Do you get headaches from your screen at work?

Why do you get a headache from sitting at the computer?

Because your eyes work all day at a distance they were not built to hold still at. Researchers call it digital eye strain, and in a review in BMJ Open Ophthalmology in 2018, Sheppard and Wolffsohn estimated that it affects half or more of computer users. The symptoms fall into two groups: those that come from the eye adjusting focus and alignment hour after hour, and those that come from the eye surface drying out.

The Swedish Work Environment Authority describes the same thing from the workplace side. Poor visual conditions can cause eye fatigue, stinging, a gritty feeling, light sensitivity and headache. They can also cause neck and shoulder pain, because people unconsciously push their head forward or lean in to see the screen. The headache often sits as much in your posture as in your eyes.

What does your employer have to do in Sweden?

More than most people think. Under the authority's regulations on the use of screens, AFS 2023:11 chapter 3, employers must regularly offer an eye examination to everyone who normally works at a screen more than one hour a day. Headache and neck or shoulder pain are named explicitly as reasons for an examination. The authority suggests an interval of roughly two to five years, and sooner if symptoms return.

If the examination shows you need special glasses for screen work, the employer pays. Phone or tablet work normally does not require special glasses. If you have not had an eye test in years and sit at a screen all day, that is the first step, and it costs you nothing. Rules differ outside Sweden, so check with your own employer or authority.

Do breaks help, and does the 20-20-20 rule work?

Yes, as long as you keep them up. 20-20-20 means that every twenty minutes you look at something about six metres away for twenty seconds. Talens-Estarelles and colleagues gave 29 symptomatic computer users software that reminded them according to the rule for two weeks (Contact Lens & Anterior Eye 2022). Both dry eye symptoms and eye strain went down. One week after the reminders were switched off, the improvement was gone.

The takeaway is practical: the break is a habit, not a cure. Put it in your calendar or an app, and tie it to something you already do, like standing up after sending an email.

Can blue light glasses get rid of headaches?

Nobody can honestly promise that. In 2023 Cochrane reviewed 17 randomised trials with 619 participants and found that blue-light filtering lenses probably make no difference to eye strain in the short term. The 2018 review describes results for blue-blocking lenses in screen symptoms as mixed. If you have recurring headaches, your eyesight, your workstation and if needed a doctor should look at them, not a lens.

What a lens does can be measured. LOWLIGHT ONE has an amber lens that filters 75–80 % of light between 415–455 nm, and the yellow lens on LOWLIGHT 03, 04 and 05 filters 95 % of blue light. Colours turn warmer and the white of the screen less harsh. Many of our customers wear them because long screen sessions feel more comfortable, and they put it better than we can.

Used a handful of times. Genuinely comfortable in front of the computer screen. When you take them off you realize just how much strain your eyes have been under.

Josef, customer review

What can you do today?

• Book an eye examination through your employer or occupational health service if it has been more than two years.
• Match screen brightness to the room. A screen brighter than its surroundings creates glare.
• Set a reminder every twenty minutes and look out of the window when it goes off.
• Position the screen so you do not have to push your head forward to read.
• At your desk during the day: LOWLIGHT ONE with the amber lens, or the yellow lens if you want more filtration.
• After work: orange lens on the sofa and red for the last hour, if the screen comes home with you. More in Blue light and melatonin.

When should you see a doctor about the headache?

If it is new, sudden or severe, if it comes with changes in vision, nausea, numbness or fever, or if it does not ease despite breaks and a checked prescription. Contact a healthcare service. Headaches have many causes that have nothing to do with screens.