Fenkins

Actually it's not the screens which are inferior, it's the way the hardware developers program the video card to output the image to the display. In order for the marketers to be able to claim that their particular phone or laptop shows billions (10 bit) of colors, the developers have programmed the video card to flip the colors of the individual pixels rapidly from one color to another, to simulate the color in between. Yes, the brain will be fooled and does not even see the flickering at all, but the eyes will strain from the flickering nevertheless.

Have you noticed how the rise of the dark theme craze conincided with the rise of eye straining devices? Long time I didn't undestand why people preferred dark theme so much, until I upgraded from my 2013 MBP to 2019 MBP in 2020. After 2 days of using it I felt that my eyes started to hurt every time I used it. I noticed that the pain started even after a minute of using it. That's how I found ledstrain.org. Eventually I found SwitchResX and switched from "Billions of colors" to "Millions of colors", and switched to sRGB, and used f.lux, and applied matte screen protector. After that it was a lot more usable but not so much as for example my HP Elitebook 820 G3 which gives me zero problems with eyes. Now I am back on my trusty 2013 MBP because the HP was too slow.

By the way, you can make the same screen which previously did not affect your eyes at all, make your eyeballs feel they are burning from behind by attaching the display to a video card which employs temporal dithering. And why it happens? It's to impress you with wider color range, because if two screens are side by side in the store and the rep says "this one is capable of showing more colors and costs the same", which one would you pick? I myself cannot distinguish between millions of colors and billions of colors, without looking the same image side by side but I can distinguish which one uses temporal dithering without any reference in just a few seconds.

      Interesting that some report that patching "reduces" the symptoms. For me, the symptoms are completely gone if I put a black tape on my non-dominant eye glass.

      For me it seems that temporal dithering, PWM and possible other source of flicker confuses my stereo visioin, causes my eyes to work too hard, which then causes the strain and the resulting bloodshot eyes. I have no other symptoms than bloodshot eyes.

      And I have now only the Lenovo x280 with ditherig.exe which cause no strain even with two eyes. All other devices, like 10 year old TV which was previously fine, cause strain if I look with both eyes. This started suddenly last February. Before that I was only sensitive to PWM and most modern laptop screens with temporal dithering.

      henno

      So, you're the advocate that the whole problem (or most of it) is linked to modern gpus and dithering usage ?

      I'm actually leaning more and more towards this also. Cause with my phones, I had perfectly working devices that became almost unusable after a random software update that has probably impacted gpu drivers.

      But I still think there is also a hardware issue with some screens. Cause for example, had no problem with a laptop, a msi ge62vr 6rf apache pro from 2016. But when I used it with some monitors like a cheap viewsonic, or even the well known benq xl2411P, I had pretty bad eye strain.

      I'm pretty certain there are multiple culprits there but I agree the main culprit is probably linked to the gpus. I've noticed I feel relief whan I uninstall intel and nvidia gpus on my laptop for example.

      • AGI likes this.

        If patching works, does it mean we have an underlying problem with our binocular vision ? Wouldn't it be weird that we had to wait for some new technology screens (possibly) to discover this ?

          8 days later

          John615 I found out something new (to me) and unexpected. Based on the test you suggested, I thought my dominant eye was the right one and maybe that diagnosis was correct, but not at near. An optometrist assessed that at near my left eye is the dominant one. He made me wear goggles with a lens orange and the other green - not sure what the test is called. He said it is not uncommon that people have one eye dominant at near and the other at distance. This is really surprising as in general any part on the left side of my body is weaker than its right counterpart.

              Liberator005

              It just does mean that if patching works you have a problem with your binocular vision. Or if you only patch one eye and you would have the problem again if you switch to the other eye it could also indicate that you have another issue.

                AGI are your symptoms more intense on the left side?

                • AGI replied to this.

                    Dominic Yes, although the situation is evolving. Four years ago when my symptoms dramatically worsened, I visited the same eye clinic (the only one where they offered service in English) 4-5 times within two weeks, desperate as I was. I had strong photosensitivity, eyestrain and twitching only at the left eyelid. Every time I met a different doctor and no one of them had a clue. I heard the most disparate opinions and comments, ranging from "you just need to relax" to "vision therapy is folk remedy". One doctor prescribed me vitamin B12 drops - which somehow helped sooth my inflammation and photosensitivity - and another one sent me for brain MRI. The idea was to see if the left optical nerve differed to the right one, i.e., if it was pinched, but the result was negative. Now that I have this diagnosis that my left eye does most of the work at near I believe that the larger amount of stress this eye had to cope with was likely the reason for the selective eyelid twitching, which sometimes would degenerate and expand to the mouth, always to the left side.

                    Recently after exposure to very powerful and flickering LED lighting I have had a burning sensation in my eyes and some twitching at both eyelids. Just to contradict my theory above :-) The twitching tends to fade as soon as I leave the area.

                        AGI I also have most of my symptoms on the left side. My left eye is dominant at near and right one is for distance. Given it's not the lazy eye (I was told I had no ambylopia), I wonder what's the correlation between having a different dominant eye at near and distance and heterophoria/strabismus. Logically if an eye is dominant at near, its medial muscle should be strong, because you use it often at up-close tasks when you converge. You don't use it so much for distance, so its lateral muscle is weaker. It's the other way round for the other eye. Logically speaking this situation would result in having an esophoria in one eye and exophoria in the other eye. Is it even possible to have both exo and eso? I don't think so because phoria concerns two eyes, not one. Maybe alternately?

                        • AGI replied to this.

                            ryans Just wondering if this is a Doctor that Dr. Debby Feinberg trained (see here for those Doctors)?

                            Dr. Debby Feinberg’s practice (https://vsofm.com/) reached out to me because they found my website. I’m very impressed by them - I’ve spoken with Dr. Debby and two of her Michigan colleagues. After our conversations they thought it was unlikely I had BVD, but at their suggestion I just today saw Dr. Cheryl Israeloff who trained directly with Dr. Debby, is part of the same network, and is located not far from me in NYC- she’s on Long Island. She didn’t detect any sign of BVD for me. She was incredibly thoughtful, though, trying to think of things to try that might help in my case, and tried some specialized colored lenses, but they unfortunately didn’t help with flicker sensitivity for me. She didn’t try to sell me any products, which I appreciated. She’s curious about us as a group and how many of us have BVD and how many don’t and to what extent treating BVD might help some of us in terms of LED sensitivity. So if any of you are near Michigan or New York, I can recommended these BVD specialists as worth seeing. There are other locations in their network too. They also test carefully for both horizontal and vertical misalignment, while I think Neurolens mainly tests for just horizontal.

                            And I find that patching when I use a screen lengthens the time before my symptoms start, but doesn’t eliminate my symptoms. So even if you don’t have BVD, patching could help you too, at least with screens. In my case since patching helps even though I don’t have BVD, it might be simply that one dose of flicker isn’t as bad as two doses for me.

                            Also, if you didn’t happen to see my post about figuring out how to report our LED issues to the FDA, whether or not you’re a US citizen, please consider doing so - they need to hear from all of us. It could bring about funding for research and change in the long run. https://www.flickersense.org/How-to-report-LED-health-problems

                                jen Very interesting update, thanks for sharing! I am guessing Dr. Israeloff used a Maddox Rod to perform the BVD tests. I'm "sorry" you don't have BVD as that could have been improved with glasses.

                                jen specialized colored lenses

                                Were these Avulex lenses?

                                jen There are other locations in their network too.

                                Here is how to find Dr. Debby's network. And here is a link to find other eye doctors who did training in binocular vision.

                                • jen replied to this.
                                • jen likes this.

                                        ryans I am guessing Dr. Israeloff used a Maddox Rod to perform the BVD tests.

                                        Yes, she used a Maddox Rod to assess BVD. There were other tests too that typical optometrists don’t do, but I can’t say exactly what roles the other tests played.

                                        ryans Were these Avulex lenses?

                                        I’m sorry, I don’t remember what they were called, but Avulex doesn’t sound familiar. She said it wasn’t just a lens with a tint, but had color and some kind of specialized structure embedded in the lens. She tried it on the remote chance it would help, but wasn’t surprised that it didn’t since it couldn’t block flicker. Prior to this visit I’d already tried about 20 different tinted lenses that didn’t help, including FL-41 and multiple other blue-blocking lenses, including very thick orange lab glasses that completely blocked light in the blue range. My very dark shade 5 welding glasses give me a few more seconds of time to walk across an LED-illuminated room before symptoms start, as long as the flicker isn’t really severe. They also slightly reduce the impact of flickering city lights and headlights if I’m walking at night. Typically I feel best if I don’t use any tint in order to best let in sunlight or completely flicker-free LED ambient light. Instead of wearing dark lenses to look at screens (my screens are worse with backlight dimmed), I’ve recently been trying putting darkening plastic over my screens - Dim It sheets on the iPhone and neutral density photographic gels over the monitor (a poor solution because glare on the gels is annoyingly distracting, but the glare is not triggering for me). And patching an eye while using the screen helps somewhat for me with flicker symptoms.

                                        • AGI likes this.

                                            Dominic phoria concerns two eyes, not one.

                                            I would think so.

                                            Dominic Maybe alternately?

                                            I will let you know once I have met the specialist that diagnosed me with exophoria at the start.

                                                2 months later

                                                Hello @mike

                                                When you started your exercise, do you had any strain or headache while you are looking at the phone with 1 eyes? or you strarted to feel good?

                                                Another question - do you try your methods with laptop or only phone?

                                                • mike replied to this.
                                                  10 days later

                                                  henno I have the same 2013 MBP but we do not get software update anymore. Could you find anything newer with no problem?

                                                    I'm happy to report my patching has continued to work, and has improved my overall ability to withstand Windows 10 dramatically. It;s been around 2 years now and I intend to keep it up.

                                                      ensete

                                                      Do you patch both eyes alternatively or only one ? If one, is it the stronger or weaker ?

                                                      Do you always use the pc while patching or can you use it without ?

                                                        a month later

                                                        bkdo It's been over a year, did you do vision therapy? I read that you started to wear prisms in that time and they improved symptoms for you. However I think that for CI vision therapy is the first thing that one should be doing, and only if that fails, then consider prisms. Or prisms + vt simultaneously. Because in CI they don't cure the cause, just relieve the symptoms? It's different with divergence insufficiency I think.

                                                        • bkdo replied to this.

                                                            @mike I'm also having symptom relief when using patching. I've tried patching once already, about month ago, but I wasn't noticing any change. I gave it one more chance yesterday and I noticed that with one eye patched (no matter which eye) I can look at the screen with 40% brightness on my laptop, whereas before it had to be almost 0% (had to use additional screen dimmer to go below default minimum). It doesn't affect my other symptom, which is "eyes being out of sync/misaligned" feeling, but it does lower the pain when looking at screen. Pretty good news and interseting finding I would say.

                                                            UPDATE: after 3 days of patching, new kind of pain is occuring in eye that is looking at the screen, so this is not a solution for me, I'm stopping it for now, maybe will come back to it later…

                                                            7 days later

                                                            mazury

                                                            Hey, I did do vision therapy for about 3-4 months. I did it myself at home for about an hour a day. I unfortunately didn't see any noticeable improvements, so I stopped, since the time investment was getting to be a bit much. My prism lenses have also stopped providing enough relief, so I'm stuck with my old prescription.

                                                            I did see a Dr. Debby trained specialist and am getting new prescription glasses within 1-2 weeks. Literally putting all my hopes on them at this point.

                                                                dev