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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?"
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.
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?
When I first got AOL ~1994 and sat down for about 1 hour of computing, my eyes were sower and red. my eyes adjusted after a few days, but im not sure if thats for the better.
:P
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.
Rocking chairs or some chair that moves is also great for increasing your time in front of the screen. If you can slide back and forth or rock, then you don't change seating positions so often.
I put my monitor in front of my window so I can gaze outside at the trees when my eyes do get tired.
You can as well get someone to watch over your shoulder and tell you when you have been spending too much time on the computer and offer to assign other tasks to you for a moderate fee
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 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.
So very true. Try it - it's amazing. Assuming your monitor isn't shoved all the way against the wall, put some kind of incandescent light behind it that will reflect off the walls around it.
For me, that gives me several extra hours of computing joy before my eyes die.
The other thing is: since I expect you're coding and working with lots of text, ditch your CRTs, use LCDs, make sure they're adjusted properly (if you're using analog inputs), and turn off anti-aliasing for small fonts. The sharpness makes an enormous difference.
And for whoever's sake make sure to turn on the light when it gets dark. The worst headaches I get are when I forget to do that and I'm suddenly sitting in a darkened room staring at 2 big monitors at full brightness.
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.
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?
I, personally, had terrible vision until I lost my glasses (turns out my baby sister hid them in the freezer). After weeks of going without them, they started correcting themselves.
What exercises were you doing? That's an important detail. I'm interested in adopting some, myself.
We desperately need Google Diagnosis.
BTW, I remember some medical website being taken offline because it had assisted suicide. If you have medical issues, there's nothing quite like the doctor IRL.
Except for the nurses.
Back in 94 you probably weren't using a good monitor, and probably didn't have the refresh set high enough. 60hz kills me, I've got to admit, but older (and cheaper) monitors also had slower phosphors, which didn't make 60hz so obvious. If I concentrate, I can see the flash fluorescent lights produce, and even the flicker of 72, 75hz refreshing monitors, particularly in very bright spots, i.e. nearly solid white, yellow, etc.
Still, for any kind of professional work (CAD, art, industrial design, etc.) nothing beats a good, big, flat, high resolution CRT, tuned up to ~85hz. Nothing. Not even close. It's a shame, because it's becoming difficult to find such a monitor (at any price) now that everyone has LCD frenzy.
I've tried every brand of LCD monitor, and at every price strata--Apples, Dells, Viewsonics, and the SGI 1660, the works. None of them have the same dot pitch that a good CRT can utilize at high resolution... So that means you've got to move it far away enough (distance from face to plane of monitor > 1.2-1.5ft) to make having a huge LCD completely ineffectual. The one thing I find LCDs are very good for is multi-head systems. Currently on my main computer I have three monitors, and two are LCDs. They're great for toolbars and icons, the odd extra terminal, virtual machine or the like, and you don't really have to care if they're the same resolution. Aside from that, the only good thing they have to offer is that they take less desk real estate, IMHO.
dual monitors with different sync rates give me headaches
I completely agree but dual monitors with the same sync at different distances from your face is great. It gets your eyes to focus back and forth. I put a monitor at normal distance and a second about twice that, at a lower resolution, and use it for things that don't need fine resolution like email. It pretty much stopped eye strain for me.
I disagree. If my eyes have learned to depend on their lenses, then why hasn't my prescription changed in over 10 years? Why is this the case for so many adults? I could be wrong, but isn't it true that myopia typically changes only during childhood/adolesence, and that an overwhelming percentage of adults over age 45 develop far-sightedness? Could it be that if you have experienced changes in your vision, they have occurred because you are very young (near-sighted changes) or have reached middle age (far-sighted)? I have yet to meet an optometrist, or even better and opthamologist, who has put forth an opinion similar to yours. Finally, my vision in both eyes is worse than your 20/600. My focal length is about 6, maybe 6.5 inches, a dipoter of about -7.00 for contacts, equivalent to something around 20/800, or maybe even 20/1000. I see 20/20 with my contact lenses. My uncorrected vision does not make me legally blind- legally blind is only when it cannot be corrected. I just want to be clear that while you are legally blind, it is not how bad your uncorrected vision is that defines that, it is that it cannot be corrected, as people with worse uncorrected vision can see just fine after lenses are used.
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!]
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.
That's interesting, because I've had the same theory as you. I'm still not convinced by your post thought. Considering the large number of people with common vision problems (I'm nearsighted), that would mean that before the invention of glasses, the human race consisted partly of half-blind people who were lucky to catch prey once in a while. It seems very weird to me that our eyesight would be, on the average, that bad. Also, though I have no real proof, I'd say that nearsightedness is a lot more common among computer users and book readers; why is that? Reverse causation?
Also, your optometrist has a vested interest in selling you treatment. So do the people who teach them. Not trying to be paranoid here -- as you put it, I'm just the "wannabe" in this, but I thought I'd at least post a sceptical reply. Do you have links to research debunking your previous theory?
It's true you know. Now I can only guess at that there are a couple dozen people here writing the same thing but I am really too tired to check. Instead, with what little I have left to give, let me tell you one thing: Five hours of sleep over a lengthy period of time is not enough and you pay for it. My vision is pretty blurred right now and I have this immense fatigue right down in my sore bones. I slept two hours today, five yesterday and four the day before. My concentration is crap. I tried to do some pretty critical stuff this morning but I had to put it aside because I just couldn't concentrate on what I was doing. As someone who knows, I can tell you another thing: Sleep deprivation is the next best thing to smoking if you want to kill yourself slowly. I used to do both.
Doctor's advice:
Sleep.
Don't smoke.
Check your triglycerides.
Have your postrate examined or get a mammogram. 5% of men need both, I kid you not (male breast cancer)
Procreate more often (or at least go through the motions).
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.
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.
Do not go anywhere other than an actual optomotrist's office to get glasses. My experience with places like Costco and Shopko is that their optomotrists, while certified, are told to only find problems that they can fix, and if the patients don't have any problem, to give them a mild perscription so they can sell the glasses anyway. Your optomotrist will find EVERYTHING wrong with your eyes, and can usually fix them or refer you to someone who can. Just think, would Costco really send you to eye surgery? Your optomotrist would. Note: Forgive the spelling, I'm tired.
Please put some pants on before you post again.
Actually, there was a scientific paper released recently (which I can't find in Google even after more than 90 seconds of serious searching) which suggested that the reason myopia developed was that those who couldn't hunt stayed home with the women. And while the perfectly-sighted alpha-males were out hunting, the myopic nerds were perpetuating the species.
Who knows? Maybe we will actually know the answer in a few years and such wild pop-optometry won't be necessary any more. (Not! And pigs might fly out of my hairy ass!)