Pure research, zero selling.
Interested? Drop a comment below or email me directly at jbornhorst [at] gmail.com. I’ll coordinate a convenient time to talk.
Reading glasses work fine when the screen is very close to your face such as a laptop screen. However if it's a separate monitor that's ~30 inches away, reading glasses are slightly blurry which can lead to eyestrain and headaches.
https://www.warbyparker.com/learn/wp-content/uploads/2023/04...
Look into it if you suspect it's a contributor to headaches: https://www.google.com/search?q=computer+glasses+%22intermed...
Over the summer I added a pair of progressive occupational lenses (not reading glasses). They are focused arms length in front of me. This has been a complete game changer. I can now see my monitor crisply, clearly, and easily in a way that I haven't seen it in a decade.
When I swap back and forth between my regular lenses and my occupational lenses, the difference is stark. With my regular lenses there's a part of the screen that's about a half dollar coin in size that's clear and in focus. The rest of the screen is every so slightly blurry. I have to move my head to constantly adjust the focal point, or move my eyes and struggle to focus.
When I switch to my occupational lenses, the entire screen is clear. I don't have to move my head. I don't have to fight to focus. Where I look, it's crisp.
No wonder I was struggling! I was fighting to focus all day long. I suffer from almost no eye fatigue now. If my eyes are tired, it's usually because I'm tired and it's been a long day.
The downside is I now have to juggle two pairs of glasses instead of one, but that's oh so totally been worth it. I'm not going back.
By asking to talk to only those who have problems, you could be self selecting for a population who may not help you actually solve your problem, even if they mean well.
This is just my experience of course. When I did my initial research, I asked a question on Blind about progressive lenses. Lots of people said they have progressive lenses and they have zero problems.
If I was forced to guess, I would say that some (or maybe even all) of these folks who start talking about the computer glasses……it makes me wonder if they simply under-bought their lenses. Yes glasses are expensive. Getting a better lens will cost more. Yes yes, the Luxotica this and that. I don’t care about any of that crap. All I care about is getting the best lens possible and so should you!
Do what I mean!
I don't sit at a screen much these days, but for a while when I did, I had a computer prescription pair that I swapped on every day when I sat down at my desk, and swapped off when I went to leave. The distance vision with it was good enough to walk around the office or down the road to lunch, but not good enough to drive to and from the office.
After moving and getting a new optometrist, I got a different main prescription, and was told to try wearing them at the computer instead of swapping. Lo and behold, they worked without causing headaches, which is why I ended up with a computer pair previously.
For all of the time I've been in glasses, I've read books without them.
I'm probably not interesting to talk to, because I'm no longer in front of a computer when I can avoid it and I'm in my 40's so I'm staring down (pun intended) some vision changes in the near future anyway.
Minus 2 or 3 in both eyes with a cylindrical correction as well.
Anyway, I've been fighting progressives for about 5 years now. I have 2 pairs that I got a couple years apart but could never bring myself to wear them. Like some others have said, I much prefer having a pair of medium distance computer lenses. They end up being the glasses I wear when I'm at home even when I'm not in front of the computer. I now have to lift them up to see up close, but that's a reasonable compromise to wearing progressives.
I really want to find an optometrist who uses some alternative to the old phoropter system. My prescription is currently a bit "off" and I swear it's because the phoropter system is fundamentally flawed. My eyes adjust and adapt during the test, causing me to misreport the optimal setting. There just isn't enough time in a typical appointment to detect eyestrain or other issues with a particular prescription.
Further reading: https://eyewiki.org/Dry_Eye_Syndrome
Does the problem persist with contact lenses? Soft contact lenses can do a better job of correcting vision for someone with keratosis, as they conform to the wonky surface of the cornea.
Edit: Just realised you're probably doing market research rather than asking for yourself. Either way, people with keratosis, who don't fit into the box, might be something to consider.
I sit at a screen 8-16 hours a day. I get strong headaches every single day, for which I keep a supply of ibuprofen at work and home. 400mg a day is generally plenty.
I do not wear my glasses while at the screen, as it's close enough that I don't have any issues.
I suspect my headaches are neck muscle related, not eyesight, but I haven't investigated further.
I wear hard contact lenses most of the time, but I do have glasses. My glasses prescription is around +21/+23 (I would fit right in hanging out with Milhouse Van Houten or Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth), but I only wear them in emergencies because I get headaches and dizziness after 10/15 minutes of wearing them. I mostly keep 'em for the novelty of showing people just how thick my glasses are. 8)
My eyes do get tired after long screen days, resulting in blurry vision and watery eyes. I also get headaches on a somewhat frequent basis.
If that's useful at all, I'd be happy to chat more.
For this case, dark text on a light background is much better than light on dark. Dark on light, the light halation blends more or less evenly over the dark letter stems, resulting is slightly lower overall contrast but sharp lines. Light on dark, it's Las Vegas in the rain.
Post-concussion syndrome (and screens)
After getting a concussion, I had to change my screens in a big way. Many people have heard of sensitivity to PWM and low frequency PWM in particular. The alternative is DC dimming, and it helps tremendously. Additionally, higher refresh rates seem to help. At least 120 Hz but preferably 144, 165 or higher. My phone has some complicated PWM / DC dimming settings[0] - possibly 120 / 360 Hz[1]. My laptop is 165 Hz and does not appear to use PWM[2]. My desktop screens are 144 Hz and have DC dimming.
I'm going through the hassle of getting a physician to sign off on an ADA request to get my current employer to allow me to use better screens at work, as they provided a laptop with a horrible 60 Hz screen, and two crappy 60 Hz monitors. Fortunately I'm only in the office twice a week.
Glasses
Last year, I got brand new glasses with the prescription determined by the optometrist. However, it took three tries of adjusting things like pupil measurements and the "base curve" or index of the glasses before I started to get used to them. Up until then, I felt very tired and brain foggy while wearing them. With the third revision and a week of adjustment, I finally started to settle in. It takes a really good eye doctor to figure out these kinds of issues, and be willing to swap out lenses for you.
[0] https://www.eyephonereview.com/post/oneplus-12-its-complicat...
[1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/OnePlus-12-5G-Smartphone-Revie... (120 Hz PWM)
[2] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-Nitro-16-AN16-41-review-A...
Quoting a previous comment of mine (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42796950#42797424)
> A big thing not often spoken about with eye strain is dry eye caused by the lack of blinking due to focusing on screens too close to our face. This is an evolutionary phenomenon--close dangers cause extreme focus without blinking. Extreme focus on close items reduces our blinks. Our eye lids have glands in them that release oils on your eye with each blink. These oils help prevent the watery part of your tears from evaporating. When it evaporates your eyes dry out causing discomfort and potentially pain.
> If you don't blink enough, the oil doesnt get on your eyes and eventually, in extreme cases, the glands can even die. A lack of oil in tears can cause extreme eye fatigue and even pain.
> This is why dry eyes is on the rise. Remember to blink!
> I actually built a little web app to count my blinks. See https://dryeyestuff.com/. Not perfect, just a prototype. 100% free.
They're expensive, there was a learning curve for getting them on correctly, and it took several followup appointments to get the correct fit from the manufacturer, but I can wear the lenses almost all day and they give me clear, sharp, 20/20 vision.
Also, when I'm wearing them I need reading glasses to read up close--my uncorrected vision actually compensates for my slight age related nearsightedness. But my vision is so much better I don't mind at all!
The back story is that I had lifelong astigmatism and 2 eyes with different powers (one more farsighted than the other one) which led to some mild amblyopia (lazy eye) that I've had since childhood. My vision wasn't "that bad" so I got by without using my glasses for a long time. But when I tried using my several year old prescription glasses I found that presbyopia (that age related inability to focus on anything up close) made the glasses almost useless for reading.
Even though I'm a dev who looks at screens all day, I didn't think I minded, but I noticed in recent years that my appetite for reading books had disappeared was partly due to noticeable eye strain, but also due to generalized eye fatigue that I wasn't really acknowledging. I also had to sit up front in meeting rooms to follow along with anything projected on the screen, which was annoying.
A colleague mentioned the book Fixing My Gaze (https://www.google.com/books/edition/Fixing_My_Gaze/Ul16tPVk...) and I bought it. It's partly a personal narrative by a neuroscientist who was stereoblind and taught herself to develop stereo vision in middle age (she was profiled by Oliver Sacks at one point). But it's also a history of research optometry, which focuses on refractive vision correction and visual processing (as distinct from eye diseases) and which I barely even knew was a thing. Which led me to NECO and my big quality of life improvement!
I first got "dimestore readers" specifically for computer use, to reduce eyestrain. When I put them on at the beginning of the day I'd notice some weirdness (phantom artifacts and double vision) but my brain would cancel it out and all was good. After about a decade though, I wasn't noticing those artifacts at the beginning of the day, but while driving home I'd see double. That led to getting prescription glasses, and learning lot about astigmatism.
Until recently, I always tested better than normal at infinity without glasses. At infinity, most of my correction is astigmatism. Corrected, I'm still 20/10. But here's the "weird trick": I've learned that it's something that my eyes / brain are doing combined with the astigmatism. I can still conjure "hot spots" with near perfect clarity even without glasses, but it strains my eyes (I don't get full FOV clarity without glasses anymore).
I can't stand progressive lenses, although I have a pair for super close-in work. All my task glasses are "single pane of glass", my "infinity" glasses are bifocals. These days my eyes are more comfortable wearing the infinity glasses than not. The truly noticeable difference with glasses was night driving: no more stars! Huge reduction in eyestrain and improved basic ability to see when challenged by oncoming headlights; I've combined that with some aggressive rose tint in a pair specifically for night driving (very 70's mod frames. woot!).
I'll never get Lasik because I've been told repeatedly that if I did so they wouldn't be able to correct me to 20/10 any longer.
I ended up self-serving at eyebuydirect.com. For the price of the highway robbery at the local optician I got 6 pairs of reasonable quality frames with regular lenses stepping along a range I guessed I need for computer work. And I couldn't be happier, even though I ignored the astigmatism bit. It's possible there is a bit of that engineer DIY itch that got scratched in the process as well :-)
They told me "you have 20/20 vision, your vision is completely fine, you don't need glasses!" But, I responded, my vision is definitely blurry. They politely told me to stop wasting their time.
Dissatisfied, I went to another optometrist, and paid closer attention to the whole process. After some discussion with the doctor, we arrived at the conclusion - I've had essentially 20/7 vision my entire life, and now in certain circumstances my vision has degraded to 20/20!
They gave me a prescription and now I am perfectly happy having laser-sharp vision again when I want it.
1. Base curve. Some people are bothered by lenses with a high base curve. Talk to an optician.
2. Flicker. Lights that flicker can cause headaches and other issues. This includes many LEDs, especially ones from more than a couple years ago, as well as old CRT monitors. “Driverless” LEDs are a major offender. Some modern “low persistence” displays could also be problematic. (I have no idea why anyone wants a low persistence monitor. I understand why low persistence is useful for VR, but monitors aren’t VR.) There’s a standard called IEEE 1789 that the industry mostly ignores.
So maybe more selling, less research?
Tip: Zenni.com lets you order pairs with custom corrections in 0.25 diopter increments for under $100 each, so you can try a few and find what feels best for several hours of screen time.
The diagnosis: keratoconus (thinning and ultimately misshapen cornea). The prescription: highly-corrected rigid scleral contact lenses. The result: radical. I would describe my uncorrected vision as 480p, glasses as 1080p, and scleral contacts as 4k.
The scleral prescription makes my medium and far vision great while further limiting my ability to focus closely. I experimented with "monovision" to have one near-focused eye and one far-focused eye with my brain sorting out the difference, but I could tell that it resulted in lower resolution. I optimize by sticking with the medium-far prescription and wearing 1.5x reading glasses for anything within a few feet. It works great.
If you're in a similar boat, I can't recommend it enough to get checked for keratoconus. To get that you'll want to find a place that can do a corneal tomographic scan with a device like a Pentacam. Oh, and try to not rub your eyes and tell your kids the same because it's believed to be a major cause. I used to do it for fun as a kid to make colors while I was bored.
Some days i can see clearly through my prescription lenses while on others i dont. I also have gone for eye power checkups on different days and indeed my prescription is different.
On my last visit i also got my axial length checked. Will do the same on my next visit and see wtf is going on in there
Ive got all sort of test btw Fundus examination Corneal thickness Corneal shape Topography
So far no one knows whats happening
[1] It's been maybe a decade since I researched this - at the time I concluded that the hourglass FOV shape was a result of progressive lens designers not having enough surfaces to play with and was unavoidable if they wanted decent near and far areas, which tends to work well when your presbyopia isn't too bad yet. Maybe since then someone has introduced a different compromise in that space (maybe narrower close window trading for wider middle distance region?) but I'm not aware of it.
Your optometry office can also test your glasses to make sure that they're actually the right prescription. Lensemakers sometimes (often?) do the fabrication slightly wrong.
I originally got my prescription with an Eye-Q device, and had a professional "correct" it.
I cannot read pill bottles and the like without a magnifying glass, and haven't been able to for a little over 2 years, right before the poking and scratching - which is why i originally thought i needed glasses.
my biggest issue with the way prescriptions are decided is the "this one, or this one" and they both look equally crappy, and they say "which looks less crappy" and i just pick randomly, because they're both awful. and then it continues, where it's just blurry from there on out. I don't understand the mechanism to give me glasses that will correct my vision when the device they use to test makes everything look blurry! At least i understand how the Eye-Q device works...
1. My perscription was out of date by two years and I let it go too long. My eyes struggled to compensate. Got it fixed.
2. For a while I had two different computer setups at different lengths, that contributed to it, they were different by almost two feet. Made changes to make them about the same distance.
3. My night computer I used in a dark room with no backlight. Added a single directed light facing the wall behind the monitor which gives it a soft but focused glow around the computer.
4. I'm PWM sensitive (see associated subreddit). I reduced brightness drastically on my phone and it helped alot with eye exhaustion since my brand is a well known bad source of PWM eye exhaustion and headaches.
After all these changes and a healing time of about a month, I'm back to being able to see individual pixels in text on my screens. My eyes feel like they have de-aged about 10-15 years and eye exhaustion almost never happens now, maybe once in a month and a half, after a few bad nights.
Other stuff that helped, improving sleep and restfulness and getting out and doing exercise more often. Also not using glasses when not needed.
Hope this helps!
But I insisted and made (very weak) glasses with blue-light filter included, and these days I use it when I need to read stuff on the screen (I get zero strain or blurry vision when I play games, in same setup, oddly enough). It helps a lot but they're not perfect, sometimes I still get blurry vision after a while.
Later on I experimented with lightning condition, and realized that my eyestrain often correlated with bad lightning (cafe, when remote work) and stress/bad sleep. Better lightning also help, but not perfectly. It's also odd because since childhood I've been sensitive to light. Walking outdoors in the summer, I can't keep my eyes fully open.
The check appointment was with the practice's other O.D. I said the prescription would've been great for sniper shooting, but I just needed something to read the computer monitor. "You want an intermediate-range prescription." It was better, but still too strong. I used the curvature measurement to order my own prescription from one of the online contact stores. Three years later I upped my prescription by a quarter diopter.
Contact pro-tip: I use my contacts for 1.5 to 2x the rated time. Daily contacts can't be used for more than a day. 2 week contacts are good for at least 3 weeks. I've found my monthly contacts are good for at least 6 weeks. I've started using the hydrogen peroxide contact solutions: https://clearcaresolution.myalcon.com/
> even though your prescription is "correct"?
Most people have a range of prescriptions that they find acceptable. Some people's visual mechanism only 'likes' a specific prescription that might not correct them to 20/20. Developmental Optometry is a sub-specialty of optometry that considers more than acuity. This is a overview: https://www.theottoolbox.com/behavioral-optometrist-developm...
My contacts correct to 20/40 or 20/50, which are good enough for most tasks.
Some time ago I prioritised sleep, inner calm, strict 9-5 work etc. Both blood pressure got better and eyestrain / headaches went away soon after.
I've seen my doctor about it and given my existing tinnitus/pulsatile tinnitus, she diagnosed me with BPPV which sounded reasonable to me. But the epley maneuvers don't do much of anything to help, and given these bouts of dizziness/vertigo are brought on/made worse by screen usage, I'm wondering if it's related to my eyes instead of my ears.
When I turned 40 and started have issues with presbyopia, I asked my opthalmologist (who also writes my eyeglass prescription) during my biennial checkup why he has been prescribing powers based on how well I can read the tiniest letters on the board when I spend most of my life reading stuff that is two feet away.
He reluctantly suggested that I could use glasses with 1D shaved off the powers in the prescription. I had already done this before I asked him about it. And it has been a big help as the strain disappeared.
Things get blurry at a distance with the new glasses, but it is not as if I am driving at night on the roads or anything.
I only ever get blurry vision after very long days in front of the computer without doing anything else (think 12-14 hours). I doubt this is glasses related, since I remember having this issue while studying late as a child, and at the time I had perfect vision (which lasted until my late twenties when my ophthalmologist suggested glasses would be a good idea).
20 minutes of (intense) discomfort. 30 minutes later I was seeing the world in high definition (with sand-in-my eyes, yes. But high definition). I took eyedrops 3 times per day for months. Totally worth it. 20 years later I remain glasses-free.
Granted, I was a mild case: Some myopia (3 and 4 if my memory serves) and .5 astigmatism on each eye. And not everyone is eligible; some people's corneas are too thin to be "sculpted".
Only drawback is that when driving at night the lights from incoming cars and traffic lights have "extra halos" around them. Very minor inconvenience for me and definetly worth it.
I’m currently lining up interviews to learn more about your experiences. If you’ve commented here but haven’t connected yet, feel free to email me at: jbornhorst [at] gmail [dot] com.
I’m especially interested if you’ve experienced persistent discomfort even after updating your prescription professionally (headaches, eye strain, subtle blur, etc.). Pure research, no selling. Your insights will help shape a better solution.
I’ll do my best to reply promptly to everyone. Thanks again, and please keep the stories coming!
[1]: https://blog.damnever.com/en/2024/reminding-myself-to-take-a...
Also most eye correction technology like glasses don't fix the higher order aberrations, that can cause halos and other artifacts. Only wavefront scleral contact lenses do that, but they seem scary so I haven't tried them.
These days I still use screens a lot but I don't recall the last instance of this happening, and I think my reading glasses have largely solved this problem for me.
(Not a subject matter expert, but my wife was an optician for 15+ years, so I've picked up a lot via osmosis)
Went to ophthalmologists and doctors and they keep claiming that everything is alright. Still not able to figure out what is wrong.
1. Your eyesight is not exactly "fixed". It can vary during the day depending on stress, tiredness, dryness, etc..
2. A prescription glass can help and does help but it doesn't magically fix your eye sight. If your eyes are strained from lengthy screen usage, the glasses are not going to do anything about that.
3. There is a possibility that your doctor prescribed you un-correct glasses. It took me a while to find my "correct" range.
With simple prescription lenses for the astigmatism my eyes are much better at looking at the same place, but at the end a long day I have a ton of trouble getting them to agree on where to look and often end up just closing my right eye.
The prescription is about the same as my old glasses, 12 years apart, perhaps they are dialed in just a little bit too much.
The other thing is that these glasses have blueguard filter, which I have been attributing the eye strain to. I've been looking for a way to remove the blue guard, but I can't and I don't want to spend A$400 on a new pair. :(
I am nearsighted (-7.5 with astigmatism in left, -6.0 in right).
Recently been experiencing slight spasms and fatigue in the left eye. Always been very sensitive to light changes. Dry eye isn't frequent (yet), but I assume will get more so with age.
Night-time driving is awful even with full correction, it seems like I get afterflashes for a fraction of a second after seeing every single oncoming vehicle.
Look at the number 0, like the zero on a speed sign that says “60 km/h”, what do you see? Likely two sharp ovals, with a pigment between them, making the shape of a zero. If you have trouble seeing it, it’s likely because your eyesight is poor and it’s blurry.
Well, I see sharp ovals. I just don’t see only two sharp ovals. I see dozens of fragments of those two ovals, both on the interior as well as the exterior. Those fragments are razor-clear and razor-sharp with a good prescription, but the smaller the zero is, the closer these fragments intrude on each other, and the harder it is to make out that zero as a zero.
Plus, when something like a speed sign gets small enough (enough distance, in terms of speed signs), I even get a distortion of the overall number - a zero starts looking like an egg balanced on its pointy end. It is fatter at the top than it is at the bottom.
This gets immeasurably worse with more complicated glyphs, like a 6 or an R. All those extra sharp-clear edges make them look like other things, like an 8 or a B.
Now, these “fragments” are kind of like looking through an insect eye at the same time as looking through a human eye. I see a part of the glyph that is clear and sharp, which then fades out around a roughly-circular distance from the place of maximum sharpness like it’s a mirage. And these cluster together such that they overlap, and also hover over the “master image” that my eye sees. So I am seeing the same part of that edge multiple times.
For example, if I look at the letter T, I can see the top corner of the left arm multiple times, both as a part of the full image of the T as well as multiple fragment overlays. If I choose a T that has the right contrast, the right thickness, great clarity and the right sizing, I can easily count how many replications of any one point are visible. Even for a precise point like the top left corner of a sans-serif uppercase T, it can be anywhere from 3-5 replicated corners. Teeny-tiny replicated fragments, and clustered tightly around that area, but multiple copies that can dramatically confuse the image and make the letter look like something else.
And this problem is in both eyes, pretty much equally. I take the glasses off, and so long as the text is close enough (I’m nearsighted), it happens without glasses equally severely.
I also have caterscts that have made screen time progressively less fun for long periods of time. It's time that I took care of them.
I'm gonna look into the lens material as suggested by some of the comments. That sounds promising.
Take a look at the test @globnomulous I hope that this helps people.
The slide rule looking eye training is also kind of rough. A string with two or three beads on it. All fun things that could make me puke from doing too much.
Nearsighted, left eye worse.
I'd be interested and negative and positive experiences!
- Don't make my stigmatism stronger, keep it the same
- Don't change my eye center/focal point, keep it the center of the lens
It has always never lasted more than one day but it fucks up my day
Go outside, have incandescent lights.
In all cases, all the doctor did was stick me in the machine, read off the numbers, give me some glasses. They work 10% of the time. I don't mean one in 10 doctors gave me good glasses. I mean on Tuesday pair #3 works. On Wednesday pair #7 worked at 10am but then stopped working pair #11 worked at 5pm. More often than not, no pairs work.
I feel like I need some kind of adjustable lenses (I'm imagining something steampunk with multiple lenses or a dial so I can dial in what works AT THIS MOMENT) but AFAICT no such thing exists
Does any one else have this issue?
Note: I have no pain
Anecdotes
(1) A doctor in SF put me in the machines, measured my eyes, made me some glasses. I come back a week later and using them is worse than not using them. I tell them they don't work. They get upset and reprimand me. Finally they give in. Make a new appointment. A week later doctor sees me, makes a new prescription, orders glasses, a week later the same, using them is worse then not.
Again they get angry an berate me. They give my some BS about I should take them home and let your eyes get used to them. I respond, if that's the case then the doctor could not make a prescription with his machine because I'd need to take the machine home to "let my eyes get used them" before he'd know if it was working.
Anyway, they finally let me make another appointment. the doctor measures and claims he knows what must have happened (didn't tell me) and orders another pair. A week later I check. These ones are marginally better than than not wearing anything AT THAT MOMENT. It take them home, every time I try to use them they're worse than not using them. (oh, and they apparently charged the eye insurance $999)
(2) My previous SF doctor I had a similar experience in that their glasses didn't work. They didn't berate me. They re-ordered once. I was shy and didn't complain the second time even though they were no good and I never used them.
(3) I've bought lots of glasses at Jins (Japan) - They have fully automated machines for measurement. I've got 2 pairs from them that help the most often, though not always.
(4) Last time I bought glasses I was at ZOff in Japan (because the wait for Jins was too long). The "doctor" their claimed my eyes were fairly good - meaning the images are clear, it's only the double vision that's the issue (letters look like there's a ghost 15% as bright/dark) about 4cm down from the actual letters)
Also xylitol and salt sinus flushes help, even with those floaters.
what's your eye pressure?
