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Computer Glasses Claim To Protect Eyesight Are Selling Like Hotcakes, But They Probably Aren't Useful (businessinsider.in)
People are increasingly concerned that bright light -- especially "blue light" from computer screens -- is causing harm, making it a potentially dangerous public health issue. Eyewear and screen protector companies have been selling products they say can protect people from these harms. But are they really making any difference? From a report: We do know that blue light at night can interfere with sleep, causing a host of negative effects. But the evidence that the amount of light screen expose us to during the day is harmful is not really there. Furthermore, many experts think these products are unnecessary and could perhaps do more harm than good. [...] The research that companies selling blue-blocking products cite falls into three categories: animal studies, in vitro studies of retinal cells exposed to light, and studies of people exposed to outdoor light. [...] "I think it's largely hype, not science," says Dr. Richard Rosen, Director of Retina Services at New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai and Ophthalmology Research Director at Icahn School of Medicine. "They want to sell it; they know people get uncomfortable staring at screens all day, so they say, it's because of this [blue light issue]." The report cites insight from several other doctors as well studies to make a case for why these glasses aren't useful.
Sitting in front of a computer for hours each day makes my eyes tired, so I routinely turn the brightness down to nothing. I put blue-blocker on my latest pair of glasses and Bam!, my sleep cycle is screwed up. Turns out blue light is really useful for stuff like your circadian rhythm. Now I only really use those glasses sparingly, and will make sure to take them off or look over them every few minutes.
My computer monitor (Benq BW2765) has some sort of blue light filtering thing built in that can be activated via the buttons on the side.
I've never used it. My screen looks fine and dandy just like it is.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
At least for me the darn things are too bright even with brightness set to 0, especially at night. Maybe it's just the monitor I chose :/
On the plus side if I ever want to use this monitor outside in the sunlight, It might just be bright enough on high to do that.
As far as blue light, yea it helps a bit making things have a yellow tint, but it sure would be MORE helpful to have a lower range of brightness in general.
My eyes! The goggles do nothing!
Have gnu, will travel.
Humans don't need complete dark to sleep. We evolved on the African plains, and there's this big thing called the Moon that regularly lights up the night sky - and that light is pretty rich in blue when the moon is high in the sky. Don't take my word for it - go out some night and look.
Or take a nice lazy nap in the middle of the day with the sun shining bright. You can get a nice sunburn doing that at poolside. The bright light didn't keep you from falling asleep or you would have noticed you've cooked yourself.
We evolved for this sort of situation. If blue light were a problem, we'd have an inner eyelid to filter it out, like Vulcans, or have an adaptation where it's not a problem (which, all SciFi aside, is what really happened). But people will believe all sorts of crap rather than see what's literally in front of their eyes, because people WANT to experience the frisson that comes from "knowing something new that someone else doesn't" - same as gossip and fake news.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
If you're experiencing eye discomfort, might I recommend:
1. Setup your work area to have even lighting. Working in a dark room with only computer monitor(s) for light is going to give you eye strain.
2. Get up and walk around periodically. Let your eyes focus on something else and relax a bit.
3. If you need glasses, make sure they're the right prescription for sitting at a computer. Old farts like me should keep a reading glasses with the right prescription for 24" to 30" for looking at your monitors.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Modern app appers use apps for apping apps while apping other apps, NOT LUDDITE glasses!
Apps!
We've known about this for years. Just ask any old person. Although, personally I prefer HD Sunglasses.
I'd largely put these products in the snake oil category, I few years ago after a day in front of my computer at work I'd be completely exhausted turns out I needed glasses (to correct the changing shape of the cornea) but I got that advice from an optometrist. An interesting side note was that they advised that if you take regular breaks (easy to get a cuppa or take a walk) monitors don't have any real negative effects themselves. However, what can have a detrimental effect is a lack of sunlight. So get out of your cave and get some fresh air and sunlight your eyes will thank you.
The article has a poor to false understanding of how blue light interacts with DLMO (dim light melatonin onset).
I'm pretty sure the entrainment effect of blue light is via direct neuronal connection to the SCN, and I doubt it involves melatonin, except indirectly.
The homeostatic sleep pressure signal builds up (more or less linearly) for as long as you're awake. On its own, this would mean that you taper into drowsiness all day long. So the sleep system has another mechanism that suppresses response to the sleep pressure signal. I vaguely recall that what happens with DLMO is that melatonin onset signals the body to turn off the suppression switch, so that the body begins to notice the homeostatic sleep pressure signal.
DLMO, however, is easily inhibited by exposure to blue light at a point in time approximately an hour before bedtime. If you're outdoors hunting moose in the bright light of late-evening arctic summer, this is a useful adaptation.
You'll get to bed later, which means you'll sleep a bit later (but not much) and then you will get less blue light early the next morning, which will affect your entrainment, gradually, on the slow-drip program.
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As a rough, empirical ratio, for every extra hour you stay up, you'll sleep about twenty minutes later the next morning. It's not uncommon to stay up for an extra two hours, then barely sleep in for an extra half hour. (We need to ignore here that modern society tends to run a massive, permanent sleep deficit, which can suddenly turn into sleeping four to six hours late at the first opportunity that allows this to happen. That's a different beast entirely.)
I have a circadian rhythm disorder, and I know from decades of sleep tracking that morning wake-up time is about three times more reliable in estimating my sleep phase than time of retirement.
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This is a worthwhile paper from the top of my notes, but it's hard to wade through:
Estimating Dim Light Melatonin Onset (DLMO) Phase in Adolescents Using Summer or School-Year Sleep/Wake Schedules — 2006
I like this paper because it shows how social convention (adolescent schooling) also influences DLMO phase.
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The sleep pressure signal eventually overwhelms the suppression of this signal, regardless of the DLMO mechanism.
James Maas is a good representative of the modern sleep science orthodoxy:
Surefire Strategies to Sleep for Success!
I just love the page break at the end of page 6. But then I'm really into microscopic moments of small page-formatting humour. (It's probably not unrelated to all those long, lonely nights, before I found a viable treatment.)
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Here's a good summary, I just found for the first time.
Phase Response Curve
The reason I only vaguely remember this mechanism is that all the phase response curves in the literature are dose dependent.
There is no PRC I've ever seen that computes the phase response differential to endogenous melatonin levels. No, what you do is administer some dose/formulation (which can include sustained-release components) at staggered times over several weeks, and then you plot the graph averaged over your test population (which thus includes all the metabolic uptake and clearance variability).
There was a time I desperately wanted to consult one of these curves and then to declare "I am here", but it never happened. These are, in effect, better regarded as qualitative curves than quantitative curves.
The model was never predictive enough to be worth memorizing exactly. And thus I remain slightly dim on DLMO when I really shouldn't be after all these years.
I was thinking that the blue light issue is something that the programmable LED lights could come in useful. Have them put out regular white light normally, but have them shift towards the red spectrum an hour before bedtime.
A free app, f.lux does the job, https://justgetflux.com/
Set the desired white balance/temperature at night time and you don't need any glasses.
Just adjust the color temperature on your monitor to be less blue
Yo listen up here's a story
About a little guy that lives in a blue world
And all day and all night and everything he sees
Is just blue
Like him inside and outside
Blue his house with a blue little window
And a blue Corvette
And everything is blue for him
And himself and everybody around
Cause he ain't got nobody to listen
I'm Blue...
> Setup your work area to have even lighting.
Specially, the room lighting and the monitor brightness should be related so that the screen appears roughly as bright as a piece of paper held next to the monitor. The white areas of the monitor should appear white, like the paper, not like staring at a lightbulb in an otherwise dark room.
I have a few suggestions for people, having used computers from a very young age and having my own since 7th grade, eye strain has always been an issue.
(1) If you are near sighted (which I am), have your the prescription *slightlt* detuned, so it isn't perfect. Mine is detuned by I think around 0.25. This reduces eye strain by a HUGE amount. You won't be able to read highway signs from far away but who needs to do that any more with gps nav?
(2) Tinge your desktop foreground coloring scheme more towards the greens and do not yet a dead-black background solid, and do not have a bright background picture relative to your windows. This reduces excess contrast while simultaneously allowing you to reduce the brightness of the screen. Excess contrast is a major source of eye strain. If you see characters burning into your retina excessively you have too much contrast.
For example, for xterm's I use the following resources:
xterm*background: #100010000000
xterm*foreground: #7FFFDFFFDFFF
xterm*cursorColor: white
(3) Monitor(s) should be arms-length from your eyes with your fingers stretched out. If they are any closer, you are doing something wrong. Any closer and your eyes will get strain for excessive crossing.
(4) Glasses vs Contacts. I don't know. I prefer glasses myself, but I've never really liked to use contacts so mostly I just don't any more... its glasses all the way.
-Matt
Amber based sunglasses and computer glasses help immensely. I do not get dry aching eyes and I'm not light sensitive after hours of computer usage. My eyes aren't tired anymore.
I'm myopic, and I often read books without glasses, but the computer screen is a little too far for that. So I sometimes find it easier to use my old glasses for computing, compared to my regular glasses with a stronger correction. Around here, "computer glasses"* refer to glasses with the optical power optimized for screen distances. It's something you can get from your employer as a health benefit if you work at a screen all day.
I also use redshift on Linux to tone down the blues (the colour component) during the night, but it's a completely orthogonal issue. Plus if you're worried about computing ruining your sleep, there's also the psychological buzz, so I'm not sure which one dominates in practice.
*(One common term is "päätelasit" meaning "terminal glasses", not necessarily because you're so old they're the last glasses you'll ever need, but because our computing term-inology is ancient and we still think in terms of terminals.)
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I remember when we had computers in the last 80's, the 'radiation' and light from the CRT's would burn your retina's, cause insomnia and the sole contributor to poor eyesight.
All forms of 'solutions' in particular screen covers but also various color lens glasses were for sale, ended up being a fad.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I'm in the market for new glasses, and I've been researching the different types of lenses. Apparently these blue-blocker lenses will give your vision a yellow tint. Not only that, but anyone looking at you might notice purple reflections off your lenses.
The only monitor out of at least 5 that I bought and returned that my eyes liked was an older 2009 apple cinema display. The focusing system in your eyes does poorly with blue light. Guess what they use to backlight modern monitors? A blue led, masked to create the other colors. I think because of a combination of cost, energy efficiency, and trying to meet color reproduction specs, they've been using one of the worst possible backlights in monitors. Another thing that helped a lot was buying new glasses with an anti-reflective coating. I don't mean any of the computer-specific stuff, but the regular fifty dollar anti-glare coating helped a lot to. It seems like computer monitors aren't taken seriously by the industry. A lot of money and new cool tech goes into smartphones displays, and tv's. Computer monitors get the short end of the stick.
Eyes focus on the same distance all the time and the muscles doing this are not properly exercised and challenged.
Being hunter/gatherers most of our genetic past life, looking far, close and noticing noises and movements around us was a necessity of survival.
And now? Focus distance to screen or cell: 2', next wall: 10-20', VR googles I don't know how this works, not much distance change there either I would guess.
I'd say, severe deterioration of human vision ability....
Wearing "blue-blocking" spectacles is the wrong solution to the problem. Fix it in software. Run "f.lux" on your PC, "NightShift" on your Apple devices, "Twilight" on your Android phone, or "BlueShade" on your Kindle. There are probably equivalent tools in other operating systems.
I don't know about easing eye strain; I already use prescription "computer glasses" that focus at monitor distance. But using these applications do seem to help me sleep better after working (or playing) on my computer for most of the evening.
ZenniOptical.com.
Monitors with PWM dimmed LED backlights are the problem. Most people are sitting in front of a 180hz strobe all day. Get some PWM free monitors and enjoy fatigue free eyes. Blue light and only late at night makes it difficult to get to sleep, nothing more.