If you are reading this article on your smart phone, then stop. Put down the phone and pick up your laptop. Results from a new study published in the journal Optometry and Vision Science suggest that reading on a phone could trigger migraine, headache and eyestrain. Not only is the text on your phone too small, but people also have a tendency to hold their phone closer to their face than necessary.
Constantly checking text messages, game updates and to-do lists on your smart phone forces your eyes to focus in a manner they’re not accustomed to and causes problems with vergence, the adjustment your eyes make as they switch focus from near to far objects. In moderation, these adjustments are healthy. But when your eyes are unable to adapt to frequent adjustments, it can trigger a migraine or headache.
Because your cell phone is the motherboard to all forms of communication in your life, FYI Living offers some tips about how to avoid headache, including holding your phone at arm’s length, enlarging the text size and saving your heavy browsing for when you’re in front of a full-sized computer. Or maybe you would rather just use your phone to call your parents on Sunday afternoons. Yeah, right.
Has reading on your phone ever triggered your migraine or headache?
