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Does anyone here suffer eye strain from computer use? -Compare notes?
What does that say?...
[url= http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/looking-at-computers-all-day-ouch ]yesterday on STW[/url]
i get migraines if i read / other 'close work' for more than half an hour ish or so...
i had my first migraine when i was 16, following a load of GCSE coursework, the optician gave me some -2 glasses to help my distance vision.
this made 50d-all sense to me, so i got some cheap +1 reading glasses.
20ish years later i no longer get migraines and my distance vision is better too (when i take me reading specs off)
Get a proper eyetest to see EXACTLY what your prescription is, +1 may well turn out to be fine but if you have any astigmatism or problems with your oculomotor balance they would need to be addressed and treated.
Regular breaks are the key and make sure your blinking often enough, your blink rate drops when concentrating on VDU screens, which can lead to dry, sore eyes esp in air-conditioned rooms.
From yesterday:
[i]your eyes focus on close objects by tensing tiny little muscles that distort the lens. [b]No, 1 muscle[/b]
your eyes focus on distant objects by relaxing the same muscles.
close = tensed
distant = relaxed [b]Almost, the muscle is attached to fibres which attach to the lens, these fibres are taut in "distance viewing" and stretch the lens to its distance shape.The fibres are relaxed when the focussing muscle contracts, the lens then reverts its near shape[/b]
do too much close work and your eyes will hurt.
as you get older the lenses in your eyes become stiffer - the lens muscles have to work harder to achieve the same focus.
as you get older the muscles that distort the lens become weaker. [b]No, the muscles still contract, but the lens gets stiffer with age as the proteins in the lens denature, hence why you can't adjust the focus.[/b]
how old are you monkey? - your eye muscles are working very hard for 10 hours a day, of course your eyes will hurt. just get some +1 reading glasses.
all this modern life (reading, looking at porn on tinternet, etc.) is very hard work for our eyes which evolved for a bit of tree climbing, spear chucking, and scanning the horizon for mammoths.
you'll do enough close work in a normal day (counting your change, making a sandwich, reading a map) to stop your eyes becoming 'weak' and long-sighted, but asking your poor old peepers to cope with 10 hours screen-work is a bit much.
you can do it when you're young, but it's increasingly hard as you get older.
feel free to ignore me, but don't ask me for sympathy when you get migraines, or your eyes 'adjust' to all this close work by becoming short-sighted.[/i]
Hi TD, yes I know all that stuff. Conventional H&S assesments etc never get to the root cause. I've been sufferig for years and have found that no ammount of optician visits, new spectacles, posture, lighting does anything very much. I've tried exact pecs, +1, +2, astigmatism corrections, anti-reflective stuff etc etc. It's ONLY VDU's that wreck my eyes. I don't wear them for anythi g muc else ulsess it's teeny and close. In fact after wearing specs for VDU use for the last 3..4 years, have come to the conclusion that if I can manage without them I might be better off.
A friend has lent me a load of books on Bates who was (and still is) a bit of a conrversial oddball when it came to optometry. He maintained that the oblique and rectus muscles were mostly responsible for acommodation, whereas opticians treat it as a lens thing. I'm beginning to believe it.
Over the last two weeks I've been doing all sorts of eye excersises, and am feeling better. So far have eliminated the awful migrane - type headaches even though I've been trying to not wear the specs.
Other bits of me (eg my neck) are slightly feeling the strain instead though.
How is your workspace for flourescent lights? They are evil for eye strain unless 100Hz, so try filling in your light if needed with a desk lamp.
Don't work with CRTs or glossy LCDs if possible.
Don't sit too close to the screen.
The Bates stuff is great - I've used it with some modifications with good results - I prefer to work my eyes rather than relax.
So I move the eyes around left-right and up-down as he says, but I also do up-down at the leftmost and rightmost extremes - which is working them. It feels like stretching muscles out.
I sometimes will look at something that has detail at a distance and lower my chin so I am peering out from my eyebrows, which gets the best focus (must compress something). After a while of looking at the object I will then lift my head slightly until I lose focus, at which point i will lower my head again until object is back in focus and stare at it some more. I then repeat until eventually my head is normally positioned and the object is still in focus.
24 years of programming computers and having big problems with flickering displays and particularly flourescent lights and only have a light prescription (0.5) for driving.
Hi TurnerGuy.
I have been feeling the same sort of effects over the last few weeks. yes we have strip lighting, and I do use LCD, but not much improvement IMO over CRT.
I too have been doing that corner/edge lookig for stretches. When i began I could hardly see properly at the very edge, eyes were kind of jumping about. i have been making myself ride to work with my head sideways and lookig, out the side. (probably why my neck now aches 😡 ). Pretty weird to begin with and a bit scary because I could look but not "see" especially while going downhill. After a couple of weeks it comes much more easily, and I now force myself to read right at the edge of vision with my eyes right round.
It seems to have been improving the rectus/obliques because I can now focus much closer than I could before I began. - Opticians don't tell us any of this stuff.
I'm right now not not using my specs which had been giving be eyestrain and headaches for the last 3 years.
I've just been looking at Bate's original animal experiments here:
[url] http://improveeyesightnaturally.com/bates-book/truth-about-accommodation-demonstrated-experiments-eye-muscles-fish-cats-dogs-rabbits [/url]
Rather gruesome, but he did seem to have a good point. I have more to read on this one!
Bates is absolute tosh, in the same league as homeopathy, the oblique muscles DO NOT affect accommodation, he is wrong, his theories were dated and crackpot when they came out 100 or so years ago. You cannot strengthen your external muscles with exercises or palming or swinging at all.
Exercises are good for developing better control of your muscles and the way they work together.
What's probably happening when you dip your chin is you'll be getting a slight pin-hole effect, nothing to do with the oblique muscles, experiments have been done to see the effect of axial length change from the external muscles and it's miniscule, you'll get a greater effect from pupil size and depth of focus.
Hi T666DOM.
I have read that this subject raises some hackles.
Well I don't do any looking down my chin, but since starting the exercises my near vision has improved about 30%. So some muscles somewhere have benefitted, and I can't see how looking hard off to the sides (which has been my main exercise) could have done much for ciliary muscles.
My optician didn't tell me that, she just gave me stronger glasses.
I've been getting eyestrain recently (programmer) and went to opticians. He said my vision was fine but recommended some reading glasses just for screen use. The female optician said I looked best in the RayBan frames, anyway I ended up paying just over £200 for some +0.25 reading glasses.
My Dad who buys +1 plastic reading glasses for a fiver from petrol stations suggested I might be an idiot. In no uncertain terms 🙁
If you, T666DOM, read my post again you will see that initially I have my head tilted to focus on the object but gradually I raise my head until I can focus on the object with my head orientated normally. I can't be getting a pinhole efect then, can I?
Bates techniques or derivatives of cannot be tosh if people have used those techniques and improved their eyesight, or otherwise how did they do it? His reasoning may be wrong, but the exercises are beneficial.
My Dad who buys +1 plastic reading glasses for a fiver from petrol stations suggested I might be an idiot.
But a devastatingly handsome one. Not that I'm a RayBan wearing programmer either, no sirree.
Ever heard of a Placebo?
Bates is based on bad science from the turn of the last century.
And "stetching" your muscles with have no effect on your prescription.
Vision can fluctuate through the day and if you stare at something long enough you'll make more detail out, if you want to practice Bates then go ahead.
By the way I've got some magic beans for sale they'll make you a much better rider, I'll give you a good price
SkillWill, sounds like you've been done over like a kipper. I personally think it's bad practice to dish out a prescription like that it'll make so little difference you might as well not have bothered
Placebo - now you are talking tosh.
So my bad eyesight is just a state of mind ? It would have to be for a placebo to make any improvement.
All I said was it felt the same as stretching muscles - I didn't say it that it was.
The Bates effect is the placebo, it'll make no long term difference at all.
You are entitled to your opinions, no matter how misguided they may be...
I fear my 14 years studying and practising optics gives me a better idea than anecdotal evidence of the efficacy of Bates.Having said that you're dead on about entitlement of misguided opinions, I believe it's still a free country...just about!!! 😉
I'll will compare that to my 24 years of programming and staring at screens for about 10 hours a day or more, sometimes up to 30 if I have to pull an overnighter, fighting to keep my eyesight in the face of flickering and reflective CRT displays and flickering 50Hz flourescent lighting.
Doing exercises, not necessarily the Bates method, has worked for me - the reduction in eyestrain after doing a sesssion of exercises is clear to feel, and the improvement in my eyesight after doing these exercises for a period of time is clear for me to see.