Hi everyone! It's been a while! I used to be a pretty active poster, reading every post and never missing one, and also contributing as much as I could. It's been a bit of a busy year and I've noticed a big increase in activity as well making it hard to keep up with every post. Over the years we have seen some active posters suddenly trail off, leaving us to speculate that they may have either found a solution and moved on with their lives, or gave up trying.

I have been good for quite a while and it was a bit hard to understand why. My condition that keeps me coming back here is pretty specific. My eyes/brain can't seem to tolerate light emitted from an LED (which all monitors are backlit with now). I avoided LEDs like the plague, and I've used a Dell U2410 monitor both at work and home for the last 6-7 years (0% brightness and "Warm" Preset mode, along with f.lux always running at 5000K).

A year and a half ago, there was a company memo that all overhead lighting will be replaced from fluorescent to LED lighting. "Well, it was a good run, but that's it - I'm finished..." my inner voice said. I remember taking 2 weeks off at the end of 2017, and walking back in the doors and seeing this bluish-whitish tinge everywhere. I expected to have issues.

But I didn't. And it didn't make much sense. Was I only sensitive to LEDs used in displays perhaps? Why wasn't this new harsh lighting giving me a "headache behind the eyeballs" or a migraine, like I would get within a minute of looking at a colleague's LED monitor? Although I was confused by it, I was always looking for any small victories in this frustrating battle.

A lot of people I remember also have had huge issues with Windows 10. I am apparently not one of them. About a month ago my PC was upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and I have not experienced any increase in symptoms. I even tried not running f.lux to see if I could make my issues worse, and it didn't seem to. I know that Windows 10 has its own pseudo version of f.lux called "Night Light" which I can enable at any time.

Everything was going well until I requested a desk move to a quieter part in the office and it was completed on Monday. Within 20 minutes in my new place, I had sharp eyeball pain as if I had looked an LED monitor. What was going on? The only change was my location. Looking up I noticed that my monitor was directly beneath some overhead tube lighting (LED). I had a pretty bad headache the rest of Monday night, and went to bed early because I was essentially rendered useless by it.

The next day I brought in a ballcap and used it to shield from the overhead light directly above me. It made a difference in cutting down the glare bigtime. I still had a migraine develop, but it was milder, and took longer. After everyone left for the day, I went back to my old area again. What was so different about it that wasn't being replicated in my new area? When I looked up, the overhead light above me had been ... disabled! I was there like 2 years and I never noticed the whole time!

So back in my new area, I crawled up on my desk and unscrewed the tubes in the light fixture, and put it back together. Am I allowed to do this? Probably not, but I bet nobody will notice anyway. If I didn't notice it was disabled in my old area the whole time, I'm sure nobody will notice one set of lights is knocked out. That made a big difference. A few other ladies in the office have bought these green leaves from Ikea to hang over their desks like big umbrellas to block the overhead lights:

https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/40338405/

Honestly, this is potentially an inexpensive but effective solution that will probably work. I lasted pretty well throughout the day having the tubes above me knocked out, and buying some of these leaves for the next time I'm in the office can potentially block other ambient LED light to make things even more comfortable for me.

Before this week, I had no idea that overhead office lighting was affecting me. Now I know, and I'm able to do something about it. I just wanted that pass that info along just in case anyone else out there with similar issues like mine can benefit from it.

Another trick of mine is FL-41 tinted lenses from companies like Theraspecs (https://www.theraspecs.com). I have overfits that go over glasses for when I'm forced to be in a situation with harsh LED lighting. Things haven't been so bad that I have to use them that much though. I'm looking for a company that can make some FL-41 clip-ons for glasses, because it's much more comfortable to use glasses at a computer than say, contact lenses (for us myopic folk!)