Dear LPG

I was recently talking with a friend who told me that for the first time in her life, she would have to wear glasses.

As a person who has never been able to see past the end of my nose, I have had to wear them for as long as I can remember. However, I did go through that vain phase, when I let wearing contact lenses allow the world to see in a little more detail, all the time I put into my eye makeup application session each morning. 

  
Perhaps being short-sighted for as long as I can remember appears to have had little impact over the years; you just get used to it, but it is funny how easily we accept such physical defects. I got my first pair of glasses just a few years before I learned to share my house with a television. Not long after that, my office typewriter gradually changed into a computer, and the mobile phone became a necessity. I know that for so many, coming home from a day of computing to a night of telly-watching was what we did.   At the time, I did not pay too much attention to what came on because I spent my time out and about with friends at the many night spots available back then, but I’m not sure that all that disco lighting helped much.

When you do a 9 to 5 every weekday, there is little time to get involved, but now that I am retired, I put a lot more watching hours’ in. 

I can remember being told that computer screens were terrible for your eyes. and that meant being made to take a break every couple of hours was an excellent excuse to do a bit of skiving, I suppose. Still, now that I am retired, I use my phone, tablet and the telly as my house companions, with all the different channels to choose from on the days when I don’t feel like going out anywhere. I do spend a lot more time than I should focussed on one electronic screen or other. 

My eyesight is not improving, and I have often wondered if it has to do with the fact that I am an avid television watcher these days, but I think that all the computer screen watching has something to do with it, too.

I have now read a little about the latest ideas for giving your eyes a rest for their good. I have found quite a bit of information about the 20, 20, 20 rule, which I hope that LPG will help me to share.

Remembering to give your eyes a rest every 20 minutes so that you can spend 20 seconds focussing your eyes on something that is at least 20 feet away can be pretty tricky. When watching a television drama or game show, the hardest part is remembering when 20 minutes are up, but I have found a solution to help. 

So many of us opt to pay to eliminate the adverts from interrupting our favourite programmes, but those adverts happen every 20 minutes and last 5 minutes these days. 

Why not keep the money that the TV companies want to charge you for blocking them, keep the adverts and use the time they take to get up and stretch your legs, make a quick cuppa, phone a friend and comment on the story so far or have 40 winks. If you don’t wake up for the next part, you can call that friend again and ask her what happened.

   SY, Dartford 

SY shares some information on eye health…

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