Exercising for Healthier Eyes

Can you elaborate on why you disagree with them on the diagnosis?

I can understand your frustration with doctors.

Around 15 years ago I had redness and pain in my eye. It got bad enough, that although after-hours, I went to a Cigna Urgent Care center. I was examined by a non-specialist who didn't know what the problem was, but guessed it was probably a bacterial infection. So he sent me home with antibiotics, and told me to come back in "about a week" if things did not clear up. Well, a week later it was only worse, so he told me I needed to see a specialist "immediately".

I was in terrible pain. Redness, photosensitivity, etc. I get an appointment with a real opthamologist, and he said I have a viral infection in the cornea, and its serious. I had already permanently lost vision (from 20/20 to 20/50). Antivirals + steroids cleared it up, but it created a dynamic that is difficult to manage to this day.

Now with corneal ulcers, the surface of the cornea is uneven. This prevents the tear film from distributing evenly.

With poor tear film (tear break up time, TBUT) the eye becomes inflamed.

With inflammation, comes neo-vascularization, nerve destruction, and more epithelial defects. All these conspire against proper tearing, and the cycle repeats.

So - its very important to get whatever dynamic you have under control. 'Dry eyes' is actually pretty serious, but most opthamologists agree we don't have good weapons for it.

Some people have dry eyes, even though they produce too many tears. Its because their tears are defective. Like some people having high HDL, but their HDL is defective.

Almost all the OTC stuff is crap. All I can do is recommend

1) Find the best specialist in your area, and see them. I saw a cornea specialist at the Mayo Clinic for a while; they were "OK". But I was surprised they had an even more famous individual there - and she never once said "hmm, what we've been trying for the last 2 years hasn't been working, lets see what my (famous) colleague X thinks". So you have to manage your doctors with great attention. Also, my suspicion - is that cornea MDs like to operate (in my case - cornea replacement), not treat. Operating is probably more profitable.

2) For dry-eyes, you should consider a few things. I use Systane Gel Drops going to sleep. Friction between cornea and eye lids is a problem. The various PM oil formulations are too goopy; but this is the thickest liquid that seems to protect me through the night. I don't wake up with red eyes.

3) For the office, consider moisture being wicked away from your cornea by ventilation. I wear a hat and glasses. Try things that make a full seal, like something Ridick would wear, or a motorcycler. Try Wiley-X Climate control stuff. Since the seal needs to be perfect, try them on first.

4) I love my Oakley M-Frame Heater lenses. Huge, wrap around the face. I wear clear even at night if I'm not wearing goggles to protect that micro-climate around the eyes.

5) You can try the 'dry eye forums' at http://www.dryeyezone.com/talk/ .. YMMV.

I hope things get better.

I was in a similar situation with you, I too was prescribed as having Blephartitis by multiple opthamologist, I did what they told me to do, clean my eye lids, warm compress, eye drops (various brands) didn't help.

After diligently tracking the root cause, data gathering and the likes, I found the issue and I have been dry eyes free since (mostly). As a matter of fact, I had my LASIK, which makes dry eyes worse usually, and have little to no dry eyes.

What's intriguing about your case is this sentence "I wake up with tired, dry eyes and it's a battle all day long" your symptom is the same as mine. My situation is this: My eyes don't close all the way when I sleep, thus throughout the night, they will get exposed and dry up badly. After 8 hours, it's plain to see why I would wake up with dry eyes and the dryness lasts throughout the day.

My solution is simple, before going to bed, I tape my eyes shut and I use a 3M tape. I tape it in a way if I try to open my eyes I won't be able to.

Please do try that for a few days and let me know if it helps :)

I feel that modern LCD monitors are too bright. Typically I have mine set at 50% brightness. Adjusting environmental/ambient light is important too if you can. I try to adjust my desk/chair orientation that overhead lights are behind my head instead of in front of me (no line-of-sight light sources other than my monitors). I also use f.Lux (http://justgetflux.com/).

I'm not sure what combination of this list of things does the most good, but I rarely get eyestrain and I look at screens for 12+ hours per day.

Not sure if this matters, but I had LASIK surgery 7 years ago and ever since my eyes have been pretty sensitive to light (night vision FTW), so this is something I've been working on for a while now.

Edit: I am 40 years old, and have been looking at screens for long hours at least 10-15 years now.

I'd love to learn how to manually perform the equivalent of whatever true REM sleep does for my eyes. No matter how I try to focus or rest my eyes myself they don't truly feel rested any other way.

There are software tools like Flux and Redshift for the PC, Screen Filter for Android (which I just use to turn off the LED lights) -- all intended to reduce the light (typically the 'harsher' blues) to absorb. Some people use orange safety glasses to accomplish the same goal: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000USRG90

Adjusting the brightness of your screen helps reduce fatigue. The ideal is to have the screen at the same brightness as the room, as if it were a naturally lit piece of paper. For instance, right now it's 15:00 for me and I'm using the MacBook at 25% brightness.

To my understanding the main thing that causes myopia in children and contributes to age related vision deterioration is insufficient bright light. You simply have to clock up an hour or two outside in daylight every day. Even very brightly lit rooms are a fraction as bright as the outdoors on a cloudy day.

>I still have a very tired feel in my eyes at the end of a long day.

I asked my optometrist about this. He said that our extraocular muscles get tired like any other muscle on the body, and it's normal to feel that way after staring at a screen for extended periods.

FWIW I have good vision and don't wear glasses.

There is an interesting read about lutein and macular degeneration [1] .. might be quackery, but I've started to include kale in my ration. If it does nothing, well it's not unhealthy. But if it helps though it wouldn't be wise to ignore it.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutein#Macular_degeneration

I have a 30in monitor and I put all fonts at 16+ pt so they are easily readable from a distance, then I relax instead of leaning in toward the screen. I am often mentally tired at the end of day but no eye strain.

When I work remote using my laptop I always end with a headache and often tired eyes as well.

Many many hackers at my office use 3 column tmux or screen terminal sessions all day long on 11 in laptop screens, but monitors are cheap so why strain your eyes?

As others have mentioned check on ambient lighting and brightness settings. You may also want to try setting your white balance, contrast and saturation levels. Factory defaults are for making them look good in on display in a store, not for daily use.

Diversity of focus. To start I have nine monitors attached to my laptop via the internal video card & four DisplayLink docs. They are placed around me in such a way that requires that I do a small amount of refocusing throughout the day as I move from monitor to monitor. I also sit next to a window and will make sure to stand up ever 30 minutes to an hour and focus far into the distance. I do this because my eye doctor was growing concerned that my eyesight continued to get worse when it should be stabilizing. Since I've gone to what some may consider to be an extreme in terms of constant eye refocus my eye's have stabilized and haven't changed for a decade. Your results may vary.

Here's my setup if you are curious:

https://defaultstore.com/mydesk.jpg

Reading glasses, intermittently. They're something like +0.5 or +1.0 diopter (I have perfect vision; adjust accordingly); enough to push my monitor toward (but not at) the edge of my focal range. I code for a few hours with them off, then for a few hours with them on. I usually switch when I feel strain setting in.

I highly recommend using an app like http://breaktimeapp.com. You set an interval and length of breaks and Breaktime will lock your screen so you are forced to rest your eyes. Use it to look outside the window every once in a while.

As a tip, definitely enforce the break. You are always tempted to get out of it if you don't.

>half of the mice in each group were exposed to a searingly bright light for four hours.

That hits a little to close to home for me. Sure, a monitor isn't searing, but it is still bright.

The real kicker to this is:

"But obviously, mice are not people, so whether exercise can prevent or ameliorate macular degeneration in human eyes is “impossible to know, based on the data we have now,”"

I have a fairly complex view of animal testing where I think it may be justified in some situations, but this type of testing in situations where you self-admit you didn't learn anything knowingly human-applicable when you could have done a more long term study just observing the eye health of multiple sets of older humans (one set which lives an active lifestyle and one which does not) is pretty fucked up.