Warning: Looking at your smartphone while lying in bed at night could wreak¹ havoc² on your vision.

警告：晚上躺在床上看手机会对你的视力造成巨大的伤害。

Two women went temporarily blind from constantly checking their phones in the dark, say doctors who are now alerting others to the unusual phenomenon³.

据报道，因长时间在黑暗环境中使用手机，两名女性的双眼出现了短暂性失明的症状，眼科医生就此向有相同习惯的人发出了警告。

In Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine, doctors detailed⁴ the cases of the two women, ages 22 and 40, who experienced "transient smartphone blindness" for months.

上周四，《新英格兰医学期刊》上详细介绍了一位22岁的女孩和一位40岁的女子患上"短暂智能型手机失明"症的病例。

The women complained of recurring⁵ episodes of temporary vision loss for up to 15 minutes. They were subjected to variety of medical exams, MRI scans and heart tests. Yet doctors couldn't find anything wrong with them to explain the problem. But minutes after walking into an eye specialist's office, the mystery was solved.

两人双眼短暂性失明的症状反复发作，每次失明时间长达15分钟。二人接受了各种医学检测，核磁共振扫描和心脏检查，检查结果却无法解释上述症状。而一位眼科专家几分钟的诊断令难题迎刃而解。

"I simply asked them, 'What exactly were you doing when this happened?'" recalled Dr. Gordon Plant of Moorfield's Eye Hospital in London.

"我只是问她们：‘你们当时在做什么？'"伦敦莫菲尔德眼科医院的戈登·普朗特博士回忆道。

He explained that both women typically looked at their smartphones with only one eye while resting on their side in bed in the dark — their other eye was covered by the pillow. "So you have one eye adapted to the light because it's looking at the phone and the other eye is adapted to the dark," he said.

普朗特表示，两名女子当时都躺在床上，枕头遮住了一只眼睛，看手机的则是另一只眼睛。"因此看手机的眼睛适应了手机屏幕的光线，枕头遮住的眼睛则适应了黑暗的环境。"他说道。

When they put their phone down, they couldn't see with the phone eye. That's because "it's taking many minutes to catch up to the other eye that's adapted to the dark," Plant said.

两人放下手机后，看手机的眼睛已经不能视物了，因为"两只眼睛要花很长时间才能恢复到相同的状态，"普朗特如是说。

He said the temporary blindness was ultimately harmless, and easily avoidable, if people stuck to looking at their smartphones with both eyes.

普朗特表示，短暂性的失明最终会对视力造成损害，如果两只眼睛同时看手机，则不会出现问题。

One of the women was relieved the short-term blindness didn't signal a more serious problem like an imminent⁶ stroke. He said the second woman was more skeptical⁷ and kept a rigorous monthslong diary tracking her fleeting⁸ vision loss before she finally believed him. But she couldn't stop checking her phone for messages from bed, he said.

普朗特表示，其中一位女性经过宽慰后不再担心短期失明会导致如中风这样严重现象的出现。另一位女性则将信将疑，做了一个月的视力跟踪检查后才相信了普朗特的话，可是她做不到不躺在床上看信息。

Dr. Rahul Khurana, a spokesman for the American Academy of Ophthalmology, called it a fascinating hypothesis but said two cases weren't enough to prove that one-eyed smartphone use in the dark caused the problem. He also doubted whether many smartphone users would experience the phenomenon.

美国眼科学会的发言人拉胡尔·库拉纳博士称，这一假设确实非常引人注目，可惜单单两起病例无法证明在黑暗用一只眼睛看手机会导致视力的短期缺失，他甚至怀疑是否有许多使用智能手机的人会遇到这种情况。

Khurana, who acknowledged that he's an avid⁹ cellphone user, said that he and his wife tried to recreate the scenario¹⁰ on a recent evening, but had difficulty checking their phones with only one eye. "It was very odd," he said.

库拉纳承认自己也是智能手机从不离手，某天晚上，他试着和妻子仅用一只眼睛来看手机，可二人发现，这种做法的难度很大。"这样看手机实在太奇怪了"他说道。