Hello everyone
This will be a longer post thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to read it and answer any questions or simply write down their experiences or thoughts.
How did this all start for me?
My problem began in 2017 when my PS4 became completely unusable after an update. I tried to keep using it but it ended up causing severe headaches and eye pain so much so that the lights were so bright when I drove to work in the morning and it was hard to drive... I returned five TVs and finally sold my PS4. I had a Sony TV for a few years but after one update it became unusable. I finally gave up on TVs and had to quit my IT job when theye upgraded to W10.
Useful equipment:
1. PC with Windows 7 Ryzen 1700 with GTX 1070 driver 382.05 and an EIZO FS2434 monitor. All updates disabled except for browser.
2. PS3 SS (not newset soft used offline only for blu rays and games)
3. Epson EH-TW 740 projector (all the better ones I tried gave me issues)
Health Status
Since 2017 I've had numerous eye and neurological tests which haven't revealed any eye problems. Regarding neurological issues I've always been "overactive" but EEG and EMG tests came back normal. A head MRI revealed vascular changes of unknown origin. Years later a checkup revealed that they weren't progressing the cause is unknown. They said it could be due to some inflammation in the body in the past.
Since last year I've been having digestive problems specifically with food not being absorbed (I didn't know about it until the last tests showed it) including fats and carbohydrates. My intestines are messed up. I'm losing weight which I've always struggled to maintain. For a long time I felt that food was passing through me I was often hungry. Now I'm wondering if malabsorption isn't also the cause of my eye problems and it's been there for a long time. I've also noticed that I have a lot of adverse reactions to medications and even supplements. I took acid-blocking medications twice and my vision immediately blurred (this is a very rare side effect). My eyes after this needed 8 days to "get back".
----Questions for you-----
How did you find the cause of your eye problem?
I definitely have:
- sensitivity to LED lights; I often blink a lot in stores or doctor's offices and feel uncomfortable.
- I can't really use TVs one exception is old Panasonic Plazmas they make my eyes red (propably cause of PWM) but no pains
- Regarding PWM it probably depends on the frequency because the projector I have flickers and it's one of the easiest devices for my eyes. I used to have an LG at work that had 240Hz PWM and it wasn't a problem but my EIZO is flicker-free.
- temporal dithering and FRC. I don't know about this because I have Windows 7 set to the default 32-bit so I guess there's dithering? And my monitor uses FRC so it's probably not a problem either.
- problem with racing games (read later)
What do you think about gut-eye axis connection?
I've been wondering lately because I've been having intestinal problems for about 10 years although the symptoms were very minor and difficult to pinpoint and maybe that's the problem? What do you think about the "gut-eye axis connection"?
"Problems in your gut, such as dysbiosis (an imbalanced gut microbiome) can lead to systemic inflammation that affects your eyes causing conditions like dry eye syndrome, uveitis, macular degeneration, and potentially glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy. The "gut-eye axis" describes this connection where inflammation originating in the gut can spread through the bloodstream to the eyes impacting tear production and the health of eye tissues"
Flare up recovery time?
At the beginning of this month I tried the SNES mini on my monitor and played for a few days with like 1h a day. It seemed okay but after a while I started experiencing pain between my eyes eye strain and pain in the back of my head...
It's been three weeks now and it's a little better but still not "normal" sitting on my PC. In addition to intestinal supplements I check whether any of the ones I take cause any problems. It's much better with movies on the projector but I admit I didn't permanently put the screens away. Maybe that's my mistake.
A few years ago I had a severe strain after trying to play Assetto Corsa. Racing games in general were an exception they've been a problem for a few years now. I played it for about an hour and it caused such discomfort that I spent nearly two months recovering a month of which I sat in a dark room depressed without any devices. At that moment, as soon as I looked at the screen (my good one), after one minute I felt a huge pain between my eyes. So for me it's a long time to recover of course sometimes it took 1-3 days.
After using a bad screen device how long does it take you to recover and what is it like? Can you then sit on the "good device" or not? Do you put away screens completely while you recover?
Emulators
I've noticed I'm having problems with some PC emulators such as CEMU with Zelda Breath of the Wild. I wanted to play it again a few months ago because my Switch was no longer usable and I sold it a long time ago. However I noticed that I experience eye discomfort when playing Zelda on CEMU.
I had similar observations earlier this month on a SNES and Atari emulator although this was consistent with my use of an SNES mini and it's possible that it was the only cause.
Why would emulators be a problem? Are there any emulator options like triple buffering scaling or smoothing that they use? I usually didn't enable any enhancements,but I'm sure every emulator has some by default.
Monitor brightness
do you feel better on a lower or medium/higher setting?
I would be grateful for any suggestions you have similar experiences this is a very difficult situation I would call it an invisible level of disability for people nowadays..