A doctor warned that prolonged smartphone use can aggravate dry eye syndrome, as a woman in her 60s who has the disease recently found out when her condition worsened and even the application of artificial tears failed to help relieve her symptoms.
Taipei City Hospital’s Yangming Branch ophthalmic surgeon Lin Yu-wei (林育葳) said that patients of all ages are increasingly seeking medical advice for eye disorders associated with the overuse of electronic devices.
Prolonged staring at a cellphone screen should be avoided, while warm compresses and massaging of the eyelids can improve dry eye symptoms, he said.
The lachrymal glands secrete tears that flow into the eyes before draining through the lacrimal duct into the nose, the circulation of which keeps the eyes hydrated, he said, adding that dry eye syndrome can develop when the tear film is too thin to moisturize the eyes.
Blinking naturally occurs every six to 10 seconds to moisten the eye, but a reduced blinking rate due to prolonged staring at electronic devices increases tear evaporation, which can lead to dry eye syndrome, he said.
Dry eye syndrome in young patients is largely associated with the excessive use of electronic devices, while the incidence of the condition soars among elderly people due to the functional degeneration of the lachrymal glands, he said.
Women are more vulnerable than men to the disease due to hormonal changes, he added.
Cleaning eyelashes can prevent the meibomian glands — responsible for producing the oily substance that sustains the eye’s tear film — from being congested, which can cause dry eyes with the solidification and degeneration of the oily substance, he said.
Patients with dry eye syndrome should eat more carrots, dark vegetables, foods rich in vitamin A and lutein to ameliorate the symptoms, he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching