A little brief history, I only had eye strain once in my life couple years ago and I was able to resolve it within a week I stayed away from screens until I got fixed but this time I had eye strain for almost 5 months and I couldn't look at screens most of the times and I didn't know how to fix it until one day I realized what if this problem is caused by the brain and not the eyes, I'll walk you through how I got this problem in the first place to understand my point, I usually work from one laptop only but recently I started working from two different laptops at the same time and it took only 10 days until I reached a point where I couldn't look at screens at all and because I'm dumb I didn't realize the cause so I started doing a little bit of research and I found people talking about bigger screens and higher resolutions and refresh rates and vertical vs horizontal waves and I said that's why I have eye strain because laptop screen is small and have low refresh rate about 56 so I bought two other expensive monitors just to experiment and guess what it got worse.

What I tried next is eliminating all other monitors and sticking to to my default laptop and guess what the eye strain have gone away couple days later, My conclusion is when you use a certain monitor for a long period of time your brain get used to it and when you change it you get eye strain and that's how the brain is adapting to the new screen I will guess that it will take couple few months to get used to a new screen if your brain is attached to a certain monitor for along period of time.

You also want to keep the same setup surrounding your monitor like the lighting and the painting of the walls .. to not catch eye strain.

The conclusion is what cause the eye strain is not the bad monitor but changing the monitor so stick to your monitor no matter how bad they are and I would recommend you use a laptop because it's functional more and can move around with you. And use only one monitor for everything like working and gaming and entertaining don't use multiple screens and lower the time you use your phone because it can also contribute to this issue.

And also to not forget what cause me the eye strain long time ago was watching a lot of movies from my tv screen and go back to my laptop so basically the same issue.

A thank you will be nice if this help you!!

I get your point but is not that simple, PWM and Dithering are real and cause issues for many people.

Healthy people get symptoms instantly on a bad device sometimes and even switching to a new device without these issues provide relieve instantly.

So it's not like this really. It can work if your device is ok from the beggining and you know that it should provide no issues then you can work through the pain and maybe it gets better after a few days/weeks.

But pushing yourself whit a bad device it's like going to the gym injured and hoping it will just heal by doing more exercise.

    osxcool22

    I respect your opinion but if you remember decades ago monitors were even worse than today and people didn't complain that much I also had a very bad monitor 10 years ago and I will work all day without any eye strain, My theory is when your brain is not attached to a certain monitor you can pick up any monitor and start working on it without any issue because your brain is in default mode but when you're used to a certain monitor for a long period of time and try to switch you start having these symptoms

        So the theory is that my lovely "bad" old screens have changed my brain to the point that I can't look at a modern screen anymore ?

        If I continue the theory, the idea would be to stop my old screens for a few months to detox my brain. After that my brain will be in default mode again and voila I am cured ?

        I'm pretty sure it won't work.

        edit : If people didn't complain 20 years ago maybe it's because these old monitors weren't as bad as you think

        hammadi

        People did complain about older monitors, a lot. Colour CRTs had visible flickering, old LCDs were a blurry mess…

        Whilst I appreciate your enthusiasm and welcome you sharing, please understand you aren't going to solve a complex and diverse disability in a few short paragraphs about one persons experience.

          Hmm you almost had me convinced through your example of the monitor being the cause as you brought up that the monitors were what affected you, not your laptop's display. I thought you'll end it as that but you concluded with something unrelated.

          Personally, for me reading the above and with a formal learning in applied cognitive psychology, while I really do wish it is that simple with "desensitization" and to agree with you, I really couldn't. My apologies!

          Guys I did this post after reading a lot of posts in this forum and visiting two doctors and trying many monitors and eye drops brands and changing glasses and doing eye exercises … I hope you try before coming to any conclusions, Stick to one monitor even if you experience eye strain and don't keep trying new monitors

            I think it's a complex issue and some of what hammadi suggests is probably true for many people. I know that myself I was able to adapt fully and have no further symptoms, after 1-2 weeks to many devices/setups (smartphones, laptop displays, iPad Air1) over the past 5 to 10 years that initially gave me a lot of eyestrain, headache and mental fatigue. I even have one Windows 7 setup that when connected (VGA port) to a 22" LED display is perfectly comfortable, and another Win7 setup connected to a 24" LED that also causes no symptoms. But if I swap the two monitors, none of them are comfortable to look at; when I put them back to their respective PCs, everything is fine again. So, there is definitely a visual adaptation to a particular setup.

            I'm having a bit harder time adjusting to newer QHD or UHD displays, though, and I think some of its is also the display adapter hardware and not necessarily the monitors themselves. I am testing a QHD display that gives a "ears ringing" symptom when connected to an Intel 530 Graphics card (even with the Intel driver disabled and Ditherig.exe running) on Win 7 or 8.1 or 10, but causes headaches (but less ear-ringing) when attached to a Ryzen machine.

              Politely disagree. 🙂 I once decided with full commitment of will to just suck it up and adapt to using a monitor that bothered me, and after a couple weeks I was in so much pain, it actually took me months to recover. I now recognize the importance (at least in my case) of listening to the body and NOT pushing onward with a screen when it causes eye strain.

              eyeguy22

              I don't buy that.

              Sitting in front of a monitor with dither/pwm flicker for a prolonged period of time could be medically dangerous for a person with flicker sensitivity. It might even result in damage to the visual cortex. (As was posted on the intel forum by a fellow who got an MRI done.)

              Your account is only 22 days old. We have had a problem recently with newly created accounts posting bogus claims as "solutions". - Who do you work for?

                I didn't say keep staring at a screen when it hurt especially if it's a new one and you're not used to it, Do something like 20 mins of work and then leave your monitor until you feel okay to work again, I found also applying oil based eye drops before work to help when you try to adapt to a new screen, You should absolutely listen to your body

                It took me about 2 months to start adopting to my new monitor "24 inch curved asus monitor 120 HZ" before deciding to go back to my old laptop which took me about 1 week to start adopting to it again because I guess my brain starting to forget it, But the adaptation rate was much faster than the 24inch monitor

                If you look at the development of the baby inside the worm the eyes are the first thing they develop within the brain which indicate how heavily eyes are integrated within the brain, Try this when you have eye strain shake your head you'll feel all of your brain hurt not just your eyes

                I also used to think this problem is caused by the eye muscles but now I believe it's caused by the brain

                One more tip when adopting to a new screen use a pomodoro software to force you to stop working.

                You're welcome!

                Slacor changed the title to Introduction / Consistent screen use .

                Reminder for everyone to maintain community guidelines.

                @hammadi I have updated your title for this discussion to be more relevant to the content of your post.

                to caboy ; I never claimed any solutions. I stated my own experiences, which are consistent in some respects, but not all, with what hammadi suggested in his post. I'm a longtime lurker of the forum with a biomedical background who started to post recently given my issues with QHD and UHD screens as of late, and because I saw some inexact information on blepharitis on another thread. Anyway, there are different factors affecting different people and neuroplasticity or adaptation is a well-accepted fact in medical literature. Rather than being defensive and asking people who they work for, it may be more useful to accept alternative viewpoints. Overall, do you really think that hardware makers are sending people over to this forum to try to discredit the very real symptoms that many are experiencing with digital screens?

                While bothersome, I don't think that PWM or FRC dithering can cause neurological damage. An isolated example doesn't prove causation. The only think I can think of would be photosensitive epilepsy, which is a rare but real condition that requires very significant perceptible flicker (high amplitudes, and flicker rates well below the critical flicker frequency threshold) to trigger a seizure. While PWM stimuli amplitudes (ON/OFF) are very high, the frequencies of change are too high (well above the CFF) for it to cause dramatic stimulation or perception changes at the retinal or retrobulbar levels, so neurological damage apppears unlikely. The amplitudes of visual stimuli changes for FRC are also extremely low, making FRC an unlikely culprit for any neurological damage.

                  hammadi changed the title to How I Fixed My Eye Strain!! .
                  dev