What is eye strain, how to treat it and how to prevent it

Eye strain is an extremely common eye disorder, each person has different symptoms when they experience eye strain but it can broadly be defined as anything that causes discomfort or pain to your eyes while viewing something. Eye strain is caused by your eye muscles becoming fatigued due to the overuse of your eye muscles during intense tasks such as driving a car, working on the computer or even reading a book.

This sense of being fatigued is caused by your ciliary muscle (highlighted in red in fig 1.1 below) tightening as it strains during these visual intense tasks making your eyes  feel sore, much like your biceps would feel after a big work out at the gym. Eye soreness is not the only symptom of eye strain, other common symptoms can include; dry or itchy eyes, blurred vision, spasms around the eyes, headaches and migraines. A full list of symptoms can be found here.

Fig 1.1

While the effects of eye strain can often leave people feeling debilitated, preventing eye strain from occurring is extremely easy. Simple prevention techniques include the 20-20-20 method or even optimizing your work space. Fortunately even if you currently do suffer from eye strain there are several easy and affordable treatment options these include; eye lubricants, specialized computer glasses, anti glare monitors and changing to an LCD monitor. Click here for full list of eye strain treatment options. Another viable treatment option which can be tried immediately is eye exercises, we’ve compiled a full list of the most popular eye exercises here.