As someone who spends a lot of time in front of a screen, I know the effect it can have on the eyes. At the end of the day, your vision could get blurry and you might have to squint to see properly.
Sadly, this is how most people spend their day at work throughout the world. This has had grave consequences for our eyesight. Also, aging doesn't help either as eyesight tends to decline as we get older.
Of course, we can use spectacles and just go about our day. After all, they have been around forever. However, if your eyesight didn't decline due to one reason or the other, that would be much better!
If researchers from University College London are to be believed, there might be a simple solution to improve your eyesight. And you wouldn't even have to go to a doctor for this.
Deep Red Light - The Savior?
So, the researchers found out that exposing the human eyes to deep red light for up to three minutes a day can be vastly beneficial. It can pause or reverse declining eyesight.
Their study has been published in the Journals of Gerontology, and you can check it out for yourself. Although the sample size is quite small, it could lead to better insights.
According to the study, as we age, the cellular function in our body declines slowly. The same applies to the photoreceptor cells in our retinas too. The mitochondria, that are responsible for producing energy, decline with aging. Hence, photoreceptors, that are power-hungry, don't receive as much energy as they need, leading to a decline in eyesight.
However, after being exposed to near-infrared light with a wavelength of 670 nanometers, the performance of the photoreceptor cells improved greatly. This was discovered by studying the eyesight of 24 people aged between 28 and 72, before and after exposing their eyes to the deep red light.
If further studies confirm this effect, then it would get easy for people to "recharge" their eyesights. All they would need to do is simply stare at the right LED flashlight for three minutes a day for a specific period of time.