Ask HN: Solution for eye strain? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Solution for eye strain?

10 pointsaohtsab29 comments

A while back there was a post on wrist pain with some good advice on circumventing it—posture, etc.

Do any of you have problems with straining your eyes? I've been forced to wear sunglasses while I work at the computer, even though I've set the brightness and contrast settings to zero. I wear contacts, and for extenuating circumstances, don't have glasses, nor will I for another month or so.

I realize the most obvious solution would be to level down computer usage, but that's not a possibility for me right now.

What do you do for eye strain?

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Billiards!

Everyone here will surely suggest frequent breaks, which is great advice. I'm going one step further to suggest that you play billiards during those breaks. However, you must play correctly. Be sure to line up shots with both eyes open. Alternate your focus between the tip of the cue, the cue ball, the object ball, and the target pocket until you are confident your shot is aligned. Doing it this way will strengthen your game, as well as your eyes.

Try changing your ambient lighting - when I had an ergo exam at work, they suggested that I make sure that the areas beside my monitor were of a similar brightness to the monitor (the idea being that it's stressful for your eyes to adjust brightness when you look to the side of your screen). I can't say I've noticed a difference, but the logic makes sense to me.

Also see if you can have some surfaces around your monitor that are different distances away from your seat, so you can periodically look to them for a few seconds to allow your eyes to adjust and not get strained into one fixed "focal length".

Lastly, don't underestimate the impact of some good eye drops. Many offices are much drier than they should be, and this effects contact-users even moreso. Throw some drops in now and then, and if you have an enclosed office, run a humidifier in there to get some moisture in the air.

That is true -- some high-end TVs come with ambient lights behind the panel for this reason, to ease the transition between bright screen and dark room.

I know this won't help you (no glasses) but I often alternate days between contacts that give me 20/15 vision and intentionally weak glasses that give me about 20/40 vision or so. I'm thinking that changing the effective distance that my eyes have to focus each day might help with eyestrain.

In my experience, it's not only for the times you look to the side of the screen. Working in a dark environment with a relatively bright monitor is very harsh on the eyes, even you stare at the monitor all the time.

So reducing the contrast between the ambient and the monitor is key to reducing eye strain, at least for my eyes. You can even improve this, by choosing a dark green or blue background, and some beige like pale color for foreground in you IDE or text editor.

I have this problem because I have one eye. I do a few things.

1) Make sure my monitor has a high refresh or response rate. Either greater than 75hz or less than 4ms (2 is better) respectively

2) You may be making things worse by setting the contrast down. Your have to do extra work to discern what it's seeing when the contrast is too low.

3) Lighting /fundamentally/ important. Use good lighting, which first means nothing that "flickers," like the average over head office lighting is terrible. You need to use soft lights. I have a rope light strung up behind my monitors so there's a nice soft, yellow glow coming from behind them at all times, plus a larger lamp pointing straight at the back of my central one. That back lighting helps a lot. For overhed, I generally use dilluted sunlight from the windows, but failing that a brightish floor lamp with a nice blub witll work fine.

4) Sit far enough away from the monitor. I sit between 2 and 3 feet back.

5) I use large fonts for everything. When I read web sites, I hit CTRL++ all the time to make the font larger. In my IDE, I use 16 to 18pt font.

6) Whenever possible, /especially/ when programming, I use inverted colors, so black background and light colors for the text. White text generally works, but you might find a light gray to be easier on the eyes.

If you do all that, you'll be fine.

I was given some advice on this once:

Lie in bed at night (make sure it is dark so your eyes don't try to focus on anything). Do some eye exercises (up-down, left-right, generally just moving them around a bit) while your eyes are open. I think the rationale behind this is that when you stare at a screen not only are your eyes focusing at the same distance but they are not moving around as much as they should be. Don't know if this is scientific so caveat emptor etc.

Question: do you have a good quality LCD screen?

I have 2 laptops: a MacBook and a Dell Vostro. I can use the MacBook comfortably for 5 to 6 hours at a stretch, whereas using the Dell for even 1 hour is a pain, even with brightness turned down to zero. Problem is, low-end laptop makers use crappy screens that burn your eyes. Even the MacBook screen is only okay-ish, not great. Buy a high-end LCD screen for your laptop. Your eyes will thank you.

Besides that, try to use low-contrast color themes on your OS. Windows and most Linux distros have too many bright colors in their default themes, which make your eyes hurt after a while. Windows Classic is a great theme if you're using Windows. On Linux, you might want to use vanilla ClearLooks.

Set your editor to use large, variable-width fonts. Also, ZenBurn and Wombat are two color schemes that are incredibly easy on the eyes. These are available for both Emacs and Vim.

Oh, and take frequent breaks. Wash your eyes. Spend more time in natural light. Glasses are better than contacts, so get them as soon as you can manage to.

Somewhat related (though not directly related to your problem): Flux ( http://www.stereopsis.com/flux/ )

It changes the color temperature of your display. By reducing the amount of blue in the evening, the idea is that you can fall asleep easier and not tire your eyes out late at night. It's done purely by timezone/time of day (no sensors taken into account), but it works well enough for me. I don't know if I fall asleep any faster, but my eyes are certainly happier when browsing late at night.

Note: The windows version is far more customizable than the mac version. I also haven't tried the linux one.

The most obvious solution is not to level down the computer usage (although that should be a step). Rather than asking the community you most definitely should go to an eye doctor as this is a serious problem that you have to wear sunglasses while working on a computer.

If you don't take that suggestion work in a brighter room (like near a window) in order to counter the screens brightness... fluorescents probably will only hurt this problem.

Blink. :) It's silly, but it's really easy to stare at the screen for long periods of time, especially when reading. Catch yourself doing this, and force yourself to blink more often.

Instead of just turning away to adjust your eyes, do your whole body a favor: stand up and walk away. Go find a drink, and in the process look around to rest your eyes. If you drink a lot, you'll naturally want to walk away from time to time. :)

Look away often, preferably at distant objects.

Take breaks, go for a walk and look at natural things like trees, lakes etc.

Sit with your eyes closed for ten seconds.

[these are the things I do]

I know it isn't possible for everyone, but I've always found it really good for me to have a window close to my computer. I'll look out the window every time I stop to think.

Wow, you should be seriously concerned. First things first, stop wearing your contacts...completely. You're drying out your corneas basically. Seriously, even though it sucks, stop wearing your contacts and get eye drops and use them every few hours. Rinse and repeat until your eyes get better else go to a doctor.

Having to wear sunglasses is just insane, there's a serious problem here.

I read a bout a neat "hack" so to speak here on HN some years ago that I've used to some degree of success.

Tense up all the muscles in your body for about 20 or 30 seconds and then relax them. It should trick the muscles in your eye (the ones giving you the eye strain) to relax, too. YMMV, but it's worked for me.

For me, fever is one of the things that causes problems with screen brightness. I have serious health problems. Getting generally healthier has reduced the frequency with which such things are a problem for me. You might try treating for fever and see if that makes any difference.

Even though I'm young, I'll occasionally wear reading glasses with a 1.00 prescription. I most need my glasses when working with CSS and pixel perfect layouts. For me, the use of reading glasses significantly reduces eye strain by the end of the day.

I've made some notes from DVD I've watched recently. It was made by Dr. Svetlana Troitskaia and is in russian. Just wanted to share with my English speaking friends.

http://dpaste.com/hold/120724/

Go, see a doctor. Read up on workplace ergonomics (make sure there is no window behind the screen). Try another monitor. Don't wear contacts when working. Don't work at night or in the early morning. Maybe use a dark background.

My eyes got much better after I started playing tennis. I think the act of tracking the ball is basically the same as the eye exercises you're suppose to be doing every 30 minutes (looking in the distance then up close, etc).

My "eye strain" usually consists of me wearing contacts for too long. Especially in front of a computer screen, they dry up a bit and irritate my eyes. Wearing glasses when the eyes get irritated is the best solution here!

You must realise that the eye is delicate, and long term stress can lead to adverse effects; However, I frequently just wash my face/eyes whenever I feel I'm strained, and do some other things for a couple of minutes.

I recommend (in addition to the other tips here) that you try switching your IDE to a variable width font.

Heresy, I know, but reading is about shape recognition, which is more difficult in mono-spaced fonts.

I suggest you play with the color schemes for your editor. I've found white backgrounds w/ text tend to tire my eyes more than a deep blue background w/ gray text.

I made a similar shift a few years back. If you use Visual Studio (at least older versions), it can be a bit stubborn about applying color changes. Restarting it helps.

I could not help but be amused by the fact that your blog post renders as grey text on a yellowish-grey background. (Not your fault, I know...)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=540078

take breaks.

not necessarily standing up and walking around, but change your range of focus. look out the window every once in a while, or something similar.

its simple, but it works wonders for me.

get your eyes near water, humidity is important

I'm planning on getting laser eye surgery in 10 years when I can't go higher in my contact and glasses subscription. I think entrepreneurs can handle the deadliness of eye strain in order to change the world.

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