Home Treatment for Repetitive Stress Injury

Do you have headaches or neck pain regularly? It may be simpler to cure than you think. Instead of downing ibuprofen or allergy medicines, consider whether you might just be suffering from eyestrain.

You’re a likely candidate if you sit at a computer or read documents for long hours, especially with an old-style CRT monitor. Chances are, your eyes just aren’t getting the opportunity to move around and stretch that they need. It’s partly the reason that at least half of our society has to wear corrective glasses or contact lenses these days – our eyes are getting weak because of our lifestyles.

Eyes, like the rest of our bodies, were meant to keep moving, constantly scanning the horizon to look for predators, checking the weather patterns, or just seeing whether friends or neighbors are coming to visit. Many of those traditional activities involve looking off into the distance and constantly adjusting your point of focus. Think of how many hours a day you spend scanning the distance, and you’ll realize how dramatically our lives have changed — usually we only do this while driving, or trying to find our way around enormous buildings such as airports, or if we’re out hiking or doing recreation activities.

When we’re always looking close up at a computer, chalkboard or books, especially in unnatural lighting such as incandescents or fluorescents, we’re literally stunting the use of our eyes. This is part of the reason that sitting at a computer or TV for long hours can put you in a sort of trance, and make you lethargic as well.

The key to solving this problem is to give your eyes some chance to relax and exercise. If possible, position your computer monitor somewhere where you can look over the monitor into the distance – in front of a window or in the middle of a room, rather than against the wall. Every few minutes while you’re working, look up from the monitor and let your eyes roam around the room.

You don’t have to get up or even move your body-just let your eyes relax. This will help keep you alert and pain-free. Every hour or two, you can also roll your eyes around in their sockets to help the eye muscles relax, and help your pupils focus by doing some basic eye exercises. (If you work in a busy office, you can just close your eyes while you roll them around, so your colleagues don’t think you’re making faces at them!)

If you have a hard time remembering to give your eyes a break, you can use free software to help you. For Windows there is a program called EyeDefender that helps give your eyes a break.

If you’re serious about helping your eyes, here’s an exercise that might just improve your vision as well as prevent headaches:

Once or twice a day, seat yourself outside or somewhere you can look off into the distance. Identify a point far away that you can look at, then a point in medium distance from you, and then something else that’s very close to you within a few feet.

First, focus your eyes on the distant point, then focus on the medium point, then the close up point. Give your eyes time to adjust to each point, and when they do, move on to the next. After you focus close up, let your eyes refocus into the distance again.

Let your eyes move between the points ten to twenty times. If you do this regularly, you should find that you can focus on each point more quickly, your headaches may diminish and your eyesight may improve as well.

Related posts:

1. Ten Tips for Safe Stretching
2. Common Sense Tips to Help You Heal from RSI
3. Fast Tips for RSI Relief
4. Free Rest-Break Software to Help Prevent RSI
5. What to do when you have to lift too many boxes?