Ask HN: Please share tips and strategies for dealing with eye strain Looking for strategies and tips for dealing with eye strain. i.e. - Types of contrast (i.e. solarized) - Types of eye drops - Smaller/Larger font/refresh rate/etc - extra sleep? (my eyes are red) |
https://iristech.co/pwm-flicker/
author at TED - https://youtu.be/HN30fO2I2aU
2/ Adjust the light bulbs and their temperature (think warm). Fluorescent lights cause problems for my co-worker.
All of them make a huge difference for me. Sauna is not something that prevents it, but cures it. I can go to sauna after a tiring day and return ready to get going again (regarding eyes).
Seriously almost all our modern ills could be solved by this advice: "return to monke"
Every 20 minutes, look 20 feet away, for 20 seconds.
There are many apps out there that can remind you. I use one on MacOS called Pause.
1. Artificial Tear Eyedrops (look for preservative free). Brands like Systane and Refresh are available at every pharmacy and will do the job. My recommendation for drops would be Optase. They recently released a new drop with ingredients that support restoring the quality and layers of your tears. They are thick and last the longest out of all the brands I've tried. They also come in a bottle while most preservative free drops come in daily use vials.
2. Punctal Plugs. These are absorbable little plugs that are inserted by an Opthalmologist into your lower eyelid where your tears drain out. They will slow down the drainage of your natural tears for 2-3 months until they dissolve and you will need it done again. Just make sure that the Dr is putting in dissolvable ones and also key here is to ask what duration plugs he has available, let him give you options usually it will be either 3 month or 6 month, you want the 6 month just so they last you longer, if you don't specify this they might put in 3 month to get you to come in sooner, usually will happen with private practice.
Optional while at Opthalmologist: Tell them about the red eyes, here in the US they will prescribe you some NSAID, basically an aspirin for the eyes to get rid of redness. It's a very cheap and safe drop to use now and then and great to just have at your house if your eyes flare up before you go to a party or some event. Prolensa is a brand name and Ketorolac is a generic (usually cheaper).
These are your easiest medical solutions. Other people in the thread have given good things to try as well so see what works for you. Take breaks as often as you can get yourself to, and maybe set your fonts a bit larger. Remember to blink! Put in drops every hour or two during a computer session.
If nothing advanced treatments like a drop called Restasis that increases your own tear production after 4-6 months of daily use is available. There's a lot of gimmicky procedures out there to heat up your eyelids and stuff, they are mostly nonsense and have ridiculous cost do not try them. You can buy a heat pad and put it over your eyes if you want to try something like that, Optase also sells one I'll link it all below. Not affiliated just a happy customer.
Regular Optase Drops: https://www.amazon.com/Optase-Dry-Eye-Intense-Drops/dp/B088P...
New drop that has ingredients that support restoring the layers of your tears:
https://www.amazon.com/OPTASE-MGD-Advanced-Dry-Drops/dp/B09X...
Mask:
https://www.amazon.com/Scope-Optase-Moist-Hydrobead-Technolo...
Also if anyone wakes up with red or dry eyes maybe a night ointment will help you (you will be blurry for a bit after putting it in):
https://www.amazon.com/OPTASE-Hylo-Night-Dry-Ointment/dp/B09...
As the strain comes from tension, the way out of the strain is to let go of the tension, and try not to grip with the eyes but to observe calmly, just as you would calmly observe the water flowing in a river.
Observe how tense the muscles around your eyes, around your forehead are. Observe whether your jaw is tense. See if you can allow your facial muscles to relax while working, and if you can allow your gaze to remain soft. Make pauses to relax the grip (the metaphorical grip on the situation you are in, as well as the actual muscle tension) every time you catch yourself tensing up.
One of the most effective tactic is to not stare at your monitor all the time. Close your eyes or look outside a window between your pomodoros.
Get your eyes checked and make sure you have the right lenses if you need any.
Definitely sleep more.
Don’t work on a bright monitor (or playing with your phone) in darkness. Always work in a well-lit environment. A quick test is to place a piece of white paper beside your monitor, and your monitor should be as bright as the paper.
Keep your monitor at the right distance, roughly at arm’s length.
Of course if you have pain or feel something is wrong do not use this to mask it, go in for a check.
Good monitors, at the right distance for your eyes (& glasses).
If you're expecting your eyes to perform like they did way back when, when you were ~20, develop realistic expectations.
By not focusing in all day and I can still see well after work. When staring at a laptop all day and my vision will be blurry the rest of the day.
I use Systane Ultra primarily, but Visine Multi-Action is what fixes the red. You don't want to over use Visine though, once a day if possible.
I also don't use dark-mode anything. Your pupils dilate more which makes your depth of focus much narrower so your eyes have to work harder to focus. I keep my monitor in Eco mode so it's not super bright which is also a source of strain.
My monitor also has a built in KVM which is super handy to switch between my work Macbook and personal desktop. I love it.
* Flicker free monitor (non-PWM backlight).
* Dark Reader browser plugin.
Nice to have:
* Ambient lighting.
* Curved monitors (reduces constant eye re-focusing on large monitors).
* Matte finish on monitors, avoid glass to avoid glare.
Flicker free is the major one. Many LCD that use a PWM backlight are pure torture at lower brightness levels. Ironically very old LCD with an actual lamp backlight are naturally flicker free. Ambient lighting can help mitigate the stress of flicker too.
Samsung didn't get flicker free offerings until 2021-ish. BenQ has had them since about 2014. Most OLED monitors are flicker free.
Isn't this a bad thing? I've been lead to believe one of the most useful techniques to alleviate eye-strain is frequent re-focusing at a variety of distances.
Compare flexing your arms to stretch, vs. moving your hand by exactly one inch. The former will contract and relax arm muscles from their stable position. The latter requires muscle tension to carry out a precision movement.
- blue light filter always on, on all devices with screens
- ambient contrast lighting. either buy a $5 table lamp and direct it to the wall at the back of your screen, or go crazy with expensive RGB. both work
- k-n-m rule. People say 20-20-20. but any number works, really. regularly stare away from the screen at a distance at regular interval
- use glasses with blue light filtering using ARC
- good sleep also matters
I do all these myself, and never get eye-strain, not even after intense sessions of 14 hours.
Ambient lighting matched to screen brightness, whether light or dark
Dark ambience = dilated pupil = 0.5 diopter decrease in lens focus
Reduce monitor blue light with F.lux, Apple Night Shift, etc
Best light: unfiltered daylight, e.g. window behind computer screen
Artificial: high CRI LED, low flicker, low blue (e.g. 2700K Sylvane Truwave)
20-20-20: look out window, or 20+ foot distant object for 20s every 20m
Tear film over eyes helps focus: blink, yawn, hydrate & track humidity
Increase eye-monitor distance: reduce eye convergence stress
Closeup/computer glasses: PD & CR-39 focal length for lens-monitor distance
Daily exposure to natural light, with distance focusing for eye muscles
20mg lutein daily from food sources or supplement
For presbyopia, daily convergence exercisesNB. 25 years+ heavy screen use, no specific monitor setup, no specific desk setup, still no significant eye strain or vision degradation.
Distant object
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"Decrease blue light form monitor using tools like f-lux"
"I have had lots of success with starring at magic eye stereograms for a minute or two once in a while. Initially I had to learn how to do it but it did pay off. As soon as the 3d image pops out move the eyes around the image including corners as well (also move eyes in circles or similarly to the infinity symbol across the image) while holding the 3d image in view. It's a bit difficult at first but once you learn it becomes easy. And as the more you do it at the beginning and as you get better at it the less you have to do it later on to de-strain your eyes. There's a version of tetris in magic eye 3d. It's challenging and fun. "
"Get further from the monitor, get a larger monitor and increase font size to make it comfortable to your eyes."
"Take eye breaks, stare in the distance through a window if not possible outdoors."
I'm in my 40s and started to have eye strain in my 20s. These helped methods me not reduce eye problems while working in front of a screen. I still have very sensitive eyes so I wear sunglasses even when it's cloudy but I do not yet wear optical glasses yet and eye strain at work is minimal, I don't even need night mode in my apps. At some point the strain was so strong that I was tempted to get glasses but the optician advised me to wait, I remember her saying that once you go that route there's no going back and am glad I didn't pursue glasses. My prescription was a bit like .5 for one eye and .75 for the other one back in my 20s and last time I checked. I assume it worsened a bit but I'm still getting by without glasses without too many issues. I'm expecting my vision to deteriorate a bit more as I get into my mid 40s early 50s.
2 - Buy glasses with blue light blocking filters.
3 - No screens at least 30 minutes before bed. Longer if possible.
4 - Avoid reading font that are too small. Zoom webpages on computers and boost font size on cellphone/tablets.
5 - Avoid reading in low light conditions. Low light makes the eyes force.
6 - No staring in direct light. Avoid having a direct light source in your eyes. I turn my lamps upwards so they lit up the ceiling and i do not see the light bulb directly.
7 - When my eyes are strained i find ways to make myself cry a little. When i feel a nice tear in both eyes i tilt my head back and close them for a minute. Tears heal eyes naturally. Afterwards my eyes are super red (like someone who cried) but at least they don't hurt anymore. I usually take a nap after that so the red disappears.
I hope this helps and you find ways to feel better.
Anxiety over eye strain can cause a positive feedback loop, because anxiety can make you more aware of your eye strain, which can make you more anxious.
To add on to other comments without repeating them, I have a small humidifier now (prevent dry eyes). Some nutrients that are supposed to improve eye health are lutein and zeaxanthin (kale, broccoli, grapes, etc), resveratol (grapes, blueberries, peanuts), and omega-3s (walnuts, flaxseed, fish especially salmon).
I also started eating fresh pineapple because there's some anecdotes that it might help prevent floaters, and I already have a couple at age 30 (probably because of my extreme myopia); I've also heard that fresh pineapple can help with arthritis.
Additionally, I use a Chrome extension that notifies me every 20min that it's time to take a break. I like that it has minimal features (time adjustment, enable/disable) and is only active when it detects you're actively using the computer. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/eye-blinker/fbgche...
It also depends on time of the year - seasonal allergy, dust, ambient light can add additional strain for my eyes.
I delayed getting glasses for a very long time, and the change was shocking from the moment the optometrist dialed in my prescription. Suddenly I knew what it was to see clearly again.
10/10 would recommend
The very basics are to sit as far as you can from the monitor and take eye breaks (periods looking off a decent distance away with soft focus like 20m+ or so).
If the distance you can sit from the screen is limited by visual acuity etc then get glasses and consider blue filter lenses (not so important truth be told as you can always warm the colour of your screen).
Make your eyes life easier use large scale text on the screen.
i also loathe (or rather my eyesight does) the Apple font rendering with antialiasing, and forced zoom on laptop displays so native resolution isn't offered, but Windows 11 (probably earlier versions too) and Linux (fedora and arch at least, daily driver on Apple hardware) font rendering feels great.
Best cure: Go outside!
Seriously, the distant focus and organic visual stimulus is like a screen scrubber for your retina...
Books:
"the bates method for better eyesight without glasses"
"relearning to see. improve your eyesight naturally!"
"habits for better vision - 20 scientifically proven ways to improve your eyesight naturally"
When I was using dark mode I felt hella fatigued.
I ended up being more productive doing this. Because it gives me time to take a step back and think about what I are working on. I often find solutions to problems while taking a break.