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Computers, Long Hours and Vision Problems?
msid asks: "I have been computing for almost 10 years, starting back in 1996 when my father bought me my first computer. In the process, I fell in love with computers and got stuck with them. The last year though has been a real challenge for me. I sleep 5 hours, in average, per day and I spend more that 15 hours in front of my laptop's monitor (a 17" TFT Widescreen), either programming or reading. I have never had 'problems' with my vision up until now. Do you have a specific way of using light sources in your workspace? I have heard of special glasses for computer users. Should I use them or not?"
"A week ago, I checked my eyes and I found 0.25 astigmatism in both of them. They told me that this is not necessarily a problem, and it is mainly due to the intensive computer work. The actual symptom is that I lose my concentration more easily now. Also, the lighting of the monitor is killing me, especially when combined with a white background. Since I am willing to continue working in the same pace that I do now, what do you propose? Is there a habit that you follow to relax your eyes? Is there a way of preventing vision problems?"
IANAO, but IMHO extensive time in front of your monitor is likely to just aggravate or expose conditions you already had or were predisposed to having. It is always well-agreed upon that the best therapy is to never do the same thing for too long. Your eyes would be happier if you got up every now and then and took a walk-- maybe walk to the deli for some Jolt or Dr. Pepper.
Btw, I've been sitting closely in front of large CRT and FP monitors for long periods each shot for over 15 years, and my vision is perfect. Not enough data to state anything conclusive, but I'd guess it supports
"Ain't I a stinka..." - Bugs
I can't vouch for this, but it's interesting information -- why aren't you googling?
Key quote from above article:
For the record, I've been using computers for LONG hours for over twenty years and haven't noticed any deterioration in my ability to sads lkjasl llksdkl!
I found that dual monitors with different sync rates give me headaches
I've been a regular over at the AVSForums for years -- I'm a confessed home theater geek/snob. A few years ago someone mentioned that they had a light source behind their TV -- just a soft white light. In total darkness, the white light reduced eye tension as it allowed the eye to go from the bright TV to a gradient light to the dark wall, and it also increased the visible contrast of the TV.
I started doing it immediately (Standard Definition) and have always increased my use of it as time goes on. My current theater is a projector, and I have a soft light behind my screen matting. I definitely find less eye strain if I have the light on.
About 2 years ago I tried it with my computer monitor (I'm a dual monitor user on the rare occasion that I'm not using my PDA; PC use is down to less than 5% of my computing time). I can say that I have less eye strain for sure when I use the soft lighting.
I tried to do a quick Google search but my PDA won't let me display any articles that talk about the light behind the display. Maybe someone with a real PC can find one and post a link -- I'm sure I've seen studies backing up the usage of the light behind the display, but I don't have any links for now.
On a tinfoil hat conspiracy sidenote: I was an eye glass wearer for a very long time. My vision deteriorated every year or two it seemed. I stopped wearing glasses a few years back and tried some of the eye exercises (as a friend recommended) and I was able to drop my driving restriction and I pass every eye test I've taken for the past few years -- without my glasses on. Anyone else have similar problems with glasses?
And while you are waiting for your appointment, Google eye strain excercises.
'Same speed C but faster'
Get a good laser printer. (As far as I know laser is cheaper than inkjet per page, and you get a better resolution.) Print the pages you want to read. Read them with the monitor turned off.
When I spend a great deal of time looking at a monitor, I can't focus after a while. Either the font size goes up or I turn it off and get some sleep or read a book.
Your body is sending you a signal. Pay attention and heed its warnings or suffer the consequences later in life.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Don't get old and you will have good vision forever.
Holy Christ. Have you tried a) sleeping more and b) getting outside? Might be a place to start.
-b
myselfmusic
If you spend 15 hours either programming or reading, where do you fit in the time to have a good wank?
Best. Webhost. Ever. Dreamhost.
The machine's wearing out.
Accept it.
I am prone to migraines and also have astigmatisms in both eyes. I work 40 hours a week in front of computers and then use a computer at home 20+ more hours a week. I used to wear contacts in high school and I found glasses let me work a lot longer and reduced the number of triggered migraines I got (for what its worth).
-everphilski-
I've been wearing glasses for close to 75% of my life, I'm 24 now. I've always had borderline 20/20 vision, but my eyes have just a touch harder time focusing in on close range stuff. I recently bought a pair of glasses from your standard mall store after an eye exam. I asked them what glasses would be best for me being in front of a computer 8+ hours a day, I got a pair that have whatever protections they have for anti-glare, and also anti-scratch. They work just great, and my eyes, and my head feel a lot better by the end of the day.
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
As a network admin and a wow player (I spent 25 hours a day on my PC), I've noticed a decent improvement in how many monitor related headaches I get from switching to an LCD. You said you use a laptop, so that's probably a null point. I don't really understand why that is, you'd think I'd get headaches regardless too.
Is there a scientific reason why looking at a monitor would decrease eyesight? I have 20/20 right now, and I really hope it doesn't go down over the years. Honestly I'm more worried about my hands/wrists, carpal and arthritis. I do find that if I break off from the monitor for a while it helps me focus better when I return.
The best thing that I have found to ease eye strain is to use a LCD monitor. I use nothing else at home and my employer graciously agreed to provide me one at work. This has helped greatly and I no longer go home with headaches at the end of the day.
Working on a LCD flat-panel is not always an option so I always add a UV coating to my lens perscription which seems to help a bit. It's not much but better than nothing.
I'm nearsighted and I make it a habit to not wear my glasses when I'm at the computer, the upshot being my vision has actually improved slightly over the years. I also try not to stare at the monitor for extended periods; about every 5 minutes I let my eyeballs to break the lock on the monitor.
Hopefully you can find some of that useful. I'd also suggest looking at this artcile, which contains helpful suggestions.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
I've been staring into the screen since 82, and I have perfect 20/20 vision.
Someone once told me, that it's because I "work out" my eyes. When I'm not seated in front of the computer, I'm out in the nature, either hiking or sailing. The eyes supposedly likes to look at things far away as well as close up. Being outside in the wide open should be a great contrast.
I have no idea if that's the true reason, but I thought I'd chip in - maybe someone has similar experience?
So in a given 24 hour day, you spend 5 sleeping and 15 in front of a computer. You are wasting your life.
i know some people only use laptops, but i never understood such people, especially if you are devoting a lot of time in front of your laptop. if the time commitment is so extensive, then please consider buying a desktop computer. such a setup allows you more freedom and ergonomic choices: changing positions of screen and keyboard and other peripherals, such that you can find the most comfortable angles
additionally, you can change screens, keyboards, and other peripherals without throwing out the core of your workstation. so maybe you just won't help your vision, maybe your spine, wrists, and neck may thank you as well
put it this way: a laptop forces your body to conform to its design. a desktop is forced to conform to your body's design. i think the wear and tear on your body should get more of your respect. so lose the laptop, buy a real computer
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So instead of asking the Opthamologist you saw to get your eyes checked, your asking /.?
My computer use isn't much different than yours from what it seems, with similar symptoms. I used to wear glasses when I was doing computer work. To relax I'd take them off, and let my eyes "unfocus", and just stare off at something for a minute or two. This always helped eye strain as well as mental stress. About a year ago I got Lasik done. Worst mistake I've ever made, since now I can't unfocus my eyes to relax. I've been searching for another way since.
The only thing I've found is just to shut my eyes for 1-2 minutes every once in a while. Otherwise try google for computer ergonomics.
...for your opthamologist.
- AMW
The best thing I've ever done for my eyes and the strain that sitting for 10+ hours a day on a computer puts on them was upgrading to a 20" LCD panel. LCD's provide more "ambient" light whereas a CRT is literally a bulb directed into your eyes for all that time. Leo Laporte and the TWiTs all recommended doing the same on one of their previous shows.
My eyes don't get sore after a long day of working anymore. The best part is, I don't lose concentration or get headaches like I used to.
You are not getting enough sleep and if you are computing for 15 hours a day, you do have a problem. Like some things, you do it too much and you will go blind. 15 hours a day doing one thing is a great way to get a repetitive strain injury.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I can see the stereotype, thick round glasses.
------- In the end there are no begining
I have that same problem, and there are 2 very easy remedies to it, the first is eye drops and the second is a stimulant, I drink lots of yerba mate tea.
There's probably more that can be done, but with just those steps you should be able to go a bit longer between visits to the eye doctor.
I suggest moving to light grey text on a black background for editing, whenever possible. Also, make sure the brightness of your monitor is adjusted properly for the light levels in the room. Finally, try upping the refresh rate of any CRTs you are using. Sometimes the flicker, while not really noticeable consciously, may still be causing your eyes to readjust.
Aside from those suggestions I don't have much advice. I've never tried special glasses, but I'm skeptical of them. Make sure to research them properly before trying them. Best of luck.
If using an IDE then try changing the background/font colors. I'm in an IDE 90% of the time I'm on my PC (which is up to 15 hours a day). I started having vision problems finding it hard to focus on the screen and read properly. I changed out my white background for a Cyan background and that made all the difference in the world for me. p.s. if in England, then try changing your background colours
I was getting slight eyestrain from working all day on computers as well. My opto suggested I try a pair of +.75 magnification reading glasses (like the kind you can get in the store or Barnes and Noble). It seemed to help with my eyestrain. YMMV
Light yellow tinted 'computer glasses' can help with eyestrain by softening the image and flattening out harsh contrasts.
Also...
If you find that, after a period of staring at a computer screen, when you look up, objects in the distance (say, > 15-20ft) are out of focus for a short while (and you don't normally need glasses for distance) then it's time to have your eyes tested - for one it can be a sign of diabetes.
L3K
(T2 diabetic)
AT&ROFLMAO
Is there a way of preventing vision problems?
Yeah. Get a life, egghead. Go outside. That big, bright thing in the sky? That's the sun. Those white, puffy things around it? Those are clouds. See that thing you saw in "Madden 2006" that the other kids are tossing in the park? That's a football. See those people using their legs? They're walking. See those people making noise with their mouths and looking at each other? That's called talking and socializing.
You might want to be the uber-geek holed up for the rest of your life, but you're not making a whit of difference sitting there in front of your laptop for hours and hours.
Being shortsighted is, imo, actually good for computer related work. If you are short-sighted you should not wear contacts or glasses while doing computer work. I used to and my eyesight deteriorated. Since stopping with that my eyesight has improved from -1.5 to -.5
This, I believe, is because human eyesight is naturally designed to focus on long distances.
Also a good tip when your eyes feel sore is to focus on something a long distance away. This will considerably relax your eyes. Eye strain is actaully due to a physical change in your eye when focusing at short distances.
If I had created the world I wouldn't have messed about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers
Just a few suggestions, especially if you suffer from dryeye:
1. Take short breaks periodically. At least 2-3 times per hour look up from your computer screen and focus on something far away. Look out a window, focus on someone across the room, etc. Do this for at least a minute or two.
2. Keep your eyes well lubricated and be sure to blink! While you are staring at a computer screen you may actually be blinking less than normal. Purposely try to blink more and occationally use some preservative free artifical tears.
3. Avoid flouresent lighting
4. Keep your room at least 30-50% humidity if you can. Get a humidifier.
5. Take flaxseed oil suppliments.
Second, turn the screen brightness down to a comfortable level (especially when in a darkened room). The brighter the screen, the harder on your eyes. Likewise, if it's too dark you'll strain trying to read it, but most users don't have a problem with screens that are too dark. Most often users max out their screen brightness without thinking about it.
Third, the light source in your computer environment is important. Laptop screens don't have enough power to stand up to natural light easily. Using it inside, I've found that overhead lights are harder on your eyes than lamps. If you can get a desklamp or floorlamp (you can get a nice one from Ikea for $8) that will be much better than ceiling lighting. Soft white bulbs are nicer on your eyes than bright white, flourescent, or halogen (even though they are environmentally wasteful).
Finally, reading from paper is light years easier than reading on the screen, especially if you have a large volume of text to go through. If you can afford it, and don't mind killing a few extra trees, go ahead and print out long articles and read them on paper. Your eyes will thank you.
The Rise and Fall of Online Community
1. Get more sleep. 5 hours isn't enough.
2. During the work day, take breaks AWAY from the computer. Go for a walk, stretch, get a coffee, whatever. Just give your eyes a reason to focus on something more than 24 inches away.
3. Try using indirect lighting. Instead of using a light to brighten a room, use a shrouded lamp to reflect light off the ceiling or a couple walls. This will diffuse the light and soften it making it easier on your eyes.
4. Take note of how you sit in front of the screen. Some people are in the habbit of practically butting their nose up to the screen to see and they're not even aware of it when it happens. Get into the habit of finding a relaxing position to work
5. Get a bigger screen. A 15" isn't much in size these days, so you might try hoowing up and external 19" screen to the laptop and work from there.
Fear is the enemy; the one true enemy. {Sun Tzu-The Art of War}
I suspect that keeping your focus on anything at a distance of about a foot to 18 inches for 15 hours a day is going to ultimately screw up your eyes ability to refocus. Your eyes are controlled by muscles and need a degree of exercise the same as any muscle in your body.
Your eye sight is only a piece of the problem. Glasses won't fix it.
Your body was not designed to sit for 15 hours doing nothing. Your hands were not designed to use a keyboard for 15 hours. Your eyes were not designed to focus at one point for 15 hours at a time. The ability to mate and parent won't be advanced by sitting at your laptop for 15 hours a day.
It is likely that you are overweight, out of shape, have no love life and rarely interact socially other than through your computer.
Get a life. Spend several hours a day interacting with other people. Exercise. Get a hobby. Watch your food intake.
Apply to yourself, the attention and commitment you apply to your laptop.
machinator omnis sine licentia
Just get away from the monitor, preferably outdoors, and sleep more. It is unhealthy to be in front of a monitor so much of the time, so drag your ass outside for a while, every day if possible. You don't even have to work out formally, just walk around for a good while.
Goes see your eye doctor. Have prescribe a low or 0 magnification pair of glasses that will help your astigmatism. I had the same thing happen to me when I was in front of my computer for 15 hours a day 7 days a week. This was for my VLSI design class I had. Sitting in front of a 21 inch monitor day in a day out might have excessively strained my eyes. Not to mention I used computers since the TRS 80 days. Once I got my prescription, which all my friends laugh at, since it has no magnification, my eyes have been able to relax. I got my pair with the antiglare/polarized lenses. This will also reduce the brightness of the screen.
Give your eyes a rest. That is the best advice. Cut down on eye usage.
I did see somewhere around the net a study that extensive computer use gives the user a higher risk for developing cataracts. It was a Swedish study, if I am remember correctly. It's not that far fetched to think that if you continue to strain your eyes on the screen, for hours day in and day out, that you will cause damage to them. Got to give them sometime to regenerate.
That was my 2 cents.
is the brightness of the monitor. Two hours on a CRT makes my eyes feel like they're gonna bleed, but give me a LCD with the brightness turned down a tad and I can use it 24/7. I hear that low refresh rates give some folks headaches, but its hard for me to tell the difference.
My vision used to be awful with a minor astigmatism, but I had it corrected with lasik. Getting rid the glare/dirt/lack-of-perepherial vision associated with glasses and the dryness of contacts made working with computers a LOT easier too (though it temporarily increased said light sensitivity and dry eyes).
What are your other light sources? Natural or Flourescent? Flourescent lighting can sometimes hurt your eyes, because they refresh at a rate different from your display, no matter if it was CRT or LCD. If's a question of the combined frequencies between the display and the lighting. Polarized lenses may help, but I found it simpler to just change the light source back to incandescent when I had a problem with flourescent lighting.
eye exercises are best, just shut off your lights, and your monitor.. then close your eyes and rotate your focus points, from left to right, up and down and across the various diagonals. Rubbing it lightly also helps, as well as powernaps. I have had astigmatism since I was 5.
the main problem with using computers for 10 years is that, invariably, your eyes age 10 years.
When reading the question I immediately remembered an article that was once linked from Slashdot. Read it and follow its advice.
b erg_healthybody.html
http://www.developerdotstar.com/mag/articles/wein
Yes, I noticed the same thing too with my glasses. I fixed it as well.
Custom lasik.
It, truly, changed my life. I had no idea things actually had texture.
Hmm, I have worried about the lighting of the background of the stuff I'm reading. It is always white and bright. This negatively effecting vision is generally accepted. Is there an easy way to modify this? Mabye an extension for firefox? It seems like would be the easiest solution.
People loose eyesight as they get older. You just happened to get older in front of a computer.
;-)
Take frequent breaks and pray
Cheers,
Adolfo
I have been putting in the same hours behind the screen and I have pretty much the same programming and reading work as u on my tiny inspiron700m.
What I do is before falling asleep I have been using visine eye drops to cool em down from the excessive strain.
And touch-wood I dont have any glasses yet.
------------
There is a book called 'How to improve your vision without contact lenses or glasses' which details a list of eye exercises to do for myopia. I have the same problem. The book states that the eye is a muscle and that one's vision should not change unless the skull changes shape (or there is a disease). I've done the exercises and they do work, your vision does get better. Wearing glasses just makes the eyes lazier and your vision will get worse.
5 hours sleep !!!!! 15 hours computing !!!! C'mon get a life. Travel, live, see new people, new shores. Sunrise over Rio, sunset in Zakynthos, snorkel off the Great Barrier reef, feel the rain in Ireland. - hey ever tried a relationship with a human being ? Or even the cat ?
Because one day someone might say you can't and these moments will never be yours....
Firstly, as other posters have mentioned, you could probably use more sleep and less computer time, if that's at all possible. As one of my professors recently said - doing too much of anything is going to hurt your eyes.
Secondly, get an eye exam if it's been a while (over a year) since your last one. Even a small amount of refractive error, dry eye, or any other condition is going to get aggravated staring at a monitor for hours on end.
There are different glasses and monitor filters (for CRTs only, I think) that can be used; some people find it helps, while others don't. Try it if you'd like.
I think the most important thing to do is try and follow the 20-20-20 rule: Every twenty minutes, take a break for twenty seconds and look at something at least twenty feet away. This lets your eyes refocus, gives your extraocular muscles a break from focussing (no they aren't designed to stare at something on your desk all day), and see if that helps.
(I'm not an eye doctor, but I will be soon!)
Aye. I've been doing the backlighting of my HDTV television now for about 4 years. Recently, while reading the AVSForums I came across this special light for the purpose called Ideal-Lume.
http://www.cinemaquestinc.com/ideal_lume.htm
So I bought one, and I do highly recommend it. Now, ideally you could probably get something similar elsewhere, it's just a flourescent tube with a 6500k bulb. I guess what makes it nice versus the ones at Home depot, is the cover over the bulb is clear(rather than white), plus it came with a plastic sleeve with half of it blacked out, that allows you to dim the bulb by turning it.
I started doing something similar with my computer, just pointing a light at the wall behind my computer, which keeps the ambient light high enough that my eyes don't hurt. Honestly, this I think is a good part of the key is making sure there is enough light in the room to work, while at the same time not having any glare on the screen. That means lot's of ambient light.
I've been behind a computer since about 1996 as well. Been wearing glasses for about the same amount of time. My vision problems come from two things, first would be that my father's side of family has always had terrible vision. My dad can barely see without his glasses, so it's hereditary. Second, it's because of spending too much time watching the really bad TV sets when I lived in Russia. That thing pretty much ruined my vision.
For the past year or so I've been considering laser eye surgery, but ran into the problem that my corneas are fairly thin, but still acceptable, and also because my prescription is still changing (for the worse unfortunately). Right now I'm waiting till this summer to have another try, and hopefully my vision has stabilized by then.
Have never heard of any special glasses, just know that sitting in complete darkness in front of a monitor is not too good for you (which I do quite often). Have a dual-monitor setup, one LCD, and one CRT, though both are of high quality. The only real suggestion I can give you is to never have a CRT with refresh rate below 100Hz. I can't tell you how many times I've been amazed about people who regularly use something like 60Hz and say they don't notice any difference. For me, even 85Hz is too low and I can immediately spot it, not to mention that working with such monitor gives me a headache really quickly.
With my current setup, I never get any headaches, but my guess is that it's still doing some hard to my vision. Between having good equipment, the right refresh rate for CRTs, and doing eye exercises every 2 hours or so (looking into the distance, moving them around, etc), there really isn't much you can do.
15 hours in front of a screen is way too much -- you'll likely be dead of a heart attack or suffering from diabetes if you find a solution to your eyestrain.
Workout and manage your time better.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Something that helps this sort of thing is an eye exercise that strenghtens muscles in your eye.
:-P
First, take a pen/pencil/finger/whatever and hold it/put it at about 5-7 inches from your eyes (right between your eyes so you can focus on it with both eyes).
Next, make sure you are in an area that has something about 10-20 FEET away that you can also focus on.
Now focus back and forth on the close object to the far object repeatedly for about 3-5 minutes (or however long you can stand it...). Just focus on the far one and as soon as it's in focus, change your focus to close one and then back and forth like that.
My old IT director did this and corrected "bad" vision from using computers... The other IT director decided to shell out a few thousand bucks for lasik instead.... It's all in how valuble your money is to you.
I'd agree with your experience.
I first started to get nearsighted around the age of 18. At the time, I was revising for exams and staring at textbooks for hours on end.
I've noted that if I spend a greater proportion of my time reading or using a VDU close-up, my sight becomes "shorter", and distant objects and large sign text become fuzzier.
If I make a concerted effort to exercise my eyes by looking at distant objects and *really* concentrating on getting them in sharp focus, this trend reverses.
One thing I keep meaning to try is a pair of -0.5 or -1.0 Dioptre eyeglasses to move the focal plane of my vision back a few feet when using a screen or reading. I reckon this could reduce the effects of short distance fixation for long periods, reduce eyestrain, and maybe even help restore my once-perfect distance vision.
An optician I asked about this just didn't seem to get it ; it would seem the culture is very much geared toward giving you glasses that compensate for your aquired vision defects, which in my experience is going to make your vision deteriorate faster. This doesn't seem to be a surprise, really.
Get up regularly, have breaks during the morning and afternoon, go for a coffee or a tea and have a chat with workmates. Make sure you take your allotted time for lunch.
Equipment-wise, make sure you have reasonably sized screen to work with and look at the refresh rate. Set it to the highest setting possible. It's amazing how many people in some companies (even technical people) leave the default refresh rate on the build they have, which is usually 60 Hz or something. Owww, that hurts my eyes and is the shortest route to headaches. Change your theme and colours to whatever makes you feel most comfortable and bugger any corporate settings. There are laws governing VDU use.
Your eyes like to be able to focus on things at different distances now and then. By finding something to look at in the distance for a minute or so, you'll help balance out the time you spend staring at your monitor. I'll sometimes get eyestrain from highway driving too long, too, always looking in the distance... so I make sure to glance down at my dashboard now and then to let my eyes focus on something nearer.
I took an ergonomics course (ergonomics is science that basically deals with workplace vs. health issues) during my final year at uni. We've been told that it is not about lights at all.
The problem is that if the eye is focused at one particular distance (computer screen) for too long periods of time (daily), the eye lens basically partially loses the ability to properly focus on distant objects (a distance of say 20 meters or more). This is allegedly irreversible.
I have this problem too. My eyes were always excellent. Now I'm 29 and after 12 years of working with computers, I can't properly focus distant objects.
The fix is to just get outside for a few days. It goes away. If I can't get out for whatever reason, I perform eye exercises. Basically a deliberately unfocus and go crosseyed, and then snap them back to attention.
Another technique I use to limit eyestrain is to keep a few colorful object in the periphery of my monitor. Every few minutes one of the objects catches the eye, and lets them blow off a little steam. Regular breaks for coffee, eats, or smokes also help. Though frankly I'm a bit of binge programmer myself. In my natural element I'll easily code until I fall over.
The best long term fix is to get married and have kids. Families are the best cure for repetitive eye injuries. They call. They email. They distract you from what you are doing. Sure your productivity plummets. But productivity kills.
One's eyes were meant to follow things in real life, not on the screen.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Five hours of sleep per night is NOT enough. Despite what you think and what you hear from your friends, you need more sleep. From wikipedia on sleep deprivation, "Lack of sleep may also result in irritability, blurred vision..."
Go to bed.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
I've got a slightly different version of one of these lamps on top of my CRT monitor. It's so cheaply made that I feel like I'm going to break it every time I touch it. Yet there's no denying that it puts light in all the right places - on the wall behind the monitor, on the cieling, on the keyboard - but not on the screen itself, and not on anything in front of the screen that might cause reflections.
An ordinary articulated desk lamp is easily maneuvered to put light on the wall behind your monitor. However it's done, I think that arrangement is notably easier on the eyes than anything else I've tried.
I had a similar problem. After long days in front of the screen my eyes would just involuntarily lose focus. My vision was fine except after long days in front of a computer screen but I was beginning to get distressed so I went to the eye doctor. I was told it was a matter of my eye muscles getting locked in because I wasn't looking away from the screen and forcing them to refocus on something more distant. The solution was to periodically look away for 15 seconds and focus on something farther away.
Hey,
Wear glasses, much better then contacts... and make sure the glasses have a anti-reflective coating on them. It gives your lenses a slight green tint. This works great for me. I spend about 40-80 hours a week in front of my laptop screen.
Wyatt
Use a high refresh rate.
Don't the resolution so high you need the screen up close to your face to read it without squinting.
Keep the ambient light low so you can have the screen's brightness down low.
I use grey as the default background color rather than white.
The last two go together pretty well and I've found them to have a more noticeable impact on eyestrain induced headaches than the first two.
this is nothing new, everybody who gets older develops problems with reading.. Its more the natural. And 15 hours behind a computer isn't healthy for any part of your body.
My one teacher has eyes problems, and he change his color from a white background to a black background and the front from black to green. He says this helps with his eyes. I read in a book that for older adults this what you want to look for, it should help you (not saying your an old adult) but if you are having eye problems, make the colors different for you
I started reading the comments to this artice 5 minutes ago. After going through 8 or 10 of them, I noticed that my eyes started to water and get tired. No kidding. This is really strange. I've been an obsessive programmer for about 15 years, and I've never had headaches or watery eyes from looking at monitors. Yet reading about this stuff had a definite effect on me. Anyone else have this and can explain it? Or should I see a shrink?
Your dad bought you your first computer in 1996... Does that make you 18? 19? That's right about the time that many genetically inherited vision problems start to kick in. You may even have been slightly myopic for years but had an astigmatism that compensated, and now your myopia is getting severe enough to be noticed.
Rather than blowing a ton of money on some ergonomic crap, just go see an eye doctor. They'll be able to tell you without any doubt what has caused your vision problems and how to deal with them (probably corrective lenses).
Welcome to the beginings of old age.
Personally, I developed my bad vision at an early age. So, I've been wearing glasses or contacts since I was four. Strangely, my eyes have been getting better each time I go in for my exam. This has happened since I started working without my glasses when the layout of the workspace was condusive to it.
You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all different.
Mod parent up. This sounds like sleep deprivation more than anything. If you're only getting 5hrs of sleep per night then holy cow, of course you're going to have a hard time concentrating. Duh! Try unplugging for a while, taking breaks, and maybe, you know, getting a life and a girlfriend?
Damien
It is important to setup the environment correctly. Most likely eyestrains and headaches come from screen being too close and/or too bright and/or with too high contrast. Avoid using your monitor as the only light source in the room - have a small lamp behind the panel. Look closely to your panel to check if the picture is still of good quality - I found some CRTs to loose the sharpness and few other monitors (both crt and lcd) to have instable picture. Check for magnetic fields near your monitor; even the one behind the wall can distract picture. Get vertical refresh adjusted to your needs - too high is not so good too.
I have worn glasses since I was 8 years old, and in college, I started wearing contacts regularly. In seven years of engineering, my prescription has not changed.
However, I have seriously re-thought how I prioritize my work and social lives, and I no longer spend as many hours at the office as I used to. The surprising part of this is that I now get more work done. Your productivity goes down the longer you work more than forty hours at a time. By limiting my time at the office during all but the most critical of project crunch times, I'm able to focus better, and make fewer mistakes that require rework.
Also, almost all of my recreation takes place away from the computer now. (Who needs games when you have a motorcycle.)
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
I got my first computer in 1988, and I started using it heavily in 1992, BBSing in as much free time as a twelve-year-old was allowed to have. I was diagnosed with mild near-sightedness a year later. While it's possible that I was already having problems, I didn't recall having trouble until then, and during times when I've been on vacation and not needed to sit two and a half feet from a screen and also avoided reading books for a couple of weeks I find that my far-field vision actually improves temporarily.
I know that this is very unscientifically reasoned, but I suspect that my continued use of computers and my love for reading are both contributing to my eye sight problems. My vision is not very bad (20/40 in one eye, probably 20/60 in the other) and I could probably pass a driving test without my glasses. I can see perfectly clearly up to three or four feet with my left eye as well, and about a foot with my right eye.
I've also noticed that the amount of light strongly dictates how badly my vision is impaired. I can read signs at 30 feet without my glasses on during the day, and I can see a movie without correction too. At night or in lower light conditions I need the adjustment that my glasses give me.
I'm considering getting prescription sunglasses when I get my new prescription, and wearing them for driving, so to try to not wear any glasses at all when I'm not driving. I want to see if my own lifestyle has made my vision worse, and if so, to see if I can correct it or at least improve it by myself. I'd love to not have to wear glasses except at night, and if that means turning off the computer more often and spending more time outside then maybe for my health it's worth it.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
1. Adjust moniter brightness. Don't you have some kind of control panel for that?
2. Change the white background or, if that's not possible, maybe wear colored sunglasses- the world is pretty in pink!
3. Get glasses to help your concentration. Also, if you've been getting headaches too, it's because you really need glasses/contacts.
4. Increase text size. Then your eyes won't have to work so hard.
5. Have moderate amounts of light. If everything is too bright or too dark, that can hurt your eyes.
And don't worry. Eventually medical technology will make invincible robotic eyes, so don't let anyone strongarm you into making too drastic & uncomfy lifestyle changes.
Maybe it isn't the monitor that's causing your eye problems, but what you are 'looking' at on it.
There's more than one reason we geeks like the dark. I prefer darker rooms - the darker the better. I notice that anything else makes my eyes and head start to hurt. I've had a computer for more than 20 years with better than 20/20 vision, and stare at a monitor for at least 10 hours a day. I also think the carpal tunnel thing is b/s and think more that keyboards aggravate an existing condition, not cause it.
The problem: your eyes are tired because you stare most of the time at the computer screen without blinking. Take a rest from time to time and relax your eyes by looking at long distances. Also watching video on the computer forces you to blink more often.
- Let us save our cousins the big apes. Do not use cell phones.
When I go to get new glasses, I let them know that I use a computer for most of the day. They put a very slight dark tint on the lenses, which is supposed to cut down on eye strain. I have dual lcd monitors at home and use them for long periods with no eye strain. I, like everybody else, do get tired though.
Background lightning, as mentioned by a previous poster, helps too. I've found even if in the room (i.e. don't let it be cave dark with just the monitor on, use a lamp) rather than behind the screens.
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
I found that as your vision gets a bit worse, you compensate by lowering your forehead to get a better focus on the screen. This is doubly dangerous with laptops as your arms and the focal point are close to eachother. You put great strain on the back of your neck.
As a result of always using my laptop, the middle of my back would feel strained, and I would feel pressure on the top/middle of my chest and neck.
My hands were also suffering from CTS to the point of not being able to lie on my bed with hands behind my head without them getting the pins-and-needles literally 5 minutes later.
I wound up buying a 20" CRT and plugging in the laptop to it. I am also using a desk with adjustable height, and have it at a nice 31". Additionally I have a monitor stand that is about 6 inches, so that my eyes are on the level of the bottom half of the monitor. I can also sit upright with my back straight, and shoulderblades flat.
All these things are mentioned in any computer ergonomics study and they help greatly.
The upshot is that I can always change up and use my laptop for a while, so I'm not stuck in the same position or with the same hardware. And CRT monitors are dirt cheap now and you should be able to get a decent one for under $200.
As for the eyes, any doctor will recommend that you rest your eyes regularly. Eyes are muscules. If they are forced into one position, they'll find it harder to change positions to focus on far away objects. I'm not sure what the concensus is, but try to take a minute break a few times per hour. As far as reading, try what an above poster said: print articles out. Just use the smallest type you can, and possibly lay the text out in 3 columns, so that short sentences don't waste the width of a line. You can paste article text into Word and make a 3 column, newspaper type layout.
If you need them, wear them. Your eye muscles will fatigue if you don't. If you're vanity is against the the glasses then go out and drop 400 clams on a pair of 'hip' ones from a specialty store. If nothing else they can help with your geek-cool persona. (There is such a thing right?) Since you are younger get your prescription checked regularly since your vision is going to change.
Ideal lighting is typical living room. Diffuse, somewhat lower light. Basically set up some floor lamps without any being in your direct line of sight. Adjust your brightness as appropriate and avoid having it too bright. I've noticed that most non-mac monitors are WAY to contrasty and people tend to have the brightness turned all the way up. Typical computer lab lighting is horrible and not to be emulated.
As you get older your corneas will get harder and your distance vision will actually start to improve (at the cost of your near vision of course). It sounds like the poster is too young for this... but others sound like they might be experiencing this.
But what do I know... My first machine was an Atari 800. Which seems to mean that I am way too old.
I use green text on black background whenever I read long texts onscreen. I tried to change the entire Windows color scheme to match, but since programmers almost never expect deviations from the default, it was unusable. When I have to work with bright backgrounds I turn the screen brightness and contrast down as far as possible.
I just started wearing glasses exclusively for computer use. 20/20 vision and I have to wear glasses for eye strain. Too much working in the dark in front of 3 monitors, so now I have glasses and a whole lot of lighting (but still no glares). My opthamologist said it definitely can't hurt to get rid of CRT's in favor of LCDs also. Prio.com has lots of tips for needing to avoid using their products, and for finding a opthamologist who can get you glasses.
I follow some general tips that have worked well for me (on CRTs). Some I thought were obvious until some friends confessed they hadn't heard before - after complaining about daily headaches.
- higher contrast. my current setup is 85/100
- low-to-medium brightness. my current setup is 35/100 bright
- elevated monitor. a tired neck means faster onset of fatigue and possible eye strain
- refresh rate!! the highest your monitor can support. I can't stand anything under 80Hz
1. I have noticed that when I visit a friend for some one-on-one gaming using a CRT instead of my LCD at home my eyes burn and tear after twenty minutes or so of playing, while my LCD allows hours of use without noticeable strain. N.B. I feel I DO play closer attention to the screen when gaming than I do when surfing....
2. 5-hours sleep a night is way, way, too little. Sleep deprivation is a serious and underreported health problem.
3. After fifty years of myopia without astigmatism, my latest eye checkup indicated a small amout on assymetry (astigmatism), too, like you. Perhaps computer use is contributing to our probs, but I cannot see how. Astigmatism is a physical anamoly, and I can't grok how monitor viewing (or even lack of sleep) can affect this; it is genetic AFAIK.
Probably what you eat is as important as your setup.
- index.html
:o(
Also, my partner recommends these glasses:
http://www.jdharris.co.uk/pinhole-glasses/pinhole
They look a bit odd, somewhat like Zaphod Beeblebroxs peril sensitive glasses, but they do work well.
I dont need them. Been programming since the 70's, 12 hours a day, perfect eyesight. Lost most my hair though
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
you insensitive clod!
Free MacMini
Vision? No. Back problems, yes. Of ocurse, I was already predisposed to back problems. In any case, it can also simply be your biological clock firing off stating "Okay... now the eyes must go... soon, the mind will follow and he'll forget he can't see... then we get the babes."
get glasses just for computer work that don't have nearly the amount of correction of your general purpose glasses.
your regular glasses have a correction strength that allows you to resolve detail at a distance.
this amount of correction while good for driving, walking through a grocery store etc, is great for general stuff like that.
it's terrible for 10 hour days spent staring at an object 16 inches from your face.
if you are very nearsighted, your full strength normal prescription used to view a monitor for hours on end day after day will:
-give you headaches
-cause you to need ever increasing prescription strength
-make near objects look smaller, most notably text
-after a long day at the computer, blur your distance vision
if you have a weaker pair of "computer glasses" the text will immediately look normal sized again, give you less eye stress/headaches, and when you slip your normal pair of glasses back on to drive to starbucks, everything will look crystal clear.
My problem is staring at the screen for a long time. I have "dry eye syndrome"; my eyes don't produce as much tears are they used to. Taking breaks to blink and stare at a distance helps as does various "natural tears" eye drops. The natural tear products you can use as oftem as needed and the "... get the red out..." products you can only use 2-3 times a day.
Hope this helps.
Half my time is spent staring at the monitor and the other half of the time is reading books (the old kind where the ink is on the paper). Reading a book also requires good lighting as well. Laying on the side of a hill and watching the clouds go by also helps your eyes.
You should place your monitor in a better environment for things. A lot of people talk about having a light behind their monitor to provide a soft light to contrast upon, but how about putting your monitor right by your window? Every now and then you can simply look out your window and focus on different things. It would definitely give your eyes a break. That and if you have glare problems from your screen, invest in some tinting for the windows. I have my monitor right by a window and I can definitely say it reduces my eye strain quite well.
Yeah, I try to draw illumination from this thing called the sun. Takes me away from my desk for a few horus a day, but I find the effects worth it.
I discovered while at a LISA conference that my eyesight was going bad. I couldn't see all the way to the front of the class. I went to an eye doctor and got tested. The doctor said that my eyesight was just fine. It happened again the next time I went to a conference. After some troubleshooting, I discovered that as long as I'm reasonably well rested my eyesight is just fine. When I start getting tired (or exausted as in the case when I go to conferences) my distance vision deteriorates until I get a couple good nights sleep again.
I don't know if this is your problem too, but it's worth looking into. Get a couple good night's sleep in a row and see if things start getting better.
Good luck!
... and now I am starting to feel mild headache. Do you have a specific way you shape your nail heads? I don't know, probably somebody already posted this kind of response, it is too easy. But really, bodily functions like sleeping, eating something other then pizza and exposing yourself to sun/fresh air/etc. are not all that overrated, you should try it some time. Maybe it will even help your vision or at least stop you from dying at 26.
I have been programming as a hobbiest, a student and a professional since 1987 when i got my first pc and honestly i do not have any vision problems. Some people have vision problems, i just don't think its PC related. Spreading that rumor helps companies sell accessories like "Visine / PC Edition" and other useless products. -ali
A few years ago I used to work as a dispatcher for a large trucking company. Despite the company's fairly dominant position in the industry, they were too cheap to upgrade the two 15" monitors which we were required to use on the job (and the lighting was fluorescent). One had a refresh rate of 60 Hz, and I swear the other must have been 45 Hz, because there was a great deal of noticeable flicker. After about a year of working there, I developed an involuntary eye twitch in my right eye; coincidentally (?), the problem went away about eight months after I went to work elsewhere. These days I use a 19" CRT with a refresh rate of 85 Hz. Much easier on the eyes.
I whack myself on the head with a hammer 25 times a day. For some reason I now have a hammer shaped indentation in my skull. Do any other
-- SIGFPE
Your problem is that your body isn't accustomed to being in front of the computer so long.
:) Oh yeah, and beware of the cat.
But don't worry! I have a friend who might help you - he found out how to stay connected 24-hours a day! Log in at the CC network's BBS, and ask for Tsukasa. Good luck!
P.S. There are some side effects of using his method, but don't worry too much about it, you won't even feel them.
Why is it that so many websites choose to go with a white background? If the standard was white text on black background it would cut down on eye strain and possibly use less battery on laptops.
I spend about 20 hours or more in front of a monitor (either at work or at home). And, although I am nearsighted, I've not had a decrease in vision quality, and this 20+ hour habit has been going on for a good 8 years or so. I think it has to do entirely with a few distinct factors. A major issue that many overlook is monitor angle. If the monitor is angle directly at your eyes then you will be getting more "direct light" whereas if you're looking at your monitor from a downward angle, the light is not directly being shone into your eyes. (This is from my optometrist, so I don't know if this is fact, or if he's misinformed and I'm relaying bad info, but I can assume it's good info). Also natural light is a lot easier to look at a monitor with (open a curtain instead of using flourescent/ incandescent lightsources).
I Lost My Virginity While Waiting for BSD to Compile.
The best thing u can do is make sure to keep the room well-lit so that the monitor is not brighter than its surroundings. If that is impossible in the situation, u need some sort of ambience light from behind the monitor. Both of these techniques make it easier for the eyes to focus the light properly without having to strain themselves.
Also, something else, though it mostly afflicts hardcore gamers, is that when you are engrossed with something on the monitor, you forget to blink. This dries out your eyes (even if it is unnoticable) and can lead to problems later on.
sooth your vision:
switch from CRT to LCD,
always keep note of distance from eyes to screen, and keep that distance,
define something ala ctrl-+/- to enlarge or shrink text in every app, and use if often,
adjust fonts manually to something more clear or comfortable,
adjust colours.. all of 'em, background, text, window manager, et cetera,
black text on a slightly dark orange background is very easy on the eye for console windows, gives accentuated text and does not give much light; everything in slightly dark shades of grey is quite pleasant for wordprocessing; for pdf and html reading, i use black text on a light orange-yellowish background.
another thing is your wallpaper: use something non-bright (obviously) and fuzzy (enlarge something or whatever) so your eyes won't focus on it automatically, when you're glancing over different windows.
minimalism, reduction of contrast and fluffy colours are keywords...
Since we are having this vital issue discussed, I would like to ask the following question:
What are the proper rules for adjusting brightness and contrast on an LCD monitor so a to ensure the best effect for the eyes? Are there any guidelines?
http://dtum.livejournal.com
...the fact that you're 10 years older?
We do age.
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
If you tend to forget to look away, get up and take a break, look up workrave (windows and linux) which is basicly a timer you can set to remind yourself to take a 30 second eye break. Its meant to prevent RSI, but you could use it for vision ( and the RSI bits might not be bad for you either ). Reduce the brightness as much as possible. If you are in XP on a laptop, turn on ClearType. dont' use such a high res you have to strain to see. Soft backlighting (gradients to a contrasting background) are best. Sit with the top of the screen about dead level with the top of your head (you may have to get creative with a laptop).. you weren't designed to stare into your lap for 15 hours a day. If your programming, honestly, get more sleep. You will be much more effective in the less time you spend. Sleep deprivation has been proven to add up to being equivelent to being legally drunk after a while. (I wish I had a link to a study to back it up but I dont, have some fun with google). 8 or 9 hours sleep, 8 or 9 on the PC and put the thing down. If your up playing WoW, and your losing sleep because of it, then you've got a problem, and no amount of ergonomics is going to fix it. Lots of us here in the forum work with computers professionally every day, all day, and we've all pretty much said go outside more :) workrave is a good tool to remind yourself to get up and walk around a bit every hour or so.
That said, I personally have astigmatism in both eyes (.5 and .75) and at work I use glare reducing weak negative magnification lenses for work, with the brightness as low as I can get it and high contrast, 75Hz refresh rate, and a 21" monitor, 1600x1200 res. - Low saturation colors on the desktop, large icons.
I was told I would require glasses if I read for an extended period as I'm slightly long sighted.
:)
Until I came across this eyeq program (for speed reading) which has stopped my vision blurring completely; and near doubled my reading speed.
Worth a look at the free flash demo; product is a bit expensive though.
http://www.infmind.com/
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
Astigmatism is not caused by strain but is a (genetic?) defect. Strain makes astigmatism more of an issue.
Just break down and go to a good ophthalmologist. You might have something more serious than eyestrain, and the slashdotters can't diagnose it over the web!
I18N == Intergalacticization
Yes, get a sex partner. Then you'll quit spending so much time with the computer.
You say you read a lot: Buy a printer.
;).
I spend a lot of time on my computer, but I'm sure to never spend more than 5 hours straight looking at it.
Also, do you have one of those crappy glossy screens? Throw it away and buy a non-HP laptop
Besides getting more sleep, which you obviously need, try some eyedrops. When I am tired and can't focus I can get an extra hour out of my eyes with some drops.
These are real easy to make.
First, get an ordinary pair of glasses.
Next, break them in half at the bridge.
Now tape them back together again with a large wad of highly visible tape.
Voila! You have official computer user glasses, enjoy!
Here is my recipie for eye-strain ELIMINATION: 1. Goto a good eye doctor and get a complete eye exam. Note: A good eye doctor is one capable of performing eye surgery. 2. Get your prescription PERFECT. When they are playing the "which looks better game" ask to see everything over and over until you are sure. 3. When you are measured for glasses the assistant has to find the sweet spot in the lens for your eye. Make sure they get it exactly right. I've had this done incorrectly and had to have a lens redone. 4. I wear titanium frame glasses with carbon anti-glare lenses. Light glasses stay in place, unlike heavy glasses which slide down your nose. Additionally, light frames and lenses reduce and pain on your nose and ears. 5. Get the anti-glare coating on the lenses. Yes it is expensive, but worth it. Remove any flourescent light source in your environment and/or reduce their intensity (turn half of them off). Floursecent lights are obnoxious and have a 60Hz flicker to them which can cause an interference pattern (jiggle) with some monitors depending on the refresh rate, which can really cause eye strain. Set your screen far enough away so whe you are looking at it your eyes are naturally relaxed. I sit about 2.5 feet away and find that my eyes are quite comfortable. If I move in closer my eyes dart around the LCD panel and this causes eye strain. Lastly, I have found the higher intensity LCD panels like 500:1 contrast rations and above, I have experienced some eye pain. On very bright LCD panels I often adjust the brightness downward and then adjust the room light so the screen is still bright. Good luck! Getting old stinks :)
15 hours a day, more time on a pc than i spend on one at a lan party. Today we have this little thing called being social. now lets do the math, 5 hours sleep time + 15 hours pc time = 20 hours that leaves us with 4 hours per day for other activities. no ideally you should get about 8 hours of sleep per day and that would leave you with only 1 hour. Now seeing as you clearly have a lack of social intereaction and not that it would be healthy to do something else i think we can figure out what you need to cut down on from the following choices: a) 5 hours sleep/day b) 4 hours otherwise spent/day c) 15 hours on pc/day now if you answered a and/or b you are correct, what wee all need to do is minimize social interaction in favor of damaging our vision on a lack of sleep
I went to an optomologist and got prescription glasses, though my case turns out I have needed them for years and never knew. What I have is a weak muscle in one eye that causes migraine strength headaches from the muscle straining to keep the eye focused. If you do not need a prescription there are I believe glasses you can buy at your local Right Aid, Walgreen, PharMor, Wally World that magnify your reading. A cheap pair of these may suit your needs allowing you to continue what you are doing and slowing the damage to your eyes being caused from it. From what I am told though your eyes will get progressively worse, personally I need to visit the eye doctor every 6 months, one more visit per year than the suggested annual visit.
This is entirely up to you though, but keep in mind your eyes have to last you your lifetime.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
At home I work on a large CRT doing illustration and graphic design. In order to reduce eye strain, I've picked up the trick that every 20 minutes, you should look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. It helps if you get up and go somewhere other than where your computer is to do it; getting up and stretching out will also help your body out. Been using computers for seven years or so now, and I've still got 20/20.
Just for clarification, who is "I" and "They"? You said "I checked my eyes", but does that mean you had your eyes checked by an opthamologist, or did you simply look at a snellen chart and make your own diagnosis? And when "they" said it wasn't a problem, was that a doctor's diagnosis, or the guy working behind the counter at LensCrafters? Decreases in visual acuity can be due to genetics, aging, or long hours in front of a computer, but there are also a number of pathologcal conditions that can cause it too. One of the early manifestations of type II diabetes is a decrease in visual acuity. Your problem could very well be attributed to poor working conditions with your computer, but you should be certain that it is that, and not a more serious underlying pathologic cause.
I stopped wearing glasses a few years back and tried some of the eye exercises
That sounds useful. Could you describe these exercises? I'm interested to try them.
TIA
You've aged 10 years since you started "computing", and I assume you started no earlier than a teenager. People naturally lose their vision over time. It's part of aging.
If teenagers start losing their vision after 10 years of "computing" (that is, they start at 5 years old), then we've got a problem.
i'm an optician (one who makes eyeglass lenses) and ardent computer user (web design, music production, etc; i spend a lot of time on front of a computer) and i've fitted tons of people with computer problems over the last 10 years.
there are a few possibilities for what you're experiencing.
computer screens suck; they confuse the hell out of your eyes. unlike printed characters, pixelated characters vary in intensity which makes them very difficult for your eyes to track and focus on. as a result, your eyes try to relax to their 'resting' focus', which is considered to be at about 10ft to infinity. the result is that your eyes are constantly resting and refocusing on the screen, taxing the muscles that focus the lens.
additionally, if you're around 40 years old, you may be experiencing the first stages of presbyopia, the natural stiffening of the lens which results in the need for most people over 40 to require reading glasses to some degree or another. i've seen several cases where, though the correction wasn't enough to warrant a modification of lens power (and, quite often, these low powers aren't mentioned by the doctor/technician), it was enough to exacerbate the problems with viewing a computer monitor for a long period of time.
the best solution to the problem is to talk to your doctor about devising an 'intermediate' prescription. just like a 'reading' prescription focuses your eyes at a distance of about 18", an intermediate prescription focuses your eyes at at distance of 20-30", depending on the placement of your computer screen. this alleviates the continuous refocusing problem.
additionally, you should always get an anti-reflective coating on your computer lenses. it's harder to keep clean and the lenses will scratch more easily if you're not careful, but i've always found the reflections on non coated lenses to be more of a pain than putting my glasses in a case.
This is just annecdotal old-wives-tale advice, but my parents suggested to me that I should look at objects far away occasionally while working. So when I'm working, about once an hour I gaze out a window for 30 seconds. I have no idea if this makes a difference, but at least it's a good excuse to get up and walk (my office doesn't have a window).
The eye is focused by muscles. Just as you wouldn't sit there trying to hold even a 5-pound weight straight out to the side for hours on end without varying the position of your arm to fight muscle fatigue, you need to "change positions" with your eyes as well. Take it from someone who survived the trenches in the 20-hour-day gaming industry and fought eye strain most of the time.
Taking the advice of many people more educated about the anatomy of the eye than myself can help a lot. Fairly frequent breaks where you give your eyes a chance to focus at different lengths, or even just closing them for a minute and giving them some rest.
Every time I go to the eye doctor I get told "Well, I could give you glasses but you can probably get along well without them" Been going on 15 years of hearing that and I still don't need glasses. I have just learned to give my eyes a break.
I've had bad vision since I was in first grade and I have definitly noticed that my eyes have gotten worse since I started using computers heavily. Before I used computers a lot, my vision would go down once every few years. Now, every single year my vision drops by another 100 points. Currently my vision is 20/800 in my left eye and 20/900 in my right (those are not typos). So yeah, since I started serious computing I have become legally blind. Horray.
To alcohol and cigarettes and Mary-Jane to keep me insane doing someone else's cocaine
Some examples in just the realm of food/health:
These aren't that hard to come up with and I would classify 5 hrs sleep & 15+ hrs on the computer per day as extreme.
:wq
My background aside, at this point in time, I can't say any of my speculation is solid fact, for I am not a doctor or optometrist. The best solution, simple, yet challenging would be to spend at most 45 minutes of every hour infornt of the computer, taking 15 minutes to simply rest your eyes doing something not in front of refresh rate laden light. (Watching TV is not good rest for the eyes!) Personally, I've been trying meditation, with my eyes closed.
Other things that help me (but not a perfect correlation) are soaking a cloth in cold water and laying it on my eyes. Visine eye drops. Wearing one of those Black Eye mask type things to sleep (side note on that: do you have LED's or a screen saver on in your bedroom? turn off your main light, and stand infornt of the LED or monitor, look at a wall and wave your hands. Looks a lot like a strobe light effect, doesn't it?). Another thing you can do is let in as much sun light as possible into your working room, making sure the monitor is positioned so to avoid direct reflection, then turning off all the lights in the room. Down side of this is, unless you're a day person, you wont have many useful working hours.
So, all of my above solutions have worked for me, but they are not a perfect be all end all solution. Some days they work, some days the ideas are useless. I'm looking forward to reading the comments on this topic for others experiences. It would be nice if someone has a more perfect solution, other than retreating to a Buddhist monastery where technology doesn't exist. :-P
Dollar Highway Financial News
I am 35 Years old, I have been behind a console since I was 7 for extended periods (except high school where I was down to 1hr a day), no problems, I am still 20/20.
My old man (Dad) is 60 he has been behind a tleltype or console since 65, his vision hasnt changed either
Generally 12 hrs a day on a console for both of us. Probably just another case of weak genetics and looking for something to blame it on.
Like carpal tunnel.....
Or a guy who gets cancer after smoking for 5 years, my family is like ROACHES I say, 50 years with asbestos, no cancer for the Pipefitters, Smoke for 60 years with no ill effects , and drink a 5th of whiskey a day with no liver issues
Now were all drunk, smell like ashtrays and just kind of mean spirited but we have good genetics
1. Sleep.
2. Try out WorkRave. It has some nice exercises for your eyes while you work; though, sleep is the best medicine for lack of concentration and sore eyes.
I had an astigmatism developing over many years and after some research decided it was likely due to excessive near-point work (i.t., staring at the computer too much). So I started wearing reading glasses even though I didn't need them, and after one year my vision had _improved_, though this hardly constitutes a statistical sample. See this link, third paragraph, and also here where I give some analysis of the optics and choice of reading glasses. Your mileage may vary!
My first suggestion would be to cut the computer time down to about 10 hours per day, no more than 8 at work and 2 at home.
----- There are two kinds of people in this world, my friend; those with loaded guns, and those who dig.
As usual, I am the idiot who judges all of the possible responses, and then puts them into a single response, in order to make myself feel good.
But seriously, there was a time when I worked MINIMUM 18 hours a day (occasionally working 2 days at a time...) and often times half of each session was a bright LCD and a tube monitor in the dark.
That is basically the worse case of all the scenarios I read in the previous posts.
Recently I have found my eye sight to be deteriorating as well. I do not wear glasses, and I have 20/20 vision (last time I was tested). It has been about a year since I was really grinding the stone 18 hours a day, but most recently it is not so much that I have noticed my eye sight getting worse, but that if I squint - things are NOTICEABLY clearer. I have also noticed that my concentration is less than optimal.
About 4 months ago, I gave up coffee ( on occasion it still happens ) and it has been about a year since I gave up serious caffeine beverages (Coke, Jolt, most of the brown sodas really, and Tea).
I do not know how this all relates, but reading the head post and give my most recent experiences, I could not help but throw another data point (that is useful) on this thread and hope it helps others. I have not looked into any of the eye exercises, but if anyone has any suggestions or similiar experiences, it would be much appreciated.
My overall suggestion would definitely be to forget what anyone is saying about getting more sleep. DO WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO. MAKE A GOAL AND GET IT DONE - AND THEN REFLECT. Read some of Paul Graham's essays on doing your best work all at once. Eventually you will NEED to get some rest, but first I would make the extra effort to do whatever it is you need to do, and then use it as an extreme reference point for when you get the most done versus how it affects you physically. You don't know what you can do until you push yourself to the edge! All of the surveys and suggestions out there are for "optimal" health, but trust me - if you can make it worth your while - the lesser stress level of having extra dollars in your bank account may just be worth it!
I would suggest getting outside though, some genuine fresh air and blue sky always helps me. That is why I suggest pushing yourself. Use the winter as a cave of productivity - and wait for the summer to relax and take 5 hour days.
Finally as far as the actually headaches and vision go, I don't know because I am trying to figure out my own situation. I agree with those that note the light in the background, as well as getting a desktop, AND especially if you are going to use dual monitors, make sure they are the same, and on the same refresh rate - opposing refresh rates will definitely give you headaches and blurry vision. Make sure there are no reflective things bothering you as well. In highschool I used get tears in my eyes due to the damn overhead projector, which is a shame because I am only 24 and there were better resources available, but my one Physics professor loved to have the overhead on the softmarker board. He was a good teach tho.
That is all!
Perhaps
Thanks,
~tim
So lets think about this. You are 10 years older than when you first started computing. So you probably started around 15 or 16? Not to say that ambient room light is not helpful in preventing eye strain and such. But could this just be a case of you are getting older and your vison may just be going down hill? In any case I would seek the services of an optomitrist and have an eye exam done. You are susposed to have one every year anyway I think or is it 7? I could be confusing that with the time you are susposed to renew your license
I've been a programmer for 10+ years. Over the past 3 years or so, I've had a red-eye problem that I blamed on all the hours in front of a crt. It was only minorly irratated/itchy, but it got really red and bloodshot - my right eye only. I got tired of looking like a b-movie monstor, so I finally went to an eye doctor who gave me some pretty strong prescription eye drops that helped a little, but definitly didn't take care of it.
:)
About 5 months later, I got on a serious health kick, abandoning my couch potato ways, I started to run daily, take a multi-vitamin, and in general just really started taking care of myself. I lost about 30 pounds in 20 weeks. [Yeah!] And unexpectadly, my red-eye problem cleared up too! I'd been taking a perscription eye drop daily, but I've been off of that for at least a month now, and my eyes are nice and clear.
My advice, first thing is make sure you're body is in good basic shape and conditioning, it's amazing how many things work better for me now than before. [Yeah, that too!]
You're right. Instead of asking thousands of people who might be dealing with similar issues, taking their advice into consideration as well as speaking to a professional, he should just go to one doctor. Because that one doctor is God. Noone has ever said, "My doctor told me to to X, but I've found that Y is a better solution."
Ever.
I know you're being funny, but here are some interesting tidbits on reading I thought I'd share.
* It's not so much reading as in reading at improper light levels. Too bright, your eyes get tired. Too dark, your eyes get tired. I think that's why, as a culture, we tend to read mostly in the early morning or evening. It's when it's not too dark, you have your lights turned on at home, and the light level is just right.
* When you're reading, you don't have to look so busy. Unfortunately, it's hard to find good books that relate to work that are fun to read. But with printouts, no one can tell if it is work related or not.
* My co-worker has a dad who has his secretary print out web pages. He'll read them, and then mark what he wants to buy or get more details on. The secretary will then give him the additional information he wants. It's a clunky, slow, way to deal with the internet. But it was interesting that people out there are actually accessing the internet this way. If I had a secretary, a great deal of his time would be spent searching the internet and printing up things of interest for me.
* There was a Korean scholar from a long time ago (I think he is on the 1,000 won bill) who read using only one eye. His idea was that by using one eye for the first part of his life, he would preserve his other eye for the later part. I don't know how well that turned out there. I figured he died before his one eye gave out. Otherwise, apparently he was a smart, if eccentric, guy.
* One thing I love doing in my books is writing in them, especially if they are of the reference variety. I hate PDF because I can't mark it up with my PDF browser. Same for HTML, except you can download that and edit it some. Does anyone know of a tool or a format which encourages people to annotate and mark the text up, if not just for their own reading? There are some neat ideas out there, like Wiki, but they're still rather clunky.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
You're only getting 5 hours of sleep a night?? And you think there's something wrong with your monitor or glasses?
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I'm not an expert, but I read that sitting in front of a monitor for a long time has (at least) two effects on your eyes:
- you blink less often which dries your eyes. This in turn allows bacterias and things like that to enter your eyes, causing deseases.
- you fixiate a near point (your monitor) for a long time, so your eye muscles have to work very long. A muscle contracted for an extended period of time changes from aerobic to anaerobic metabolism that produces acid in the muscle.
You should avoid both of this by
- training yourself to blink often (wasn't there a slashdot story about a program that generates stimuli that after some training make you blink automatically ?).
- Relax your eye muscles from time to time by looking away from your monitor and fixiating a far point (for example the sky if possible).
A program like workrave might help, not only your eyes but also your hands/arms to avoid RSI.
Please correct me if I'm wrong about this, as I said I'm not an expert.
these hairy palms?
E.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
I also have +0.25 astigmatism in both eyes, which developed in my case in my late 20s. Like you, my main symptom was that it was harder to concentrate: I didn't actually have any difficulty reading, but it became an effort, which it had never been before. I got a pair of prescription glasses about three years ago and they solved the problem. The nice thing about astigmatism is that the correction is the same for all distances, so you can wear them reading, driving, or just walking around and it prevents that end-of day eyestrain and blurred vision. With such a mild prescription, though, you don't have to wear them if you don't want to.
You shouldn't need special "computer glasses" unless you also have a bit of long- or short-sightedness. I am also very slightly long-sighted, so I have glasses that correct that, too, and have the focal length set for computer use, since that is how I spend most of my time.
First, before I get to a "real" answer, I'm going to echo some of what others have said. You need to be getting more sleep. And you need to take a break every couple of hours during those 15 hour computer sessions.
Now to comment on "computer glasses".
I've had piss-poor vision pretty much all my life. I've worn glasses since I was 7 (I'm now 44). I'm legally blind without glasses.
About two years ago it was time for new glasses. One of the local vision places was having a "buy one pair, get a second pair free" type thing. So I opted for one "normal" pair, and one "computer and reading" pair.
The pros: I don't get headaches while working at the computer any more. Small print is tack sharp. I can read newspaper-sized print from three feet away (without glasses the newspaper has to be within 6 inches of my face).
The cons: My reading ability with my "normal" glasses has gotten even worse. Trying to read a newspaper or magazine, or work at the computer, with those glasses is totally pointless. My eyes have gotten used to having those reading glasses. Also, proper computer glasses will not be cheap. Its not like buying a pair of "reading glasses" off the rack at your local drugstore. With anti-glare coatings and such, my close-up glasses were slightly over $600 US (and $150 more than the "regular" glasses if I had to pay for those too), and that was two years ago.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
My old boss has been using computer for over 25 years. He said that his eyes kept getting worse and worse until he went and got contacts (he had glasses before). He said that after he got contacts that his eyes stopped getting worse even though he didn't change his computing habits. I've been tempted for a year or so to get contacts and see if the same thing is true. Maybe glasses have something to do with it?
It's a well-known fact that wearing corrective lenses causes the eye to learn to depend on the lense, causing the eye to weeken and need a higher perscription.
Most vision problems (myopia, astigmatism, etc.) are caused by incorrectly shaped corneas and/or eyeballs. Those are unaffected by visual experience in adults, so you can't fix them by not wearing glasses.
There can be small improvements in myopia if someone chooses not to wear glasses due to secondary effects (flattening of the lens if it's not used over its whole range; learned deblurring in the brain). Whether that's worth it is for you to decide, but even if it works for you, it doesn't fix what's wrong with your eyes.
If you want a permanent treatment for myopia or astigmatism, you can get laser eye surgery. But even that is only a symptomatic treatment in most people (the underlying causes and consequences of myopia remain), and it has significant risks.
Altogether, in adults, correcting vision fully with glasses is the most sensible choice: it's low-risk, flexible, and highly effective. And in your 40's, reading glasses become inevitable anyway.
I have a problem in my work place that the fluroecent lights are open, in my line of site, and nothing is done despite my complaints, and it's literally causing lots of headaches.
> Also, the lighting of the monitor is killing me, especially when
> combined with a white background.
Yep, that'll do it. White backgrounds are distilled evil. You don't notice it so much on paper (although, even there, the cheaper, more yellowish paper used for mass-market paperbacks is easier on the eyes over extended periods, and even the dull white of mass-market hardback fiction is not as taxing as the blinding-white of textbooks and such), because the paper is only reflecting whatever light is shining on it, and you don't have to use a high-wattage halogen lamp all the time.
On the screen, though... if you're going to be spending *that* many hours in front of it, you want to go with a low-contrast (or possibly medium-contrast), light-on-dark setting, rather than high-contrast light-on-dark. The traditional amber-on-black used by a lot of dumb terminals is pretty decent on the eyes, but I've found that wheat on dark slate green (something like #FFE6BC on #294D4A) is even better. Set your system colors to this (if you use GTK, the eMaCs theme will do; for Qt or Win32 you can just set the colors directly) for at least a week, and then see if your eyes are doing better. You will also want to set your terminal emulator to use the system colors, and your web browser (and turn using the page author's colors off, so that *all* pages use your colors). Most reasonable applications will just pick up the system colors and use them automatically, e.g., any vaguely recent version of OpenOffice will just automatically use them (on the screen, by default; on paper your documents will still come out black-on-white, as you would want, and of course if you specifically change the color of anything, it appears in the color you specify).
You will *occasionally* have to work with white backgrounds, e.g., when doing image editing, but unless you're doing that sort of thing for a lot of hours, it isn't such a big deal, although after a few years of using softer colors you may eventually get to the point where you physically recoil at black-on-white.
Also you should try to sleep a little more.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
The specific glasses that you're talking about are for CRT monitors only. Using a TFT monitor makes them completely unnecessary. They claim that they work because a CRT has to have slightly blurry pixels in order for you to see the correct colors, but this results in the viewer shifting his focus between a little in front of the glass to a little behind the glass several times per second, resulting in significant eye strain.
I'm with everyone else. Get more sleep and you'll be much more functional with the rest of your hours.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
To quickly invert all screen colours (so you read white text on a black background), press command+ctrl+option+8 . Same key combo to change back. This can be good for a change, and gives you the black background to text editors/websites that others were suggesting.
I'm 42, and still have near perfect eye site. Have used computers every day since my Sinclair ZX-81 in 198(1!). My mother always said, leave a balanced lifestyle, and with regards to your eyes, ensure that every day you take their muscles to their limits in both directions. Driving is an excellent way to keep you eyes on distant objects (you are forced into this to read distant road signs, look out for danger ahead etc), while reading a book helps the muscles in the other direction. Diet wise, reduced carbs and sugar and an increase in natural protiens and fruit and veg. When it comes to displays, LCDs are far better on your eyes than a CRT, and in an ideal world, you would only read amber text on a black background! But that's just not going to happen is it? :-) Finally, keep the brightness at a minimum in low light conditions and be aware that poking at the keyboard in a darkened room is terrible for your eyes. Or buy a late generation Powerbook with backlit keys.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
First of all, if you can't stop looking at your computer screen 15 hours a day (and you really should) at least make sure you're taking enough breaks. Stop looking at the screen for 5 minutes or more at least every other hour or so. More sleep should help reduce eye strain, too.
Don't use white or bright background colors. I find greys and deep blues to work best for me.
Lighting can help a lot, but depending on where you work, there may not be much you can do about it. Ideally you want to replace as much direct lighting as possible with ambient light sources. If you have your own office, try killing the overhead lights and get one of the torchiere style floor lamps that directs all or most of the light upwards. There was one office I worked in where the ballasts in the space I shared with three other people had gone bad and made a horrible buzzing noise. We turned off the overhead lights and all aimed our desk lamps (halogen guys that bear a strong resemblance to the Pixar logo) at a central spot on the ceiling. A lot of people gave us crap for it, but I think that was the best light I've ever had for extended computer work.
Finally, as many other people have mentioned, if your primary problem is lack of concentration, you probably really need more sleep. Try getting at least an extra two hours of sleep each night, and spend several hours a week on a hobby you enjoy that doesn't require looking at a flat screen, and you may find that most days you can get as much work done in 10 hours as you currently do in 15.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
I've been in computing for over 25 years now, and I only have one 'hard' rule that I follow - I must have a sharp, clear, monitor with little glare. I used to really like the NEC back in the 90's, and hated the cheap-charlie brands. These days, most anything will do, but they have to be adjusted properly and physically clean (dirty glass is a distraction to the eyes).
As a professional developer, I spend all day at the computer, and as a person, I spend hours every night and weekend staring at a screen... so far I've had no ill effects. My last eye check was a while ago, but it detected no issues.
Simple advice: Always use a good monitor to reduce fatigue, keep it clean and adjusted, and take breaks to do sudoku at regulat intervals
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
I have been using computers professionally since 1985, when I finished university. Now I have a pair of glasses for computing and a pair for the "real world". But I'll tell you now... don't play with cheap lighting or cheap displays.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
call me crazy but you need more than 5hours of sleep.
Straining your eyes can lead to the constriction of the small capillaries which supplying the retina with oxygen. This can lead to a reversible deterioration of vision called retinal migraine. Avoid light sources that "flicker" like fluorescent lighting, CRTs etc. Also avoid too much Caffein.
D =387
.....
See also:
http://www.eyemdlink.com/Condition.asp?ConditionI
Another condition that affects vision are floaters. These could be caused by another underlying disease like inflammation. Have your eyes checked out, and if nothing is found, just remember to give them a rest once in a while
If can set up an office near a window, then you can look out the window frequently to rest your eyes.
(Probably not that workable at night.)
http://www.babiesonline.com/babynames/index.asp?na me=Hildreth
i usually just google "name origin [the name]" when i need to figure something like that out
I started seeing double after about five years of ridiculous hours, so I went to see an optometrist. She told me to look away from the monitor and let your eyes relax now and then! It worked fine. You should spend at least 15 minutes out of every two hours with your eyes focused on the horizon (i.e. "infinity"). If your cubicle doesn't offer you a horizon, just close your eyes and let them relax naturally.
And for goodness sake, stop working so hard and robbing yourself of sleep. It isn't worth it! You're young now but you'll destroy your health if you keep it up. And your company has a short memory of past achievements... all it takes is a reorganization to blank it out! So why kill yourself?
Not as much experience as the parent, but I'm ASIAN and I have 20/20. I have genetics on my side, as neither my mom nor my grandma are shortsighted. I also engage in a decent amount of sports that exercise my eyes.
I have dry eyes. They feel tired and sore from time to time and I have to/should take eye drops.
I consulted an eye specialist because of it a few months ago. My vision isn't the best either.
I'm 25 with several years of computer and monitor work.
Exercise your eyes, and give them rests by looking at faraway stuff.
If you insist on focussing on small, local objects for long periods of time, then you only have yourself to blame for it. You're not invincible.
Wow, I haven't seen such crappy moderation in a while. Sand up your vaginas, moderators? Can't take a fucking joke?
Hi,
I too stare at a monitor for large periods of time at work.
Here are my observations:
1. an LCD monitor is easier to look at than a CRT.
2. I need to look away from the monitor at least every 15mins, sometimes
I can break my work up so that I go and do something else work related
(patching servers, reading meeting minutes etc...) so that I get a mental and
eyeball break.
3. Drinking lots of water is important, the eyes are basically sitting in the
stuff. I find when I get dehidrated at work they can get sore.
4. My dad taught me this eye exercise where basically you do a figure of 8 with
your eyes (looking down and right, then up to the right, then top right, then
to your nose, then bottom left, up to straight left, top left, down to the
nose etc...)
Thank you. I tried googling for it but the SNR was too high -- it's apparently a pretty common last name.
I didn't used to need computer glasses, but as I get older, the range of distance over which I can focus is getting narrower. As a result, the computer screen is too far to see with my regular glasses off (I'm near-sighted), and too close when they're on. So, I get computer glasses that bring things 3 feet away into focus.
You're probably just getting old....
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
Hey, sounds like my own story - great thread, have bookmarked it.
Essentially, answer is to be *active* about problem: investigate methods of eyesight improvement WITHOUT binoculars (will dig that book back, it seemed to work - training involved sun, etc.). Have breaks. Have stuff printed. Never strain eyes, too.
As a rule, it's a one-way wear, so spend mo-dest-ly!
Once again, many good ideas under your post.
I hope you're not just trolling, because that would make an incredibly rare name, it sounds _very_ outdated, but it's definitely female.
Keine Ursache.
A World in a Grain of Sand / Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Infinity in the Palm of your Hand / And Eternity in an Hour.
This, being the context, is perfectly alright.
What he's really saying is that he looks at porn for 15 hours per day. Focusing for that long on cocks, tits, and cumshots is just not good for your eyes.
Most of the other comments covered the eye break issues well enough, but I have emphasize the importance of enough sleep. I just left a big consulting house position last year because I was suffering from serious concentration and cognitive problems, severe short term memory problems, and permanent long term memory loss.
the cause was relatively easy for the doctor to diagnose, 11 years of 3 to 4 hours a night sleep, and frequent (5 to 6 times a year) 50+ hour days. I was also a 100% travel, so virtually the only time I slept was on airplanes, and weekend nights.
after 5 months of 7 to 10 hours of sleep a night, and low stress small busines consulting, I am only just now beginning to recover, and from what the doctor says some of the memory problems will be permanent.
I can not recommend strongly enough, get a minimum of 7 hours of sleep a night at least 4 nights a week.
my old sig is obsolete, and I haven't come up with a stupid enough new one yet
Why is it seemingly 90%+ of the time anything with Cliff's name is just abso-freaking-lutely STUPID?
I've been in front of a various terminals, ranging from RF modulated TI-99/4a on a b&w tv to my Mac LCD. 20+ years with darn near perfect vision.
It's in the genes.
Cliff, could you spare us with your "trying too hard to be a geek" vibe next time. It's way past old.
Well at least I am - 42 - been in front of a computer screen since 1976 - haven't left it - can't unlock the chain holding me here - I use reading glasses sometimes....
Face it - your eyes go bad the older you get - adapt and overcome with superior technology.
....for desktop computers users at least.
I've been using my Ambient Weather Beacon for few months now. I don't know if it helps, but I know my daily headaches went away after I put it behind my monitors. Plus, it's wicked cool!
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
It's a well-known fact that wearing corrective lenses causes the eye to learn to depend on the lens
Actually, my optometrists told me for years that rigid gas-permeable contact lenses would slightly _decrease_ the prescription that I would require (because they shape the cornea a little bit, I believe, which soft lenses don't do). I can verify that when I stopped wearing such lenses for a year or so prior to getting LASIK surgery, my eyes became measurably (if not dramatically) more myopic.
"Legally blind" is a bit misleading, as at least one other has pointed out; it's usually only applied to those with uncorrectable vision. "Legally blind without corrective lenses", sure.
Side note: 20/600 is poor vision but not inherently uncorrectable to 20/20. My vision was considerably worse (appx. -12 diopters in each eye, corresponding to a focal length of ~3.25", or about 20/1200); it was correctable to 20/20 with the aforementioned contacts, or with glasses (although apparently not with soft lenses). If you're only getting 20/45 corrected vision, you either have some other vision problem which is not being addressed, or you need a new optometrist and/or optician.
I browse at +5, so sorry if this has been said.
I used to work in an optical, so I know a bit about the comp glasses.
Usually sell them with anti-glare, but that's mostly for CRT flicker, or for offices with fluorescent lights (sounds like that's not an issue for you).
The biggest thing with them is that they are for people who wear bifocals/progressive lenses. Computer glasses are an intermediate perscription, as the distance Rx is usually not good for a monitor so close, and tilting your head back all day to look through your reading portion can give you neck strain pretty quick.
As someone with eye troubles since the first grade, and who now can't even read the big E on an eye chart...
Liquid Crystal Displays are enormously more gently on my eyes than are CRTs. So much so that at work I use a 14" LCD rather than a 27" monitor due to the strain from the monitor. If you do have CRT ensure the refresh rate is pretty high like 75Hz or up.
I definitely agree with LCD's help ing eye strain, and also turning the brightness down helps.. but those are personal preferences.
As far as science, my eye doctor told me that looking at close up things (e.g. reading a lot, or working on a computer) can cause two problems depending on a person genetic predisposition. in people like me: 1) astymagtism and near sightedness as the muscles pulling on your eye to focus on close up things cause your eye to deform or in other people 2) far sightedness as the muscles strain causes the muscle to stretch out and they loose their ability to focus close up over time. #2 is far more commone, and happens to most people as they age.
He proposed four things... 1) use large fonts 2) set your monitor about 30 inches away from your face 3) reading glasses that make you a little far sighted to allow your eyes to focus on close up things with less strain. He said that reading glasses don't have to be a prescription for people with normalish eye sight and you can pick them up at drug stores and at walmart and such. 4) always use lots of light in your work area.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
The advice of see an eye professional is the start.
Consider a pair of glases just for the computer. They can be cheap single correction plastic. Keep you from having to tilt you head when you get bifocals, (and you will).
Always use a high refresh rate. much below 72hz will give you a headache.
When and if you have cataracts removed be aware that you can change the correction needed for your eyes. The eyes do not have to be the same either. For instance, I had mine corrected so I could see up close without glasses, distance vision requires a correction. Most people do the opposite , correct the far vision and wear glasses for close work.You could get a correction that works on the computer and wear glases for far and up close, lot of combinations.
Final note; when the time comes, don't wait to remove cataracts, it's time wasted. I wish I had had it done sooner.
I've got something like .75 in one and .95 in the other. I'm also slightly nearsighted, but I wear contacts while working -- I generally am far enough (2ft+, yay for that 24in widescreen LCD :) ) from my displays that not using anything would mean hunching over.
:)
Its definately fixable with contacts or glasses. If you go with glasses, make sure you get something high quality like crizal or something, not some cheap no-anti-glare stuff. Crizal also has the bonus of less starbursts while driving, if you get those.
You'll be amazed looking at trees (mmmmm, fractal patterns) for years and wonder why you dealt with the haze.
-- dieman - Scott Dier
Throughout my last few years of high school I was regularly getting five to six hours sleep per night due to spending the wee hours hacking away on my favorite open source projects. During the day at school I was irritable, unable to concentrate and I nearly flunked my exams as a result. Fortunately, I got a figurative kick up the ass just in time and got my act together, focused on my studies and actually impressed myself at how well I can perform with a sensible amount of sleep.
You might think you're being more productive by shaving off a few hours sleep per night, but you will most likely find that your increased concentration as a result of having a natural amount of sleep will make your work time more fruitful despite it being shorter.
If you continue to live like this your suffering won't be long. You will probably die 10 to 15 years sooner. Your last years you will probably spend in a wheel chair or in bed because every movement hurts like hell. If you are blow 30 and you already have problems then act NOW!
Pick up some some regular sport or work out. Combine aerobic sports (running, soccer, biking) with something for your flexibility (yoga). Sleep enough - usually before midnight. Review your diet - especially when you live in North America. Check ergonomics of your workplace. Laptops usually make your neck bend too much and this causes stress to your cervical vertebra which in turn may result in many diseases. If you often use a mouse, make sure you don't double-click too much. Configure the middle mouse button as a double-click for example. Double-clicking is known to lead to carpal tunnel syndrome - the graphical designers disease.
I wear reading glasses while using the computer, and it helps a lot.
My vision absolutely stinks. I wear contact lenses of about -8.5. I don't recall how this translates to the old 20/whatever, but without correction, I have to have my eyes about 4 inches from what I need to read.
I blame a combination of bad genes and poor reading habits. I spent a lot of time reading books at a range of about 1 foot (perhaps less). My vision started going bad about age 7. I was in bifocals only a few years later, but I didn't really use them correctly. Things just kept getting worse.
Twelve years ago, at about age 25, my optometrist suggested I start using reading glasses for close in work. The theory was that he was correcting my distance vision, but I did so much close-in work that my eyes adjusted for the preferred distance. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I've been using reading glasses in the +1 or +2 range since then, and my vision has proven remarkably stable. (I have custom lenses, rather than the standard drug-store variety, in part because I have some astigmatism.) It definitely reduces the strain on my eyes; forgetting my glasses at home makes for a moderately unpleasant day.
Maybe I should try one of these "eye exercise" therapies, but I worry that my eyes are just too far gone. (How can I focus on distant objects when anything beyond 6 inches is a blur?) My son (now 14) doesn't have any need for glasses, but he spends a lot more time outside than I ever did.
To restate: Consider reading glasses for close-in work if this takes up a large part of your day. Also consider getting more sleep and varying your activities.
The United States of America: We mean well.
When finishing a dense PCB design after a spate of 100 hour weeks, my eyes started to shake side-to-side at about 2Hz. Scared the fuck out of me, I thought I was having a stroke or MS symptoms.
Turned out it was just fatigue, so I take breaks more often now.
'Be always mindful, even when ditch-digging.' --D. T. Suzuki
I was once given some exercises to do, I dont know for sure if these are the ones though:
1/ Hold up a pencil vertically (or just use your finger). Hold it as far away as you can between your eyes. Slowly bring the pencil closer to your face, keeping it in focus as much as possible until your eyes feel strained or it reaches your nose.
2/ Hold up a pencil vertically and keeping your head still, move it from side to side until its out of view. Track the pencil with your eyes. Do this at varying distances.
3/ Hold up two pencils vertically. One at arms length, the other midway. Move your focus back and forth from one to the other.
I used to do variations of the 3rd one at different distances. Just pick out the closest object and the furthest object and use them. Another thing. I was talking to my grandfather who is a keen artist. He was talking about how great sketching is for the eyes as the constant change in focus from object to paper really works them.
Before I became an EE, I was an Optician. The special glasses for computer use are just anti-reflective. They will do SFA if you don't wear glasses. The people at the glasses stores are sometimes misinformed. (Seriously.) There are no glasses that someone with your prescription should wear while using the computer. If you wanted to buy them from me, I'd have advised you not to buy anything. If you insisted, I would have sold you plain plastic lenses with an anti-glare coating. Don't buy glass, and don't buy polycarbonate. (Glass is too heavy, and polycarb is too fibrous.) Make sure you can get your money back, since you're going to bring them back for a refund after a week or two anyway.
I wear contacts adjusted for long-distance viewing (20/10 and 20/15) and I have no problems using a computer for most of the day. (20 years of computer work, I'm 29 (today, actually - It's my birthday!) I take breaks, have the light adjusted correctly, and don't let anyone touch my monitor. I trained everyone by doing this: As soon as someone touches the screen, the conversation is over. I get up, go get the windex, and clean the screen. Then they can continue.
When you set up your lights, have no lights behind you. Your monitor should be backlight with light that is dimmer than you would prefer for reading. You can get task lighting for reading. If there are lights behind you, get rid of them.
Finally, do less work in a day. You aren't productive after 4-5 hours. You're just wasting time.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Actually, I've noticed that sitting in front of a computer screen improves my health. It appears that the radiation kills any germs that might make me sick, and it leaves my skin soft and smooth (the dead stuff just falls off).
Register the editry.
I got my first pc at about the same time you did, and have been getting new ones every few years ever since. I am nearsighted anyway, but I think thats from both my parents needing glasses and all 4 of my grandparents needing them. As for any trouble with the computer screen, all I can say is take a break man. Read a book, go outside. Thats what works for me if I have accidentally stared at my screen too long playing civilization or something.
I think the room light should be enough to read the keyboard, but not more than that.
d uctDisplay?topcategoryId=15579&catalogId=10103&sto reId=12&productId=11158&langId=-1&parentCats=15579
I can stand long computer session times better when using dark backgrounds and light text (In Firefox I forced all webpage colours to ave black backgrounds, yelow text and light blue links) I know the pages look diferent, but after a while you'll get used to this. (Old text terminal monitors always had black backgounds and light text).
And lower the room and monitor light so you can read fine, and don't find the image light too agressive. (Brighntess to the minimum, and contrast to litle over minumum).
I think a great room light is a white or yellow chrismas light tube (not flashing ones) placed near the ceiling behind you, so you'll have very good indirect light without shadow angles.
Maybe this light is a good choice:
http://www.ikea.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Pro
(it's white led based, very low heat and power consumtion).
About dark backgrounds I still don't accept why every aplication gui (mainly Microsoft) is using white backgounds on computer monitors) maybe it's to simulate a white paper, but paper is an passive light divice and computer monitors are a light source. (Who want's to look directly at light sources!?!)....
Unfortunately from the time being, I still can't use black windows background with black butons background in KDE 3.5.0 (I think it's a bug, so buttons just disapear:(
Well, 5 hours per day is kind of borderline -- some people are fine on 4-5 hours per day, others need 7-8 or more to be productive.
Personally, I've found that if I sleep less than 5 hours I'm tired, but if I sleep more than 6 hours I'm also tired or even have a headache (at 8 hours, I often have a headache). So, over the years of working an 8-5 I.T. job, I've found the best middleground for sleep is getting to bed by midnight, then up by 6am -- with that much sleep, I'm always ready to go. It also allows me to go to bed a little later or get up a little earlier if I want to for various reasons.
Years ago before I was in I.T., I was in the artillery in the U.S. Army. Artillerymen are *required* to stay awake for 72 hours straight on a regular basis as part of our duty (have to be prepared for fire missions for long periods in a time of war). So, I learned to go to sleep very quickly (it takes about 2 minutes for me to go into snoring mode according to my wife), and I'm pretty quick to get up in the morning.
Also, my first two years after college I worked 16-20 hours a day, 5-6 days a week, because I had 2-3 jobs while I was getting established (like most techies, it took me a couple of years to find a *good* job after I got my degree).
So, I have plenty of experience with sleep deprivation. I can tell you first-hand, if you're staring fairly constantly at a computer screen for 15+ hours per day, every day, your vision will be affected. That really depends on how you're using the computer, though. I've been using computers for 16 hours per day for over 15 years, but I take breaks every 15 minutes or so. Sometimes it's walking around, sometimes just talking to people, sometimes reading manuals, or whatever.
I've sometimes gone for 8-10 hours playing a game (WoW or Civ immediately come to mind), and if that's the kind of non-stop computer usage you're doing for 15 hours per day, you've got to change it or break it up somehow.
Lewser GET A bloody life man.... how fat are you?
Chances are your eyes, like the rest of you, are just getting old.
Go to an optician and get your eyes tested. If you need glasses, wear them.
For myself, I have far from perfect vision but it has not degraded because of computer use: it was bad to start with and has remained pretty much constant for twenty five years. I'm getting degradation now because I'm reaching a critical age.
Dunx
Converting caffeine into code since 1982
And I still have 20/13 in both eyes... no problems with monitors. Use a computer 8 hours a day at work and probably another hour or two at home.
Thank your good star if you abuse your eyes and have no problems.
The scientific body of evidence is overwhelming regarding the ill effect of spending too long in front of computer screens without taking any measures to ensure your vision is ok.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
...had a physical in a while.
I can attest to this, folks. My experience wasn't with the loss of vision (and it runs in the family, so while it was a surprise to me, it wasn't due to working in front of a computer all the time...) but with only one of the other symptoms. I'd checked into the ER with a blood sugar of 600mg/dl- you run the risk of a coma past 300-400. As the glucose levels dropped, I went suddenly far-sighted. I'm fine now, not needing glasses.
If you show any of the symptoms- and I do mean any of them, you may want to get in for a physical immediately.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
If you're getting nearsighted, wear farsighted glasses; just the cheap $15 reading glasses that you can get at a drug store will do; if your vision is good, pick up some with +1 or +2 lenses.
If your vision isn't good enough to do that (ie, you wear nearsighted glasses), either don't wear your glasses or get a pair with a weaker perscription.
THe reasoning behind this is to help your eyes naturally compensate. with nearsighted glasses, they perscribe them for distance work - as evidenced by the wall eye chart they have you look at 30 feet away. with a strong nearsighted perscription, your eyes will 'adapt' to that strength at the distance they're perscribed to, potentially meaning you'd need a new perscription in a couple years. meanwhile, they're overstrength for close-up work. If you're doing close work, it really stresses your eyes. optomitrists never tell you this because they want your repeat patronage.
The same concept is behidn wearing the farsighted/reading glasses: in essence, they make the closer objects strain your eyes less as they are being compensated by the lenses to make your eyes think the objects are further way.
also, just spend more time outdoors. It's good for you. Exercise, go boating, camping - anything that will make your eyes focus on further objects. I personally prefer shooting - both long range rifle and pistol. Though, with something like shooting where you mainly use one eye, you've got to be careful you don't cause one eye to become over dominant.
(I've had long-running issues resulting from over-perscribed eyeglasses, and I've been trying to get my eyesight back to 'acceptable' through the above methods. My perscription is now 40/20 (give or take) in each eye; it was 210/20 in each eye (give or take) 10 years ago.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I've had ongoing problems with headaches, particularly in my temples. I lose focus and get really irritable.
Then I decided on a whim to wear a peaked cap ("baseball cap"). Since then, no headaches.
I suspect my headaches were caused by the position of the lights in my office (two of them are shining light into my eyes from odd angles) and the location of the air conditioning duct (no matter where I sit in my room, I get cold air dumped on my bald head).
You may also want to cut down on the sheer number of hours you spend in front of the computer.
I was sincere. Thank you.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Our eyes were not meant for the type of work we often do--close-up, unbroken, for long periods. They were meant for spotting prey, food, and predators in the distance. The easiest and most important thing you can do for your eyes is give them breaks.
AT LEAST every five minutes, turn away from your computer screen and look around. Focus on something distant. Ideally, look out a window. Blink. Breathe. Then go back to work. (20-30 seconds) I read something about schools implementing this practice in China or Japan or something with good results.
What kind of light do you use in your workspace? Are you maximizing daylight? Consider avoiding fluorescent light.
If you wear contacts, consider switching to glasses. If you wear glasses, don't wear them every waking hour. Take them off when you give your eyes a break as described above. If you don't wear corrective lenses at all, consider yourself darn lucky and don't assume this luck will continue forever.
Loss of concentration is probably due to drained energy. Vision may take far more energy than most people realize. Make sure you're using good posture and breathing deeply. Dr. Andrew Weil has a lot to say about breathing, and it's very interesting. He says most people don't breathe properly, and if they did, they would have far less stress and fewer health problems. Posture: Try sitting up so straight that you feel ridiculous. How long you can stay like that without a) forgetting and slouching, or b) collapsing from exhaustion? It's harder than you may think. Practicing good posture builds your core muscles for a better physique and better health.
Do you read books often? Make a bookmark that says, "Stop. Look up. Blink. Breathe. Now put me two pages ahead." (Or just use a plain bookmark and remember to do those things whenever you reach it.) I got this from a book called "Take Off Your Glasses and See" by Jacob Liberman. It's a little out there (metaphysical), but it's quite interesting. I am currently reading it and seeing a doctor to which the author refers as a "behavioral optometrist" (vision therapist) with the goal of reducing or eliminating my dependency on corrective lenses.
i've been working with computers for almost 20 years, and the thing that really affects your work dramatically is everything that surround the computer: the futniture. bad furniture=repetative stress disorder and other maladies, like fucking up your eyes and getting neck and back aches.
1) make sure you have a good chair which supports you ass/spine/thighs properly, so it doesn't cause undo stress on your body. if you have the cash, the aeron chair is an excellent choice, other herman miller or steel case task chairs are also good choices. avoid the ikea/office max/office depot $99 entry level task chairs... these'll fuck you up. look for chairs that have quality tilting/tension/lifting mechanisms, arm rests, and good lumbar support. most quality task chairs can be found in the $250-500. you're spending as much time in your chair as you do working at your desk. consider it a human interface as important as a keyboard, mouse or monitor. personally i'm using the old skool eames aluminum group executive chair. i've never been a fan of the balans chairs, but i got a programmer friend who swears by it, claims it improved his posture, cause it forces your to sit up right...
2) if you don't have a good desk, get one. IMHO desks are a little easier than chairs sine it doesn't necessarily require you to actually try it out to figure if it works for you. height of the working surface should be between 36-42" from the floor, keyboard shelf/drawer and other accoutraments are personal preference. If you don't have a desk, are are looking into sreplacing your existing one, consider some of the task stuff from ikea, or if you got extra cash, go with the anthro cart stuff. the ikea stuff is cheap, but it actually has a good range of customability. i like the jerker series from ikea with the upper shelf and the swinging side tables. I've got one of these now, and at one time i had two 21" monitors, two 15" monitors (on the swing out side surfaces), a shuttle XPC, sun classic, quadra 700, G5 and a laptop all on the same desk.
3) a quality display with fast a refresh, and proper viewing angle. if your working 8-12 hours in front of this stuff, don't torture your eyes or you neck! the best viewing angle for a display is as close to perpendicular to the center of the screen. iyou might consider hooking up an external display to your laptop, and run the laptop closed, using the external display as the primary monitor. LCD displays have come down in price enough. i replaced my 21" tube for 19" viewsonic vx910, which I ended up getting for $100 under retail because of rebates. it's bright, it has good contrast, the refresh is fast(not great for gaming, but great for real work), and it has both dvi and vga, so i can actually use it as a poorman's KVM.
4) ambient lighting. shutting down all the lights and bathing in the glow of the monitor might be cool if your a teenager, but your eyes will eventually suffer from lack of exercise. ambient lighting helps reduce the extreme contrast between the light coming from the monitor and no light coming from around the monitor. having ambient lighting will allow your eyes to focus on things around your work space when your eyes need some variety. try a desklamp directed towards the wall/floor/ceiling. quartz halogen is preferred because it has the widest spectrum, then standard incandecent next, and flourescent are a last(poor) choice because of the discontinuous spectrum.
5) try using the software on your system to cycle backgroud pictures for you on a regular cycle(new image every 20-30 minutes) you might also try working in a teminal program which allows you to alter background image/color/transparency, and have it set randomly for you, like e-term. also consider a typeface which is easy on the eyes. serif typeface tend to be easier on the eyes for long term reading, san serif can become annoying real fast when reading small type for an extended time. i prefer using courier or another monospaced typeface, it's also easier to recognize number/letter pairs that are ver
three can keep a secret, if two are dead - benjamin franklin
I had 20/10-20/20 for a long time but after using a computer with a 19" CRT at work where it was closer to my left eye and sitting at an angle, I gradually developed 20/100-20/200 on my left eye vs my right eye's 20/20.
My doctor said that this is actually a blessing in disguise because I can see close objects with much more clarity using my left eye compared to my right one. As my vision in my right eye ages and I cannot see close objects without reading glasses, I'll be able to do that with my left. Far-away objects are taken care of with my right. In essence, I won't need glasses for a while.
I use special glasses that have "infinity" set to about 2 feet. This allows my eyes to not have to focus up close all the time. So I can do long sessions without having my eyes get tired. You might want to talk to your eye doctor about special glasses.
I'm a programmer, and I was having alot of trouble a sitting behind a computer for long periods of time. After a few hours my eyes hurt like hell. I asked my eye doctor, and he recommended reading glasses, which helped to some extent. Then a fellow worker, who also suffered from eye strain, recommended full spectrum light bulbs. These bulbs have a EM spectrum similair to real sunlight (in contrast to incandecent and flourescent lighting). Once I started using them, all eye strain was gone. I can sit behind a computer all day now without any problems. In addition, my near sightedness, which was getting progressively worse, has stablized. I've been using the game prescription for years.
I have recommended using these bulbs to others who work with thier eyes up close, and they have reported beneficial results as well.
As to why this works, I don't know for sure, but my guess is that our eyes developed for use in real sunlight, and the bad spectrums of artificual light wreaks havoc with our eyes in some way.
I'm gonna come off a little rude here...
The problem isn't your vision. GET SOME DECENT SLEEP, moron!
Should be obvious. You aren't resting enough, so you're experiencing eye-strain due to your eye muscles not being rested. If you're stressed on top of all this, it makes things worse.
Get your 8 hours. Hell, even 7 would be fine. And cut down any stress.
It was exactly 10 years from when my pops got me my first computer until I had to get glasses.. When I was a kid I didn't needem, saw just fine. But alas, here I sit.. filling the shoes of the nerd stereotype.. but hey.. at least I have 20/15 withem on :D
Happy birthday!
I have some sort of RSI/Carpal/Cubital tunnel. I first noticed last march, when I had shooting pains in my right hand. Now parts of my left hand are numb at times. I've had issues with my vision as well. I'm sure it has to do with the amount of time I spend in front of the computer, and that I work much too much overtime.
If you're going to work long periods of time at the computer, you have to take frequent breaks. I found this nifty program (www.workrave.com), to help manage my breaks. I have it setup for 30 second microbreaks every 3 mins, in which I look around, take a breather - think about what I'm doing or typing. It can get a bit annoying if I'm concentrating on something, but it's good to remember its for you're own good. In addition it forces you to take "rest breaks," which I have defined as 5 mins every 20 mins to stretch and walk around. My resting routine is a bit aggressive, as I am recovering from RSI. But all of the timers are completely customizable.
If you're using the laptop keyboard, the one directly attached to the screen, then that means the screen is well below an arm's length away from you. With an external keyboard, you can put the laptop further away from your face, and your eyesight has a chance to improve, or at least not deteriorate.
I know how much slashdotters love links to blogs, so here's a link to mine. It has cute diagrams to illustrate this.
Gee, hmmm... you only sleep five hours a night and now are having a hard time concentrating? Garsh, gee, how'd that happen? You never mention your age, but one can infer you're in your twenties from the context. And besides, anyone older than, say, 30 or so would be wise enough to realize he can't get by on only 5 hours of sleep any more, or that there's more to life than sitting in front of a screen.
So get up off your pasty white ass, Poindexter; get out there and take some dance lessons. And quit whining! You're like those asswipes who go to the doctor and cop the attitude that they can and should do everything they've ever done as a teenager and if they can't do it and remain slim & healthy that it's the DOCTOR's fault.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
Modulo the weight loss. My mass shifted from more fat/less muscle to less fat/more muscle, which I presume means that it call turns to fat again if I stop cycling. I would like to lose 15kg, however.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
This is my problem, too, but it's just a simple matter of sleep. The only problem about that solution is that I spend so much time on the computer that I go to bed at midnight every night. :P
There's no place like 127.0.0.1
Press Command-Option-Control-8.
;)
It will invert your screen's colors, thus turning those blinding harsh whites into an unintrusive dark black.
I use this feature all the time when I'm out and about with my iBook at night. It's especially good if you're at a coffee shop etc. and don't want to distract other people with your painfully-bright LCD monitor illuminating half the room. It's far more effective than just lessening the brightness of the display (go into an unlit room with the laptop, face the screen away from you, and just keep pressing the key-command to invert the video and you'll see how much of a difference it makes)!
Not to mention it looks pretty sweet.
HOWEVER, I would point out a few things here. First, I set the refresh rate to something my eyes are comfortable with. Too low a refresh rate will likely cause headaches and eye-strain, though I doubt it can actually harm your vision.
Secondly, I've generally used monitors that are either anti-glare or fitted with anti-glare screens. Reflections off the monitor will also cause eye-strain. For the same reason, monitors should not be positioned to reflect inside lights or the outside.
Thirdly, adjust the contrast and brightness sensibly. In general, I've found it best to use the minimum brightness and then raise the contrast until the picture is comfortable on the eyes.
Lastly, the best computer wallpaper seems to be soft colours with motion, as you're mentally going to be placing that in the background of whatever you're focussed on.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Hi!
There is a very nice book about improving your vision. It's titled "The art of seeing" and it's by Aldous Huxley. He himself used methods devised by Dr Bates in the 1930's I think. I am sure there are others but this is the one that helped me.
Get 8 hours of sleep. Take frequent breaks (e.g. 10 minutes every hour). Go out and get some sunshine and some exercise. I would also strongly recommend vitamin supplementation - particularly vitamins A,C,E, and b-complex, as well as fish oil. All of those are important to the eyesight. I've gone from 1.5 farsightedness to having vision better than 20/20 using these simple rules.
You're probably experiencing old fashioned old age. Your vision is going to deteriorate until you hit 25, then stabilize for 20 years, then deteriorate again. It probably has nothing to do with computers.
5 hours of sleep won't do it. You need an average of 8 hours until you hit 40. Then you can think about 7 hours.
I recommend the 20/20 method. Every 20 minutes focus on an infinite focus plane for 20 seconds.
Everyone should see an Ophthalmologist (not an Optometrist) regularly. The definition of regularly depends on your age, status of your vision and health. If you have vision problems you should make the effort to find a GOOD Ophthalmologist.
An Ophthalmologist is a physician (M.D.) specializing in diseases of the eye. An Optometrist is a technician trained to test your eyes and prescribe glasses. A good Optometrist might recognize medical problems, but you need to see a physician to rule out medical eye problems.
The most basic eye problem that will happen to everyone is that with age we lose our focusing accommodation -- in our 40s and definitely by age 50. If your vision is perfect for distant objects, you will gradually lose your ability to focus on close objects, later at reading distance, still later at computer distances. One of the early symptoms is eyestrain reading or using a computer. Cheap reading glasses are fine if your distance vision if perfect. If you need glasses for distance vision, bifocals or trifocals or continuously variable bifocals solve the problem for most purposes. For computer work bifocals are literally a pain in the neck -- to focus you hold your neck at an unnatural angle. By the time you are in your 50's you'll need computer glasses, so that when your eye is in its relaxed state it is focused on the computer screen. If you're 20-30 this is not likely to be your problem.
Many of the environmental suggestions here are good, but they won't help much with disease conditions, the aging process, or optical problems.
--Walter
I don't know how, but the last time I went to the eye doctor, my eyes had actually improved! I have been using a computer almost daily for the last 10 years. My eyes were never that bad (I just wore glasses to read the chalk board in school). I had lost my glasses at some point, but it took awhile before I went back to the eye doctor. When I dinally did, my eyes had improved and the eye doctor said I didn't need glasses.
having a wank, or rather too many wanks might actually be the problem... at least that's what my father used to tell me (don't do that so much or you'll go blind!)... and he wears pretty thick glasses so I think he knows what he is talking about :)
1. LCD screens are much nicer to the eye than CRT's, but turning down the LCD backlight makes it even essier on the eyes. I dim the backlight until the screen is about the brightness of a sheet of copier paper (not high-brightness printer paper) under a white light near the screen. It makes the White background of the LCD screen MUCH less harsh.
2. I crank up screen resolution to the max, then increase the screen font sizes. This is not so that I can read the screen, it just makes reading feel a hell of a lot better. When screen resolution increases, fonts shrink and push my eyes slightly into eyestrain...not enough to make them hurt, but enough to make reading uncomfortable.
3. Few opthamalogists and optomistrists stake into account how you read and computer use when writing and filling eyeglass prescriptions. It strikes me that eye distance to the media is key, but I've never been asked. My opthamalogist didn't ask about the distance I like to read at (typically, I read a newspaper that's laying in my lap) and then he assumed a distance 8-12 inches closer than I'm accustomed to reading at, without asking. Also, the idea that there was a difference between the distances that I read paper and my laptop's screen was an alien concept to him. He assumed that I read everything at the same distance that he did. Hint: Carry something to read and have them measure the "eye to media" distance that you're accustomed to, and make sure he/she pays attention...After all, you're paying them for the service.
4. There is a big difference in eye correction between eyeglass brands and optomotrists are often clueless. I grew up laying books and newspapers in my lap to read them. My first prescription reading glasses (Sferoflex) required me to hold the newspaper directly in front of me to read it (causing tired arms). A smaller pair that I got to fit in my briefcase (Irish Eyes) focused further away so that I can comfortably read a newspaper at arm's length or in my lap. The optomotrist from whom I order both pairs thought I was crazy until I showed him both pairs, filled from the same prescription. There really were different!
There are many things you can do, but the best is to experiment and advocate for yourself. As I see it, the system wants to give a "good enough" solution that might meet your needs, but only if you're average. If you don't complain, they think they did well....
Your issue reminded me of a statement in this article (see #14):
Poor distance vision is rarely caused by genetics, says Anne Barber, O.D., an optometrist in Tacoma, Washington. "It's usually caused by near-point stress." In other words, staring at your computer screen for too long. So flex your way to 20/20 vision. Every few hours during the day, close your eyes, tense your body, take a deep breath, and, after a few seconds, release your breath and muscles at the same time. Tightening and releasing muscles such as the biceps and glutes can trick involuntary muscles--like the eyes--into relaxing as well.
Used to be I'd have a window to stare out when contemplating a real-world to computer translation problem. But 2 years ago I was moved into a cubicle and all I have to stare at is beige fabric. And I've noticed my eye sight has been getting worse.
I have had three separate eye doctors tell me that long hours either reading books or looking at computer screens can cause near sightedness. They have all said that they regularly see problems with college students in certain majors such as engineering, physics, mathematics, and especially computer science (surprisingly, art history majors aren't included on this list). The last doctor told me that a way to counter this damage is to wear low powered reading glasses while you use the computer. She suggested the $10 cheap-o's that you might get from your local Thrifty drugstore.
I've been staring at computer screens for more like 25 years myself (no congratulations necessary ;) ).
Certainly, I've experienced some pretty weird optical things in that time, although my vision is still very good. For instance, when I started full-time IT work about 7 years ago, I was pulling 16 hour days fairly consistently. Even though I'd had pretty heavy computer usage before that job, for about the first 3 weeks into the job, I'd walk outside and find my perception (not vision, I think, but probably more the way my brain was processing the optical input) was oddly distorted... I remember walking around a local shopping mall and seeing everything like it was a computer network. Trippy! (and I wasn't even smoking anything at the time). It also meant that I used to walk around outside for about half an hour before driving, as my distance perception wasn't so hot until I re-adjusted.
I find this happens even today - if I've had a long stint writing code (ie. minimal or no social interaction for 5-10 hours), when I go outside, it takes my other cognitive faculties a while to "switch on".
The point in relation to your original post is this:
Actual physical optical limitations aside, the brain in almost every way operates on a "use it or lose it" basis. The reverse is also true - which is how we develop a high level of skill in something, or indeed habitual behaviour (based on recent cognitive psychology research).
An optician told me once that it's a good idea to deliberately use your long distance vision for about 5-10 minutes for every hour of computer usage. As any decent programmer will know, sometimes those hours pass without one's noticing!
A little exercise I've developed to get around this, which I find has helped immensely, is to go and hang out my street-facing window (I work from an apartment) at the end of the day and watch the pretty girls walk past on their way home. Cheesy, I know, but it works for two reasons:
a) There is an inherent motivating factor ;)
b) The process of focussing on a moving "target" is more cognitively complex than, say, just looking away from the computer screen every once in a while. Having something specific to look at, over a long distance, seems to train the eye muscles much better.
As a result, I've had far less eye strain (which I used to notice when finally going to bed), and a reduced "re-integration" effect time when I go out for lunch or whenever.
Hope this helps :)
Do great things while they are small. Do small things while they are great. - Lao Tzu
Your body and mind are adapted to exercise, motion, and adequate sleep. By depriving yourself of all three, you are inviting a whole host of mental and physical problems. You'd laugh at someone who dropped his laptop on the floor over and over, and complained that it eventually broke. If you're not willing to do elementary preventative maintenance on your body, then you risk the consequences. Don't be stupid.
I asked my optometrist about this when I read a study. ALL reading can damage the eyes. Prolonged reading from pages or monitor puts strain on the eyes and a person ends up with impaired vision. Who knew? Reading was actually BAD for you. Don't tell the kiddies!
Sugapablo
Let me discuss: I believe that my vision has suffered from sitting in front of a computer for so long in my short life. I started using computers heavily in 1990 and while I can't say I've been in front of a computer 16 hours of the day, I have spent a lat of time. Now I am working in IT and sitting in front of the computer for more than 10 huors a day, then the TV after that, and my eyes have been getting worse. I have an astigmatism in my eyes and I am near sighted. I think it is easier for me since my computer is never far away, at the most 3 feet, but I have noticed that after a day of work I can not focus on road signs or focus on people farther than 15 feet away. I also get headaches after work, when my eyes start to re-focus onto the tv 5 feet away. So yes, I think that focusing on a screen for too long can "damage" your eyes. But let us discuss "damage". I believe that the actual "damage" is not damage at all. I am a backpacker, and I travel state parks as often as I can. Winter camping is the best, trust me. But I digress... When I go out backpacking for the weekend, I take no screens. My eyes are awake, moving, and focusing on close and distance objects. I do not get headaches, I can focus on things farther than 15 feet (not by much), and I do believe that this is because my eyes are not focused on a flat surface for a long period of time. So the "damage" might be temporary, if we give out eyes enough time to re-focus on other objects. But, just like tobacco, after a certain amount of time, the damage is done and you will die before your body can heal itself. so maybe the damage is temporary, but the half life of your eye sight may not be less that your half life. So, what would help? My optometrist suggested using reading glasses while sitting in front of a computer screen. I tried it, I hated it, they collect dust. I wear contacts, get check ups every year, get new prescriptions, the usual. But I don't think my eyes will last forever, and I know they are bad and getting worse. What if we could find a new display to help? If focusing is the issue, why not try to use a 3d display, or even 2 or more displays. A 3D display would help our eyes by "exercising" them by re-focusing and being active. Same principle to a lesser extend for the dual displays (which I love). Taking breaks every couple hours, suggested by professionals, might alleviate the issues, but not dismiss it. I wonder what else might help? I wonder if others, like obsessive book readers (I'm an obsessive computer user, no offense book worms!), have the same issues? Ponder that... Rusty
Dude,
I spend the same number of hours in front of my PC since 1994. And yes I would "think" it's connected to bad eye sight in that your eyes are always focused on something very closed. My near-sightedness generally goes up 50 degrees per 2.5 years.
If you noticed how asians wears more glasses (especially from hong kong or tokyo), it's because of the jam packed environment and we rarely get to look beyond 2 miles in any direction for the whole childhood period.
So to answer your question, no those funky glasses won't help because you're still focusing on the same short distance. Finding another hobby does help.
Don't overlook the obvious in taking care of yourself. Full nights, of regular sleep, at set times. Plenty of fresh water. Good nutrition. Exercise. Stress relief. Being moderate with stimulants and intoxicants.
If this sounds glib I have been notorious for reading in poor light since I was a kid. I have been in the IT field since my late 20's. Everyone in my family has vision issues except for me and I am in "the old age of my youth", cough cough, as Churchill put it.
I made it a point to do those things, especially the good nutrition with eating vegetables and the regular sleep.
I've just started treatment with Orthokeratology, which is a non-surgical eyesight improvement technique, where you wear hard contact lenses while you sleep, and during the day you have perfect vision. My experiences are documented here. Since my vision isn't too bad, I won't have to wear them every night. Every 2nd or 3rd night should be sufficient.
One problem I have with it, however, is that the morning after wearing it, it's difficult to focus on the monitor. I can, but it takes a while.
I've also read about the use of optional glasses for intensive computer work, to put less strain on your eyes.. which certainly sounds like a good idea.
MAYBE YOU'RE GETTING OLDER!!
Sheesh!! Your eyesight has gotten worse over the past few years?!! Who's hasn't?
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
What you are doing is extremely, extremely unhealthy.
Hell, even when I went through spells of depression and wouldn't leave my house for days at a time (about 6 years ago) I would at least change my focus by shifting from the television, to the computer, to nothing at all, to sleeping.
Judging by the statements that your father bought you your first computer in 1996, and you've been doing this for 10 years, I'd say you can't be more than 21-22 at this point. You're probably younger. I deduce this age by the fact that you spend 15+ hours in front of your laptop -- unless you're some sort of consultant, and even then, the simple fact that you can spend 15 hours a day at your computer without changing your focus significantly leads me to believe you're probably not employed anywhere.
So, we have a handful of items which are contributing to the symptoms you're noting (reduced ability to concentrate, eye strain, etc.)
(1) You sleep only about 50% of the medically-indicated recommendation for young adults and only about 60% of the "full night's sleep" consisting of 8 hours. So your defenses are lowered right from the get-go.
(2) You're not moving around much. You're keeping your energy all pent up in one place. Humans aren't built for that.
(3) You're focusing at a close distance for extremely long periods of time. On average, you're spending 3.75 hours at your PC between breaks. You should, ideally, be taking a 5 minute break every 60 minutes and making sure to focus more than 20 feet away. If this isn't possible -- at least focusing more than 3 feet away would be beneficial.
The conclusion:
Your symptoms are being manifest as a result of the fact that you are behaving un-naturally, and as such you are putting a lot of stress on it. Simply not sleeping enough will reduce your ability to concentrate and think as if you slept more (regardless if you think you need it or not) and sitting in one place all day, every day, with no physical activity to burn off various chemicals and get your blood moving the way it should is very bad for you.
If you'd sleep even an extra hour a night, and use the computer for 3 hours less a day, giving you the measly total of 12 hours in front of your laptop and 6 hours of sleep, you'd probably be much healthier overall.
One further bit of advice:
There is absolutely no excuse for people to be so "nerdy" that they can't function in a social situation. That sort of behavior is a psychological abomination, since humans are social creatures, and unless you have a very good reason to be at your PC that long every day (valid reasons: you live in the isolation wing of the infectious diseases research lab at your local university hospital) you're living a sad, sad existence. You need to get out and socialize, even if that socialization just means going to the deli and ordering a salad or something.
Actually i've been wearing glasses for over 30 years and have been computing for more than a decade now spending a good 10 - 15 hours a day in front of the screen.
Funnily enough, my eyesite has improved my last two visits to the optometrist.
Figure that one out!
I certainly have no explanation but it sure bucks the trend.
Some people -do- do fine on five hours a day. I'm one of them, in the summer.
For most of the spring-to-fall period, when our days are well over 12 hours long (and slightly over 16 hours in early July), I need about half the sleep I do in the winter. 4-5 hours, tops, and I generally wake up. It's very hard to fall asleep before midnight or 1am, and when I do, I usually wake up around 5am. Sometimes I manage to sleep longer (6-7 hours), and I feel like complete crap for the whole day.
In the winter, our days dip to just under 8 hours long (living at 51 degrees North is fun!), and I need a lot more sleep. 8-9 hours, often 10. I've tried going with less, and always feel awful the next day. I can often sleep 12 hours in December and feel great the next day.
When I was younger the winter didn't affect me much. I used to experiment on myself for months at a time, and I found I was far more alert and at my "peak" with around 5-6 hours of sleep each night, year round. Getting any more didn't help, and in fact usually made me become drowsy later during the day (and yeah, I did this for a few months at a go just to see what would happen).
Everyone's different, and contrary to conventional wisdom there is no magic amount of sleep for everyone. There isn't even a magic amount for any given person, as it depends highly on what you're doing, stresses in your life, diet, exercise, and a million other factors.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
High contrast colors, a dark background, and a large font really help me.
At least, they prevent my eyes from feeling tired and irritated after a day on the computer, and I've been headache free for years. (Don't know if it has any bearing on long term vision problems.)
On the other hand, I've occasionally borrowed friend's computers and felt my eyes fizzle and become sore in minutes. Any time I look at small text in black on a white background, it bugs me. (Don't even get me started on semi-transparent terminals. Why on earth anyone would want to turn down the contrast on their terminal and then past a bunch of distracting stuff all over the text is beyond me.)
I generally make the text large enough that i can easily sit back forty inches or more from the monitor and choose high contrast combinations (slightly off-white or bright green on black, white on navy blue or magenta, etc.) I also avoid anti-aliased fonts, but that's mostly an esthetic choice. In general, I find that if my font is so small that anti-aliasing is useful, it's *too* small to be comfortably read anyway.
Cutting overhead light helps too.
I used computers for a long time too, and never noticed anything until I got my new job. I think what got me was the light output from the monitor at the new job. I turned down the brightness quite a bit, and it has seemed to help a lot.
Also, if you get a good quality "glare" screen, it might help. They don't seem to really get rid of glare from other sources, but do block some of the light from the screen.
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
There's a solution. It's called "Get the fuck up from your peecee and go do something else". There's this thing called "outdoors". Perhaps you've heard of it. There's trees, grass, and all kinds of fun things to do. Give it a try sometime.
So let me add in my 2 cents. First off, I agree with many of the other posters regarding the issue of backlighting, lcds > crts, contrast, etc... However, strictly speaking, these aren't really ophthalmic issues -- The fatigue that one can experience from this shouldn't have any long term effects.
Other issues which I've not seen brought up, or are being given short shrift, are the long term effects of near work, and the decreased blinking rate when using a computer (or reading, or watching tv).
Firstly, it's likely that long term near work (especially when your younger), which forces your eyes to accommodate (i.e. raises the refractive power of your lens, to focus a near image on the retina), can indirectly lead to permanent near-sightedness. One of the theories as to the cause of this is that the long term accommodation releases growth factors, which make the eyeball LONGER, and therefore more nearsighted. So chronic near work, in short, CAN make you more nearsighted. A possible solution to this is to get a pair of "readers" which allow you to relax your accommodation during long periods of near work (however, if done chronically, this could theoretically reduce your accommodative potential, and make you presbyopic earlier, but that's another issue altogether).
Secondly, it's been shown that reading, using a computer, watching tv all can contribute to a decrease in the blink rate. It's just like when you stare at something intently, you tend not to blink. But if you're doing it for a long period of time, your eyes will tend to dry out. To fix this, use artificial tears, and/or concentrate on blinking more frequently.
Lastly, just a comment on the concentration thing -- I agree with other posters who attribute this to lack of sleep. Real ophthalmic symptoms from overlong computer use would likely include eye strain/headaches (asthenopia), or dryness, (in addition to the long term risk of refractive errors).
I have been using computers since December 1992, when my eyesight was short sighted but nowhere near as bad as it gotten a few years back, more recently though it has improved. I ascribe this to the use of LCD type screens as opposed to CRT type monitors.
I have been told by the company I used to work for that seating is also crucial to my well being.
My vision hasn't got worse since I spend time staring at CRT's, back then, with refresh rates as low as 67 Hz, and even at night in a room with no other source of light than the CRT itself. Both with glasses and contacts. Nothing changed for me, so I could as well have spent all this time playing soccer or whatever else, there is no way I could harm my eyes with computers.
You just got troll'd!
I've been looking at a variety of monitors since around 1988 (rapidly increasing since around 1993) and also read frequently, which I think has contributed to a slight near-sightedness. Being inside naval vessels for extended periods of time probably doesn't help either.
What I've noticed more after time in front of the monitor are "eye floaters" or shadows of thread or cellular-like material that drifts across my field of vision. I can move my eyes and control the direction they drift. This condition happens to almost all people as they age, some may notice it and others might not, but if you have lots of them or notice flashes of light or "stars" around your field of vision, then you definitely need to get to a real eye doctor to have it checked.
One or two doctors claim it can be cured or reduced using lasers, but most will say that there is nothing you can do except adjust the light to minimize the effects. I'm not saying extended computer use causes these, but sitting in the blue glow sure makes them more noticible.
Beware of the Redittor who loans you a Sharpie.
I have found the perfect solution is to wear a specially adapted pair of spectacles. I simply attach a band-aid to the bridge of my normal specs and HEY PRESTO! Geek-o-vision....
"Finally, do less work in a day. You aren't productive after 4-5 hours. You're just wasting time."
Me: Boss meet Beardo the Bearded.
Boss: Glad to meet you Mr Beardo the Bearded. Congradulations on your birthday.
Beardo the Bearded: Why thank you. Well anyway I'm here to advice you that your employees should only work 4-5 hours.
Boss: Well that's a good idea, and since I'm in a good mood today, from now on I'll pay them for eight hours of work. How's that sound?
Beardo the Bearded and Me: Great!
Me: Oh, and can I have three day weekends as well?
Boss: No problem. Make them paid three day weekends.
The biggest problem is focusing on a fixed-distance object for a long period of time. I see potential for some kind of autofocus glasses that change the apparent focal distance of the object, thereby exercising the eye-shaping muscles. Glasses would be better than a virtual-reality display, because they could be applied to analog media such as books, televisions, crafts, and other detail-oriented work where one spends a lot of time focused in a narrow depth of field.
I've noticed in myself, after long sessions of reading, that it is very difficult to focus on other objects -- not just distant ones, but any objects -- that are not in the depth of field of what I'm reading. It's as though the eyes get stiff, rather like your joints and muscles might if you sit in one place for a long time (or when you awake in the morning).
Another easy-to-do thing that can help reduce eyestrain is to pay attention to the contrast between your screen and the surrounding area. A bright screen in a dark room creates a tremendous amount of eyestrain; a dark screen in a brightly-lit room does likewise. I find that turning down the brightness of the monitor, then adjusting the brightness of the room so the background behind the monitor is comparable to the brightness of the screen provides a failry comforatable, low-eye-strain environment. Generally, a room lit only by the screen on your computer is a bad thing-- no matter how low the screen is, the contrast between screen and background is too great. When the contrast becomes too great, the eyes are constantly trying to reconcile which view they should expose for.
In summary, exercising by focusing (the cornea) on near and distant objects is good; exercising by adjusting exposure (the iris) for dark and light objects is bad.
-The Anadromous Cowherd
More sleep, less computer time.
Jeez...
Check your at-keyboard time for tasks that involve a lot of rapid tracking back and forth, like playing solitaire or pinball. I've found those are the most likely to cause vision issues after prolonged periods. It may mean going cold-turkey on a couple things for a day or two. If you do, and find your vision improves, you may have to cut down on some things.
I had vision problems in my left eye. I turned out to be caused by insufficient blood circulation due to muscle spasms in the neck and shoulder (i.e. an ergonomy problem caused by laptop use). It only became apparent after I got terrible headaches. A eye specialist doctor did not notice cause of the problem.
or is there something wrong with this picture? Eye straining
Don't know whether this is of any help or not, but I seem to remember being told a long time ago that "the text on the VDU is green and the background is black, because we have found that this combination causes the least strain on the eyes", or something to that effect. Now, I'm not a doctor, so I have no idea whether that is really true or whether it was just sales-speak for "all we have in stock are green-screen monitors". But - at least personally - I find a colour-scheme of bright text (of any colour) on a black background much easier to stare at for hours on end than the current fashion of dark text on a bright background (unless you're doing graphic design or some other application that really does need to appear in "real-world" colours).
also, the lighting of the monitor is killing me, especially when combined with a white background.
First of all, this one is very easy to solve. Just get rid of the white background. Unlike paper, a monitor sends out light, like a light bulb, and reading black text on a white screen is like trying to read the tiny text on a light bulb without turning it off. For a CRT screen, there may be an argument for a bright background, it does make reflections less visible. But reflections aren't normally a problem with TFT screens.
Second, what do you do when you leave work? Go home to sit in front of the computer? Get outside... No, I'm not talking about exercise, not in the usual sense anyway. But your eyes need "exercise" too, the focus is controlled by muscles.
Healthy eyes can focus anywhere from a few inches to infinity. Looking at the screen, your eyes get lots of practice in the close range (unless you have your screen at an ususual distance), but don't get any practice at focusing at the long range. Go outside, look down the street... Go mountain climbing - what's that you see down below? Look out over the fields, is that a big bird or a cow?
Mostly anything you do outside will work, as long as there is something to look at at a distance - so walking in a dark forest or crowded city may be exceptions.
(Notice that this is not a suggestion to get out of the computer business. Your eyes still need *both* short and long distance, and looking at the screen will give you plenty of short distance practice. Getting only long distance practice will be just as bad for your eyes).
Try reducing the number of hours infront of the screen. It should help your vision.
Getting a life
A self confessed geek myself, I get the occasional bout of eyestrain. Usually manifests itself as a kind of headache. I think its due to hours spent inches from a crappy TV monitor (for an Amiga) in my youth.
I find that dimming the lighting in the room, and turning the (TFT) monitor down to minimum brightness alleviates it.
That and cutting down on the time I stare at monitors...
James
http://www.reeb.freeserve.co.uk
Some people get away with under 6 hours sleep a night. Especially as teenagers. I did, I usually slept from 1am to 7am then. Now I'm irritable and have aching eyes and slightly blurry vision if I do a few nights like that these days. Now I try to get 8 hours a night regularly (difficult because of mild insomnia).
Also for the reading, try to do it away from the computer. Do it in a comfy chair. Do it in the middle of the day in a park.
Fix your room's lighting. Dark rooms with bright screens lead to eyestrain in my experience. Bright screens should be in brightly lit rooms.
Limit your computing time to under 12 hours a day, including breaks. 15 hours is too much on a regular basis.
Get out a lot more. The same environment all day every day will eventually get you down.
Without a good eye doctor you can't be sure if it's eye strain or eye cancer. Go get checked.
I18N == Intergalacticization
thanks for that one
*an infinite number of monkeys wrote this sig
It is usually caused by viewing too much porn online. Have you noticed any new hair growing on your palms?
No matter where you go, there you are.
Get more sleep. Five hours of sleep isn't very much and can greatly affect concentration and even vision (in my experience). Fifteen hours a day of staring at a computer screen makes your eyes tired. Your eyes need a break. Sleep more.
If you swear, and I mean the oath kind, never, ever to play an online game, be it a combat simulator or virtual world, your eyesight will return, your S.O. will come back to your loving arms, your pickup truck will eventually get fixed, and you can get your old job back. Wow, I sound like a country music album, but played backwards.
No, the special glasses were for the older monitors. You do not need tham for the newer CRT or LCD ones. What I use (and that is what my MD eye doctor recommends) are just reading glasses. That's the doctor prescribed kind, not the cheapo bought for $5 at the store kind (the cheapo kind can further damage your eyes). Also, spend some more time away from the computer--like going for a walk outside. That helps you eyes adjust to distance.
John W....
19 hours awake and 5 hours asleep? No wonder you have tired eyes. Get 8 hours sleep every night for a week and see how your eyesight is bearing up after that.
I must say that it is common for IT related jobs to have a high amount of people with eye sight problems.
I am one of them.
What I do is to iluminate the room properly and make sure I do not need to force my eyes any more than necessary.
Even if the letters seem too big for others or stupid. I make sure that my eyes get no extra strain from using a computer.
Maybe your lack of concentration is due to sleeping 5 hours instead of a good 8 or 10.
Your eyes might also need to see something else. Static images for long periods of time are not too nice for anyones eyes.
I recomend tweaking the computer to your needs and to get another monitor to put something else to divert your atention.
usually put Totem and some music so I see the visualizations.
As an Optometrist and System Admin I have generally seen many if not most computer people wearing glasses. There is some stress involved looking at a certain distance for long hours. What I believe happens is the muscles in the lens relax but leave the focus on the screen. Looking away on a regular basis every few minutes - focusing on a distance object may help. Seeing your Eye doctor is a great idea as well. You can talk to them about glasses to help you focus on the computer screen. Yes astigmatism(different focus points vertically and horizontally) can bother you as well when working as well. Some of the problems occur as you get older. I have seen changes in the eyes occur in the late twenties and early fourties.
This is IMHO the best advise talk to a decent Eye Doctor and if you don't like their advise see another.
I sleep 5 hours, in average, per day
Assuming you are a member of the human species, that's not true.
People who claim they need this little sleep tend to sleep really late in at weekends to catch up but then don't factor that time in to their 'average', but they think it makes them sound cool. In fact, they are being very silly, as you need in the order of 7 and 9 hours sleep in order to be at full mental alertness the next day. FACT.
A week ago, I checked my eyes and I found 0.25 astigmatism in both of them. They told me that this is not necessarily a problem, and it is mainly due to the intensive computer work."
No, it's mainly because it was already there.
The actual symptom is that I lose my concentration more easily now.
All Americans think they suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder, because it's easier than just trying to pay attention. Your inability to pay attention is not related to your computer usage.
My vision was way out of whack, and my glasses prescription had changed quite a bit. I lost the weight, got the sugar under control, and went back and my prescription was changed back down some. I was told that many diabetics are discovered after going for an eye exam.
Anyway, to make a long story short I found an older pair of pre-diabetes glasses in my car not long ago and discovered that this nearly 10-year-old prescription was the same as my post-diabetes prescription. So for someone with normal sight who's suddenly starting to have vision problems, it may mean something other than eyestrain.
I know several people in their late '30's with perfect vision who have worked in IT all their adult lives.
Avoid optometrists and opthalmologists who prescribe lenses. Simple,(but it took me decades of lens wearing to figure it out) here is what happens - 1)you become nearsighted by looking at things close to your eyes 2)you are prescribed glasses so you see clearly now (distant objects, that is) 3)your eyes have now slowly adjusted to the glass lenses or contacts 4)eye muscles are locked in nearsighted mode 5)again your nearsightedness increases as you continue the same pattern 6)stronger lenses 7)Repeat
To those who noted that there is nothing intrinsicly uncorrectable about 20/600, you are correct. I did a poor job of saying what I meant to say. The point I was trying to make is that there are many vision problems that are uncorrectable, or only partially correctable, such as mine. My vision problems are related to the fact that I have a severe astigmatism in my bad eye
Free MacMini
Which is a little over half the recommended amount. Personally, I wouldn't be so concerned about the vision problem you're experiencing. I'd be more concerned about the stroke that you're going to have if you don't let your body rest and heal. No monitor is going to make up for a lack of sleep. Don't think that sleeping in late on Saturday will help. It doesn't. I've tried that.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I spend at least 10 hours each day staring at a screen of some sort due to school and my hobbies for the better part of 12 years. My eyes weren't wonderful to begin with, but I find myself getting dizzy if I move my head too fast after long bouts of computer use, and my contacts tend to dry up and stick to my eyeballs. Not fun. I don't know what some of the other users are here, but I'm a pretty much blind -7.5 in each eye.
:)
But that's only half of it. The eyes are bad, but the hands are worse
Not to disparage your good eyesight, but 20/20 is not perfect vision. It's the traditional "normal" acuity mark. As an example, 20/15 means you can read a line on a chart from 20 feet away that someone with 20/20 vision would have to read from 15 feet away.
But acuity is only one part of vision. You can very easily have 20/20 vision or better, but have double vision, poor contrast, etc. And that can only be discerned by a qualified optometrist.
Which brings me back to the point -- question asker, go to an optometrist and get an eye exam. Oh wait, apparently you did, as you know you have a specific degree of astigmatism. So get some specific professional advice, and, you know, maybe a doctor will tell you that you're getting older and need more rest.
Really, this Ask Slashdot stuff is interesting and makes for some lively discussion, but it's at best diversionary and at worst dangerous to seek open and thoroughly unqualified anecdotal advice on health matters, legal matters, etc. As long as you keep that in mind, and get the proper level of advice and treat this forum as simply entertainment, you should be good.
Simply using the computer a lot will not necessarily cause vision problems. However, what you are doing while on the computer may impact your vision. Tell me, have you noticed any abnormal growth of hair on your palms?
You're likely right in that your astigmatism probably existed before you started using a PC, and that its symptoms have likely worsened as a result of your time in front of a monitor.
I too was diagnosed with astigmatism a few years before I got my first PC. My eyes are fine otherwise; better than 20/20 in both eyes. I was given a(n expensive) prescription for glasses with prisms in both lenses. These glasses help a lot when I read, and they seem to help initially when I sit down in front of a monitor, but over time they seem to do more harm than good, most likely a result of light from a bright monitor being refracted by the prismic lenses and into the retinae.
As has been said by many other commenters, the best therapy is "everything in moderation": do some PC work, walk away for a bit, rinse, repeat, etc. I know this can be a difficult habit to implement and maintain, especially in the workplace and under heavy stress, but we just have to do it.
Rather than critiquing lifestyle decisions or offering great advice like, "See an eye doctor," here's something useful. (Read the whole post to get the good stuff.)
Take frequent breaks. Duh, sounds like a no-brainer, right? It is a no-brainer, but the problem is that most of us aren't good about actually DOING the right thing. (Kinda like new year's resolutions like "Work Out Regularly.")
A big reason that people heavy computer users experience vision degeneration is because we spend all day staring at a fixed depth and relatively fixed focal point. Taking a break allows the muscles that shape the lenses in our orbs to flex the lenses differently. If you spend long hours every day in front of the screen and don't take breaks, you increase the likelihood of permanently altering the lenses to be less flexible - often resulting in near-sightedness.
The absolute best thing to do to rest your eyes is a practice called "cupping" where you rub your hands together to warm them up, then completely cover your eyes. Leave your eyes open and let them really relax. Cupping is actually more relaxing for your eyes than closing them because you let all of the muscles in your eye socket relax.
Great, you know why you should take breaks, and what to do during the break, but you're so hardcore and intense that you loose track of time and whole weeks go by where you forget to eat/sleep/etc. What's the answer? You need a program that will remind you take breaks. Enter Workrave (http://www.workrave.org/). This fantastic piece of software "frequently alerts you to take micro-pauses, rest breaks and restricts you to your daily limit." It's really a great tool and the key to using it is to set the frequencies and durations such that they're useful AND YOU TAKE THE BREAKS. If you're on a Mac, do a search and see if there's something similar and if not, get something that will remind you to take breaks.
I recommend having micro-breaks every 5 minutes and cupping your eyes at least 1/2 of the micro-breaks you take. After a few days of this, you'll be able to feel the decrease in eyestrain after intense sessions and you'll probably have less headaches if you were prone to them. There's no guarantee this will fix your vision problems, but it will definitely mitigate future deterioration.
I've noticed a few people mentioned Workrave, which helps me quite a bit. I use a 'bookmarklet' (is that a real word?) called "zap white backgrounds" to help reading web pages.
The problem with staring at a monitor for hours on end is not the lights around you or how bright the screen is. The activity that your eyes perform is simply gathering as much light as they can and sending it through the appropriate channels to be interpreted by your brain. In a sense, your brain is doing all the work in setting brightness for you. In reality, if your brain didn't filter out what it deems "excess" light, you wouldn't be able to see a dang thing.
Your brain finds contrast in light, and therefore finds edges so that you perceive an object to be a certain size and distance away from you.
The actual reason that your eyes get crappy from sitting in front of a computer all day is because they receive no stimulation. You're focusing between 2 and 4 feet for 8 hours or so, pretty much constantly, so your eye muscles are not getting any workout. Just like people get fat and lazy from sitting in a chair all day, they get bad eyesight because they're not focusing near and far often enough. YMMV.
The best way to handle this is to not just stare at your monitor(s) all day long. Take breaks. Look out the window, or at your cubicle wall, whatever. Anything.
Grammar Lesson: you're is a contraction of "you are"; your means you possess something; yore means days gone by.
These are some of my tips to reduce eye strain..
1. Give a small break say 5 mins for evry one hour you spend on your copmuter.
2. Wash your eyes with plain water.
3. Atlest turn away from the screen, look at some pleasant colours.
These change the 'power of accomadation' of the eyes and make it refreshing. Someting same as refreshing your primary memory.
I used to have bad eyestrain which made me made me second guess my career which required long hours in front of a large CRT. On top of that, my astigmatism kept getting worse. Then, 5 year ago, I found Web-i-Wear computer clip-on lenses. They are lenses with a slight magnification and a yellow tint. I combined these with optometrist-prescribed computer glasses. The combination has completely eliminated my eyestrain and I am able to stair at a CRT for 12+ hours each day. Plus, I have actually dropped 2 prescription strengths off my regular glasses since I began using this combination! Tip: If you want to improve your vision, try to get a weaker prescription for computer glasses than the tests indicate you need. I believe the manufacturer of Web-i-Wear lenses has discontinued the product. Contact them (info below) to see if they have any in left in stock. They were only $20. Barbara Creations, Inc WebiWear.com 8121 N. Central Park Ave. Skokie, Illinois 60076 UNITED STATES Phone: 800-323-1418 Fax: 847-679-0184
I was in your shoes too, out of nowhere my vision took a turn for the worst. Thankfully when I went to the eye doctor he gave me coated lenses, that are anti-glare. So it helps when staring at that monitor all day and night bustin out the C# and reading slash dot.
Anti-glare is worth looking into, also I don't know about you but every once in a while I make sure to look away from the monitor and rest my eyes , if only for a moment or two
Well, I'm no optometrist, but my simple view on it all has to do with the type of light we're looking at. Our eyes, as far as I can recall from anatomy and the bit of research I've done into it (my friend's got albinism and major problem with his sight, but not directly related to his eyes more so his connections on the brain, but took a while to find that out), eyes are generally meant to absorb reflective light from whatever source it is. We're told not to look straight into lights directly from young for a good reason. (i.e sun, headlamps, flashlights, etc.) our eyes get irritated and we have to squint and with due reason. under normal conditions we see only the light that is reflected off of objects, the light source is usually behind us. with modern displays (asside from projectors), all light is direct light being bounced straight into your eye. graned at considerably lower light dosages than a sun or flashlight would be, but still the same concept, and will degrade your vision slowly over time the same way looking at a strong light like that will burn out your eye (not literally of course), especially if you happen to be genetically prone to degrading vision. whenever i get the money I'd love to buy a projector use that for 5 years or so to see if my theory is correct (dunno if others have suggested the same thing, never bothred looking). meh.. until then.. where are my glasses....