.: Do read through the article a few more times to understand all points, and when you get cured, please return to leave a comment. I recovered fully in October 2022. An ordeal that started in July 2011, and wrecked my career. There’s a glaring lack of a support system in companies and in society.

• My second article on more people’s experiences of severe eye pain.
• My third article on how to help people who have eye strain.
• My guide for people researching eye strain.
• Freelancing websites for those who had to quit their jobs due to eye strain.

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