Category Health

Adverse effects of staring at your phone too long and possible preventions.

officialmorisblog 1 Comment

If you ask the majority if they can do without their phones for a week, the major answer is a resounding ‘no.’ Almost every one of us is guilty of this because the world has gone digital. 

The majority of the transactions we make are online, and it is done via our phones. However, it’s also expedient to note that some health hazards surround staring/glaring at the phone or laptop screen for too long. 

In a study published in the journal scientific report, Professor Ajith Karunarathne writes: “it’s no secret that blue light harms our vision by damaging the eyes’ retina.” His team further argues that blue light is very hazardous to the overall health of our eyes; this is because the eye’s cornea can neither block nor reflect it. 

Some of the other eyes effects of staring at the phone or system screen for too long are:

1. Eyestrain

I guess the majority of the people whose day begin and ends on their mobile screen must have found themselves with dry eyes, tired eyes, and blurred vision at one time or the other, which translates to the fact that your eye is taking in a lot of strain and it’s also been affected.

Studies have it that straining or focusing your eyes on one thing for too long can cause Myopia. I’m sure the majority of us are familiar with what Myopia is. Myopia is short-sightedness. So, what’s the best way to prevent this since we all can hardly do without our phones? 

The most suitable way to prevent strain is by intermittently taking breaks from your mobile phones/systems. Avoid staring/focusing on your phone screen for too long to avoid eye health issues. Take conscious breaks from your system.

2. Blinking dysfunction

Blinking dysfunction is when you blink excessively without having the ability to control it, which can be pretty irritating. Although many factors can lead to blinking dysfunction, the most glaring cause is when something is on the eyes’ surface, which is, of course, temporary. 

However, some of the other things that can cause blinking dysfunction are eye irritation, e.g., dry eyes; eyestrain can also cause blinking dysfunction, and also vision problems such as Myopia can lead to blinking dysfunction.

3. Impaired vision

There’s no doubt that many have had a type of visual problem at some point in their lives. For some lucky ones, these problems can be easily treated with contact lenses or eyeglasses.

However, part(S) of the eye or brain involved in processing images can become paralyzed or damaged – this is when severe or total loss of vision can occur. Unfortunately, the eyes cannot be fully restored with contact lenses, eyeglasses, or surgery.

Although, according to an ophthalmologist affiliated with sharp community medical group, Dr. Arvind Sini, “there is no clinical evidence that prolonged screen use causes permanent vision loss. Dry eyes and eye strain, yes. But nothing long term.”

4. Eye pain and migraine

Straining your eyes on mobile screens can cause eye pains and migraines.  Asides from the eye pain, it could also cause blurry visions. According to the vision council, “over 27 percent of people have experienced headaches as a result of digital eye strain.”

So, we’ve mentioned a few of the health hazards staring at the mobile phone excessively can have on the overall health of our eyes. There must be possible ways to prevent these issues, especially when we cannot do without our smartphones and digital devices. Look below for the possible protection of the eyes against all these dangers.

Possible ways to protect your eyes health from your mobile screens

1. Adjust the size of your text

Try making the text on your screen bigger to make it easier to read. Try as much as you can to avoid squinting your eyes to read a text.

2. Always remember to blink.

Staring at your mobile screen excessively could cause dry eyes and other eye irritation. By remembering to blink, your eyes repel irritants, retain their moisture, and remain refreshed.

3. Take breaks

Always remember to take breaks intermittently. When you glare at your phone for a few minutes, you can look away from it for a few seconds. Preferably, try to look at things at a distance during these intermittent breaks.

4. Reduce the brightness of your phone

Adjusting your phone’s brightness to regular will make it much easier to use and comfortable for your eyes. Asides from this, you’ll also get to preserve the battery level of your phone.

Final thoughts

Although the phone has become a constant companion of everyone in the 21st century, the majority cannot do with their phones even for an hour. However, when we consider the adverse effects staring at the phone for too long can cause on our eye health, we shouldn’t hesitate to take little breaks from staring at our phones.

The mystery behind the colour of your nail

officialmorisblog Leave a comment

You know that feeling you get when you’re about to be tested in one way or the other? The angel on your right shoulder says, ‘everything is gonna be fine.’ while the devil on the other shoulder whispers, ‘it won’t go well; just walk out now and let go of the trauma of failing.’ That was precisely how I felt sitting in the examination hall, waiting for the examiner to bring in our questions.

It was a mathematics exam, and need I say, it hasn’t been my favourite subject for a very long time. I had tried to study, but it’s not like every other subject where you could just read and pass; you need to work it – and to work, there has to be an expert to put you through. I know it’s so simple to many people though, but people like me don’t find it interesting.

Random thoughts kept coming to my head. If I could borrow a brain now, whose brain would it be? Probably my big brother’s brain – that guy is so good; he doesn’t need a textbook. Or my runaway mathematics teacher? Man, I would be relaxed by now. Or I can make do with Abdul’s, man does not need studying maths; he’s practically the mathematics guru. The last option is more like it; he literally begged to be a part of me; I guess he needs to prove it.

I decided to ease my thoughts and focus. I looked sideways at my seat partner – he was praying with hands held up in front of him. Then, I stopped. I stopped doing whatever it was I was doing when I noticed his nails.

I know it might seem like an overreaction, but It wasn’t. I haven’t seen a fingernail so black and thick. I stared hard at the nails, thinking the boy probably used a ‘Lali’ or something, but no, that was his nail’s colour. The mystery of the black, thick nails got my spirits excited for research. My findings are highlighted in the paragraphs below.

What the colour of your nails tells about your overall health

The nail colour should generally be a colour pink, with the healthy nail plate being pink and the tip being white as it grows off. The change in the colour of the nails could be an indication of a severe health complication.

As I delved into the research, I noticed other nail colours that I would have found weirder than the colour black had I seen them. The nail colours are blue, green, pale, yellow, red, brown/copper, grey, white, and purple. Each colour symbolizes different ailments – these ailments/conditions are addressed one after the other.

Black Nails

Black nails could indicate underlying health conditions such as bacterial infections, vitamin B-12 deficiency, chronic kidney disease, trauma, liver diseases, cancer, or silver deposits.

Blue Nails

Blue Nails are medically termed cyanosis. Sometimes blue nails could be caused by cold or constrictions; if the standard colour doesn’t return after warming, it might be due to a severe underlying illness. Blue Nails indicate a variety of medical conditions such as:

  • Lung and breathing challenges include asthma, long-term bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and other respiratory malfunctions.
  • Raynaud’s disease: The finger and toenails whiten, then turn blue. It may alternately benumb and painful once exposed to cold.
  • Wilson’s disease – Hepatolenticular degeneration.
  • May point out an unusual elevated form of haemoglobin in the circulation.
  • Septicemia: This often occurs when there’s a bacteria infection in the bloodstream.
  • Argyria: This is caused by exposure to some chemical compounds.

Green Nails

Green nails could be caused by cleaning agents, allergies, fungal infections, bacterial infections, and chronic Emphysema.

Yellow Nails

Yellow nails may indicate: diabetes, the nicotine from cigarette addiction, chronic bronchitis, swollen Han can also cause yellow nails, respiratory disorders, which might indicate problems with the lymphatic system.

Red Nails

This color indicates high blood pressure, lung disease, stroke, heart disease, carbon monoxide poisoning, and brain hemorrhage.

Purple Nails

This colour might be indicative of congenital difficulty, deprivation of oxygen, circulatory problems.

Pale/white Nails

Pale/white may be indicative of anemia, kidney, or liver disease. White line bands across the nails may also be a pointer to protein deficiency. 

White spots on the nails can also be an indication of iron and zinc deficiency.

Gray Nails

Gray nail indicates glaucoma, Emphysema, lung disorders, edema, malnutrition, and cardio-pulmonary disease.

Nail darkening on the sides

Darkening of the nails on the sides could be a pointer to kidney disease.

Brown spots under the nails

Brown spots under the nails could be an indication of psoriasis. Also, reddish-brown spots on the fingernails can be an indication of folic acid deficiency.

Final thoughts

The article didn’t start like I was going to be discussing the underlying health issues of our nails. But it is sometimes funny that we get to learn new things and find inspiration in the oddest days/ways.

I hope you check your nails like I did mine severally while writing this post. If you notice any abnormalities or signs, please do the needful by seeing a medical expert ASAP.

9 Reasons Working Long Hours Can Be Hazardous

officialmorisblog 4 Comments

As a growing child, I heard and witnessed some appalling, heart-wrenching stories/incidents which could have been avoidable. And, even as an adult, the stories are still unbelievable. It’s probably that it could have been avoidable that makes it worse. I remember this particular one; both parents are workaholics. They decided to hire a housekeeper, with the father’s brother’s support; let’s call him Lana. They thought with the uncle’s stay at their place, adequate care would be given to their children. Unfortunately, they thought wrong.

Lana and the housekeeper were shameless adults; they had sexual relations in the presence of the young, innocent kids and encouraged them to do the same. By the time the parents found out, it was all too late. The kids were addicted, and the brother eventually impregnated the sister. This is taboo, morally unjustifiable, religiously wrong, and a sin. But why do people choose long hours of work over family and their overall wellbeing?

Why do people work long hours?

The ideology of working so hard without a break to make it has been ingrained in most societies; this attitude is so bad that when nature calls and we fall asleep, we feel unproductive and lazy. But really, do long working hours make you more productive? How long of work is healthy? Or do we care so much about being a ‘zillionaire‘ that we are willing to jeopardize everything worth living for? What if the secret to being productive isn’t working long hours?

White-collar job isn’t making it easy on employees; one of the basic requirements for most jobs is working under pressure. The work environment and society judge your productivity level by the amount of time you spend working. The work environment glorifies long working hours, but does your physical and mental wellbeing glorify it? Does the havoc it wrecks in your relationship glorify it?

If we could recount stories of how long working hours have had adverse effects on family, marriages, relationships, health, and more, we’d be desperately willing to spend quality time after work before going back to it again.

The adverse effects of working long hours

  1. Broken ties with family and friend

I don’t think there is anything worth losing your family over. There are several cases of broken homes and broken friendships due to working overtime. Broken relationships could be slightly tolerable compared to the adverse effects working overtime has on such parents’ children. Many turned wayward, were sexually abused, and eventually became mentally depressed and miscreants in society.

2. Decreased productivity

Isn’t the reason for working overtime to increase productivity? But it’s however shocking that working overtime kills productivity. We think we’re working, but the brain has been shut down; the quality of work you produce will be very watery if you don’t relax your brain a while before picking up from where you stopped.

Study shows that the optimum working hours per week for productivity is 40hours per week, that is, almost 6 working hours in a day. However, every hour put in in over 40hours per week doesn’t breed productivity.

3. Overly stressed out

Working for long-overdue hours leaves a huge telltale on our bodies. The mind becomes overstressed that we barely have time to do other things. When stress sets in, other diseases are harbored. We become prey to various diseases, and we care little about people around us – people loathe you for what you’re doing to yourself. You barely have anyone to talk to because no one wants to be there for always physically and emotionally unavailable people.

4. High risk of heart attack

Many do not know that working long overdue hours could leave them with increased vulnerability to killer diseases such as heart attack. Studies show that people who work long hours have about 67% increased chances of the disease than those who work within the average working hours of about 7-8hours in a day.

5. Brain damage

Research has it that those who work for more than 55hours a week have a high chance of reduced mental skills, cannot recall words, short-term memory loss, amongst others, as opposed to those who work only for about 41hours a week. In essence: “Excessively long working hours can cause fatigue and physical and psychological stress, which potentially damage cognitive functioning.”

6. Higher risk of obesity

Another research has that people who work long hours are more susceptible to being obese than those who work for normal hours. A report says that: “Long work hours may be contributing to the rising obesity problem by reducing time for a physical activity…”

The mail online reports that “Obesity knocks 20 years of good health off your life and can accelerate death by eight years.”

7. Depression

A high level of depression could set in for people who tend to work more than the required hours in a week. As a result of long-overdue working hours, the worker has zero social life and finds it difficult to share happy and sad moments with loved ones.

8. Reduced hours of sleep and tiredness

Research has it that about 7-8hours of sleep must be enjoyed. Avoidance could lead to a high risk of severe health issues such as tiredness, diabetes mellitus, high blood pressure, acute myocardial infarction, cerebrovascular diseases, and the like.

9. Cancer

Studies also show that working long hours could increase cancer risk. According to an article in the British Journal of Cancer:

“Observational evidence suggests that working longer than recommended hours is linked to many behavioral cancer risk factors, such as excessive alcohol intake (Virtanen et al., 2015) and physical inactivity (Kirk and Rhodes, 2011; Angrave et al., 2015), possibly because individuals feel that they lack time to exercise because they spend extensive time at work (Escoto et al., 2012).”

Final thoughts

Working overtime is avoidable. You could be working the normal hours of about 7-8 hours a day and be twice productive as someone who works overtime. Working normal hours enables you to create time for family and loved ones, and importantly, guarantees a better health status.

If you think long working hours are the thing for you, why not sit back and strategize on your working hours for a while and see how productive you’ll be.