Hacker News Reader

Comment by djb_hackernews | Hacker News Reader

Anyone have experience with eye issues? I've seen Ophthalmologists and my vision is perfect, but I am constantly in discomfort/ border line pain and it's been like this for over 2 years. I know it's due to computer use but various "therapies" don't seem to be making a difference. Would love to hear your experiences.

Edit: I've gotten some great responses below. In case it helps anyone here is what I do to help myself:

* lower the brightness of displays as low as possible

* make sure I am looking down at any screens

* fish oil supplements

* I wear these ridiculous yellow tinted motorcycle sunglasses (motorcycle sunglasses are padded, trapping moisture)

* avoid overhead fluorescent lighting

View on HN

I mitigated this issue buy purchasing a pair of reading glasses (+0.5 diopter; I have perfect vision). When I feel eye strain set in, I pop on the glasses, which sets the focal point of my monitor further away, allowing my eyes to relax a bit. Vice-versa if I'm already wearing the glasses.

That sometimes happens to me, after doing 100+ hours/week, for some months straight :). The best solution is to get away of the computer, as much as possible.

Other things that can help:

- Have good ambient light. Don't look at monitors in the dark.

- Adjust the monitor backlight/bright to as low as possible, while it still looks good.

- Take short rests often. Every ~40 minutes, get away of the computer. Look at a distant point in the horizon for a couple of minutes.

I've struggled sometimes too. Try increasing your font size. My vision is excellent, but I think staring at tiny fonts increases strain on your eye muscles or something.

Also, as monitors have gone up in resolution over the years, pixel density has increased, shrinking the default font size from what is appropriate for the eyes.

Lowering the brightness is not always beneficial. In fact, the opposite can be true. Brightness is usually controlled electronically by rapidly switching the backlight on and off. Therefore, lowering the brightness can increase the amount of flicker, which is imperceptible but still implicated in strain. Try turning the brightness all the way up, which will minimize flicker. If it's too bright, wear sunglasses and see if that helps.

>I've struggled sometimes too. Try increasing your font size. My vision is excellent, but I think staring at tiny fonts increases strain on your eye muscles or something.

This one has been the big one for me. My vision is not excellent, and the coke-bottle glasses are a testament to that, but I'm just about 20/20 with them on and I still end up feeling weird after staring at a screen for too long. I tend to use fonts about three steps up from normal size and I never have problems anymore.

Big fonts and 1920x1200 (Retina) on a 15" screen makes for a lot of workspace and it looks good. :)

" Try increasing your font size."

It'd be great if many apps actually let you do that. Finder on OSX - how do increase the font size there? IntelliJ - how do you increase the font size there? I can increase the font size of my editing area, but not of the tree area with files in it.

Have been using macs for the past few years, and this is my one of my biggest bugbears - font sizes are often very locked down, and I end up having to shift my position or squint.

>Finder on OSX - how do increase the font size there?

While browsing a folder, do a secondary click (right button on Magic Mouse or two-finger click on a trackpad), open "Show view options". A popup window will appear; select your desired font size (I think 16px is the maximum). Then click on "Use as defaults" and all folder and file labels will use the same font size.

thanks. doesn't help for the sidebar text though. :/

Do your eyes also feel very dry? If you already have dry eyes, starring at computer will make it worse. I had similar problem for a while, until I started to force myself to drink lot of water at the office, and humidifier at home.

Of course, this is just one of the possible causes.

And caffeine dehydrates you

I find http://stereopsis.com/flux reduces strain on my eyes greatly at night time!

I definitely agree with this! Hell I use it to bring the temperature of the colors down to match the lighting during day and night. It's a brilliant program.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com