AGI
Are you "intolerant" also to LED and fluorescent lighting?
That depends on what and when. Here's my history:
When I first encountered symptoms, it was a little over 15 years ago, and I was triggered by CFL bulbs. I should mention that standard tube fluorescent did not cause me any issues, just the compact ones. That sent me down our long journey. At the time LED lights were not mainstream, there was no such thing as LED light bulbs, it was still an incandescent word.
As the years progressed, incandescents started to get more and more replaced by CFL's. This led to the question that to this day I have not answered, was I born with this condition and just never noticed because CFL's weren't invented until later in my life, or was it something I developed? Probably never figure that out.
Anyway, as the years went on and my misery progressed and as I started realzing how rare my condition was since doctor after doctor could not help me, I started on migraine treatments. Most did nothing, but propranalol helped a little. A few years after that I was tested for Irlen syndrome and "daignosed" (as much as one can be diagnosed for a syndrome) and when through the lens test procedure and ultimately get a pair of lenses made that 100% cured my condition. For 3 months. After that, they stopped working, and despite multiple attempts at re testing and hundreds and hundreds of dollars on new lenses getting made, I was never able to find a lens color that made any help at all, so I abandoned that road.
It was around this time LED's started coming out, and CFL's started waning in popularity. I immediately noticed that LED's were much more hit or miss, some LED's were instantly pain inducing, but some LED's cause me no issues whatsoever.
Around that time I started down my nuerofeedback and biofeedback treatment, and this is also when smartphones started coming onto the market and my issues with those screens started happening. Much like LED's some were fine, most were terrible. The nuero and bio helped a little more in my CFL issue but not with the LED issue. At this point in my life, CFL's don't bother me much at all, not that it matters since they have basically vanished from the face of the earth since LED's supplanted them.
For LED's, some things have gotten better over time, when car headlights switched to LED's it was a REAL problem. But nowadays LED highlights rarely cause me any issues at all. After one of my sinus surgeries I was put on a daily anti allergy medication and this helped with the LED sensitivity. It might be the medication, it might be the surgery, it might not be anything I did, maybe the LED's just got better or something changed in my brain that made it not as bad.
The primary irritant at that point became screens since everything in the world was moving to digital displays, phones, tablets, thermostats, credit card readers, cars, you name it. And most of them caused severe eye strain. I was diagnosed with convergence insufficiency and went through vision training, which 100% cured me for credit card terminals only. No improvement on any other digital screen. Explain that one.
The color connection came up when I found I was able to take a screen that was arming me (PC screen) and completely eliminate the issue by loading the correct ICC profile. Like 100% eliminate the issue. And certain colors of web pages (specifically a very light gray, #FEFEFE is the hex code) will instantly trigger a migraine. Lucky for me Microsoft picked this color as it's new toolbar background color in Office 2016 with no way to change it. Thanks Microsoft. Also lots of bright white can cause me issues, which was awesome when Google decided that Android should no longer be based on dark tones by instead be a retina searing white.
So thats roughly where I am today. I've seen countless doctors in 7 states and have learned no one out there has "the answer" we are looking for, and just hoping my neurologist is correct in telling me the most likely outcome is that I will age out of this around my mid to late 50's to 60's.
I am a sinusitis sufferer too by the way. And AC can be as bad to my body as offensive lighting.
This is just something I have observed. Nearly everyone I have met with our condition also seems to have severe sinusitis. I have had 3 sinus surgeries myself. I met one person who had identical visual symptoms to me, and had unrelated surgery on his pallete, and to his surprise his lighting and screen issues were 100% cured after the surgery. My pet theory is that the nerves responsible for the pain we get run through the sinus and pallette area (it is a heavily enervated area) and reducing inflammation there may block the brain signals causing our issue? Who knows.
I also know that for some people stuff like flicker, dithering, and PWN can cause issues, but for me they are not. Which indicates different triggers are affecting different people and then producing the same symptoms, or triggers are getting misidentified and leading us down rabbit holes. At this point in my life I have abandoned any hope for a "cure", and have adopted a strategy of leading as pain free a life as I can: when I find a setup for a computer, TV, phone, whatever, that causes me no pain, I NEVER change it unless I absolutely have no choice. Yes that means I have a 7 year old smartphone and a 8 year old TV and a 12 year old car with no digital displays and I will never use Windows 10, and if anything breaks and I have to find a replacement its ruins my life for a while, but thats just the hand I got dealt. There is no feature, benefit, new capability, performance increase, or anything that is worth being in pain for. Just my philosophy
And AC can be as bad to my body as offensive lighting.
I had to install an $18,000 mini split system to re mediate my issues with HVAC.
That was a lot of typing.