Take care of your posture and eye sight if you spend long hours in front of a computer

Working long hours in front of a computer screen can, in the long run, cause problems for your health if you don’t take special care.

• If your posture is wrong, you can get backache and neck pain.
• If the distance is not right, your eyes can tire, water or feel itchy.
• If the lighting is insufficient, you can suffer from headaches.

No need to worry.

Just follow our advice and you will avoid all these problems.

1. Do not work with just the screen lighting. The office must be properly lighted.
2. Avoid a light source coming from behind the screen as it will dazzle you.
3. Place your seat perpendicular to the light from the window to avoid reflection.
4. If the laptop you work with has a screen smaller than 14 inches, use a larger Otherwise, you will be constantly squinting.
5. Place the screen on a level with your eyes. If you need to lower your head, you will be exerting your cervical spine and end up with a contraction.
6. There should be approximately 50 cm between your eyes and the computer.
7. If you need to read a long document, you should print it out. This is indeed the digital era but your eyes can relax more if you read on paper rather than on a lit up screen.
8. Stop looking at the screen every 20 minutes at the most and focus on something in the distance. We spend so many hours in front of an image which is always at the same distance that our eyes get lazy and then distance vision becomes more difficult for us.
9. Sit properly, with your back fully supported, your feet on the floor or on a foot rest, never dangling, and make sure the seat is at the proper height with respect to the desk, so that your elbow and forearm are at a right angle.
10. Stand up at least every half hour. Just change your posture, stretch your back and move your neck and activate your circulation. You only need a minute.
11. Don’t take a break from your computer to look at your mobile phone. Taking a break means closing your eyes, blinking, giving yourself a little massage or looking out the window but never at another screen and particularly if it is a smaller one.
12. Drink some water. Always have a bottle nearby. You will keep your mucous membranes from drying out and your eyes will not bother you so much.
13. Have your eyes checked now and again. Particularly if your eyes are tired or itchy or if they water or you have a headache at the end of the day. Make sure you don’t need glasses or the ones you wear don’t need to be upgraded.