Are Blue Light Blocking Glasses Necessary?
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Is blue light harmful? What kind of effects could it have on our bodies? Ophthalmologist Dr. Jennifer Yang explains what exposure to blue light could mean for us and if blue-light-blocking glasses are the solution.
Transcript:
What is blue light?
I've been getting a lot of questions about blue-blocking glasses, or blue-blocking lenses. “What is that?” “Do I need it?” “I've heard everyone needs to get a pair.” It's a little bit controversial. So, just to kind of take a step back. What is blue light? Why is blue light so much in the public eye, getting so much publicity?”
The blue light that we're talking about, it's not ultraviolet, so it's not a dangerous type of light like that. It’s part of the visible spectrum of light. If you think about a rainbow, it’s literally just the blue section of the rainbow, so it’s blue light. It's found with sunlight, as I said. It's found in all the light bulbs - the traditional ones and the high-efficiency light bulbs like the LEDs. LED is what's inside of most of our screens. Those actually have more blue light than traditional light bulbs. Fluorescent lights, LEDs, those sort of things do have more blue light in them. So indoor lighting, I guess one could argue has more blue light than sunlight.
It's a known fact that blue light or exposure to blue light can suppress a hormone in your body called melatonin. Melatonin is what regulates the sleep-wake cycle. Exposure to blue light suppresses melatonin so, in theory, you feel less sleepy. In investigating the consequences of this, they looked at some people who work on the night shift - people who are probably exposed to much more blue light than average because they're working all night and they're exposed to indoor lighting, which may have more blue light. They found that obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease seem to be more common. Was it a direct cause of blue light, or is it because they're up all night and people get the munchies, and they eat more than they should? There's really nothing proven that it's a causative issue, but people claim that too much blue light can cause these things.
Some people even say blue light can cause cancer. None of this is proven. There's no evidence, no conclusive study that proves this, but nonetheless blue light does get a bad reputation. In addition, there is no evidence that blue light, again not ultraviolet, blue light harms the eyes in any way.
All of the large academic centers reassure their patients that there's really nothing wrong with blue light in terms of the eye. Some people will talk about the little laser pointers and little lights that have an LED bulb in them. Those all have disclaimers saying “don't look at it,” “it might damage your eyes,” and that's not so much because of the wavelength. It's not because it's a blue wavelength of light. It's really more the intensity of it. It's light that is compacted into a little source, so when you look at that bright source of light, in theory, it could be damaging to the eye but not so much that it's because of a blue wavelength.
Are blue-light-blocking glasses necessary?
Again, there's nothing proven that blue light harms the eyes. There's no reason to believe that it harms the eyes. So, are blue-blocking lenses necessary? I would kind of have to say no.
Whether wearing some sort of glass or eye protection over your eyes helps other things – maybe it blocks a draft that might be affecting your eyes or making your eyes feel uncomfortable–They may have other benefits, but there's really nothing specific about the blocking of blue light that helps the eyes.
Those are the main things of computer vision syndrome. My main takeaway is that I want to reassure all of you that there's really no damage being done by being in front of a computer all the time. Obviously, parents tell their children, “Oh, don't sit in front of the TV,” you know, “if you play video games all day, you're going to ruin your eyes.” It's not really true. Well, I can follow up on that for a second, but it's nothing about the blue light that's really damaging your eyes. It’s more of a nuisance due to the physical strain on the eyes and the dryness like we already talked about.
It definitely can make your eyes feel uncomfortable, not to say that those feelings aren't significant. They are significant and they can be, in a way, life-affecting. But you don't have to worry about blindness or that you're going to get some eye disease down the road because you're on the computer all the time. And so with a few changes of habit, I think it can be very manageable.
Please remember the 20/20/20 rule. Remember every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. I'm sort of a big proponent of holistic approaches. A healthy lifestyle is going to lead to a healthy body, and your eyes are attached to your body. So if you have good health, the eyes will probably follow.
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