Computer Glasses Claim To Protect Eyesight Are Selling Like Hotcakes, But They Probably Aren't Useful (businessinsider.in) 118
People are increasingly concerned that bright light -- especially "blue light" from computer screens -- is causing harm, making it a potentially dangerous public health issue. Eyewear and screen protector companies have been selling products they say can protect people from these harms. But are they really making any difference? From a report: We do know that blue light at night can interfere with sleep, causing a host of negative effects. But the evidence that the amount of light screen expose us to during the day is harmful is not really there. Furthermore, many experts think these products are unnecessary and could perhaps do more harm than good. [...] The research that companies selling blue-blocking products cite falls into three categories: animal studies, in vitro studies of retinal cells exposed to light, and studies of people exposed to outdoor light. [...] "I think it's largely hype, not science," says Dr. Richard Rosen, Director of Retina Services at New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai and Ophthalmology Research Director at Icahn School of Medicine. "They want to sell it; they know people get uncomfortable staring at screens all day, so they say, it's because of this [blue light issue]." The report cites insight from several other doctors as well studies to make a case for why these glasses aren't useful.
My own dumb experience (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: My own dumb experience (Score:5, Funny)
We'll eventually evolve, it's too soon to give up.
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All we have to do is figure out a way to reach Warp 10. Our new amphibian eyes will have built in blue light filters. It's already been tested on both a male and female test subject.
*As an added reassurance, our ability to procreate will not be inhibited by the test.
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-- Cave Johnson
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We did not evolve to sit in front of computer screens all day. And in a typical cube farm, us peons are in the middle of the floor nowhere near a window.
Every hour, walk outside. Take a "smoke break".
Or get a monitor that doesn't suck ass and put out abnormally blue light.
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Yes, it is about selling, that and the placebo effect... if you believe it will work, then it does.
Reminds me of a stint I did on the semiconductor business. One of the engineers that I was interviewing for requirements went on and on about how a vendor of pens realized that semiconductor processes can get really screwed up by calcium.
They started marketing a line of "calcium free" pens, which sold at a premium and were used at semiconductor fabs globally.
Turns out that ink pens NEVER had calcium in them in
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can't speak for them all but from what I read about Crizal Prevencia it doesn't block the UV light that messes with your sleep hormones. it's blocks the UV ranges just before that
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I used to stay up late in front of my computer. Ever since I started using my computer glasses, bam, proper sleep cycle restored.
I often wake up about 3am, and I avoid using a computer because of the blue light. Instead, I read a book illuminated by a "warm" led light that emits little blue light, and I usually go back to sleep around 5am. If these glasses could allow me to get computer work during those two hours, it would be a godsend. It would be nice if there was real data about this rather than just anecdotes.
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I actually bought a red LED flashlight for nighttime reading and retrofitted a red theater gel into another book light.
I don't know why reading helps me sleep. I just need to find a way to put a red gel on my Kindle Paperwhite without affecting the touch.
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Worse, that's not blue light that's the problem. It's UV. Take a look at a modern freezer aisle someone. Products exposed to constant LED light are sun faded and look decades old.
instead of glasses use an app (Score:5, Informative)
A free app, f.lux does the job, https://justgetflux.com/ [justgetflux.com]
Set the desired white balance/temperature at night time and you don't need any glasses.
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A free app, f.lux does the job, https://justgetflux.com/ [justgetflux.com] Set the desired white balance/temperature at night time and you don't need any glasses.
I have it, and I eventually turned it off. Didn't make any difference at all, except make my screen dim and yellow, and nag me to go to bed.
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Agreed. f.lux is more annoying than useful. Too dim early in the evening, too bright late at night. To keep screens from keeping you awake: negativescreen. If you want to read at night, set it for red text on a black background, then turn the brightness down as low as possible.
Best of all go for black text on a black background, you'll soon fall asleep.
My monitor has this built in (Score:2)
My computer monitor (Benq BW2765) has some sort of blue light filtering thing built in that can be activated via the buttons on the side.
I've never used it. My screen looks fine and dandy just like it is.
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I know Windows (and other OS's I'm sure) allow you to adjust your color calibration. Just adjust the "blue" one until the desired effect is achieved.
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On Linux it is becoming more and more difficult. I use a dark background with yellowish text but it is hard to find the settings on new installs.
New LED backlight does not go dark enough. (Score:2)
At least for me the darn things are too bright even with brightness set to 0, especially at night. Maybe it's just the monitor I chose :/
On the plus side if I ever want to use this monitor outside in the sunlight, It might just be bright enough on high to do that.
As far as blue light, yea it helps a bit making things have a yellow tint, but it sure would be MORE helpful to have a lower range of brightness in general.
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Back in CRT days, amber was one of the favored monochrome options...
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Funny, and all this time I thought it was due to those bent pins in my VGA cable, keeping my colors out!
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That happened too...
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Set color to sRGB color mode. It may look too red at first, but your eyes will adjust and it will be much less harsh.
Oblig (Score:5, Funny)
My eyes! The goggles do nothing!
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The whole "blue light thing" is pure BS. (Score:3, Interesting)
Humans don't need complete dark to sleep. We evolved on the African plains, and there's this big thing called the Moon that regularly lights up the night sky - and that light is pretty rich in blue when the moon is high in the sky. Don't take my word for it - go out some night and look.
Or take a nice lazy nap in the middle of the day with the sun shining bright. You can get a nice sunburn doing that at poolside. The bright light didn't keep you from falling asleep or you would have noticed you've cooked yourself.
We evolved for this sort of situation. If blue light were a problem, we'd have an inner eyelid to filter it out, like Vulcans, or have an adaptation where it's not a problem (which, all SciFi aside, is what really happened). But people will believe all sorts of crap rather than see what's literally in front of their eyes, because people WANT to experience the frisson that comes from "knowing something new that someone else doesn't" - same as gossip and fake news.
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some frequencies of blue light are right about what you see in the mornings and they mess with your melatonin levels if you're exposed to them at night. that much is known. what is not understood is how much computer screens mess with your sleep
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Computer screens mess with some people differently than others. SADD is a thing, and some people living north of the Arctic Circle have a major challenge with winter, others aren't so bothered by the noon-time night.
If you have a highly sensitive "blue light neuro-regulation" system, then, yeah, wear the LED visors if there's not enough light in your life, block the blues when you need to. I suspect there are more actual gluten-sensitive people in the world than actual blue-light sensitives.
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It's Barbara Hudson. There's no stopping the foolishness of Barbara Hudson.
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I have a pair of amber tinted glasses - meh. Blue light, schmoo light. Like any other light filter, it dilates the pupils a little, narrows the focal depth of field, seems a little more relaxed - calming. In the outdoors, there is arguably more "excess blue light" or, put another way, the blue light contains less useful information than other colors - which is why your eyes are less sensitive to it in the first place.
If the color balance on your computer monitor isn't to your liking - adjust it, they alm
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1. Moonlight can be bright enough to read a book by. But it's not brightness that's the problem, or just closing your eyes would eliminate the "problem." It doesn't, because the problem is between the ears, not an actual real effect.
2. Turn on the room lights and the relative brightness of the monitor becomes a non-problem, People working in dark rooms are retarded.
3. Also, buy a better monitor and you'll be able to dim it. However, that's not the problem, as per 2. Again, turn on the room lights to a de
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Humans don't need complete dark to sleep.
Some humans do need complete darkness to stay healthy. It turns out that people on common anti-cancer drugs who use night lights or have other sources of light 24 hrs a day have a much higher fatality rate than those who sleep in complete darkness for at least 2 hours a night.
There have been plenty of studies linking light pollution to melatonin levels and several types of cancer.
Based on numbers I've seen for Australia, light pollution is interfering with the one of
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sickle cell anemia
Also from Africa - protects against malaria
Before buying the glasses (Score:3)
If you're experiencing eye discomfort, might I recommend:
1. Setup your work area to have even lighting. Working in a dark room with only computer monitor(s) for light is going to give you eye strain.
2. Get up and walk around periodically. Let your eyes focus on something else and relax a bit.
3. If you need glasses, make sure they're the right prescription for sitting at a computer. Old farts like me should keep a reading glasses with the right prescription for 24" to 30" for looking at your monitors.
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If you're experiencing eye discomfort, might I recommend:
1. Setup your work area to have even lighting. Working in a dark room with only computer monitor(s) for light is going to give you eye strain.
Basements are dark places, as many Slashdoters know all too well.
2. Get up and walk around periodically. Let your eyes focus on something else and relax a bit.
It's hard to know where you are going in the dark place. The bathroom and fridge are the only places well known by the basement dwellers.
3. If you need glasses, make sure they're the right prescription for sitting at a computer. Old farts like me should keep a reading glasses with the right prescription for 24" to 30" for looking at your monitors.
Glasses. Check. Comes with the territory.
*This post was for humor only, any resemblance to actual people, both living and dead, is purely coincidental.
Screen brightness should match paper (Score:3)
> Setup your work area to have even lighting.
Specially, the room lighting and the monitor brightness should be related so that the screen appears roughly as bright as a piece of paper held next to the monitor. The white areas of the monitor should appear white, like the paper, not like staring at a lightbulb in an otherwise dark room.
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I had increasingly been having discomfort due to the blindingly white color of web pages and apps these days. I was getting headaches and having so much trouble that I went to an eye doctor, only to find that my eyesight was still 20/20. But my eyes are also too dry. Taking antihistamine eye drops (Alaway) made a huge difference for me. In addition, I use Stylish and write styles for the web sites I use most frequently to make the background dark gray and the text off-white.
Only LUDDITES wear LUDDITE glasses. (Score:1)
Apps!
Old news. (Score:1)
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Neutral density sunglasses only for me, thanks. Those things screw with colors.
Breaks and outside time (Score:1)
I'd largely put these products in the snake oil category, I few years ago after a day in front of my computer at work I'd be completely exhausted turns out I needed glasses (to correct the changing shape of the cornea) but I got that advice from an optometrist. An interesting side note was that they advised that if you take regular breaks (easy to get a cuppa or take a walk) monitors don't have any real negative effects themselves. However, what can have a detrimental effect is a lack of sunlight. So get o
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However, what can have a detrimental effect is a lack of sunlight. So get out of your cave and get some fresh air and sunlight your eyes will thank you.
Living in Alaska, and working in a windowless room during the day, I can vouch for this suggestion.
- Driving to work in darkness
- Driving back home in darkness
- Working in a secure vault during the day.
- It's 40 below zero outside.
Adds up to much suffering.
DLMO (Score:5, Informative)
The article has a poor to false understanding of how blue light interacts with DLMO (dim light melatonin onset).
I'm pretty sure the entrainment effect of blue light is via direct neuronal connection to the SCN, and I doubt it involves melatonin, except indirectly.
The homeostatic sleep pressure signal builds up (more or less linearly) for as long as you're awake. On its own, this would mean that you taper into drowsiness all day long. So the sleep system has another mechanism that suppresses response to the sleep pressure signal. I vaguely recall that what happens with DLMO is that melatonin onset signals the body to turn off the suppression switch, so that the body begins to notice the homeostatic sleep pressure signal.
DLMO, however, is easily inhibited by exposure to blue light at a point in time approximately an hour before bedtime. If you're outdoors hunting moose in the bright light of late-evening arctic summer, this is a useful adaptation.
You'll get to bed later, which means you'll sleep a bit later (but not much) and then you will get less blue light early the next morning, which will affect your entrainment, gradually, on the slow-drip program.
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As a rough, empirical ratio, for every extra hour you stay up, you'll sleep about twenty minutes later the next morning. It's not uncommon to stay up for an extra two hours, then barely sleep in for an extra half hour. (We need to ignore here that modern society tends to run a massive, permanent sleep deficit, which can suddenly turn into sleeping four to six hours late at the first opportunity that allows this to happen. That's a different beast entirely.)
I have a circadian rhythm disorder, and I know from decades of sleep tracking that morning wake-up time is about three times more reliable in estimating my sleep phase than time of retirement.
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This is a worthwhile paper from the top of my notes, but it's hard to wade through:
Estimating Dim Light Melatonin Onset (DLMO) Phase in Adolescents Using Summer or School-Year Sleep/Wake Schedules [journalsleep.org] — 2006
I like this paper because it shows how social convention (adolescent schooling) also influences DLMO phase.
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The sleep pressure signal eventually overwhelms the suppression of this signal, regardless of the DLMO mechanism.
James Maas is a good representative of the modern sleep science orthodoxy:
Surefire Strategies to Sleep for Success! [paramountsleep.com]
I just love the page break at the end of page 6. But then I'm really into microscopic moments of small page-formatting humour. (It's probably not unrelated to all those long, lonely nights, before I found a viable treatment.)
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Here's a good summary, I just found for the first time.
Phase Response Curve [circadians...orders.org]
The reason I only vaguely remember this mechanism is that all the phase response curves in the literature are dose dependent.
There is no PRC I've ever seen that computes the phase response differential to endogenous melatonin levels. No, what you do is administer some dose/formulation (which can include sustained-release components) at staggered times over several weeks, and then you plot the graph averaged over your test population (which thus includes all the metabolic uptake and clearance variability).
There was a time I desperately wanted to consult one of these curves and then to declare "I am here", but it never happened. These are, in effect, better regarded as qualitative curves than quantitative curves.
The model was never predictive enough to be worth memorizing exactly. And thus I remain slightly dim on DLMO when I really shouldn't be after all these years.
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It's really annoying when you have a sleep disorder and something like dark therapy (blue blocking at night and SAD lights or brighter right before waking up) makes a monumental improvement to your quality of life, after trying various other things for years and being constantly fired for being late to work, and people tell you to your face that you're full of shit and just making it all up.
Sleep disorders exist. Things like blue-blocking help some of these silently suffering people. Trying to use the sam
Programmable lights (Score:2)
I was thinking that the blue light issue is something that the programmable LED lights could come in useful. Have them put out regular white light normally, but have them shift towards the red spectrum an hour before bedtime.
cheap and IMHO better alternative (Score:2)
Just adjust the color temperature on your monitor to be less blue
"Blue" by Eiffel 65 comes to mind... (Score:2)
Yo listen up here's a story
About a little guy that lives in a blue world
And all day and all night and everything he sees
Is just blue
Like him inside and outside
Blue his house with a blue little window
And a blue Corvette
And everything is blue for him
And himself and everybody around
Cause he ain't got nobody to listen
I'm Blue...
Some hints (Score:2)
I have a few suggestions for people, having used computers from a very young age and having my own since 7th grade, eye strain has always been an issue.
(1) If you are near sighted (which I am), have your the prescription *slightlt* detuned, so it isn't perfect. Mine is detuned by I think around 0.25. This reduces eye strain by a HUGE amount. You won't be able to read highway signs from far away but who needs to do that any more with gps nav?
(2) Tinge your desktop foreground coloring scheme more towards t
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(1) If you are near sighted (which I am), have your the prescription *slightlt* detuned, so it isn't perfect. Mine is detuned by I think around 0.25. This reduces eye strain by a HUGE amount. You won't be able to read highway signs from far away but who needs to do that any more with gps nav?
Ah, I was just posting [slashdot.org] about this below, so let me ask: why not have separate glasses for computer work?
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1) I like my vision sharp, so I have it tuned as tight as I can get it, just a bit better than 20/20.
2) I like my high contrast term.
Terminal background color - white.
Terminal foreground color - black.
Cursor - blinking black rectangle, can't miss it.
Web browsing defaults are also white background, black text.
3) Eh, it's about there.
4) Contacts, all the way. No headache from the frame, and full focus peripheral vision, you can never get that from glasses, there's always a line beyond which things are blurry
Not my experience (Score:1)
What about optical power? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm myopic, and I often read books without glasses, but the computer screen is a little too far for that. So I sometimes find it easier to use my old glasses for computing, compared to my regular glasses with a stronger correction. Around here, "computer glasses"* refer to glasses with the optical power optimized for screen distances. It's something you can get from your employer as a health benefit if you work at a screen all day.
I also use redshift on Linux to tone down the blues (the colour component) during the night, but it's a completely orthogonal issue. Plus if you're worried about computing ruining your sleep, there's also the psychological buzz, so I'm not sure which one dominates in practice.
*(One common term is "päätelasit" meaning "terminal glasses", not necessarily because you're so old they're the last glasses you'll ever need, but because our computing term-inology is ancient and we still think in terms of terminals.)
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Agreed. I also have "computer glasses" that are all about the focus. They have close up prescription on the bottom, far at the top, and most of the middle is about arms length (monitor distance) focus. They are fantastic. Before that, I was tipping my head up with my progressives to get the focus, and found I did most of my work on the bottom half of the monitor as it was hard to focus on the top without a lot of head tipping.
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ZenniOptical.com.
And so history repeats itself (Score:2)
I remember when we had computers in the last 80's, the 'radiation' and light from the CRT's would burn your retina's, cause insomnia and the sole contributor to poor eyesight.
All forms of 'solutions' in particular screen covers but also various color lens glasses were for sale, ended up being a fad.
If you like having yellow tinted vision (Score:1)
Recently bought and returned several monitors (Score:1)
So, what's the problem here - staring at a screen? (Score:2)
Eyes focus on the same distance all the time and the muscles doing this are not properly exercised and challenged.
Being hunter/gatherers most of our genetic past life, looking far, close and noticing noises and movements around us was a necessity of survival.
And now? Focus distance to screen or cell: 2', next wall: 10-20', VR googles I don't know how this works, not much distance change there either I would guess.
I'd say, severe deterioration of human vision ability....
Fix It In Software (Score:2)
Wearing "blue-blocking" spectacles is the wrong solution to the problem. Fix it in software. Run "f.lux" on your PC, "NightShift" on your Apple devices, "Twilight" on your Android phone, or "BlueShade" on your Kindle. There are probably equivalent tools in other operating systems.
I don't know about easing eye strain; I already use prescription "computer glasses" that focus at monitor distance. But using these applications do seem to help me sleep better after working (or playing) on my computer for
PWM monitors are the problem (Score:1)