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Biotech Technology

Handling Eye-Strain? 52

Posted by Cliff from the relaxing-the-optic-nerves dept.
mathgenius asks: "Usually I have no problems with this, but I've noticed again, as the stress levels increase I become more susceptible to eye-strain. I've reduced the contrast on my monitor, changed Mozilla to grey background, and enlarged my text. I am considering moving my desk to the window next, so that I am more likely to relax looking at a distance. Do people here have these problems? What have you found to help with eye-strain?"
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Handling Eye-Strain? More

Handling Eye-Strain?

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  • The subject says it all.
    • I cheat. I'm farsighted, and get cheap reading glasses from the drug store. But I always get glasses powerful enough to read the monitor with my eyes basically at total rest. I once got glasses from an optometrist, but I still had to strain to work at the computer for long. Whereas I used to get tons of headaches looking at the monitor, I now get none.

      It also helps that I only use LCD monitors now. CRTs are poison for your eyes.

  • Glare, Light Levels, Contrast See Optometrist (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DaRat ( 678130 ) * on Saturday June 26, 2004 @04:49AM (#9535782)

    It's important to reduce the glare on your monitor. Moving your monitor near the window may actually be increasing the amount of strain that you are experiencing if the amount of glare has been increased. Ideally, you'll want to have the monitor at a 90 deg angle to the window if there is a significant amount of light coming through the window. Almost the worst is facing the window and the screen dead on (if there is too much light coming in the window). Being able to focus on something more than 15 feet away is a good thing though.

    Reducing the light level in your work area is also important. Either reduce the overhead lights, turn them off, or pull the shades slightly.

    Using more contrast may help. A gray background may actually increase eye strain because there is less contrast. But, your mileage may vary here. Key thing is to use a combination of colors that is easier to see. For example, yellow on gray is a terrible choice. Black on white tends to be among the best for text. Do use a subdued, simple background for your desktop.

    Finally, seeing an Optometrist or Opthamologist can help since they can prescribe special computer glasses for you.

    • Reducing the light level in your work area is also important. Either reduce the overhead lights, turn them off, or pull the shades slightly.

      For me the best light to work with in the evening is simple candle light. Far more pleasing to the eye than any electrical light I know of. Plus staring at the flame is great to take a break and think about something. :)
    • just check it yourselve, try reading /. with the defeault white background and a light yellow (not harsh just a hint of yellow. Pastel if you like or whatever they call it. Another simple test is books, wich do you find easier to read newspapers/paperbacks or textbooks/magazines?

      See how much clearer the text is? Of course increasing the font as well helps a lot.

  • Few Things (Score:5, Informative)

    by TheFlyingGoat ( 161967 ) on Saturday June 26, 2004 @04:49AM (#9535784) Homepage Journal
    - Get up and walk around every 15-30 minutes, at least for a minute or two.
    - Dim the lights in your office if possible... the reflection off a monitor gives me headaches.
    - Stretch your neck and shoulders every so often. Eye strain can be associated with upper body tension.
    - Get one of those screens that goes in front of the monitor to reduce glare. They also dim the monitor a bit more.
    - Make sure you're sitting far enough back. I have a tendancy to sit REALLY close to the monitor. You'll get used to sitting a ways back and it will help a lot.
    - Make sure you're getting enough sleep. Sounds silly, but I'm guilty of complaining about eye strain while not getting enough sleep (here I am, up at 4am)
    • Also, use a dark gtk/qt theme, grey on black is easiest on the eyes: ftp://public:asd@81.86.159.146/latest.jpeg
    • Make sure you're getting enough sleep

      I second this. I used to get 5-6 hrs sleep per day, until I realized I never really felt OK (same complaints: sore eyes, not feeling fit, constant light headache, etc). I'm not really disciplined and I have difficulty actually going to sleep, so 2 hours before the ideal bedtime I started taking Melatonin [google.com].

      It's not one of those sleeping pills, it's to stabilize your day/night rhythm. I used it for a couple of weeks and now I've gotten into a routine which gets me a ful

  • Get up out of the chair. Leave the building. Walk half a mile or more.
    Look at the horizon, or at birds, or clouds -- at things far away.
    Every day. Daylight on the retina is registered in the pituitary.
    Thirty minutes to mental health.

    I know you won't, but if you did, you'd feel better in a dozen different ways.
    • Get up out of the chair. Leave the building. Walk half a mile or more.
      Look at the horizon, or at birds, or clouds -- at things far away.

      See your boss in the distance, gently waving wondering why you're not at work.
      Come back and find several boxes neatly packed with the contents of your former office.
      Ahh... bliss.
    • > Daylight on the retina is registered in the pituitary. Actually, not to quibble, but it's the pineal gland, inside which sunlight stimulates the production of the neurotransmitter melatonin.
  • I went from 20/20L 20/15R to 20/25L 20/20R because of eye strain. Damn my eyes!

  • Some thoughts (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kris_J ( 10111 ) * on Saturday June 26, 2004 @04:55AM (#9535796) Homepage Journal
    I haven't suffered from eye strain using computers, so I don't know how much help this is, but I have assisted on a number of IT ergonomics and occ. health and safety issues, so I have a good feel for these sorts of things.

    I strongly suggest a high contrast, bright (digital) LCD panel as your primary screen. Eye strain is often not from bright light, it's from being forced to compensate for low contrast or fuzzy text. I also recommend a second monitor that's a CRT if your first monitor is LCD, or vice versa. This means that your eyes aren't being fed the same type of light all the time.

    I also recommend against desk lamps unless you're reading a lot of stuff off paper. Lighting up your whole work area when you're looking at something that's producing (rather than reflecting) light is counter-productive. In fact, glare from light bouncing off the screen can be a major source of problems.

    I wear glasses because I'm short sighted. The glasses I've chosen are photochromatics ("peril sensitive", they get dark in bright light). At their clearesst setting they're about a 5% shade and they reduce a lot of glare. If you already need glasses, you may wish to try something similar. They're also great for driving at night as they reduce the glare from oncoming lights.

  • I got a flat panel iMac and it's great. The LCD screen is much comfortable to look at than a regular CRT screen. Though my other screen used to be a CRT set at 1024*768 with a refresh rate at 60Hz.

  • Some hints (Score:3, Informative)

    by richie2000 ( 159732 ) <rickard.olsson@gmail.com> on Saturday June 26, 2004 @05:17AM (#9535869) Homepage Journal
    Upgrade from CRT to LCD monitor.
    If you have any flourescent tubes for lighting in the office, replace them with regular bulbed fixtures.
    If you keep the CRT, check your screen frequency and set it as high as it will go - 75Hz is a bare minimum.
    Try lowering the resolution, it will make you squint less and will allow you to up the freq some more.
    See an optician. You may have a latent eyesight problem that's crept up on you slowly.
    • If your fluorescent bulbs are a problem, it's because you bought the cheapest ones you could find. Modern fluorescent light bulbs are no longer a problem for flicker, and you can even get ones that put out a warmer light that I think is even better than incandescent (it's closer to sunlight).

      If cost is a factor on buying cheap fluorescents, consider that spending 50% more on that fluorescent bulb really isn't that much considering how long they last - in fact, it's probably even cheaper in the long run si
      • The problem is that in large buildings, they usually are fixated on the costs of lighting the building. That means that they buy the cheapest cool white bulbs, no matter how hideous they are, or how depressing they are to the staff. Your chances of getting better bulbs installed are somewhere between slim and nonexistent.
  • If buying and LCD monitor is not an option for you, you might want to increase your refresh rate. I used to suffer from eye strain, chiefly because my CRT's refresh rate was at 60Hz. This killed my eyes. To keep them from suffering, I upped it to 85Hz. This helped quite a bit. If you can get it to 100Hz, all the better.

  • Avoid GUIs, choose a tranquil "anti-desktop" (Score:3, Informative)

    by Florian ( 2471 ) <cantsin@zedat.fu-berlin.de> on Saturday June 26, 2004 @05:54AM (#9535978) Homepage
    I had the same problem as you. The major source of visual stress and annoyance are GUI desktops with their multiple color, countless toolbars, flashy icons, blinking & popping up messages.

    My solution grew over years switching from Window Maker (1998) to 9wm (1999) to larswm [earthlink.net] (2000) to ratpoison [sf.net] (2001) and since then is what a famous freshmeat editorial [freshmeat.net] calls an "anti-desktop".

    Here is the Tao:

    • Run all windows fullscreen and without decorations with a WM like ratpoison (or Ion or larswm)

      Nothing then distracts you from the program you work in, as opposed to a typical GUI desktop where diverse window/tool/status bar consume up 50% of screen estate.

    • Run CLI/console programs wherever possible.

      Since CLI programs all use the same font in only one size, few colors (which typically can be customized and thus streamlined to a useful minimum), they offer a visual tranquility that is hard if not impossible to achieve through theming in GUIs

      I essentially do all my work in a GNU screen [gnu.org] session inside an rxvt, with a couple of open zsh shells plus vim, mutt, elinks, slrn and aumix.

    • Choose a good, readable, big console font,

      I was dissatisfied with all available choices and designed my own one called pxl 2000 [freshmeat.net]. I use the large 20 pixel size variant which gives me 92 characters per line on a 1024x768 pixel display

    • Use white text on black background

      Black backgrounds are the most tranquil backgrounds possible (dark blue might be an alternative for some people). Since monitors do not reflect light like paper, but are light sources themselves, using brighter backgrounds is almost the equivalent of looking into a neon lamp your entire day. If you use CRTs, black backgrounds also reduce flicker and radiation.

    • Use textmode web browsers wherever possible

      A major source of visual stress is browsing the web with its flashy and page layouts that change (and thus constantly force your eyes to readjust) with every hop from site to site. Textmode browsers like lynx, w3m, links and elinks streamline the web to one, always consistent page layout (elinks offers the neat feature of switching table rendering off on the fly) in your preferred, fixed-size console font, and allow to concentrate on the real textual information of the web.

    • Use a dark grey, non-flashy color scheme for the legacy GUI applications you still need

      Configuring GUI applications to black backgrounds and white text typically creates compatibility problems (i.e. unreadable widgets) because some application programmers didn't think about such a setup. So the best compromise is to configure all GUI widgets to a dark grey background with white menu text. The get color scheme consistenty across Qt and GTK applications plus Mozilla, create a color scheme in the KDE Control Center and click the option "Apply to non-KDE applications".

    -F

    • Fun tip: If you're using Mac OS X, you can switch the whole screen to white on black by hitting ctrl-option-splat-8.
      • For some reason, when I do this, it also turns on greyscale mode (12" Powerbook, 10.3.4). Anyone know why, or how to avoid it? I find that I need to switch back and forth between inverse and normal video often enough that I really desire the quick-switch key.

        I do higly recommend a modern font system on an LCD for reducing eyestrain. Those of you stuck with Windows, I would highly recomend changing the default theme; I find it tiring on the eyes.
    • > Use white text on black background

      Green text on black background is the most tranquil combination. White is just too bright.

      > Use a dark grey, non-flashy color scheme for the legacy GUI applications you still need

      GUI applications usually assume black on white for everything, so you might have better luck with using a medium background, like the title bar color in Windows' "Rainy Day" scheme, and keeping the text black.
  • Reducing contrast on your display makes no sense. If you want the text to be easily readable, you need high contrast. Lowering the contrast will make it LESS readable in comparison, causing MORE eyestrain.
    See your optometrist. He set me up with glasses specifically for working on a computer screen, at that distance and size. Works great for me.
    • Turning up the contrast makes things worse, because while black stays black, white gets much, much, brighter, making it harder to see with all the glare. The best setting for the contrast will give you a white close to ambient. For me this is impossible because it is 10:30PM, and the white on my monitor is the only light in my room. However, you CAN turn up the contrast and use your monitor as a strobe light.
      • I don't think you quite understand the concept of CRTs. I didn't say anything about brightness, given two settings of equal brightness and different contrast, the lower contrast setting will be less legible.
        There is an optimal contrast/brightness setting, there are objective standards for this setting combination. Reducing contrast will reduce legibility. If you're seeing glare, you either need to clean your eyeglasses, or consult an opthamologist to see if you have problems with your eyes.
        • On mine, when I turn up the contrast, the whites get whiter, and when I turn up the brightness, the blacks get whiter. When I turn up the contrast to 100 I can see my shadow on the other side of the room. Imagine having some black writing on the sun and you get the idea.
  • Drink more =)
  • as some folk have said, get a decent monitor/LCD, and run it at the highest refresh rate your combined setup can handle, at a lower than usual resolution.

    Eg on a 19" display I usually use 1024x768 or 1152x864. On a 21" display 1280x1024.

    If you can afford an ultra-modern LCD with an extremely high contrast ratio it's definetly worth it, but make sure you get a decent refresh rate out of it, anything less than 85hz is still nasty. I run my CRTs at 100Hz+ (120Hz on the one that supports it).
  • Visine or some other eyedrop as well as some of the other posts are very helpful.

    Sometimes it is also helpful to give yourself some "away time" from your "baby" and look out a window helps too.

  • Eye drops? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BladeMelbourne ( 518866 ) on Saturday June 26, 2004 @06:22AM (#9536051)
    My optometrist recommended that I use lubricating eye drops 2-3 times a day. I have only been using them for a few weeks - it's a little uncomfortable to use - however it provides decent relief for me. (Sometimes I miss my eye and get my cheek instead - lol)

    People generally blink less staring at a monitor - meaning their eyes can get dry and sore.

    My eyes feel less sore/tired after 9 hours in front of a monitor, and they dont look blood-shot. I put the eye drop applicator next to my monitor - otherwise I forget to use it.

    If you do use eye drops - check the applicator for a note about using within ~30 days of opening.

    Also ensure that your monitor's refresh rate is high - 85Hz is good for me. You might also want to try an LCD monitor - this works for some people.
  • I spend on average 10 hours a day on the computer. About every 30 minutes I do wrist exercises, get up and walk around, get a glass of water, and step outside into the sunshine for a couple minutes and look into the distance. Really works wonders for eye strain.
  • I've also have dealt with pretty bad eye strain. I'd work 8 hours a day on the computer, then go home and go another 2-3 each night.

    www.workrave.org [workrave.org] is a free (Linux/Windows) program that I really like. It has you take regular "micro" breaks and even has images showing simple exercises to perform every hour or so.

    Workrave along with an LCD monitor at work has helped me tons.

    EP
  • There are a lot of great suggestions above, and you should do all that stuff... but also don't forget the basics. Keep up the basic maintenance (get some sleep, don't eat too much junk, stay hydrated), and many of these problems just go away.

    Your eyes will be much more susceptible to eyestrain, feeling dry, etc. etc. if you are running short on sleep.

    Sometime, yeah, you have to get through high-stress times, but too many people sacrifice sleep before anything else. This is a POOR choice. If you've slep

  • eyestrain... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Polo ( 30659 ) * on Saturday June 26, 2004 @02:47PM (#9538379) Homepage
    You probably have eyestrain because the muscles in your eye are constantly in a state of tension.

    This means you're probably straining to focus on a screen that's not naturally in focus.

    I would think you need reading glasses.

    Here's a good link with a very good explanation:

    http://www.allaboutvision.com/cvs/faqs.htm [allaboutvision.com]
  • Try calibrating your monitor like this webpage recommends:

    Setting the Brightness and Contrast of the CRT monitor Accurately [aim-dtp.net]

    I've never had your problems exactly, but using this method just always makes things feel better.
  • TFT does not accelerate electrons into your face, and the light is generally much easier on the eyes. Do get a later model version and if you can help it, get one with a DVI connector which makes pixels into tiny boxes rather than fuzzy circles.

    My ideal monitor, for which I should start saving, is a 17" samsung at 1600x1200, because I use the 800x600 resolution, which will look bad on 1024x768 or 1280x1024 monitors. Critical also are the refresh rates(should be 20ms or less or something), and contrast (400

  • First, get yourself a thorough check by a reputable optometrist. And I don't mean a "15 minutes and we throw in the glasses for free" franchise.

    I get eye strain from a condition in which my eyes are not horizontally aligned, so focusing on a point involves one eye pulling in and downwards -- and you eye muscles aren't made to do that for an extended period. Conditions like this are not detected by slap-dash consultations.

    Here are a couple of other important factors:

    • Allergies: if you have an allerg
  • This could very well be the thread most worth reading on /. in weeks.

  • cliff - I had an error mailing you, please mail me. Thanks. -davidwr.geo -at- yahoo.com
  • Poke yourself in the eye with a sharp stick. After that, you won't notice the eye strain.

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