THIS 'EYE SPA' TREATMENT MIGHT BE L.A.'S MOST RELAXING SERVICE

WE TREKKED TO THE CITY OF INDUSTRY TO TREAT OUR EYESTRAIN, AND MORE

- DEBORAH VANKIN

AN ESTHETICIAN lightly massages reporter Deborah Vankin's eye area, top. New Vogue Spa's Himalayan Salt Room, center. The treatment includes a special mask and an electronic device with sonic vibration tech, left. A relaxed Vankin looks at her reflection, right.

Photographs by ARIANA DREHSLER For The Times

ADMISSION: I suffer from eyestrain. Even right this very second. As a reporter working on a computer more than eight hours most days, my eyes often feel fatigued and itchy by evening.

I'm not alone: More than half of the U.S. population lives with computer vision syndrome, also known as digital eyestrain, and nearly 16.4 million Americans suffer from dry eye syndrome.

So I was especially excited to stumble on New Vogue Spa, in City of Industry, which offers a relaxing, if intriguing, treatment called "Eyeball Care" - something I'd never heard of before at a day spa.

New Vogue Spa is an Asianstyle spa with Korean and Chinese influences. The spa's offerings include massages and body scrubs I was curious about the "Red Wine Body Scrub," but I couldn't help exploring eyeball care, which was much needed after my 50-minute drive from Silver Lake. (City of Industry is about 30 minutes from downtown L.A. without heavy traffic.) So it came to be that I found myself lying on a massage table, wearing what looked like protruding diving goggles, with clouds of cool, aromatic steam oozing from both sides of it and engulfing my face. A spindly plastic tube extended from my forehead to the "Eye Spa" machine. Serene spa music, a blend of classical piano and loudly chirping birds, trilled in the background as the machine sloshed and gurgled. It felt like lying, creekside, in a spa robe wrapped in a blanket of chamomile and rosemary-scented fog.