Jonathan Wilhoite Blog: Has A Smartphone Made Someone Momentarily Blind ?

Friday, June 24, 2016

Has A Smartphone Made Someone Momentarily Blind ?

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This, after a woman from England went to see doctors for fear that she was going blind in one eye, without knowing that a smartphone made someone momentarily blind in another part of the country.

Has any smartphone made someone momentarily blind?

The 22- year old British lady began complaining about having occasional blurry visions in one eye that happens at least once or twice a week. But she noticed the condition getting worse when it started happening every night.

Tests and brain scans were conducted, but doctors found no problems.

In another part of the country, a woman was also complaining about losing vision for 20 minutes at length in one eye and fearing that it may be caused by a stroke, landed her in a hospital’s emergency room.

Tests, however, gave no conclusive diagnosis for her condition.

Transient Smartphone Blindness

Researchers from the Moorfields Eye Hospital in London said that the condition is known as transient smartphone blindness, believed to be caused by a habit of gazing at a smartphone before falling to sleep.

The young lady recounts that it has been her habit of checking her cellphone lying in bed and using her right eye. Her left eye is often covered by a pillow or blanket.

The other patients, says that she always checks her cellphone every day before getting up. She said this habit has been going on for more than a year already

“They were looking at their smartphones and they just happened to have one eye covered because they were lying in bed,” says Omar Mahroo,who leads the study.

“The retina is pretty amazing because it can adapt to lots of different light levels, probably better than any camera,” he says. “It can reduce its sensitivity, so that when you’re on the beach or in the bright snow you can still see relatively well,” he says

One eye blind

The retina adjusts the light that enter the eye and can adapt to different variations of lighting and brightness levels. This was what these to ladies may have caused their ‘blindness’ to occur.

Both patients were asked the view their smartphones with only the left eye, followed by only the right eye in some occasions. Both ladies began to realize that the ‘blind’ eye were the ones they often use to gaze at the smartphone screens before sleeping.

Mahroo and his fellow researchers, to prove their point, conducted experiments on themselves where they went into a pitch black room with one eye covered then gazed at a smartphone for 20 minutes before powering it down.

True enough, using a device that gave out bursts of dim light, the exposed eye to the lighted screen took time to adjust to the new light environment.

Although Mahroo believes that it is not conclusive that smartphones may eventually lead to permanent blindness, there is still enough reason to caution that smartphone made temporarily blind is highly plausible and that too much exposure could cause some vision-related conditions.

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