Temporary blindness linked to smartphone use in the dark
By Associated Press
Jun 22, 2016 4:26 PM CDT
This July 21, 2016 photo shows a smartphone held for a photograph in New York. In a letter published Wednesday, July 22, 2016 in the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors detailed separate cases of two women who experienced "transient smartphone blindness" for months. Doctors discovered it was caused...   (Associated Press)

LONDON (AP) — Doctors have an unusual warning for anyone prone to checking their smartphones in the dark: make sure you use both eyes.

In a letter published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine, doctors in London detailed the cases of two women who inexplicably suffered temporary blindness lasting up to 15 minutes.

But soon after walking into an eye specialist's office, the mystery was solved. Dr. Gordon Plant figured out that the women habitually looked at their smartphones with one eye while lying in bed in the dark, with the other eye covered by the pillow.

That mismatch meant that when they put down their phones, the eye adapted to the light took time to catch up to the dark-adapted eye, resulting in temporary blindness that Plant described as harmless.