GregAtkinson Got it. Is the Prozac still working well?
Treatments, desensitization, pills, exercises - solutions
ryans Yeah, I'd still say about an 80% improvement.
8 days later
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If it helps, I am on escitalopram 20mg and only had to go back on the meds when this display mess started happening. When I bought the LG OLED CX and couldn't watch it without feeling dizzy, I thought all new screens were like this. I tried a high end Samsung after that and felt the same way. Since I coldn't find any answers, my Anxiety went to places it had never been before. Panic attacks and all. Now that I am hopefully starting to figure out what the issue(s) are, I am gaining small parts of my life back. So far a year wasted of my life because of screens and not being able to find answers…
9 days later
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Any recommendations for dry eye syndrome? Interestingly that all started in April last year, after using for about a month a pixel 4 which has pwm starting from around 176 Hz which is extremely low. In the past year I had 2 eye checks. Eye doctor said I have perfect vision, but dry eye. I wake up with reddish eyes, feels like burn/sand in them. The other interesting thing is it just debuted for both eyes on the same time. I find it hard to accept that I have dry eye just out of nowhere. I've used amole phones in the past like Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy S1, Note 3 with no issues. But after finding about PWM I can't exclude also some symptoms because "I know I should have them" 
I've started taking Vitamin A and Omega 3 supplements. Symptoms seem to be more noticeably when I do stuff which involves moving the eyes a lot (watching tv, computer). This makes sense as the eyes being irritated moves a lot. I have a computer with flicker free display, I take 5 mins after each 25 minutes. I carefully set brightness on the low side and high contrast, turn night shift in windows. Used F.Lux for a few months. Some artificial tears seems to have some effect, but not much. I do not feel that my eye sight has degraded in any way, however there's the discomfort.
We know that is hard to keep a schedule, so my solution for this was to use workrave app on windows. It allows me to set break intervals with the important feature of BLOCKING the display (yeah, no Ctrl+Alt+Delete, no Taskbar, no TaskManager ) .
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ban The only artificial tears that have a very good effect on my dry eyes are Thealoz Duo. I've tried Hyabak, Lumixa, Doppelherz and half a dozen others, to barely any effect.
I also clean/wet my eyes regularly, with some cheap cotton pads that are supposed to be used for makeup removal. (I wet a pad with tap water, then wash my eyes with it).
If anti depression drugs are helping, maybe the condition is "Nervous asthenopia"
Nervous asthenopia: due to functional or organic nervous disease, commonly seen in anxiety
https://eyewiki.aao.org/Asthenopia
a year later
I went to see a neurologist who specializes in headaches. In January, I began to take Nortriptyline (a very old antidepressant). I started at 10 mg nightly and every two weeks added 10 mg. By the time I hit 40 mg, my headaches, tinnitus and nausea were gone.
Note that 40 mg is a typical dose for migraines but a very low dose for depression (typical starting dose for depression is 75-100mg).
Unfortunately, I started having other side effects of the medicine (extremely tired during the day, sadness, unmotivated, heart palpitations, and feeling dizzy when standing), so I discontinued it.
I'm going to see a neurologist again next week to try a different medication. There are tons of anti-migraine medicines out there. I guess my advice would be to visit a neurologist who specializes in headaches and give something a try. I'm definitely kicking myself for not doing this earlier.
GregAtkinson Have you tried Rinexin or similar medicine? It helped me a lot with my eyes.
mike I have not tried it. I'm in the US and it appears that Rinexin is not available here.
GregAtkinson If you have the possibility to try something similar for a week or two, perhaps it works for you too.
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GregAtkinson Thanks for the update! Good to hear from you again. I've heard good things about this virtual headache center -- but I've never tried them and have no personal experience to offer. Unfortunately with awful LED lights going everywhere in public I might have to see someone like that.
Again just from my research, no personal experience, you might want to look into:
- Supplements (Vitamin B2, Magnesium)
- GammaCore
- Cefaly
- CGRP medications
2 months later
Clokwork How are you doing now? I'm on 10 mg escitalopram for the past 15 years or so (was having random panic attacks). Recently tried to upgrade a laptop/monitor/camera etc. and realized that I'm affected by almost all new screens and monitors. It's sent my anxiety through the roof. I was actually thinking of trying to maybe getting off Lexapro since it does seem to have a ocular/vision effect component to it. I don't recall any vision changes when I first started taking it but maybe the triggers in technology just weren't there. So figured maybe being off it would help.
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It's been roughly 8 weeks since I went off Nortriptyline and I can say with certainty that my headaches are worse now than they were when I was on Nortriptyline (same with Paxil and Prozac).
For instance, I have a large ViewSonic monitor that I could use just fine on Nortriptyline but now I get headaches within 10 minutes of using it. I'm back to my old standby monitors (I have one old Acer and one old Asus that are 10+ years old).
I got a prescription for venlafaxine (Effexor). I'll give that a shot, but I have some serious catching up to do in my life, so I need to make sure my motivation issues are figured out before I start another antidepressant. I'll send an update in November.
5 days later
ryans suggested a couple supplements/vitamins, so I went crazy and decided to try these four:
- Feverfew 380 mg
- Riboflaven (Vitamin B2) 400 mg (will turn your urine bright neon yellow, FYI)
- Magnesium 500 mg
- CoQ10 100 mg
I'm skeptical, but hey, if there's a 1% chance it'll work I'm willing to give it a shot. Anybody else had any luck with vitamins or supplements?
2 months later
I started all four at the same time and had side effects, so now I'm trying them one at a time. Here's my results so far:
Feverfew: gave me rebound headaches (20-ish hours after taking it, I'd get terrible headaches). I discontinued it.
Magnesium: may possibly have reduced (but definitely not eliminated) my headaches, but it also gave me diarrhea. I discontinued it.
I'll give an update on the other two later.