What are Blue Light Glasses? Protection for Your Eyes in The Modern World

Protection for your eyes in the modern world 

Anti blue light glasses, also known as screen glasses, blue light filtering glasses or gaming glasses; are glasses that contain lenses specifically designed to filter the amount of harmful blue light - typically emitted from digital devices; that reaches your eyes.

Let’s take a deeper dive into the science behind how anti blue light glasses are beneficial to our eye health. We will explain what blue light is and why is it a danger to our health; signs that blue light is having a negative impact on your health, and alternatives to anti blue light glasses.

What is Blue Light and why is it a danger to our health?

Most electromagnetic waves are invisible. But a small band of waves, known as visible light, can be detected by the human eye. Blue light is just one type of colour on this spectrum.

Blue light has a dark side.

There are several man-made sources that emit harmful blue light. Between our phones, computers, tablets and the television, we spend hours each day staring at a screen. This has become such a major part of our culture that we don’t often think about it.

The amount of time we spend using these devices, coupled with the proximity of the screens to light emitted by these can have a negative and long term impact on our eye health.

Signs that blue light is having a negative impact on your health

Those who are exposed to blue light day in and day out will likely start to notice that their eyes feel dry, strained, and tired. In extreme cases, you may also notice redness and blurry vision.

Many people also notice that they get headaches after being exposed to blue light for a long period of time. This can be extremely detrimental to work productivity, especially if you have a job where all of your work involves exposure to blue light.

Another huge negative effect that blue light has on our health is that it damages our sleep cycle. Although you might notice that you feel just as tired, if not more tired, than you usually are after being exposed to blue light, you’ll probably have trouble falling asleep.

This is because exposure to blue light reduces your body’s production of melatonin, which is a natural hormone that helps us fall asleep and maintain a healthy circadian rhythm. You might also have trouble maintaining normal sleep patterns, which can be extremely detrimental to other aspects of your health. After all, the amount of sleep you get can directly affect your mental performance and physical functioning throughout the day.

Alternatives to anti blue light glasses

If you’re not quite ready to purchase a pair of anti blue light glasses, there are a few trips and tricks you can implement to minimise the detrimental effects of blue light:

1. Avoid using electronic devices before bedtime.
2. Using blue light screen protectors on your laptop, cell phone and ipad.
3. Take regular breaks from screens using the 20-20-20 rule (Every 20 minutes spent using a screen, try to look away at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds).
4. Use a low blue light desk lamp.
5. Install blue light blocking software, however this will change the way the quality of the colour on your devices.
6. Use a black out mask when sleeping. Studies show that even though your eyes are closed, our eyelids are translucent and light can still disrupt your circadian rhythm.

The takeaway

There is plenty of research that supports minimising blue light from our devices. Anti blue light glasses are a great solution to the problem of blue light exposure, because they are portable, and you can easily take them on and off depending on what you are doing. You’ll probably notice that after using anti-blue light glasses for a while, your headaches, dry and tired eyes, and poor sleep quality will all diminish, and you’ll be able to work on your computer or watch TV without worrying about your health. They also naturally increase the contrast on the screen, which makes things easier to see and therefore reduces the level of strain on your eyes.