Dealing with strain during exam season

ARTICLE & PHOTO BY GABRIELLA DRITSAS

For many students, exam season is filled with late nights, cramming study notes, and hours spent in front of your laptop. This can take a big toll on your body, resulting in eye fatigue, neck pain, and headaches. Thus, a balance between studying and self-care practices is necessary to ensure you keep yourself in good health.

Digital eye strain, or computer vision syndrome, can happen when the muscles that help the eyes focus become strained from spending too much time looking at your devices. Digital eye strain can be identified through symptoms including headaches, light sensitivity, dryness, double vision, and difficulty focusing. To avoid these symptoms, there are a number of things you can do.

Firstly, the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health & Safety (CCOHS) suggests keeping your screen an arms length away. In addition to this, it suggests following the 20/20/20 rule. This involves taking a 20-second break every 20 minutes and looking at something about 20 feet away. Exercises like this allow your eyes to take a break and “prevent feelings of fatigue from accumulating.”

Lastly, try wearing blue light glasses when looking at your screen. These specialized lenses aid in filtering out blue light that comes from electronic devices, including phones, laptops, and TVs. Blue light flickers which casts a glare and can reduce visual contrast. This can impact visual clarity and sharpness which causes fatigue and headaches.

Avoiding neck pain is another important factor to ensuring a comfortable study session. You can do so by setting up an ergonomic workstation that allows you to keep your screen at eye height, open up your shoulders, and keep your feet flat on the floor.

As suggested by Veritas Health, various exercises can be performed throughout the day to reduce neck pain. One exercise is the chin tuck. This can be done by sitting upright, looking straight ahead, placing a finger on your chin, and then slowly pulling your chin and head straight back until a good stretch is felt at the base of the head and top of the neck. At the end of the tuck, there should be some separation between your chin and finger.

According to the Mayo Clinic, tension headaches commonly arise due to stress. To mitigate the effects of stress, there are a couple measures you can take.

For starters, ensure that you are properly fueling your body. Pack study snacks to eat throughout the day. Healthline reports that certain foods may have “stress-relieving qualities,” such as various antioxidants and anti-inflammatory effects. A few of its recommendations include sweet potatoes, eggs, sunflower seeds, chickpeas, and blueberries. Staying hydrated is also always a good idea.

Proper sleep will also help to reduce headaches. While pulling an all-nighter to cram notes can be tempting, it will only set you back. According to Hopkins Medicine, sleep deprivation impacts your mood, memory, and health. For example, sleep deprived individuals are three times more likely to catch a cold, which would not be ideal during exam time.

Engaging in self-care is important. Try to follow these tips to improve your chances of a more productive and healthy exam season.