New to this. F.lux or glasses?

Linkandzelda

I feel like this question probably comes up often. I'm totally new to this whole topic and only just began to research blue light and all about it's effects.

I heard about it roughly 3-4 years ago when I started to get small headaches. I felt like it was not bad enough and forgot all about it. Fast forward to now and I have a headache almost every day, and I can feel the tiredness in my eyes and it gets unpleasant, and I end up just pushing through.

Now what I understand is f.lux isn't meant to help eye fatigue exactly but rather to protect your sleep, by only enabling the gradual effects into the night. This is where I'm confused as to what I should try out:

Use f.lux as it was intended with night time effects only, and normal colours during the day
Try and get it to lower strength effects during the day as well
Use glasses all day
Use glasses in the day and f.lux at night

I'm not a glasses wearer currently, so I'm a little off put by the idea of using glasses.

There's one other thing I'm concerned about and that's doing colour sensitive work on my computer. I know that there's no way to filter out colours while keeping perfect colours visually without a trade off.

I would appreciate some kind of insight.

Tungsten_smooth

@Linkandzelda I think what would help you is work rave. It's a small program that works on all three major desktop OS, Windows, Mac, and Linux, and it will force you (unless you get creative) to stop using the computer--even if you stop the process, the timer will still keep count! So it's a great way to say "Take a break!" without having to remember.

Also, a plug for a monitor technology (or implementation) that's been around since 2010!! Yeah, so, really, I'm not sure what stopped it, but Pixel "Chi" or Pixel Qi is a monitor technology that works just like your current LCD screen, with full color and backlight, but you can turn off the backlight completely, and let ambient light hit the screen.

There's something to be learned about LEDs. They contain a spike of color near the blue region which seems to cause issues. A blue sky has WAY more blue, but there is a lead up of color progressing to the blue, and I think the eyes work with that and understand it more than a spike of color that comes from "out of the blue" (intended). Same with any fluorescent bulbs, I just hate those things in general, except the TL 950 by Philips, they tried at least.

If you think you need glasses, go to an eye doctor, I can tell you glasses are much easier than contacts, because they're easier to see, and much easier to clean.

herf

I think this is a key question because avoiding all light during the day can make sleep problems worse, and in some cases this might make headaches the next day worse as well (because you didn't sleep well or because your circadian system is not expecting bright light at certain times).

Overall I would say two things:

If you have really bad headaches "right now", I would do what you need to. Avoiding bright light is a great approach, and trying to increase light levels later in the day is sometimes possible too.
On most other days, most people should try to see enough bright "blue" light during the day (e.g., an hour outdoors) and keep things dimmer at night. This will let you sleep a little better at night, and if you do, maybe it will help headaches too.