In today’s day and era, many of us find ourselves exhausted at work. Even though reasons for that can be many but lack of proper sleep is one of the major reasons. One study showed that 72% of Indians on an average wake up thrice every night and more than 85% of them attribute this as a reason towards lack of sleep.

Ideally, 7 to 8 hours of sound sleep is considered healthy. However, in today’s high tech age where almost everything is fast paced, it is not uncommon to see people with dark circles and puffy eyes owing to poor sleeping patterns.

This mainly happens because our eyes do not get enough time to rejuvenate. This aggregates to give rise to many side effects such as headache, dizziness, etc. along with many eye problems such as dry eye, eye spasms, and lack of blood circulation in eyes.

 

  • DRY EYES: Recurring episodes of sleep deprivation adds pressure on your eyes and thereby causes eyestrain, and dry eyes. Dry eye is an eye condition when your eyes do not have satisfactory level or quality of moisture. When your eyes have insufficient rest, it will demand continuously supply of tears to lubricate your eyes adequately.

Patients with dry eyes often experience light sensitivity, eye pain, itching, redness or even blurry  vision. Some even show prominent blood vessels in the eye making the eye appear red.

 

  • ANTERIOR ISCHEMIC OPTIC NEUROPATHY (AION): AION is a serious eye condition that is typically seen in patients who are middle aged to above 60 years of age. This can happen when people suffer from sleep deprivation for longer period. AION is an inflammatory disease of the blood vessels because of aging. This event in the long run can affect the optic nerve owing to reduced blood supply to our eyes that can cause permanent vision loss.

 

  • EYE SPASMS: Eye spasms are referred to as involuntary eye twitches that occur when you have a sudden involuntary muscular contraction in your eyelid. These are also called as myokymia. Although, eye spasms do not cause pain or impair your vision; however, they can be very be very irritating and leads to a lot of discomfort and mental agony.

 

What can you do to avoid these eye problems?

When we experience sleep deprivation symptoms, we often resort to over-the-counter medicines from chemist shop. However, we know ourselves that those drugs just give temporary relief and are not healthy in the long run. So, here’s a list of few lifestyle changes that can be easily made:

  • Get ample amount of sleep
  • Have a short nap as and when you get time in the middle of the day
  • Work in a quiet atmosphere
  • Try to finish your maximum work during daytime
  • Take short but regular breaks and give rest to your eyes

Feelings of grumpiness, fuzziness or feelings of unhappiness in life can happen when we are sleep deprived.

Do not hesitate and take that small but important step to figure out the exact cause of your sleep loss and visit an eye doctor in case of any eye problem.