Holistic Eye Care Tips

Let's talk eyes today.

While we've written about the healthiest type of light for eyes before, we wanted to get into some more detail about eye-care tips.

A brief search on Google found a lot of similar tips surrounding things like diet, not smoking, not rubbing your eyes, and wearing sunglasses outdoors.

Some talked about the importance of not staring at your computer screen, and the 20-20-20 rule (which we love and include below). But not once do we see lighting mentioned!

Since our business is natural lighting, we'd also like to talk about about the importance of choosing the best possible indoor lighting, when it comes to taking care of your eyes.

Specifically, the best type of light for your eyes, some lighting characteristics that make it easier to see and read! (hint: these features are characteristic of our Chromalux® light bulbs!), and some great holistic eye-health tips.

So let's get to it:

Our favorite holistic eye-care tips

Apart from taking care of your nutrition, hydration, movement, and getting time under the sun each day, the following are some great practices to incorporate into your every day life!

20-20-20 rule: Most of us stare at screens at close range all day long - but our eyes are designed to see both up close and far away. Try the 20-20-20 rule to combat eye fatigue and dry eyes that could occur, while giving your eyes a gentle workout. Every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. Our eyes are muscles and they need to get a workout too!
Cup your hands over closed eyes: Don't look at the world through tired eyes! Rejuvenate your vision during the day by rubbing your palms together quickly to create some heat, then cupping your hands over closed eyes. The heat will help dissipate any tension in your eyes and eyebrows, while also allowing your eyes (and brain!) a moment to rest. Our eyes deserve a moment of peace too - they are constantly taking in and analyzing the world around us!
Set screens to a warmer color temperature: You may have your device screens set to turn a warmer color temperature at night, but we suggest setting it for daytime too! The blue light emitted from our screens is not only straining and unnecessary but potentially harmful to our eyes. For Mac users, head to your System Preferences > Displays > Night Shift > Custom > Slide the color temperature dial to the right for "more warm". Windows users: Start > Settings > System > Display > Night light settings. Play around with a setting that is white enough to see, but feels comfortable to the eyes.
Using Chromalux® Incandescent + Enhanced light bulbs during the night and day, respectively. We'll get into the eye-friendly, vision-enhancing properties of the Chromalux® light bulbs shortly (as well as some interesting backstory), but in a nutshell, these bulbs have been shown to improve visual acuity by effectively "purifying" the visible light spectrum and visual field.

Eye-friendly and Vision Enhancing Properties of Chromalux®

Even though color discrimination (CRI), plays a big role in how well we see under a certain light, there are some eye-friendly, vision-enhancing properties that are unique only to Chromalux® light bulbs.

The Chromalux® light bulb was first conceived in Finland, land of the Midnight Sun, where daylight is scarce during the winter time. Our founders were inspired by the findings of skin doctors who used a similar light source using the element neodymium, to more accurately detect abnormalities in their patient's skin. Just like under natural sunlight, they were able to see all details, texture, color, etc., under this type of lighting, almost as if they were under a magnifying glass!

-Enhanced Color Saturation

Neodymium - the color enhancing/purifying element used in our bulbs - has a narrow absorption band around 555nm in the visible light spectrum, which is the color we know as tennis ball yellow. Interestingly, the human eye is most sensitive to this color, and least sensitive to red and blue colors. By attenuating the yellow signal of light, our brain is able to interpret all the other colors more vibrantly, similarly to how you'd see colors under natural sunlight!

-Increased Contrast

By cleaning up the visual field and enhancing color, the eyes can relax. Neodymium has a great sharpening effect, so you can distinguish between textures more easily, and - when it comes to our eyes and reading - there is almost a 3D effect where black text seemingly lifts off of white pages.

Some parting words

For those of us blessed with good vision, most of how we see the world around us depends on our eyes: their ability to see, decipher, and distinguish between elements in our environment. Keep your eyes in tip top shape, and maybe you'll be able to see your world with a renewed perspective!

When it comes to health and ultimate well-being, we believe lighting should be part of your everyday wellness checklist: how does it look, how does it make you feel, do you have enough (or too much?), the list continues...

Lumiram (our parent company) has been making full spectrum light bulbs uniquely designed to enhance well-being since first opening its doors in 1959, and brought their flagship brand of neodymium glass light bulbs - Chromalux® full spectrum - to the United States in 1978.

We're glad you're here. If you enjoyed this article, consider joining our newsletter list, where every month our resident wellness lighting expert sheds some light on all things light and health. Not only will you gain valuable insights to the very important world of lighting, you'll also get a code for 15% off your first order with us - so you can try out all the above recommendations! Scroll down to find the subscribe box in our footer.

Wishing you all the best in light and health!