Computer Fever - Is there an MD in the house?

[MRoss]

And I say MD and not Doctor because I am sure there are many math doctors on QN

Anyhow, I have been having this problem for a while and have been just "dealing with it". I was wondering if anyone else has a similar experience and perhaps they can provide some advice.

When I program for too long one of my eyes gets bloodshot and then a migraine follows. It is not pleasant. I'm not sure if it is because of my eye drying out (if so why only 1 eye?) or because of the computer glare.

Has anyone else had similar symptoms to programming? (I think computer games would follow a similar pattern. Anything that makes you STARE at the monitor.)

 

[DominiConnor]

I've had that, first you need to see a proper medic, when you're taking medical advice from a headhunter on the Internet, you cannot always be guaranteed a 100% accurate diagnosis...

I suspect your problem, like mine is not medical but psychological. Eyes normally rarely actually ever look at anything for all that long, they scan around, since we evolved (sorry American readers) eyes for both seeking prey and avoiding being prey ourselves. However some people concentrate so hard that their eyes don't move nearly so much.
After serious sessions I can get both eyes bloodshot
The trick for me is to force a habit of every so often looking at something far away, at least across the room. Do it more often than you are currently doing it. It's not all that hard to write a little app that pops up every so often to tell you.

 

[Andy D.]

@ MRoss - funny you mentioned this. Back in '07 I had exactly the same problem - with my right eye actually. I remember one night in particular where I was working on a project for a customer and finished up in the office around midnight. My right eye felt really really strained that evening - but just my right eye which was weird.
Anyway it turned out that I needed glasses and my right eye was slightly weaker than my left. So it was likely just a case of eye strain alerting me to an issue I already had, but hadn't really noticed.

Go get an eye test and make sure you don't need glasses (I'm under the assumption here you don't already wear them).

 

[MRoss]

Wow that's really interesting! My whole life my eyes had very different prescriptions. I remember back in high school one of my eyes way 1.75 while the other was 4.00! Last visit (two years ago?) I was told that the gap had narrowed significantly.

Thanks for the input guys. I'm going to look into both of your ideas.