In today's terrifying news, it turns out that your phone can make you blind. Well, temporarily anyway.
The New England Journal Of Medicine reportedthat two women, 22 and 40 both experienced repeated, common incidents of vision loss for up to 15 minutes at a time for weeks and months.
The two women were sent on a wild goose chase of doctors, tests, MRI scans and heart examinations. All these tests ended up revealing nothing and the doctors were clueless.
Eventually, they found Dr. Gordon Plant of Moorfieldo’s Hospital in London, an eye specialist, and all he did was ask them about what they were doing when these incidents happened and it gave them their answer.
It turned out that both the women regularly looked at their phones in the dark. It was the position and the angle they were looking at their phone at that caused them to go blind.
They would both lie down in bed on their side and look at their phone but this meant that only one eye was actually looking at the screen, the other was buried in their pillow.
Dr. Plant explained that one eye adapted to the light because it’s ‘taking many minutes to catch up to the other eye that’s adapted to the dark.’
Dr. Plant diagnosed it and called it ‘Transient Smartphone Blindness.'
Yes, it's an actual thing with an actual name and it's actually terrifying.
Like this? You may also be interested in:
How To Ditch Your Mobile Phone For A Whole Saturday And Actually Have Fun
Follow Sarah on Twitter @sinclair_writes
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.