If you work on the computer a lot, you probably realize that spending many hours in front of a monitor is harmful to the eyes. Here are some basic things you can do to help your eyes stay healthy.
1. Use a good monitor
A good computer is a good thing, but it’s the monitor that is the interface between you and your work. It’s the monitor that you look at. There are a lot of monitors out there to choose from, but there’s one cardinal rule you should be aware of: small text is bad for your eyes.
As you probably know, the image on your monitor is made of little dots or pixels. The amount of vertical and horizontal pixels that compose the image on your monitor is called screen resolution (for example, 1280×800). What is less known is that those pixels have different sizes. Say, you have two monitors with the same resolution of 1280×800, one is 15″ and the other 14″. What this means that the pixel size in the 14″ monitor will be smaller, since the same amount of pixels is packed on a smaller surface. In effect, everything on the 14″ monitor will be smaller than on the 15″ monitor with the same resolution.
With the advent of HD movies, a lot of monitors support full HD resolution (1920×1080), so they can retain the HD quality when playing movies. The problem is that to fit the large amount of pixels needed to support the HD resolution on smaller monitors, you need to make those pixels extremely tiny. Which makes the text unhealthily small.
Again, small text is bad for the eyes. And it doesn’t matter if your eyes are still good enough to make it out right now; they probably won’t be good enough for long if you continue abusing them.
So you have two choices: increase the font size on your operating system, so the text appears bigger, or buy a bigger monitor.
The problem with the first option is that once you increase the font size on your operating system, some applications won’t look as good as they are supposed to, some text might be cut or abnormally warped. A lot of developers just don’t take the changes of font into account when writing programs.
So investing in a larger monitor or a notebook with a larger screen is a better solution.
When buying a monitor look for the monitor’s “dot pitch” specification, and stick to this rule: anything below 0.282 is unhealthy.
Ok, so we got the dot pitch theory out of the way. There’s another thing you should look for in your monitor: clarity. Most of the monitors today display clear and sharp text, but from time to time you’ll still find monitors that are blurry. Stay away from blurry monitors.
2. Get exercise glasses
I got my pair of exercise glasses in 2001 when I lived in Sochi, Russia. They are black plastic glasses with hexagonal holes in them. The holes, all equal in size, are smaller on the inside of the plastic then on the outside. To make the long story short, the glasses force the eyes to exercise. I was told that the glasses won’t improve my eyesight, but if I use them regularly, they will keep it from deteriorating. This is exactly what happened. My eyes are just as good today as they were 10 years ago. 10 years of heavy computer work. When you use these glasses, you really feel like your eyes do heavy workout. in fact, you can’t use them for too long before your eyes start hurting. When you start using them, you should wear them for very short periods of time and slowly increase the length of usage to about 15-20 minutes per day.
I don’t want to sound like an advertising agent, but they really work. I don’t know where you can get them. Mine were made by a company called “Уралочки” in Chelyabinsk, Russia. Maybe you can pick up your pair when you go to Sochi for the Winter Olympics 
3.Work in good lighting
Nothing can tire the eyes more than working in bad lighting. Try to set up your computer in a naturally-lit room; make sure there are not reflections on your screen; make sure your monitor is positioned against the wall and not a window, so there’s no strong light shining in your eyes. And try not to work in the evenings, when your eyes are tired and the natural light is gone. That’s a sure recipe for glasses.
Oh, and you shouldn’t sit any closer to the monitor than the length of your outstretched arm.
4. Take breaks
Your vision narrows drastically when you look at your monitor for an extended period of time. You should take regular breaks and look out the window at least every hour or two. Look left to right, close and far, up and down, let your eyes wonder and enlarge the angle of your vision before you get back to work.
5. Exercise your eyes
Many books have been written about eye exercises, and most of them are good and effective. But there’s something that most people seem to forget: the effects of any type of exercise will not be visible immediately. If you are hoping to improve your sight (and yes, it’s possible to actually improve your eyesight with proper regular exercise), you need to realize that it will take many months for the smallest effects to become noticeable. If you can’t commit to being faithful and regular, don’t even bother and skip to the next point.
But if you are, you can expect some eyesight improvement. Here are some of the exercises that I found to be most effective:
- Perspective. Stand in front of a window. Select three points: a dot on the glass in front of you, a street lamp across the street and a house far away. Now focus on the glass, the lamp, the house. And back, the lamp, the glass. Do at a good pace, but not forcefully. Repeat 20 times.
- Palming. Sit down resting your elbows on the desk and your palms covering your eyes. Make sure you don’t press on your eyeballs and that your eyes are in complete darkness. Keep your eyes open. Relax your entire body and your mind. Your mind has a lot to do with the health of your body and of your eyes. Concentrate and meditate on what you see. At first you might see a lot of bright dots flashing and blinking and moving around, this is the result of your eyes “discharging” the energy that they have accumulated. Eventually the lights will start to fade. Keep your eyes covered for 4 to 5 minutes, relaxing your body and mind.
- Rolling. Stand in front of a window and slowly roll your eyes clockwise and counter-clockwise.
- Neck exercises. These include head and shoulder rolls. Having your shoulders and neck in shape is also important to the health of your eyes.
Take the time for these exercises regularly during your work.
7. Wear a hat and good sun glasses
Direct sunlight is not healthy for the eyes. You should wear a hat that keeps your eyes in the shade at all times. Also, if you wear sunglasses, make sure they have a 100% UV filter. Most of the cheap sunglasses you buy on the street will probably not have an effective filter, even if they say they do. It’s important to invest in good sunglasses. Here’s a simplistic explanation of how this works:
In bright light, your pupils constrict and let in less light into the eye. And thus less of the harmful UV rays. But if you put on sunglasses, your pupils will dilate, thus letting in a lot more of the harmful UV rays. If your glasses don’t have an effective UV filter, you will be actually damaging your eyes by wearing the sunglasses.
8. Eat healthy foods
Stay away from junk food, eat lots of fresh vegetables and fruit. Especially dark green leafy vegetables and eye-friendly foods that are rich in vitamin E, like carrots. But again, for this to take effect, you’ll need to stick to it for several months at least. And continue after that.
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It seems like this is a long list just for improving or maintaining your eyesight. But eyesight is a treasure and we should do everything we can to maintain it in good condition. Plus, these points are really a part of a greater picture, a part of healthy living. We all know that shouldn’t sit at our computers for too long, we should live a life in the real world; we should eat healthy food not only for the sake of the eyes, but our entire body; we should eliminate stress because it causes serious damage to all our organs and it makes us miserable; we should slow down, the fast pace of life and work just takes away the reason of existence out of our lives.
So if you live a healthy life, you already have a good start to saving your eyes. Try it, it’s worth it!
