Ask HN: Do your eyes bug you even though your prescription is "correct"?
I’m digging into an idea around eyeglasses, screen-time, and vision discomfort. If you wear prescription glasses but still get headaches, eye strain, or blurry vision after long screen days, I’d love to chat briefly (20–30 min).
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.
333 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 267 ms ] threadIf I accidentally wear the progressives at my desk, I usually notice within half an hour that I'm not comfortable.
With the computer glasses, everything is clear (including my laptop screen, which is below my monitor).
Would love to chat about your experience in any case. I'm at jbornhorst [at] gmail.com if interested.
Presbyopia: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/presbyopia/sy...
If you're much younger than 40, maybe google "early onset presbyopia".You should ask a qualified or licensed optometrist or optician or whatever it's called wherever you live.
AIUI:
- you don't adjust CYL
- The amount you add is roughly 0.75, plus an extra 0.05 for each year above 40yo.
For example, at age 50:
Add = 0.75 + 0.05 × (50 − 40) = 0.75 + 0.5 = 1.25
So let's say that this person's regular glasses are -3.25 in each eye. Their computer glasses would be -2.00 in each eye.
Don't trust random strangers on the internet!
The downside of this is that I now find it very difficult to read computer screens and my phone while wearing my distance lenses. The practice of holding things further away to be able to read them always was, I suppose, inevitable.
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 think my water intake is fine, but I don't have a specific measurement.
My last appointment was a couple of years ago, and I don't believe they raised any issues about it then.
I'll see about an appointment.
Maybe try e-ink? There are e-ink monitors on the market if that works, if the problem's the light. You can also try software like Redshift[1] for regular monitors.
If it's your neck, at least put some books under your monitor stand, if you're not able to get better monitor mounts. Or lower your chair. You should be looking straight ahead for your monitor, so your neck muscles shouldn't have to do much work.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift_(software)
The rest I'll consider though, thanks.
I didn't start doing that (sitting on stools) till I had been meditating for a long time, so it wasn't that different than sitting on the floor in half lotus position, which I had extensive practice doing.
I've been doing it for >10 years now; I will confess that when I have a meeting in a meeting room with proper chairs, I do really enjoy the chair back. It's all about using your body in a variety of ways.
My monitor is at the appropriate height (eyes are roughly even with top of the screen) and distance (about arms-length), so I'm looking straight ahead.
Definitely not a good plan, especially Ibuprofen. My mother took Ibuprofen for years to manage her arthritis and that absolutely wrecked her kidneys. Not to mention Ibuprofen can also cause internal bleeding. It's a quick short term fix but not a good long term solution.
As opposed to what? It's all metabolised by something, choose what you wreck. Take paracetamol routinely instead and you'll wreck your liver instead.
It’s much harder to address the root issue (speaking as someone who’s taken their fair share of pain meds themselves), but it’s infinitely better in the long term.
Make sure your posture is correct when sitting in front of a screen before attempting anything else.
This could be the problem, especially if you are close to 40 years old. You may be starting to develop presbyopia, which is typical. In the early stages you can still read and focus on closeup things fine, so you may not realize it is starting, but in the background your eyes are, in fact, straining a lot and causing headaches.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medication_overuse_headache
So maybe more selling, less research?
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.
Using it outside of its intended distance will cause eye strain since your eyes won't be able to focus properly.
My provider calls them "computer glasses". It does not have blue light filtering as I do work with implementing web designs and color accuracy does matter to me.
I totally recommend computer glasses for anyone who works all day looking at a computer screen.
They would be a separate prescription / lens type (as in not progressive I think) compared to daily use glasses. I do have to swap to my daily use when not using my computer glasses outside of sitting and looking at a monitor.
Using my daily use for computer monitor reading doesn't feel "right" compared to my computer glasses. There is a clear difference between them.
Mine are more useful that I anticipated when I'm not using them for work. I would advise against anybody driving with the wrong pair of glasses, but I can see significantly better with my occupational lenses than without. I would not trust them at night, but during the day I can see well enough I am not concerned about my driving. I don't intend to drive with them, but there has been the occasion here or there when I had to run somewhere quickly and forgot to swap my glasses.
It also helps that mine are progressives, so the very very top part of the lens is my "regular" prescription. I can use that to focus on something at a distance if necessary.
>They would be a separate prescription / lens type (as in not progressive I think) compared to daily use glasses. I do have to swap to my daily use when not using my computer glasses outside of sitting and looking at a monitor.
Like I mentioned above, mine are both occupational and progressive. I'd like to try non-progressive occupational lenses to see if I like them better, but I'm not convinced it would be worth the money.
I've only done it a handful of times, though. And also I wouldn't do so at night.
I don't find that at all, personally. I wear my computer glasses almost all the time in the house and just let myself not try to focus on things. If anything it seems to be better than my normal distance lenses for eye strain, for me, because my eyes do try to focus with my normal lenses since it's supposed to be perfectly clear, where I know there's a good reason they're not in focus when I'm not wearing them.
My distance glasses have progressive lenses, which may be part of that, as there's different strength depending on where you're looking at in the glasses. I've been tempted to remove progressive lenses from my next pair, as I tend to take them off to read anyway, and then I'd get a flat prescription like I have on my computer lenses.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intraocular_lens
I was very surprised that this is not a more common thing to hear about amongst people with bad eyesight. Laser correction sucks in comparison, with more risks of complications, generally worse vision outcomes, longer recovery, etc. The lens implantation process is even undoable and as safe as cataract surgery which has been done since the 1970s.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cataract_surgery
IIRC the chance of complications for Lasik is about 10x that of the one for intraocular lens implantation. The nature of the complications for the latter is also more along the lines of "an eye infection for a month" instead of something permanent.
I definitely suggest researching it (and not mentally lumping it in with Lasik, because they are quite different). Cheesy, but my only regret is not having done it years sooner.
Ever since my elderly friend had cataract surgery (5 years ago) she finds bright light painful, so she spends less time outdoors.
Instead of just wearing shades? That's silly.
try bandaids on your fingers, it takes 21 days to form a habit. buy a few big boxes, 30 bandaids a day is cheaper than a beer
I get my glasses in ANSI rated safety glasses so wearing glasses all the time doubles as protection from all the things that could get in my eyes. This is useful if you have hobbies where that is a worry, though for most people you are fine without.
What are the rest of the words? Or the auto'correct'-corrections?
You would still wear* and after 45 everyone does* perhaps?
never should have been need
I feel similarly, but as the thickness of my glasses increases as I age, I'm starting to consider Lasik or similar. If I already had cataracts, implanted lenses as part of the cataract removal would be a non-brainer.
I still dream of being able to see first thing when I wake up.
This can be mitigated with custom magnetic clip lenses, e.g. Chemistrie. Tiny magnets are implanted into your current frame. Clip lens changes the focal length of your existing glasses by a fixed offset. Computer or reading clip can be changed in seconds. They also have polarized clips for instant sunglasses on your existing frame, which are better than Transitions/photochromic because they work while driving and are instant on/off.
I have two glasses that have lenses with a similar prescription. The older one has some basic lenses and anything outside the center gets gradually less clear towards the edges. The newer one has aspherical lenses and even the areas near the edges are quite clear. It wasn't expensive either. The best lens I have used was probably a zeiss one but I'm guessing the full featured zeiss is probably quite expensive.
https://www.presbyopiaphysician.com/issues/2024/march/the-un...
I wouldn't call it "the" solution: it's part of a complete breakfast.
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 :-)
Progressive lenses also influence visual perception after years of use, unlike old-school bifocals with a clear shift in focus.
Some of their frames are clones of expensive, popular frames from boutique designers. Perhaps that's why they are retired after a while.
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.
The past two docs I've been two have ignored me when I've said "I can make out the letters, but they're blurry and fuzzy. Can we go stronger?" with "Well, that's corrected to 20/20 vision.".
I'm very, very strongly considering finding a used eye-testing-headgear thingie like they have in their offices, learning how to use it, and doing the testing for myself.
Maybe this is your sweet spot?
I doubt it. I played around a bit with the hand-lenses and was able to get a much more clear picture by increasing the lens strength more than the doctor was willing to.
If the doctor was making any sort of tradeoff, they were not informing me of it. They kept asserting that I was "corrected to 20/20" when I protested that the letters on the chart were still quite fuzzy. If they'd have informed me of a "close range vs. long range" lens tradeoff, I would have happily informed them of my willingness to have multiple pairs of glasses.
Nearsighted, left eye worse.
For common lens materials, polycarbonate has a low Abbe number, and Trivex is a widely available alternative with a higher Abbe number. You can find tables online for common lens materials.
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!
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.
what's your eye pressure?
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.
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.
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.
I’m severely myopic (-11), though that is corrected completely by contacts. Presbyopia, alas, hits us all.
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...
Yes! You're the first to mention this.
It's not refractive index itself that's the problem, it's dispersion (roughly, the degree to which refractive index varies across the visual spectrum, described by ‘Abbe number’). We've all seen pictures of a prism splitting a beam of white light into a rainbow — for visual purposes, the less split the better.
Higher-index materials tend to have poorer dispersion, but especially in the mid-range 1.6ish, there are wide variations in quality at the same index. Glass tends to be best, if your prescription is light enough that you can handle the weight. Polycarbonate and acrylic are awful. MR-8 is in the middle, and what I've settled on for recent computer glasses.
Here's a good way to test your glass's refraction index. On your desktop find a small red icon with something white in the center. Stare directly at it. Now turn your head until the icon is at the edge of your vision. If your lenses are cheap polycarbonate, the white part of the icon will appear to move towards the edge of the icon or even out of it.
Most non-cheapo glasses today in the US use Trivex. It's a polymer, not glass, but its Abbe number is 43, which is perfectly adequate.
Crown glass, with its Abbe number of 59, is superior, but the eyeball can discern differences only up to 45-50, so most of Crown glass's improvement over Trivex is imperceptible.
This is partly why it's not offered in glasses (again, in the US, at least according to my optometrist). It is also twice as heavy, shatters (polymers like Trivex don't), and scratches more easily.
Actually buying CR-39 lens might require solving a dark pattern maze of online or offline options, since the cost is so low.
I'd used the same material for my outdoor/sports/driving frames but it's higher density caused them to slide down my nose during activity so the next pair I opted for Trivex.
--
¹–CR-39 requires full frame spectacles, as drilling holes is verboten.
²–Shamir Autograph III, awesome & highly recommended.
That’s why our cone response to the spectrum looks like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_cell#/media/File%3ACone... instead of having cleanly segregated red vs. green responses. If it was segregated, we could only focus on red or green but not both. By having a heavy overlap, we can get a sharp focus on yellow. And, the visual system makes the full spectrum work by deriving the red vs. green concepts from the difference between the two cone responses. Blue focus is accepted as a necessary sacrifice.
I suppose that's why r/g colorblindness is so common.
Now I always go for the thickest lenses (which are also usually the cheapest) for this reason. My prescription is -3.75, and there isn't any noticeable difference with thinner lenses.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/aberration#Noun
The lens material you've now chosen actually has the best optical properties out of all the plastic lens materials. Its only downside is that the refractive index is only 1.5 which does mean they will be a little bit thicker than the high index ones.
You could also try a material called Trivex which also has low chromatic aberration while being a little thinner than the material you are using which is called CR-39
What kills me is going into the office where I am switching between glasses. Different rooms with different Zoom screens. At home is much nicer where I just have one big monitor to watch.
I take my glasses off to read my phone most of the time. Technically my primary glasses are progressives but it is nicer to take them off.
Same. I wear progressive lenses and I feel like they do fine as far as being able to read the text on my phone or for reading a book. But I tend to take off my glasses anyway to do these things. I'm not entirely sure why this is since I seem to be able to read the text fine with the glasses. My hypothesis is that I like being closer to the text so that it fills up more of my visual field which helps me mentally focus on the text better.
I'm nearsighted and don't need glasses to see my computer screen clearly at all. But nevertheless I started getting headaches from eye strain.
Went to the optometrist, got a pair of glasses just to reduce eye strain at screen distance. Zero difference in sharpness, but I can work all day long with zero eye fatigue.
It's not for avoiding outright headaches (I don't get vision headaches) but it's clearly more comfortable. It's quite possible that what's pleasant is in part the change of pace - but it is also better adapted for sharpness.
12 inches?
that's way too close
Imagine them lying down or propped up on their elbows with the book on the floor. Then that distance seems about right.
(Or am I totally misremembering something...)
Currently wearing, to look at arms-length monitor screen, add +1.0. Will move out to the porch to read and switch to add +1.5. Will come back to cook and switch to my basic prescription.
I must put on and take off 300 pairs of glasses a day. But I don't care. I can't do anything else.
That almost seems to reduce eyestrain as well, at least for me, as they're still good enough to see everything (I can't read text across the room but I can halfway across the room), just not without some light blur on things, and I seem to have trained my brain to stop trying to focus on things, just let it stay in the blur (at least while I have my intermediate glasses on), and that seems to relax my eyes more.
But the intermediate glasses are super clear for when I'm on the computer, which is a good chunk of the day and where I really need to see nice and sharp, as I'm manipulating things with pixel precision at times (game ui, web ui, board game graphic design).
Thing is, I ignored it for about 10 years and my brain simply ignored whatever signal was coming from that eye. I'd look at things and see no blurring unless I closed my right eye. However, at a certain crossover distance my brain "switches over" because my left eye has amazing close vision and my right eye doesn't. I can actually feel it when this happens, like a physical sensation. No headaches, but it is "odd".
Anyway, I decided to get glasses, and it turns out I need two different prescriptions. One is close up (not longsightedness, it is still a myopia lens). The other is for 1m-∞
The intermediate distance lenses are great and my headaches have vastly reduced - because they were specific for VDU, my work paid for a portion of them.
My wife is getting bifocals for basically this same reason.
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.
I'm skeptical that that can work. I suppose you can administer a basic eye test and get a close-enough prescription, but this is really important and I want to get it exactly right.
I kinda wish I could give it a try, just to see what they can manage to do without all of the tools that an optometrist would apply. But I've got some concerns (which is why I made the appointment) and I'd rather have somebody look closely.
What you also need though is someone to look into your eye and machines still don't do everything an optometrist does there. (though there are other machines that do things your optometrist cannot)
Furthermore an assessment by an optometrist should also check for glaucoma and macular issues.