Strain Management Trick

You may be having a very busy day, lots of work to do. Or you are reading some absorbing novel, unwilling to put the book down for those breaks. It is counter productive, but life does happen not to conform to our rehab rules at times.

The main idea of the breaks is to allow the ciliary muscle to relax, change the focal plane, bring the eye back to a distance that is closer to a ‘neutral’ mode. Ideally we would spend the majority of our time at that range of focal plane, as opposed to the 50cm and less. The compromise is breaks. But today, you are too busy even to take all the breaks.

Here is how you can still get some focal plane change while continuing to work:

From time to time, take off your differential prescription (reading glasses). Take 5-10 minutes, adjusting your distance from the page or screen as necessary, to be able to see just clearly enough to continue reading or working. Move back a little bit, play with the blur distance while you are engaged in your activity. This is no real substitute for a proper break, but it can help prevent the ciliary lock in and resulting accommodation spasm that happens otherwise. Also a good exercise even if you are taking proper breaks, adding another dimension of focal plane change and encouraging movement while you are at this close up range.

Next time, we will cover another reason breaks are so important – the reflex of blinking is almost suspended when you look at a computer monitor (about seven times per minute, compared to a normal 20 times per minute). It’s like holding your breath! More on that, coming up.

Note:  If you are very high myopia, this trick may not work for you.  You might get some +1 reading glasses though, to put over your differential for just 5-10 minutes.  Yes it’s a bit weird, but reading glasses are cheap and you might find that you enjoy the focal plane change.

Questions, comments, drop me a line in the forum.

– Jake

Session:  Audio Track

pending …

Session:  Video Stream

pending …