Can my eye strain cause daily headaches?

Question

Hi doctor,

Initially, I got headaches before five months. When it happened every day, I got my eyes checked. I found out I had weak eye muscles and was prescribed for glasses with power -0.75 in each eye. The headaches disappeared for two weeks and returned again.

When I consulted my eye doctor, he told me to take painkillers thrice a day. I consulted another doctor, but he also told me that I had the same power and my headache could probably be caused by weak eye muscles. The headache still did not go. I went to a new optometrist and got my eyes checked again. This time he prescribed me a power of -0.75 in left eye and -1 on the right with a little bit of cylindrical power.

The headaches disappeared for about two weeks. Again, I feel a slight headache for the past three days. I have been working a lot on my laptop and my eyes started watering when I went to watch a 2.5 hour movie at the theatre.

What is causing this?

I am a student and I can barely concentrate on my work with these incessant headaches.

Please help.

Thank you.

Answer 1

Hello,

Welcome to icliniq.com.

From what you have described, your headaches may be due to refractive error as it is resolving temporarily on wearing glasses. It is important to use glasses with the correct power regularly during waking hours.

Since you are a student, I assume that you are reading and using a computer or laptop fairly often. Continuous focusing can cause headaches. So, after every 15 minutes, close your eyes for 10 seconds and roll your eyes under closed eyelids.

Alternatively, you can look into the distance to relax your eye muscles. Another important thing is to blink often, voluntarily and especially while reading or using computers. This is to combat dry eye and computer vision syndrome.

I hope it helps.

Thank you.