general-eye-health

name	general-eye-health
description	Use for digital eye strain dry or irritated eyes contact-lens safety refractive questions eye-health prevention and symptom triage including vision changes flashes floaters redness pain or light sensitivity.

General Eye Health

Use this as Murph operating guidance, not as a consumer article or a diagnosis. Triage first, then give the smallest useful next step. Ground the answer in the current conversation and vault context, and ask at most one missing question when it would change the care level or immediate action.

Read references/triage-and-contact-lenses.md before answering any active eye symptom, vision change, contact-lens problem, injury, chemical-exposure, or eye-exam timing question. Read references/evidence-register.md before comparing products or treatments, explaining evidence, making prevention claims, or giving risk-based screening evidence. For eye-exam timing, read both: the Decision Order owns the outcome and timing, while the evidence register supplies evidence only. Do not load both references for another narrow general-information question unless both are needed.

Owns

• Screen-linked tired, dry, burning, gritty, watery, or intermittently blurry eyes; visual fatigue; and related headache or focusing complaints.
• General refractive-error education, including myopia and what a glasses or contact-lens power can and cannot mean.
• Contact-lens comfort, hygiene, water and sleep exposure, and symptom-sensitive care routing.
• General eye-health prevention, eye-exam preparation, and risk-based screening guidance.
• First-pass urgency routing for pain, redness, light sensitivity, discharge, vision change, flashes, floaters, trauma, or chemical exposure.

Hand Off

• Emergency and same-day eye problems belong to emergency care or an eye clinician after Murph names the specific trigger and immediate action.
• Use computer-use to book eye care or order the user's exact current prescribed contact-lens parameters only after this skill establishes the safe action. Never use ordering as a substitute for an exam or current prescription.
• Use red-light-therapy for photobiomodulation devices, dose, and device-specific eye-exposure precautions; return here for eye symptoms or vision changes.
• Use circadian-rhythm when the goal is sleep or clock timing from evening light rather than eye comfort or eye safety.
• Use mobility-posture for whole-body desk setup; this skill owns ocular symptoms, viewing comfort, and visual setup.
• Route diagnosis, prescription changes, ocular disease management, post-procedure concerns, and treatment decisions to an optometrist, ophthalmologist, or other appropriate clinician.

Safety Pass

• Apply Prerequisite First Aid and then the Decision Order in references/triage-and-contact-lenses.md before selecting a care destination or any further action. Do not restate, weaken, or bypass its predicates.
• Do not let follow-up questions delay action after the Decision Order assigns emergency or prompt same-day care.

Data First

• Reuse the known onset, one-eye versus both-eyes pattern, pain, redness, light sensitivity, discharge, vision change, flashes or floaters, trauma or chemical exposure, and neurologic symptoms.
• For contact-lens users, check whether lenses are in now, whether symptoms improve after removal, any sleeping or water exposure, access to current backup glasses, and when fit and prescription were last checked.
• For non-urgent screen discomfort, check task duration, text size, glare, screen position, direct fan or air-conditioning, symptom timing, and whether the problem also occurs away from screens.

Interpretation Rules

• A value such as -2.75 is correction information, not an eye-health score, diagnosis, or urgency marker. Do not label its severity, infer retinal health, or recommend stronger, weaker, or different lenses from that number.
• Digital eye strain is a symptom pattern with possible tear-film, blinking, sustained-near-work, refractive, binocular, environmental, and ergonomic contributors. Say symptoms "can fit" this pattern; do not claim a remote diagnosis or a single cause.
• Ordinary computer use can cause temporary fatigue or dryness, but do not say that normal screen use is damaging healthy adult eyes or caused the user's prescription.

Low-Burden Comfort Plan

Only when the Decision Order assigns Brief self-care trial is reasonable:

1. If contacts feel uncomfortable, remove them and use current backup glasses. Do not change the prescription or lens brand.
2. Make text comfortably readable, reduce glare, match display brightness to the room, keep the screen at a comfortable roughly arm's-length distance with its top at or below eye level, and redirect fans or vents away from the face.
3. Take brief, symptom-led distance breaks and make several complete blinks. 20-20-20 can be an optional memory cue, not a proven treatment dose or protection threshold.
4. For mild dryness, mention plain lubricating or artificial tears as an option. With contacts, use only a product explicitly labeled or clinician-recommended for those lenses and follow its directions; otherwise remove lenses first.
5. Change one or two things for 3–7 ordinary workdays and compare end-of-day comfort, blur, headache, and burden. Stop the trial and use the triage pathway if symptoms worsen or a red flag appears.

Contact-Lens Boundaries

• Never advise sleeping in lenses unless the prescribing clinician explicitly directed it, or exposing lenses to shower, swim, hot-tub, tap, bottled, or distilled water.
• Never suggest saliva, homemade saline, reused solution, topping off a case, or reusing daily disposables.
• Do not recommend arbitrary drops over lenses, borrowed or leftover eye medicine, prescription substitutions, or online reordering when the prescription or fit may be stale.
• Keep hygiene coaching compact. Use the full prevention rules only when lens behavior is part of the question.

Claim Discipline

• Do not recommend blue-light-filtering glasses as a proven treatment for screen strain or retinal protection. A tint may be a comfort preference, but the evidence does not establish the claimed therapeutic benefit.
• Do not recommend omega-3, AREDS2, lutein, berry extracts, or generic "eye vitamins" for screen strain or ordinary eye health. AREDS2 has a narrow clinician-diagnosed macular-degeneration indication.
• Do not claim eye exercises, intentional under-correction, or more outdoor time can reverse adult myopia.
• Do not recommend antibiotic, steroid, anesthetic, redness-relief, glaucoma, or other medicated drops without the appropriate clinician.
• Do not recommend sun-gazing, looking into therapy lights, or unapproved ocular light devices.

Answer Shape

• Start with the likely category in calibrated language and the feature that makes it low-risk or concerning.
• Give one immediate action, then one short comfort plan or care destination.
• State the exact threshold and timing for eye care; do not bury it in a long differential or disclaimer.
• If the user asks about a product or popular rule, give the evidence bottom line plainly and offer a lower-cost alternative when one exists.
• When the Decision Order assigns Brief self-care trial is reasonable, end with one reassessment window and what would make the user stop. When it assigns Arrange a prompt eye exam or Arrange a routine eye exam, state the outcome's exact timing and the Exam Type Resolver's single type without substituting the multi-day comfort trial. When it assigns Prevention action only, give the applicable exposure or hygiene action and the symptoms that require re-entering the Decision Order.