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340 points jbornhorst | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.525s | source

I’m digging into an idea around eyeglasses, screen-time, and vision discomfort. If you wear prescription glasses but still get headaches, eye strain, or blurry vision after long screen days, I’d love to chat briefly (20–30 min).

Pure research, zero selling.

Interested? Drop a comment below or email me directly at jbornhorst [at] gmail.com. I’ll coordinate a convenient time to talk.

1. r_klancer ◴[] No.43292670[source]
I will say this: if you're not happy with your current prescription, there are ways to get a more intense workup and better outcomes by going to an academic optometry center. In my case, I went to the New England College of Optometry and got prescribed a special type of contact lenses ("scleral" lenses) which have been a major quality of life enhancement.

They're expensive, there was a learning curve for getting them on correctly, and it took several followup appointments to get the correct fit from the manufacturer, but I can wear the lenses almost all day and they give me clear, sharp, 20/20 vision.

Also, when I'm wearing them I need reading glasses to read up close--my uncorrected vision actually compensates for my slight age related nearsightedness. But my vision is so much better I don't mind at all!

The back story is that I had lifelong astigmatism and 2 eyes with different powers (one more farsighted than the other one) which led to some mild amblyopia (lazy eye) that I've had since childhood. My vision wasn't "that bad" so I got by without using my glasses for a long time. But when I tried using my several year old prescription glasses I found that presbyopia (that age related inability to focus on anything up close) made the glasses almost useless for reading.

Even though I'm a dev who looks at screens all day, I didn't think I minded, but I noticed in recent years that my appetite for reading books had disappeared was partly due to noticeable eye strain, but also due to generalized eye fatigue that I wasn't really acknowledging. I also had to sit up front in meeting rooms to follow along with anything projected on the screen, which was annoying.

A colleague mentioned the book Fixing My Gaze (https://www.google.com/books/edition/Fixing_My_Gaze/Ul16tPVk...) and I bought it. It's partly a personal narrative by a neuroscientist who was stereoblind and taught herself to develop stereo vision in middle age (she was profiled by Oliver Sacks at one point). But it's also a history of research optometry, which focuses on refractive vision correction and visual processing (as distinct from eye diseases) and which I barely even knew was a thing. Which led me to NECO and my big quality of life improvement!

replies(1): >>43296176 #
2. giulianob ◴[] No.43296176[source]
I just recently got sclerals for dry eyes and I'm still going through the adjustment process. Usually they are prescribed for keratoconus (misshaped cornea) and not something most people need. The doctor actually said it's more challenging putting it on someone without keratoconus (like me) because I am used to having fairly good vision with my glasses and sclerals aren't as easy to get right as glasses/normal contacts. They have been amazing for dry eyes so far though.