Gazing at your smartphone in the dark may result in transient blindness, according to a recent study. This comes as a warning to people who sleep beside their smartphones.
The researchers have found two women transient smartphone blindness, a condition where they went blind in one eye after gazing at smartphones in the dark.
The first patient, a 22 year old woman from UK, had a practice of looking at her smartphone prior to falling asleep. She would lie on her left side and look at the screen mainly with her right eyes with her left eye being usually covered by the pillow.
The second patien, in her 40s faced similar problems when she woke up before sunrise and checked the news on her smartphone before sitting up. It had been going on for about a year, ever since she had injured her cornea, according to the report
Put away your smartphone when in bed
Omar Mahroo, ophthalmologist at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London and an author reported in a paper published in The New England Journal of Medicine, said that both the women were looking at their smartphones and they just happened to have one eye covered since they were lying in bed. In both cases, nothing bad was going on, adding that it is just that one retina was adapted to light and the other to dark, added Mahroo.
Mahroo further noted that the retina is quiet amazing since it can adapt to countless diverse light levels, almost certainly better than any camera. Retinas continually adjust when someone leaves a room and enters a somewhat dimmer room or goes inside after being outdoors.
Source: Think Natural Today
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