General helpful information to help fight against PWM / photophobia.

d_balon

seakerofsense yes, it's a gaming one 🙂

d_balon

macsforme do you know any 2020 - 2025 TN monitors that are legit? The back of my Acer TN monitor shows: June 2019. Sorry for generalizing btw.

macsforme

d_balon I am unaware of any recent monitors (TN or otherwise) which are comfortable. I did try an AOC G2460PF gaming monitor (1080p TN panel), and it had a noisy/unstable/busy sensation when looking at it. Most of my current monitors are from the early to mid 2010s.

I bought my Acer XB241H in April 2019, and it went back in August 2019 for a replacement panel due to severe backlight bleed. When I opened it up later, I saw that it has an AUO M240HW01 panel manufactured "19/12" (I believe the 19th week of 2012). This has been a quite comfortable screen for me.

CounselMe2Day

d_balon Nice. Don't forget to enable dark mode on Windows 11 and your iPhone / android phone. Use the dark reader chrome extension to force websites like Amazon to have dark mode when browsing. Link to that here: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/dark-reader/eimadpbcbfnmbkopoojfekhnkhdbieeh

d_balon

CounselMe2Day I use dark mode myself. Wonderful recommendation.

d_balon

d_balon Also, for the Twilight app for your phone, you can adjust your settings to go even more than what I recommend. Make screen dim to 85 (max) if needed. Adjust if you need to.

K-Moss

d_balon Photophobia is caused by not getting adequate sunshine into the eyes. People constantly wearing sunglasses or spending most of their time indoors will get some degree of photophobia, guaranteed.

If you look at old beach pictures, people didn't use to wear sunglasses even on bright, hot, sunny beaches. Something changed such that people wear them constantly even on grey days.

There is concern about cataracts, but the evidence for sunshine causing cataracts just isn't very good. However, we do know that high blood pressure has a pivotal role in cataracts.

Hypertension is the Prominent Risk Factor in Cataract Patients: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6723767/

Meanwhile: "This raises the possibility that insufficient sunlight is a new risk factor for hypertension, perhaps even in the general population." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32106744/

Also, I have an interesting book by Aldous Huxley on light and vision. It's called "The Art of Seeing." He believed natural light into the eyes very important for eye health.

Could well be I can tolerate IPS better than some on here because I get lots of natural light into my eyes. My eyes aren't photosensitive.

Dr. Lorraine Day said:

"I show, from the medical literature of 20-30 years ago, before all the “science” became LIES, that sunlight exposure is totally healthful to the body, in many, many ways. I document all those ways with peer-reviewed articles from the medical journals, again before the “science” began to be totally FALSE.

I show that sunlight does NOT cause skin cancer, that sunlight (particularly UV light) is absolutely necessary for the health of every system in your body, including your eyes. Obviously, it’s not good to look directly at the sun, and it’s not good to fry yourself to a crisp outside on a really hot day, but NONE of the things they say about UV light are true.

Just like NONE of the things they say about cancer are true.

And just like NONE of the things they say about Parkinson’s are true.

And just like NONE of the things they say about viruses are true.

And just like NONE of the things they say about bacteria are true.

And many, many other things that I document in my materials.

These are ALL backed up by proper peer-reviewed articles in the medical literature - AND documented in the Bible.

So, you can either believe the present-day LIARS like Fauci, Gates, Klaus Schwab, and many other individuals who are supposedly “real” doctors and scientists, OR you can believe what God says, the One who created everything in the world.

The NIH and the CDC are totally criminal enterprises. Years ago, I was an advisor for the CDC before I realized they are ALL LIARS!"

jordan

K-Moss I agree 100% I have found this BUT I will say that OLED devices do add to it

d_balon

K-Moss I agree that the sun (natural sunshine, etc) is good.

cooldudz

K-Moss This is a great comment, and to add to this, everything they say about "vitamin" A is a lie. I want to direct your towards the work of Grant Genereux, researcher Anthony Mawson, and Dr. Garrett Smith. To sum quickly, Grant was suffering from eczema, chronic kidney disease, and other health ailments (chronic fatigue, insomnia, etc) and basically reverse engineered his way into discovering he had vitamin A toxicity that caused all of this. He tried to get the intake of vitamin A in his diet as low as possible and reversed all his health issues. He's been on that same low vitamin A diet for now 10 years and is in great health. His blood levels have showed he has a "deficiency" of "vitamin" A for 6-7 years now, which shows two things - 1. We don't need any "vitamin" A to live. 2. It took him 3-4 years to deplete all the vitamin A in his liver to reach a deficiency in the blood, so it builds up in the system and takes a really long time to deplete. Grant writes extensively about his health (including eye health) on his blog - ggenereux.blog

Him, Garrett, and Anthony Mawson all believe vitamin A is not essential and that the early rat studies done on vitamin A are flawed. The "vitamin A free diets" they would feed rats would be deficient in zinc and taurine, and it was actually VERY high in vitamin A in the form of retinoic acid, considered the active form of vitamin A that they never test for (they only test retinol and caratenoids). It was the lack of zinc and taurine that destroyed eye health and the high vitamin A in the most destructive form (retinoic acid). Retinoic acid is also synonymous with Isotretinoin, which is what the drug Accutane is. When they give you Accutane, you are taking the active form of "vitamin" A. Look into "Accutane horror story", "Accutane ruined my life", etc to see what taking the direct, most potent form of "vitamin" A can do to destroy the body.

I've been on the low vitamin A diet for 8 months now and have seen major improvements - can now tolerate screens much longer now before fatigue sets in, feel more resilient, higher pain tolerance, much more emotional stability (feel like not much bothers me anymore), have way less sinus congestion, feel happier, feel more like me, like if I were a window that was stained and dirty, I feel like that window is starting to become clean and all that grime that was attached to it is being washed away, and I overall feel less inflamed. Keep in mind I never took accutane, never really got into eating liver, etc. It's just so ubiquitous that even if you didn't focus on intaking it, you likely have an excess of it that is causing your body issues.

In the future I will make an extensive post on the topic. Not sure yet if I can advise people to do the diet, as that entails a responsibility to people's health, which I'm not really comfortable with. But I hope I got some gears turning for some people who read this, and helped direct you towards a path that gets you healing.

K-Moss

jordan You think OLED adds to photophobia? I can believe that.

jordan

K-Moss not think but I know for a fact that they do. When I went from oled to eink what I noticed right away was that I can go outside without squinting. With oled your looking directly into the light source and we know leds are VERYYYY directional and intense light. I think they overstimulate our photoreceptors for sure, maybe even ganglion cells (flicker wise?)

K-Moss

jordan Maybe that is chiefly why most people now constantly wear sunglasses? If so, they have their OLED screens causing photophobia and then they are depriving their eyes of natural daylight, worsening their eye conditions.

By the way, as I was saying it is plausible my eyes adapted to IPS screens. Consider when we first go out into the sun we tend to have bad reactions if we aren't used to the strong sun, but as our body gets more familiar with the sun's rays the symptoms and side-effects disappear.

For example, I used to get a rash on my upper arms from sun exposure that I stopped getting as I got more and more exposure to sun, including strong sun.

Therefore, I believe it is conceivable one can adapt to IPS screens.

K-Moss

jordan "not think but I know for a fact that they do. When I went from oled to eink what I noticed right away was that I can go outside without squinting. With oled your looking directly into the light source and we know leds are VERYYYY directional and intense light. I think they overstimulate our photoreceptors for sure, maybe even ganglion cells (flicker wise?)"

How bright were your OLED screens? With OLED you really need to use "Extra Dim" on Android to get the brightness down without increasing PWM.

Of course there's a separate issue of increased battery consumption and burn-in of the OLED screen when running it at higher brightness, but both concerns should be mostly negligible, and those wanting superior eye-brain comfort and health and have no other choice when using OLED.

Indeed one of the reasons I like IPS phones is being able to run them at very low brightness without resorting to Extra Dim. Definitely should help battery consumption. Besides that, IPS phone screens are very long lasting without any degradation and supposedly significantly more durable versus physical impacts. I dropped my old IPS phone multiple times and never did any damage to the screen. I used a basic case with some protrusion but never a screen protector.

jordan

K-Moss I wouldnt be surprised if thats why! Sun light in the eyes is crucial (not staring directly at the sun), people need to take off their uv blocking glasses/contact lenses. I notice when I am flared, if I go outside in the sun my eyes start to feel like theyre relaxing.

IPS has been the absolute worst for me but in general I think a bad device can make a good device bad. I think when testing any screens you should do a long screenless break for a while which I didnt do when I was rapidly testing phones. At this point im terrified of IPS so im not gonna test any but i do know tn and va have been way better for me. My ccfl va tv is the best lcd i have

jordan

K-Moss The OLED I was using was the xiaomi 13t at 55% brightness but also using a screen dimmer overlay app to darken things further. Basically its similar to extra dim but I at least know its achieved through an overlay, unsure if extra dim uses a different technique.

I would honestly take bad screen burn in like early oled devices if they were super comfy and didnt mess with my eyes. Thinking about it though I dont know if I can adapt to a ips even if i cut off all screens for a long time because of how severe the symptoms are for me. I know when I took a 8 month or so break I felt amazing and even when returning to the problem iphone se / 11 it still caused me symptoms right away. I am personally waiting for a rlcd phone. Rlcd's tend to use a TN panel which seem to be more comfortable usually.

JTL

jordan I dont know if I can adapt to a ips even if i cut off all screens for a long time because of how severe the symptoms are for me.

I'm not doubting you have issues but I think it's important to state that not all IPS panels are the same. There are some higher end panels that have better uniformity across the screen (e.g no vinaigrette effect or uneven colors) or even a polarizer, which if implemented properly improves contrast and viewing angles, among other advantages.

jordan

JTL I mean im sure there are definitely better IPS panels but I dont think I ever used a IPS panel that was decent for me, all just were bad. TN and VA just seem much better.

JTL

jordan Fair enough

d_balon

jordan For me, TN is one of the worst for my eyes. Gaming wise, it's beautiful. One day, I'm going to have to try an IPS screen. Every human being is different. Maybe IPS is the one for me.