For those of you who have myopia, or nearsightedness, I highly recommend Jake Steiner of endmyopia.org. He has a website and a large collection of helpful youtube videos. It's all objective and scientific based, there is no BS there. If you don't have myopia, you can ignore, but I still suggest limiting near work to prevent myopia onset.
I'll try to summarize. This is indeed related to ledstrain, because part of our strain is too much near work and overprescribed glasses lenses. But you can't rid of your glasses completely, not yet. It's part of a process and will take some time.
-You basically need a separate reading glasses prescription, for computer work, which is equivalent to near work. So yes, you need reading glasses even if you don't have presbyopia. And I don't recommend bifocals or progressives, but an entirely different pair of lenses. The prescription on these glasses will be less than your full lenses, maybe 1-2 diopters or thereabouts, but you can find different ways to do the calculation. You can also get a set of test lenses or plus lenses to put over your glasses, to estimate what will be comfortable. Helpful optometrists might agree to prescribe you a different set of reading glasses, but if not, you can buy glasses at some online stores such as zenni.com without a written prescription. Start slowly and read everything at endmyopia before you start, you don't want to be messing around until you understand how this works.
-You use this set of glasses for computer work only. You will be able to see fine around the house as well, but never use them for driving or important distance work. Text at distance will be too blurred. At first it will be an adjustment, but you will quickly find a reduction in near accommodative strain. Text will appear larger, headaches/eyestrain might improve, and the overall experience will be better.
-After some time, you will even be able to reduce your distance prescription. Again, you want to go slow here, but you can aim for a 20/40 prescription to begin with, that you use for distance work such as driving or when you are out and about outdoors, and you will find it works well. In time you will be able to get more aggressive. So basically, you will have two pairs of glasses: one for computer and near work, and one for distance work. Jake refers to these as the differential and normalized prescriptions, it's just his terminology.
-The problem is that we have been prescribed these full, 20/20 prescriptions for everything, that we never should have used in the first place. Learn to measure your own eyesight with an eyechart, or with specific centimeter to blur measurements. Vision is not static! It improves with good natural lighting and less strain, and gets worse with poor lighting and tons of near work. To try this, just step outside in daytime in good natural sunlight, take off your glasses, and marvel at how well you can actually see. Of course, don't do anything important without your glasses, and practice safety.
-You should basically never use contact lenses while spending any amount of time on the computer. Too much strain and dry eye will result. Contacts should be distance only, and for limited duration. If you wear your contacts all day you are asking for trouble, to say nothing of sleeping in them, which you should never do no matter how many optometrists tell you these ones are ok.
-As your eyestrain and focusing ability improves, you will stabilize your myopia and even begin to improve it if you learn the practice of active focus. This is not magic…yes, you can relearn the ability to focus and improve blur. I'm just explaining the basics here. So yes, eventually you will be able to consistently go down on your prescriptions, at a measurable rate. Even if you can't go down and get rid your glasses completely, stabilizing myopia is essential because progressive myopia is associated with all sorts of bad long term eye risks, including cataract, retinal tear, macular degeneration, etc.
-Don't overdo it and go down too much or too quickly. A good starting point is to get your first pair of reduced prescription for reading glasses. From there, everything will follow in time. And of course, continue to practice good habits and take lots of breaks from computer work, get up and about and blinking and letting your eyes relax and focus on distance.
Anyways hope this helps some of you. Endmyopia.org and his youtube videos are basically all you will need to understand this. Best of luck.