Do You Spend 60 Minutes at Your Computer?

We asked for a show of hands and examples from a class of 30 highschoolers, whether they had serious stress in their daily lives. They wouldn’t shut up.

We asked a class of IT executives about stress. Half denied it existed; the other half claimed it never ended.

What is Stress

The term was swiped from physics. It is a force that produces strain on a physical body, and is measured in units of force divided by units of area.

In physiology, stress is an internal response to stimuli or pressures that challenge an organism’s ability to adapt and cope. Stress disrupts homeostasis (equilibrium). Get this – stress is a vasoconstrictor, meaning stress causes a narrowing of blood vessels including the muscular walls of the large arteries, arterioles, and veins.

What happens is a lack of blood flow, reducing oxygen and glucose to your cells. Untreated, stress affects the immune system, and can be life-threatening.

Stress has a direct effect on the Telomeres, which are bundles of DNA at the ends of your chromosomes in control of aging and longevity. The shorter the Telomeres, the more advanced the end of the cell’s life-cycle. Death.

Google: Dr. Hans Selye, General Adaptation Syndrome; coined the term stress, wrote 32 books and 1,500 articles on stress. He discovered the role of emotional response on wear-and-tear on the human body.

Sitting At Your Computer

I quizzed a dozen of my friends about how much time they spend daily on the computer, and they are not IT specialists. Average is 4-6 hours, at office and home.

Shallow Breathing

After 20 minutes at the computer our breathing pattern changes from diaphragmatic (deep) to shallow (top-of-chest) inhalation. It is not a conscious decision, it comes from lack of muscular body motion. No activity and the blood pools. All the blood drops to the lowest part of your body.

Lack of movement slows up blood circulation, heartbeat, and respiration. Your heart must pump harder, and the immune and nervous systems weaken.

Put this bit of scientific knowledge into prospective. You (Homo sapiens) have 62 thousand miles of blood vessels. Picture this: that is more than twice around the world. All 62K miles of arteries, veins and capillaries need oxygen and glucose to function or they die.

It is your carotid arteries that carry oxygen to your brain. How long can you hold your breath? U.S. Navy Seals can survive without oxygen for up to 5-6 minutes. Not me.

What do ITs get stressed over?

They worry about computer bugs, viruses, hackers, data loss and system crashes. What about highway traffic, relationships, and career advancement?

Sixty-Seconds to Overcoming Computer Stress

If you can hold your breath for 30 seconds, you can improve your respiration capacity. Alveoli are air-sacs in your lungs that exchange gas between oxygen and carbon dioxide. You got 300 million alveoli in each lung.

Breathe-Stretch-Shake and Let-It-Go!

1. Stand up please. You are going to take three diaphragmatic (deep) breaths and hold each one for a count of 10-30 seconds. Exhale.
2. Now stretch your arms out and move them up and down like a windmill. Lift each leg and stretch as far as you can go without falling.
3. Shake your arms and legs, twist the muscles of your stomach, and make a funny face by squishing face into a twisted smile. Squeeze your face.
4. Swing your arm and slap your sides making a loud noise. Silently or aloud say the phrase – Let-It-Go! Do it again for good measure.

This strategy requires about 90 seconds, and overcomes stress for about 90 minutes. Only do it if you wish to live out your full longevity. That’s it? We suggest you repeat the Breathe-Stretch-Shake and Let-It-Go! strategy, each 90 minutes you are attending to your computer.

The Eyes Really Do Have It

After 60 minutes of concentration on your computer, you eye muscles weaken. How come? You are using narrow-vision, and ignoring your peripheral ocular muscles. You own six (Rectus and Oblique) muscles in each eye, plus the one that lifts each eyelid. On the computer you only use two of them to focus on the page.

Google: VOS (Vestibulo-Ocular-Reflex) and Extra-Ocular-Muscles)

Two-Minutes

If you are concerned about being a sighted person for the rest of your years, we suggest a baby-easy strategy called Sock-it-to-them Infinity. Your goal is to trigger all 12 eye-muscles to exercise by contraction (constrict) and dilate (widen).

1. Strand up, please and focus on a spot on the wall about 10 feet away. You spend your time on the computer using your Central (narrow) vision, now you are going to use your Peripheral vision for (wide) viewing.

2. Consciously widen your vision to take in the left and right sides of the spot you are focusing on. Just relax your focus and choose to include your left, and then simultaneously include your right side, in your Field-of-Vision.

3. Can you picture in your mind a reclining number 8? It is the symbol for Infinity in math, and is called lemniscate from Latin for ribbon. Now like an air-guitar, draw an air-Infinity symbol. How big? Two-feet wide, by up to 12 inches high. How many times? Six sets.

4. Keep you head still while moving your eye to follow the Infinity symbol as your Passive hand (index finger) creates it. See as far left and as far right as possible to exercise all 12 eye-muscles. Switch hand to your dominant index
finger and do another six sets.

5. Continue making the air-infinity symbol, but this time permit your head to move along with your eyes. First set is to see extremely left and extremely right. Second set is to see the extreme upper-left, and extreme upper right, and lastly, choose to see your extreme lower left and extreme lower right. You are exercising all twelve-eye-muscles.

The more you stretch your eyes the more successful this two-minute exercise.

What are the Benefits

Avoid Dry-Eye and floaters, and some ophthalmologists suggest you reduce the risk of cataracts, macular degeneration and maybe detached retina. We recommend this strategy to merely exercise your eye muscles, and avoid stress which often settles in your eyes.

Endwords

If you become a speed reader and use a Pacer to exercise your eyes, you will be conditioning your eye-muscles for wide (dilation) vision using peripheral vision. The rest of the world depends exclusively on their Central (foveal) vision, and it is
as slow as a snail.

Would it improve your career prospects to read and remember three-times more than your peers? We suggest these skills permit you to access greater knowledge than your competitors, and places you in the fast-lane for promotion.

If you are concerned with your health, longevity, and career, ask us for details.

See Ya,

Copyright © 2008
H. Bernard Wechsler