ryans That is very interesting indeed. I have two types of eye issues related to computer screens: One is looking at an LED computer monitor, which will give me a very sharp headache deep in the head, sort of behind the eyeballs, within 10 minutes. It will sometimes take a full day or more to feel back to "normal" after such an exposure. For this issue, I've just learned to avoid these displays at all costs.
The second issue is just pure overuse. I almost call this one an "RSI of the eyes". It comes from just reading too long at a close focal length (i.e. within an arms-length distance: cell phone, computer screen, book, etc). I have had a very bad tension headache and aching eyeballs since last week's Tuesday, which started at work when I had like 1,000 e-mails to peruse after being off work the week before (most of them are quick deletes, but that's a lot to sift through!) Tight squeezing temples, aching eyes, and sensitivity to light are the symptoms, but can leave one feeling quite junky and miserable! Even a weekend of rest last weekend didn't really seem to help a whole lot, and here I am on a Monday with another week of work ahead of me. Good thing it's a short week this week!
What could have caused this recent bad headache is that I had paused my vision therapy exercises for 3 months. I did a full course of vision therapy from about 2012-2014 to try to strengthen my eyes for long-term close work. I was then put on "maintenance exercises" about 2x a week since then. I think it must have done something, as I was able to see my NPC (near point of convergence) improve over time. It's like getting your eyes a workout at the gym! The reason why I kinda got lazy with them is that it would take about 15 minutes a day, and it was pretty taxing each time, usually resulting in the same symptoms I would complain about after a full day of computer work. The types of exercises I would do would include:
- Pencil pursuits
- Pencil pushups
- Near-far vision "jumps" of about 20 feet (i.e. focusing on something within 1 foot for a few seconds, focusing on something 20 feet away, then jumping back and forth between the two)
- Fusing split-images together
- Etc
Some of these exercises are a bit hard to explain, but searching online might reveal some good resources. I've been meaning to try to look up some new ones for a while now.
I want to point out that these exercises I believe are only good for the eyestrain-from-overuse issues some of us may be experiencing, and not from the immediate issues such as sensitivity to blue light or certain backlights. Even if I avoid LEDs, I will still have eye/head discomfort from doing too much close work for too long without enough breaks (Excel can be a killer!)
I hope my insights are helpful to at least someone!