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Hours Spent Staring at Screens ‘Will Rob Millions of Their Sight Decades Early’

  • January 25, 2017

Calling it a “global epidemic of blindness," the Daily Mail reports that scientists believe high energy light from digital screens is damaging our retinas. One way of stemming the destruction is to use filters on tablet screens and looking away 20 feet away from your computers for 20 seconds every 20 minutes.

In addition to the danger of failing to use screen filters on your electronic devices, I believe that eye damage from the bulbs of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are another pervasive hidden risk factor for sabotaging your health. These lights are touted for their energy-saving capabilities, but the down side is LED light can have very serious long-term consequences.

In fact, LED lighting may actually be one of the most important, non-native EMF radiation exposures you're exposed to on a daily basis. If you choose to ignore these new insights, it can have very serious long-term ramifications, for example, leading to age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which is the leading cause of blindness in the United States and elsewhere.

When buying LEDs, one way to get a healthier light is to look at the color rendering index, which should be included on the packing information. Sunlight is the gold standard and has a CRI of 100 — so do incandescent light bulbs and candles. What you're looking for is a light that has an R9 (full red spectrum) CRI of about 97, which is the closest you'll ever get to a natural light with an LED. After sunset, I also use blue-blocking glasses, which can help regulate your internal clock to control your sleep patterns when it’s time for bed.