martin I looked up that muscle and that makes sense it would help with our condition. I have been thinking it is posture related for awhile now. I have been doing posture exercises for about two months now. I have heard that the cell phone posture and computer posture can lead to all sorts of problems
Treatments, desensitization, pills, exercises - solutions
Peter
I have had similar experience. If I use an LCD, the next morning I almost always have a sinus headache. If I use Loratadine before using the LCD I am far better off the next day. Looking at the sun makes me sneeze which 23andme have found to be linked to photo sensitive epilepsy. there may be some histamine relationship in the mix?
- Edited
Look at the symptoms http://www.triggerpointtherapist.com/blog/sternocleidomastoid-pain-scm/sternocleidomastoid-trigger-points-migraine/
All sound way too familiar. Maybe if the sensitivity in the muscle is treated, our sensitivity can disappear.
Ive noticed I can handle my digital camera display for longer periods of time when I do the stretching throughout the day.
Personally I endorse this claim. Whenever i release the sternocleidomastoid (I am doing Alexander Technique and Feldenkrais for a couple of years) my breathing is more free, this improves my chronic rhinitis issue and in turn my tolerance to some of the new led displays.
This has not "cured" me, but it does improve things which is of course important. In fact there are devices that whatever i do they keep causing me headaches.
From the Alexander lessons i have understood that for some people when the neck carries excessive tension the eyes under-perform. Below some articles that explain the connection of proper body use and eye sight.
https://www.alexandertechnique.com/articles/eyesight/
https://www.alexandertechnique.com/resources/BatesandAT.pdf
Intuitively I believe that my eyes are not flexible enough to accommodate this strange flicker of led displays / new graphics cards and this is may have as the root cause the excess neck tension. There are signs that this maybe the case since for me there is an increase in tolerance to the new displays when i release neck tension.
When I do the exercises I feel a pain in my right eye
Interesting
JTL I will try tonight.
Does anyone also find that - inexplicably - they seem to be less symptomatic on days when they've had low sleep (e.g. work days), and seem to be more symptomatic when they've slept in a lot or had lots of sleep (e.g. weekends)? I can't understand why this seems to be the case for me.
Maybe my brain literally operates slower when I haven't slept as much, as it can't notice flicker as much!
MagnuM I'm not a good example because I go to bed 9 or 10 every night and get up at 5 or 6 am. I am always getting 7 - 8 hours of sleep every night. I do find that going to sleep after midnight makes you feel worse.
Working a desk job, I go for regular routine massages about once every six weeks or so. I would strongly recommend it to anyone else with similar working conditions, and you would not believe some of the muscle knots worked out that build up that you may not have even been aware of! Working out these knots can definitely help improve blood flow, plus it's really good for stress relief!
During my last appointment this week, I asked if my massage therapist could focus on the SCM muscle above. I don't see how it could connect to the eyes, but with all the connection points and trigger points that muscles could have, you never know! It is interesting how it connects up to behind the ear and maybe even the sides of the head, because I've had a lot of tension headaches here (temples, sides of head, etc) that come from reading on the screen too much.
However, after my last massage appointment, I've been really good! For the first time in 3 weeks, I'm not getting those aching tension headaches on the sides of my head, and even my eyes feel better. I'm not sure if these headaches were going away on their own already, or if the general massage was mostly the benefit, or perhaps even more hopeful working this SCM muscle seemed to do something!
I will definitely look more into it and monitor how things go moving forward. Thanks to martin for sharing the idea!
By releasing your SCM muscle the skull stops compressing the spine down and it allows the head to "float" on the top of the spine. This in turn allows the jaw, face and eye muscles to also release (the release of the SCM muscle was studied extensively in Tufts by Dr Frank Pierce Jones, i think back in the 70s).
For me the more I release the SCM muscle the more i feel my eyes to become more flexible. It may worth to test this hypothesis over time relevant to display strain. Even if we can not cure ourselves, at least we will increase our tolerance.
I have done trigger point therapy with great success for years.
Trigger points in the SCM do cause the orbicularis occuli muscles surrounding the eye (and other muscles in the face) to become more reactive and is linked to conditions like blepharospasm.
The official medical text is Travell and Simons' Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction: The Trigger Point Manual (of which I am a proud owner), and the best laybook is The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook by Clair Davies (also very good).
I uploaded part of the SCM chapter here:
3-4 years ago I attended vision-training sessions by Leo Angart
https://www.vision-training.com/e/index.html
https://www.facebook.com/angartleo/
I went to seek advice with regard to my electronics device-induced eyestrain, which was not the focus of his training at all. But the exercises he showed were still helpful, especially the "Tibetan Wheel" to soothe astigmatism.
https://www.vision-training.com/e/assets/Astigmatism/Tibetan%20wheel.pdf
Maybe you find something useful...
SCM fits with our TMJ connection maybe..
reaganry check this out
https://youtu.be/wAakgY2fdbEI bought his books of exercises but I left them overseas :-(
I will see later / on the weekend if there are other videos on youtube.
I have only a very minor astigmatism on the left eye and I do not wear spectacles. However, there were about 20 people with me at the training and some had really thick-thick glasses and poor sight. Sessions were on Saturday and Sunday. Well, I can tell you that, as Leo anticipated on Saturday morning, some guys had to go to the next drugstore to buy lower grade glasses on the same day because they could not tolerate theirs anymore. This was after a few exercises. I am a scientist and a quite skeptic person. I need to see and measure to believe. Unless everyone was faking, that showed me that muscles around eyes are fundamental. Since 2010 apart from a short break I have been only using laptops. I am in an unpleasant position the whole day and my eyes are always focusing on a little display a few cm from me. The exercises do not eliminate the cause of my eyestrain but certainly produce relief. Now, to be honest I have not been doing them for long cause I am a bit depressed at not finding a way out with all these electronics, but I want to restart. I wonder whether we can sort of train ourselves to tolerate flicker, dithering or whatever it is that bothers us...