I went to see an eye specialist at a local hospital a while back. The doctor, an Ophthamologist, conducted the retinoscopy procedure on my eyes. The results shows that my eyes have high cup-to-disc ratio. I asked the doctor, what does this mean, is it bad? The doctor said that I have an irregular optic nerve. "Irregular" because of the high cup to disc ratio. But the doctor says this does not necessarily mean bad, it just means different.
I asked is having an irregular optic nerve is the reason why I suffer eye strain from PWM and other display devices? The doctor cant say that for sure, because there are no study done on this yet. The doctor said, many who came to the hospital seeking treatment for eye strain, most if not all of them does not know the reason why. The word the doctor said, most of them are not "observant" enough to know the cause of their eye strain, unlike me, the doctor said, who has identified the specific causes, which is due to PWM and intel graphics driver.
So, many people get eye strain, but most of them believed it is because of their eyes, and they are not aware it is actually because of the technology used in some of these display that is causing the eye strain. We need a university or some research hospital to do a study on this to see how big this problem really is, and to find the connection, the common factor why some of us gets this eye strain, while others do not.
Anyway, back to my medical result, due to the high cup-to-disc ratio, the doctor advised me to undergo further test to rule out Glaucoma, which is a disease that damages the eye’s optic nerve due to buildup of pressure in the eyes. Without proper care and treatment, glaucoma can cause total permanent blindness. Scary.
I have undertaken the test recommended by the doctor, which is the Humphrey Visual Field Test, the result shows my left eye is normal, but my right eye condition is “borderline”. The doctor advised me to take the test every year just as a precaution.
These eye strain that we are having, it might be caused by pressure build up in our optic nerve, which can be dangerous. So if we do get eye strain, especially those really bad eye strain from laptops or phones, we better stop using it. Meaning dont force ourselves to use devices that causing us eye strain. Sometime I too "force" myself to really use a specific device for long periods of time (because I really want to use that device), and that got me very severe eye strain. I have stopped doing that. Dont get me wrong, I still do use devices that causes me eye strain, to test it out to see if I can really use it, sometimes experimenting a few stuff to find a solution, but I wont overdo it. For devices that give me eye strain, I would just using it for short periods of time, then rest to let the eyes recover. I dont want to take any risk of damaging my optic nerve.
Has anyone else done this retinoscopy procedure? If not yet, maybe you should consider doing it too, and we can compare our test results, so see if there is any common factor or similarities that might explain our condition.