I wanna post a bit more about my coping "toolkit".
1. I have muscle pain in all my muscles (psychotropic medication-withdrawal related). My legs, my eye muscles, etc. To counter that, I use:
- Huge dose of Magnesium Glycinate/Lysinate Chelate (6000mg, which contains 600mg magnesium ions)
- Huge dose of vitamin D3 (2000IU)
- 84g frozen spinach. (mainly for the magnesium in it, but it helps my eyes disproportionately to the amount of magnesium it contains. Probably because of the Lutein/Zeaxanthin/vitA in there.)
- 3L water a day. I think the reason it helps me is that it "dilutes" the blood levels of my pills, therefore reducing their side effects
2. My opthalmologist prescribed me a (harmless) eye-related supplement called Acomodin (since everything else that we tried failed). It's advertised to help with "computer vision syndrome" and "accomodative spasm" among other things. I take 2 pills of it every morning. It contains a bunch of active ingredients - not sure which one does the trick. When I stop taking it, it becomes impossible to watch screens. I've tried taking each of its ingredients (well, most of them) in isolation (Potassium, Magnesium Oxide, Astaxanthin, CoQ10, DHA, Vitamin C). Of those, only the magnesium and the Vitamin C help.
3. When I feel some "chemical" irritation in my eyes (e.g. if some shampoo got into them recently), I take a single pill of Aerius 5mg. It's a new-generation antihistamine (i.e. anti-allergy) med. Has pretty much no side effects or addiction-potential.
4. I have some cervical spine damage (spondylosis, radiculopathy). Basically a pinched nerve). And When I feel my vision is more blurry than usual (and this is combined with more pain in my eye muscles), it's usually because I've gotten my cervical spine nerve endings irritated (by simply looking up with my head - this compresses the nerves). In that case, I then take "Milgamma N" for about 10 days. It helps a lot even starting in the first day, but needs to be taken for at least 10 days to make sure the nerve is fully healed before stopping. Milgamma N is an interesting drug (yes, drug, not supplement), as it basically simply contains some huge doses of vitamin B1, B6 and B12. Those heal the nerve.
5. When I get eyelid twitches (and this normally comes with more eyestrain), I know I've developed an electrolyte dysbalance (usually due to recent diarrhea), and then I take "Magnerot" for a week. Magnerot (again, a drug, not a supplement) is from the same German company as "Milgamma N" and is advertised to heal electrolyte disbalances (when that disbalance is magnesium deficiency). And it does that very well, in my case. Unlike all the other forms of magnesium that I've tried.
6. I take a 2min break every 15 screen minutes. During that break, I put my eyes under running cool tap water for a second. This relieves the strain.
7. With regards to eye exercises, I used to self-apply "vision therapy" eye exercises but I cannot tolerate those anymore. They are now too "strong" for my eyes, worsening the eye muscle spasm rather than removing it. I do other exercises instead:
- Tibetan eye circles and
- Looking in cardinal directions (precisely as described here. The timing described in that link matters).
…And they help a lot.