We have heard for years about the harmful effects on our eyes from watching too much television. I recall as a kid that many parents warned their kids that sitting too close to the television could make them go blind. Today, few of us who did sit too close are blind, but is there a real danger from electronic screens?

Today, millions of Americans now work in jobs where they spend much of their work time in front of a computer screen. Many of them come home and log on to their home computers or tablets. In between work time, they check out messages, email and more on their mobile phones. Millions of school kids and college students also spend many hours in front of a computer, tablet or mobile phone.

For over the past several decades, I’ve spent much of my waking time in front of a computer screen. Many a night, I go to bed with tired, dry and irritated eyes. I’ve just chalked it up as eye strain and used over the counter eye drops before going to bed, as do so many others.

Last week, I saw my ophthalmologist for my routine exam. This is important since I am a type 2 diabetic and loss of vision is a major result of diabetes. The last time I saw my eye doctor, she showed me on the images she took of the insides of my eyes, where the impacts of the diabetes were showing. I also had a couple of blood vein occlusions. On the recent exam, the eye doctor showed me that much of the impact of the diabetes she had previously seen is no longer there, nor were the vein occlusions. She was very pleased with what she saw, which was a result of my eating right and keeping my blood sugar levels and A1C down.

I am now working for a major financial company and spend all day in front of dual computer screens. I ordered a pair of single vision glasses to use while working on the computer. She said that they would put an anti-computer glare coating to help protect my eyes.

I told her that I had recently written an article about the benefits of taking a supplement called lutein to help protect the eyes when spending so much time on the computer. She told me that she had just read a new report about an 8-year study that proved that prolonged exposure to the blue-light omitted by electronic screens kills the pigment cells in retina.

Then she said that she highly recommends everyone working with computers to take lutein and especially lutein combined with zeaxanthin. She went on to explain that this combination not only helps protect the eye from the electronic blue light, but it also helps restore some of the pigment cells of the retina.

The pigment cells of the retina are a surface layer of epithelial cells that performs the following functions:

• Absorbing the scattered light that enters the eye.
• Filters out some of the harmful radiation that enters the eye which reduces the photo-oxidative damage to the rest of the retina.
• Barrier that helps protect the inner cells of the retina by working with the immune system.
• Buffering ions that enter the eye.
• Moisture control

The layer of retinal pigment cells is constantly being damaged and replaced and have a system that helps clean up the damaged cells. This is where the lutein and zeaxanthin come into play in helping to nurture the natural replacement of these important pigment cells.

Without proper protection, the retinal pigment cells can become damaged to the point where they no longer provide the functions they were designed to do and the result can be permanent damage of retina and has been suggested as a possible cause of some instances of macular degeneration.

The bottom line is this: if you spend a lot of time on a computer, tablet or mobile phone, you NEED to take measures to protect your eyes. If you wear glasses, get a pair with the anti-computer coating and take lutein and zeaxanthin. My doctor says she can’t recommend it high enough and said that it extremely vital to eye health.