• Introduction

  • Blue light photophobia, eyestrain, muscle spasms, pain, twitching

ryans Hmm, I'm hoping it doesn't come to that. If so, I forsee lots of old movie watching in my future! I do like black and white movies, although yes, for anything newer or social media, it's definitely not the same.

My laptop is a refurbished HP I got on eBay maybe 4 or 5 years ago. It's the Notebook - 15-r231cy TouchSmart. I am running windows 8.1. I've never cared for this windows 8 OS. XP was my fav. It seems going old school is the way to go. What kind of phone do you use? I'd like to try using an older device and see if that helps. I loved my blackberry back in the day. My only concern is the apps running extremely slow. The main things I use my phone for are navigation, email and social media, but I do have a fair amount of apps on my iphone, all of which I use on occasion.

Quinine calms down the twitching I experience when I've had to work under florescent lighting without my glasses. It unfortunately doesn't do anything for the muscle pain, but I definitely recommend it to anyone experiencing twitching from florescent exposure or eyestrain/overuse.

And yes, I have been checked for thyroid issues multiple times, the results are always normal, and the lyme test was negative.

    metalmike Thank you!! I have been compiling notes/lists with all of the recommendations from everyone. I'm definitely going to look for the monitor you mentioned. I'm finding this forum to be so amazing and helpful. I cannot express how much it means to me to get all of your responses. I feel like I've found my tribe! And sorry, off topic but Mike, does your screen name mean you listen to metal? \m/ 😉

        JTL my show has been on hiatus since November but we are back this month. I'm going to look into it and will report back.

          welcome! lots of new insights & overlap with other folks symptoms/triggers:
          'production monitors' is a helpful clue on a rabbit trail we're on already.

          Quinine is new & interesting- (finally) ordering some now. [some crazy side effects fyi: change in color perception(!), not effective when taken with magnesium, interferes with different meds (https://www.rxlist.com/qualaquin-side-effects-drug-center.htm#overview)]
          Most of us arent bothered that much by fluorescents.
          I just read that goat's milk (which i can tolerate) has A2 casein vs A1(cow's- which i cant).
          Have you taken the colorblindness tests with the little dots? https://enchroma.com/pages/test

            reaganry Doesn't mean much when the GPU is the "weak link", finding monitors without FRC/dithering is trivial, it's the GPU that's the large issue.

                JTL OMG you have to make a sticky with the new regedit dithering fix for windows. i just did it and it's amazing! immediately it feels just like linux- hopefully it will be good long term. i wonder how hard it is to make a switching app..

                • JTL replied to this.

                    reaganry Which registry fix? Which GPU? I'm confused.

                    I tried the dithering options with my 1070 under Linux and didn't seem to make a difference.

                        Blair You're very welcome Blair! A lot of this literally came down to trial-and-error over several years.

                        I had an iPhone 3GS in March 2010 that was great and gave me no problems. In December 2012 I got an iPhone 5 and it would give me similar problems like you are describing with your cellphone. I was able to mostly get around this by keeping the brightness as low as I could see stuff on it and only using it a few minutes a day (good enough to answer text messages and what not).

                        That's why I'm thinking something changed around 2011 or so with screen display technology that affected us. My first LED monitor I bought in December 2011 was my first clue that there was something about it my eyes/brain do not like at all.

                        My guess is that the monitor you use on the production set might be one of those boxy CRT TVs like this:

                        http://a.espncdn.com/combiner/i?img=/photo/2016/0901/r121048_800x450_16-9.jpg&w=800

                        These are the old school tube TVs that had that 60 Hz refresh rate flicker. Ironically, these would probably be the easiest monitors for you to look at. Some gamers still use these ancient TVs from the 90s because they still have the fastest response times to them with almost no input lag.

                            I'll tell you - I thought at first it was my TMJ (I have very mild - wear a nightguard but otherwise have no issues) or related to my Tinnitus (both of these involve inflammation in the temple area) but the timelines don't track. I started wearing a nightguard because my jaw really ached in late 2011. I didn't have a problem with monitors until nearly a year later. The tinnitus has been an issue for nearly 20 years, certainly unrelated.

                            The first thing I noticed I couldn't look at was Macs. Specifically Macbooks with newer ATI chips in them. 2010/2011 models with GeForce in them were fine. 2011/2012 models switched over to ATI Radeon and they were pretty much unusable.

                            After that I switched jobs, and noticed that some monitors were harsher than others. But I had tried to "force" myself to get through the Macbook issue, and tried to work under the REALLY BAD fluorescent lighting at work, and just couldn't do it. Bear in mind - I was using a 2012 model Lenovo X220 with an LED backlight at the time in a darkened room as my "safe system", so it's not anything intrinsically to do with all LED's.

                            I was also driving long hours with an eyeglasses prescription that needed updating - my new job required me to drive 1.5-2 hours each way, always into the sun (east in the morning, west in the evening) and by the time I got home I was really burned out.

                            This caused me to have a massive anxiety outbreak, I was having anxiety attacks pretty regularly at this time which CERTAINLY didn't help.

                            Known good systems at that point were breaking down. My TV? Unwatchable. XBox 360? Unusable. Anything that required me to focus on a screen was simply out of the question. Store lighting was bad. I was in a really low place, spending most of my time in the dark away from screens.

                            But there's hope - I'm 1000 times better now, in spite of using a much wider variety of screens! I have relatively recent laptops I can use (my primary work laptop is a 2015 Dell XPS), I can use relatively recent PC's (the 2015 Windows 10 LTSB with a GeForce 970 First Edition is not a bad system under any circumstances), the only remaining issue is my phone.

                            There are still bad things - the supermarket put in a ton of LED lighting for the checkout aisles... and then took it out because people complained. Vending machine lighting is often LED's now, harsh and horrid. The nearby Wal-Mart put in high-intensity fluorescents above their produce area, and I have to rush to get my lemons and broccoli now lest I get burned out...

                            But in general I can function. For how long? Not sure. Hopefully long enough for a cure.

                              Gurm

                              Hey, as explainend in my "your health" thread it's the same at my side.

                              First of all there was the bruxismn and nearly one year later the eyestrain odyssey began without and end till now.

                              • KM replied to this.
                              • Blair likes this.

                                  Gurm

                                  or a chronical infection.

                                  Trying out some new meds. It's called "infecto complex 1" and should help to fight against such an unknown infection or inflammation.

                                    I find it hard to believe that I'd have an unknown infection for a decade... infections either resolve or get worse.

                                      Gurm

                                      I could also be wrong with my statement.
                                      I'Ve explainend it in more detail in the health thread. Normal blood tests show that I'm at perfect health, however if you look closer and do further blood tests some markers show that my immune system is permanently running and fighting against something. Some guys mentionend a reactivated Epstein-Barr-Virus and also at my side there was the assumption that this could be a root cause of my problem. However it is not clear and therefore I try out my mentionend micro immune therapy.
                                      However the only thing which is clear is, that something is going on and that we are far away from common health and eye problems so we also have to do uncommon tests and therapys.

                                          Blair You should try Choline enriched foods. Or maybe suplements. But i prefer not to take suplements.

                                          "Choline performs a chemical transformation, converting the harmful homocysteine into the helpful chemical methionine."

                                          https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190108084424.htm

                                          https://www.optimallivingdynamics.com/blog/16-proven-ways-to-effectively-lower-homocysteine

                                          Also betaine is also good.

                                          "Probably the most extensively researched benefit of betaine? It’s used to convert homocysteine in the blood to methionine."

                                          https://draxe.com/what-is-betaine/

                                          Also Cod:

                                          "Cod, specifically, promotes cardiovascular health because it is a good source of blood-thinning omega-3 fatty acids as well as an excellent source of vitamin B12 and a good source of vitamin B6, both of which are needed to keep homocysteine levels low. "

                                          http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=133

                                              reaganry

                                              Indeed- I'm feeling hopeful about the production monitor being something I may be able to tolerate long enough to (gasp!).... watch something! Looking forward to getting the technical specs of the ones they use on set. Then promptly buying one, assuming there's a good return policy on it 😉

                                              The quinine I take is an alcohol free tincture (Secrets of the Tribe brand). The label says 'Organic Quinine (cinchona officianalis) dried bark. So I'm thinking it's not quite the same as the Qualaquin sulfate capsules. I'm hoping not, because I take 400-800 mg of magnesium glycinate per day. I only use the quinine tincture when I'm having twitching, which is infrequent (every few months, for a few days to a week).

                                              It's weird that most of you guys aren't bothered by florescents, yet I am extremely sensitive to them. Are TV's insanely bright to most of you as well? For me, the brightness is practically blinding. I can only look at a television for a few seconds. So it's the brightness, followed by the strain, followed by the muscle pain. I'm also wondering if anyone else here has had muscle spasms in the eyelid due to eyestrain. I have the pain almost daily, to varying degrees depending on how good I've been about staying off my phone.

                                              It's interesting to me you brought up the casein thing. I don't know if that was random or in response to something I said. (It's hard for me to go back over everything that has been written, for obvious reasons) so forgive me if I repeat myself or overlook things. Anyway, I'm sensitive to gluten and casein, but I can also tolerate goat/sheep milk. Grass fed butter isn't a problem for me either, as it only contains A1 casein in microscopic amounts. I'm currently off all dairy except grass fed ghee because I'm doing this low inflammation diet.

                                              Just did the color blindness test. It was normal. Sigh. Always hoping for that "a-ha!" moment...

                                                  Blair It's weird that most of you guys aren't bothered by florescents.

                                                  I was. In fact back in September 2011 (when I first noticed this issue) I associated it with lights instead of screens.

                                                    dev