

Ask HN: how do you prevent computer related eye fatigue? - oscardelben

Many of us works many hours per day in front of a computer monitor. Eventually the monitor's light may cause eye fatigue and related symptoms and so I wonder if any of you is using a particular method or combination of them to prevent this effect. Thanks
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niels_olson
First, keep in mind you may be having symptoms of a refractive error or
systemic disease (diabetes, allergies, thyroid disease, etc). So keep that in
mind.

I'm forwarding this to a soon-to-be ophthalmology resident fiend. To make his
read more functional, please describe your symptoms more specifically.

These are just some questions I came up with. It's not a validated screening
tool or anything like that:

When do your eyes hurt? Do you experience loss of vision? Blurry vision? Does
it feel like you're in a tunnel? Do they hurt the same on the weekends?
Holidays? Summer vs winter? Do you have seasonal allergies? What medications
do you take for seasonal allergies? Are your eyes red and irritated? Do you
have headaches? Do you feel nauseated? Do you feel physically exhausted, like
you couldn't hold your arms up to comb your hair? Do you experiences auras?
Have you recently lost weight? Gained weight?

The more people who could answer the questions, the more useful it _might_ be,
at least in painting a picture of what the common symptoms are.

This _not_ medical advice. If you are seeking medical advice, you should
consult a physician. That said, I'm interested. Having been all the way to an
orthopedist and having a office ergonomics study done several years ago (my
issue was numbness in my hands, fixed with proper positioning), I empathize.

Here's a search of the PubMed database to get started on further reading:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&cmd=D...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&cmd=DetailsSearch&term=terminal+asthenopia)

Honestly, my brief survey of the literature suggests that the usual culprits
are at play and there's nothing particularly evil about computers:

1) Make sure your terminal and keyboard are situated so you have good posture
(that whole sit-up-straight thing really works). Otherwise the strap muscles
of your neck and head will definitely get strained throughout the day, leading
to a headache.

2) Loose weight. Sleep apnea is a common cause of headache, which may be
mistaken for eye pain. Type 2 diabetes is at least partially reversible with
weight loss and is famous for causing numerous eye problems.

3) Take breaks. Your extraocular and intraocular muscles move your eyes
constantly. 5 times per second. This means two things: "eye strain" probably
isn't a muscular problem. 2) A lot of that movement helps monitor your
environment and helps your brain construct better 3D representations. Staring
at a flat screen of constant brightness may well screw with your brain. This
is entirely speculative on my part, but I suspect it is similar to the
headaches one gets in the fog on a ship at sea or in the desert: there's so
little detail to train your eyes on. Alternatively, it may be similar to the
experience of driving at night in the rain. The constant near-to-far ranging
and trying to filter rain from road can definitely cause a headache.

4) Most reports are favorable toward anti-glare screens. I think this is at
least partially missing the point that antiglare screens are also polarizers
that cut down about half the emitted light. At the very least, the two effects
are difficult to untangle. I suppose if you have a large window behind you,
then the anti-glare value might be helpful. Otherwise, I'd say save your
money, dim the screen, and use Flux. That said, one study looked at blink rate
as a proxy for asthenopia and found anti-glare coating reduced blink rate. I'm
not sure how far to follow that though because the activity was watching a
DVD, not actively typing text.

5) Some studies look at age. Not much you can do with that one, my friend.

6) One study looked at environmental vibration. So, I suppose, if you're
writing code in a plane or on an oil rig, you should use a larger font. Or
find dry land.

7) Think about radiologists. They do pretty much all these things: good
posture, dark room, no windows (no glare), they take breaks, and the old
doctors (faculty) get new doctors (residents) to stare at the screen whenever
possible :-)

~~~
vincekrish
For the past few months I have been having problems driving at night after a
day's work in front of the computer. I am not able to cope with the bright
headlamps of oncoming vehicles, esp. in places where there are no street
lamps. On weekends though I find the problem not to be that acute. All doctors
I consulted told me that I have perfect eyesight. They suggested I wear anti-
glare glasses. But that solves the issue only to an extent. Apart from this
issue of driving at night I have not yet experienced any other issues with my
eyesight like reading or even driving in daylight. I am curious to know
whether anyone else is experiencing the same problem.

------
pierrefar
One tip I learned ages ago is to look at and focus on differently distant
objects regularly. So every 5-10 minutes (now it's a second nature habit), I
scan the room and randomly focus on objects nearby and objects at a distance.
Focus on 3-5 objects per scan, each at a different distance.

If you have a window nearby, even better: look outside and admire far away
things.

Of course, if you get out of your seat and take a walk while looking around,
you get the double combo of moving and reducing eye fatigue.

Also adjust the brightness. After a lot of experimentation, I discovered my
comfort zone of having relatively dim screens. And get a flat screen!

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dupersuper
I use a program called F.lux to automatically adjust the brightness of your
screen based on the time of day and your location. It gradually dims the
monitor as it gets later in the day and brightens up in the morning.

<http://www.stereopsis.com/flux/>

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christefano
I play action video games:

    
    
      Action video games improve eyesight:
      http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=540072
    

Seriously, I make sure that I:

    
    
      1. use large displays so that I'm not squinting
      2. have decent fonts to write with (Panic Sans is my current favorite for code)
      3. blink a lot
      4. have a lot of lutein in my diet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutein

------
releasedatez
Here are a few nice articles:

[http://lifehacker.com/5146058/eye-relax-reminds-you-to-
stop-...](http://lifehacker.com/5146058/eye-relax-reminds-you-to-stop-burning-
your-eyes-out)

<http://www.wikihow.com/Exercise-Your-Eyes>

[http://www.centre4activeliving.ca/workplace/trr/tools/yoga_a...](http://www.centre4activeliving.ca/workplace/trr/tools/yoga_atdesk_en.html)

------
PeterKovacs
Make sure that you mention to your eye doctor that you stare at a computer
screen all day. I have a separate prescription just for the computer and since
I got them my eye-strain (not to mention neck-strain and headaches) has all
but vanished. You could need a pair of computer glasses even if you don't
normally wear glasses especially when you get into your 30s.

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jcl
I've read that putting a light _behind_ your monitor helps relax the eyes
(i.e. illuminating the wall around the edges of the monitor) -- and it seems
to work OK for me.

I think the theory is that it increases the amount of light entering the eye
peripherally, which contracts the pupil slightly, helping focus.

------
manniwood
Agree with poster who said ambient light should match brightness of monitor. I
always turn my monitor brightness/contrast WAY down so that I don't feel like
I'm staring at a light bulb all day. This simple adjustment does wonders for
the eyes.

~~~
TunaFish
What worked for me was changing from black on white setup to white on black --
in whatever editor you use, make the background you stare all day black. MUCH
easier on the eyes.

------
corysama
One factor that helps me is to set my IDE syntax coloring schemes to minimize
the amount of blue one the screen. Mostly yellow, green and brown text with
hilights of grey or cyan on a black background.

Staring at glowing text is much better than staring between the glow in a
futile effort to mimic paper. Blue light makes focusing more difficult.

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wesley
I'd like to know. I've been having eye problems for months now. Doctors (I
went to 2) just give me eye drops.

My symptoms are a little different though, when I press on my eyes (the upper
part) it actually hurts (nowhere else) and when I don't put in drops I'll get
a grainy feeling in my eyes, like there is sand in my eyes or something..

~~~
Tacomanator
Hearing your account reminded me of when my eyes were burned by accidental
exposure to welding light. It was quite painful, and basically felt like there
was sand in my eyes for several days. The doctor used a special dye to detect
the burns. Probably not the case for you unless you've had a particular
exposure, but something to think about..

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rodrigo
I was using regular red eye drops on a daily basis, but they seemed to
increase the damage. Now i use this natural eye drops made from Hamamelis
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamamelis>) and they help a lot, seemingly
without side effects.

~~~
silencio
I was told by my ophthalmologist to not use those red eye drops. I wear
contacts half of the day, and I typically use rewetting drops or Systane eye
lube... definitely cuts down my cause of red eye and discomfort (typically dry
eyes or something in the contacts that the liquid tends to flush out and
wetten).

------
dazzawazza
One of the best things to stop fatigue I have is a white board. It forces me
to stand up (which is good).

I can walk around and think. I get to use my eyes in a different way and white
boards rock. It's great fun.

Everyone get a whiteboard!

------
jpirkola
I have noticed that the surrounding brightness conditions should match with
monitor, that way it is not so bad for eyes. I am also using lower resolution
to make everything look bigger on screen. Taking a hourly break is a great
idea as well.

~~~
moe
An excellent tool for the brightness issue is f.lux:
<http://www.stereopsis.com/flux/>

~~~
thalur
I second this, although it can be a bit disconcerting when it suddenly changes
the colour temperature. Also, it doesn't affect the mouse cursor for me, which
ends up appearing slightly bluey green in the evenings.

------
cubicray
some tips here: [http://www.ipnlighting.com/blog/2007/02/22-ways-to-reduce-
ey...](http://www.ipnlighting.com/blog/2007/02/22-ways-to-reduce-eye-strain-
at-your.asp)

------
shubhamharnal
www.gunnars.com has a range of glasses to deal with this; I have a pair from
them and they really do work.

~~~
pxlpshr
I've looked at those, and even called a few of their executives to see who's
in charge of TX sales. I had a friendly response but very little follow
through, it surprises me that they aren't doing more with geeks TBH. Austin
may not be the valley, but I was extremely surprised that I couldn't find a
dealer anywhere to try them on.

Can you tell me anything more about your experience with them? Which model do
you have? Thanks!

~~~
shubhamharnal
I apologize for taking sooo long to get back to you on this: I own a pair of
Sphere Halogens. I bought them since I felt at the end of the day(having
stared at the screen for hours together, that I had eye-fatigue, related
headaches and dryness.) After trying out the Halogens for a few days, instant
relief! I would say it is totally worthwhile expenditure if you feel eye
fatigue; obviously a whole lotta people seem to do good without them...so good
for them. They have really helped me alleviate my eye-fatigue and I can now
work longer on my computer and follow-up on other things in life after having
worked on computers, without feeling burnt-out. Hope this helps.

------
vlisivka
I use program to force short breaks (see workrave.org). I also use short play
of fast arcade game (sopwith to first death, 20-30 seconds) to relax a bit.

~~~
cubicray
Is use AntiRSI also on OSX - <http://tech.inhelsinki.nl/antirsi/>

