5 ms·

Aging and Eye Problems

114 points by speckx 5mo ago

thewebguyd 5mo ago
Interesting. I've actually been making more use of light mode lately, even for code. Granted, I'm not that old yet but I'm almost 40, and I have astigmatism so dark mode was already difficult to read, but now I feel like its gotten much worse for me. I lament the lack of good light theme choices though because the majority use dark mode, and dark mode is increasingly becoming the default setting which I don't particularly like, but as long as there's a choice its fine. I don't do much work on a screen in the dark anymore though to where dark mode would be necessary. My home office is surrounded by big windows with a ton of natural light.
- mikestorrent 5mo ago
  Light mode has its place! I think I am far happier reading light mode text, but when I code I want dark mode. Dark for _everything_ is sometimes overwhelming, it always seems like there are too many things to look at.
- loloquwowndueo 5mo ago
  This. I hate dark mode because it’s difficult to read for me (myopia due to age) - the glowing letters on dark background get much blurrier for some reason. Most people who like dark mode use it so they can be in a dimly lit room and not have the display blast their eyes with light but I’ve found that under low ambient light my vision is far blurrier - a well lit room complemented by light mode (ie natural, default) display is the easiest to read.
  - jorl17 5mo ago
    Hear, hear. Back when I attempted to be an edgy college guy, I carried my Gentoo with green foreground on a black background. EVERYWHERE. My pcmanfm (yes, I was one of those) looked glorious in true matrix style (and I did have a matrix screensaver). I did it because it was "cool", not because I felt that dark mode was better. Then when I changed to MacOS, since there wasn't native dark mode, I don't think I ever _thought_ of even changing it. Things just looked great and I had no complaints. And, as I've aged, dark mode started to actually hurt my eyes. There's a special kind of dark mode which I can never put my finger on and literally makes my head hurt. I can feel my light adjusting itself to the change and the blurriness settling in. Every letter seems to transfer some of its weight onto neighboring letters, even those in a previous paragraph with quite a large vertical gap! I don't see the letters overlap but it's like my mind is telling me that they ARE overlapping. It's bizarre but it's the best description I can give: my brain is convinced they overlap, even though my eyes disagree. I can never focus on those websites and have to quit immediately. Usually pitch black is bad, but I've seen some websites make it work. I once read it has to do with astigmatism and ever since then I've paroted that, but I have friends with astigmatism who scoff at my white/light mode. Examples (most of them from random googling): - This is terrible. The green makes my head hurt and it's very hard to focus on it. https://anilkody.framer.website/?ref=darkmodedesign https://anilkody.framer.website/?ref=darkmodedesign - This is ok. https://www.danielsantos.co/ https://www.danielsantos.co/ - Our company's website is fine https://www.cron.studio/ https://www.cron.studio/ - Also ok https://superset.sh/ https://superset.sh/ - Unbearable: https://www.omnius.so/web-development https://www.omnius.so/web-development I'm a guy who loves to have the maximum brightness, and incredibly bright lights. I'm not kidding: if I work against a black wall I'll go crazy. Back at my parent's place I pointed 4 different strong ceiling lights at the place where I used to have the computer to make sure it was LIT. It sort of sucks because there's an increasing amount of dark-mode only websites and I've had to occasionally apply custom styles to them just to browse...
    - com2kid 5mo ago
      Ooh do me! My site is purposely annoyingly retro! https://generativestorytelling.ai/ https://generativestorytelling.ai/
      - jorl17 5mo ago
        Your website is ok. The blue-on-black text in the footer is very blurry but that's also part of the CRT-filter design. Since most of the actual text is not "white on dark", but "dark on blue", it's very readable. The blue version is fine. The best of all 3 by a large margin The amber version signals me that I should stop looking at it eventually, though I hang on for a while The green version hurts my eyes. I want to leave as soon as possible I think the green is brighter to me than the amber and, on top of that, the black text on green background somehow also gets hard to read. So you definitely made the right choice going with that default!
        com2kid 5mo ago
        It's funny how over saturated that green is on my phone's OLED screen vs my desktop's LCD. The green is retro on my desktop my very not retro on my phone. It is supposed to be a subdued retro green not the overly saturated color that mobile makes it out to be! The blue comes across truest to my vision on both LCD and OLED displays. Thanks for giving it a look! :)
    - kps 5mo ago
      > Every letter seems to transfer some of its weight onto neighboring letters, even those in a previous paragraph with quite a large vertical gap! This is probably astigmatic halation. For me it looks something like this: https://www.threads.com/@mrmedina/post/CuciL0Uvam9 https://www.threads.com/@mrmedina/post/CuciL0Uvam9 If a product/service/site is dark-mode only, I can't/won't use it.
      - picofarad 5mo ago
        Only some dark mode does this to me, and only on some screens. I find "light mode" bearable, but anything else cute like custom fonts or whatever and I am seeing 33 as 88 and 100 as loo. I have schwas in my vision, like swishy halos around light sources. At one point I counted 12 distinct mirrored images. Driving was awful. Reading my 4k screen was impossible, gave it to my wife and switched to a 2k HDR at 175%. I still have swishes but only 1.5-2 and much dimmer. It used to be impossible to read the clock on my stove at night because it would just be a green smear!
- piskov 5mo ago
  I don’t know how anyone with a glossy display can work on a dark theme. I see my whole room unless it is pitch black inside.
  - EvanAnderson 5mo ago
    I don't know how anybody can stand glossy screens, period. The mirror effect is wildly distracting. All my daily driver machines have matte screens. If I could get a matte screen on my phone I would.
    - piskov 5mo ago
      You can easily “stand” glossy screen with white background: you only see reflection on dark background: like check your phone screen. Also not that there were many alternatives to my 32″ 6k display at the time of purchase.
- walterbell 5mo ago
  Lower ambient light, including dark mode, leads to pupil dilation, which is a loss of about 0.5 diopters. Higher ambient light with low-blue content (from lights and screens), where the room and screen are matched has several benefits. Natural light is always best and only light mode screens can match natural light.
cwbrandsma 5mo ago
My eye sight got MUCH worse after a covid infection. I was 20/20 or better before covid, now everything is blurry outside of a very narrow distance range, and white anything can hurt. Granted I'm over 50, so I was expecting my eyes to go bad at some point.
- mkl 5mo ago
  May be a timing coincidence - I'm in my mid 40s and my eyes are changing rapidly and getting much less flexible in terms of range. I'm switching between three different pairs of glasses for different distances, and need new prescriptions every year.
- functionmouse 5mo ago
  fever triggering impending physiological changes maybe
cyanydeez 5mo ago
I think there may be even more issues with brain health and vision. https://www.nccdp.org/the-connection-between-dementia-and-vision-loss/ https://www.nccdp.org/the-connection-between-dementia-and-vi... The eyes connect to the back of the brain and just above the evolutionary older cortext. When those signals start failing, there's some deeper change going on.
- bluechair 5mo ago
  I’ve started going down a similar path for scent and ADHD. I have a horrible sense of smell and just learned that it might correlate with symptoms of ADHD.
  - mkl 5mo ago
    Interesting. Research results seem mixed, and I wonder if ASD comormidity is affecting them. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7369237/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7369237/ has a reasonably large sample size and finds an effect for ASD but not ADHD.
- downrightmike 5mo ago
  Blind people do not develop schizophrenia
  - cyanydeez 5mo ago
    isnt that from birth though.
jasperry 5mo ago
Retinal detachment is one thing that can cause vision loss as we age. My optometrist says that people like me with a strong nearsighted prescription are especially susceptible to it. Another is high pressure inside the eye, which can lead to glaucoma. Get your eye exams regularly, folks.
bluechair 5mo ago
I’ve had surprisingly positive results with these red light glasses: https://www.eye-power.co.uk/product/eyepower-red/ https://www.eye-power.co.uk/product/eyepower-red/ I don’t know who on Hackernews first mentioned these red light glasses but bought them for my mom in the hopes it could alleviate some vision problems she was having. After reading the precautions and fine print she was scared to try them, so I figured, why not see if there’s a difference for me. I don’t know how to describe it other than my eyes feel well rested when I use these consistently. I can see better in the dark and depth perception is just slightly better. I’ll use these puppies forever.
- nikolay 5mo ago
  Really? I bought them when they were released, but never wore them because I thought they were gimmicky once I got them.
Nevermark 5mo ago
> Instead of a single row of data on a spreadsheet, I saw two, one below the other I have keratoconus, where the cornea loses its shape and creates multiple focal points. I have several focal points in each eye. It got so bad I couldn't read. So many copies of every letter that text looked like nests of spiders. Not an exaggeration, you could give me a page and a week and I wouldn't be able to decode it. I also got headaches. Imagine trying to focus when all that does is vary which points in one eye match the other eye. It took a long time for my brain to stop trying. If I look at a little "power dot" on some device across a pitch-black room, I can clearly see all the focal points, at random distances from a presumed center and each other. And a web of smeared focal lines connecting them. It sounds cool, but you really don't want a focal web! Fortunately, surgery involving soaking my cornea with a strengthening substance, and applying lasers to set it, improved my left eye considerably. And then, for unknown reasons, both eyes have improved spontaneously since then. I feel very lucky to be able to read effortlessly, or at all, again. For some reason, I sometimes have bad days and see mildly offset multiples. But mostly, the focal points are so closely clustered I don't notice them. Unless I try and read tiny tiny pill-cannister writing. Now about my damn myopic lenses, ... For most of my life I had noticeably better than 20/20 vision. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keratoconus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keratoconus (I am happy to say, my eyes never looked anything like that picture. They didn't have any visible misshaping. I think my corneas had subtle soft rippling.)
- EvanAnderson 5mo ago
  Fellow keratoconus sufferer here. Glad to hear about your successful treatment and spontaneous improvement. I definitely notice day-to-day differences in my acuity but nothing miraculous like that. Hope it remains good for you. I "missed" corneal collagen crosslinking w/ riboflavin (the treatment I assume you're eluding in your paragraph re: soaking your cornea and applying lasers). When I was initially diagnosed the treatment was in trials outside the US. By the time it was approved in the US my corneal specialist said I'd "stabilized" and was likely to see no benefit for the procedure, only risk. My prescription has been reasonably stable for the last 10 years (at least as far as my astigmatism and keratoconus goes). Now I'm just descending into presbyopia hell. Out of curiosity, do you have a history of allergies with ocular symptoms (itching, swelling)?
piskov 5mo ago
PSA: if you have floaters, try VitroCap for at least 6 months. It doesn’t help everyone, but makes life much easier for some like my mother If I remember correctly, it contains some stuff from ordinary grape seeds that helps to orient back the fibers in a vitreous body. Hence the at least 6 months to understand whether it works or not — new tissue takes time.
- assimpleaspossi 5mo ago
  There are no fibers in a vitreous body. Nor does it contain tissue. Just for fun: if you ever had eye surgery, there's a 50/50 chance the machine used is the one I designed.
  - piskov 5mo ago
    Literally wiki: vitreous collagen is organized as thin *fibrils* 10–25 nm in diameter with cross-striations. Or did you come here to say that ackkhhualy fibrils are not fibers and gel-like structure is not a tissue? :-) English is not my native language so excuse me for not knowing 50 words for snow. Regardless of the terms, are you saying vitrocap cannot help orient those fibrils, reduce clumps / improve transparency of collagen and what have you to alleviate floaters?
EvanAnderson 5mo ago
I'm nearly 49 now. Presbyopia (the loss of ability to close-focus) came on strongly for me at about 46. It was almost like an overnight change. I've also lost significant acuity in low light, but that seemed to come on more slowly. I got my first bifocals last year. I got the "no line" variety and, so far, I hate them. The focal distances I need for reading, viewing my phone, and other close work are at the absolute bottom of the lens. Likewise, I find the top of bifocal area of the lens interfering with straight-ahead vision sometimes, too. I'd like to try a set of bifocals with traditional discrete lenses to see if that improves my experience. I'd be curious to hear others' experiences. re: light - I can definitely tell I have better acuity in bright settings when my irises are "stopped down" to a small pupil. I'm glad of my experience shooting manual focus / aperture cameras because it gives me a good intuition for what the optical instruments in my head are doing. Edit: Oh, and the damned floater in my right eye. I've had it for 15+ years, and they're not increasing (so it's unlikely a symptom of retinal detachment). Reading on paper or a screen and, oddly, driving, always seems to bring it to the center of my vision. I flick my eye around randomly for a few seconds and it goes away for awhile. I haven't even broached the subject with my ophthalmologist because it's not too bad-- just annoying.
- TacticalCoder 5mo ago
  Like you but it began at 51 y/o. No glasses 'till 52 y/o. We had good runs mate! Same: presbyopia and I hate low-light now: it's just as you wrote: better acuity in bright settings. Either during day time or with proper lighting. Still can read signs from the car (say while on the highway) before anyone else so there's that. Can't really share any experience as I don't have a good understanding of glasses/focals.
  - WarOnPrivacy 5mo ago
    > Like you but it began at 51 y/o. No glasses 'till 52 y/o. 40s but it's been a slow grow. I got by on magnifiers until 50 or so. I'm still on my original script. My indy eyeglasses guy got taken out by a hurricane and he was the last one. I can't bring myself to visit s vision mill.
comrade1234 5mo ago
I have keratoconus. It's where there is one or more thin spots in my cornea making my eye pointy in those spots as the internal pressure of the eye pushes out. When I lived in s.f. my ophthalmologist asked me to go to Berkeley to test the students - only one of dozens diagnosed me correctly over a few years. I had to wear contact lenses since junior high because my eyes were so warped that glasses couldn't correct my vision. This was fine but when I hit fifty I started wondering what I'm going to do when I'm really old - I couldn't see myself caring for my scleral lenses at 80 or whatever. My eyes started to develop cataracts at 50. I was lucky and found a great eye surgeon who implanted custom toric lenses. I can now see well enough that I can legally drive a car without lenses. I can read books at night on my phone without lenses. I start my day in the morning on the computer programming without lenses but in the afternoon I usually put on reading glasses and continue... Anyway, I'm so much better off after my cataract surgery than I was before. However I have relatives that are worse off after. I think part of it is my warped eye - I can focus different distances because of it. But also I had a great ophthalmologist which sounds like the major difference.
m463 5mo ago
The lens of the eye usually degrades as you get older. For most people it becomes inflexible first, and you might have trouble squeezing the lens and it limits your range of focus. This is when most people need reading glasses. I had problems with cataracts, when the lens further gets cloudy. Most people eventually get cataracts due to age, but some conditions can speed up the process and you get them earlier. When I had the problem, I had trouble with glare while driving, and seeing a bright computer screen was a chore. I switched to dark mode for reading and computer use and it really helped. It was such a relief. For driving, the glare was like shining headlights on a dirty windshield. Some situations like bright tuner headlights on a rainy night were confusing and required extra care. It helped to use polarized driving glasses, but only a bit. When this stuff gets to be too much, people get cataract surgery to replace the lens. This operation is pretty well sorted, it takes a few minutes to replace the lens, and most people really enjoy the results. for me, I chose single-vision lenses. I got very very good 20/20 vision at a distance and used reading glasses for near vision. There are lots of types of reading glasses available and I have lenses for my computer. I can use very small fonts, and dark mode is completely optional. Funny, but driving at night is a big change. I can see clearly and headlights have switched the type of glare. I can now focus on bright headlights and now the problem is all that light focuses perfectly on probably one cell on my retina and is almost painfully bright. (there are two kinds of glare - disability glare the kind I used to have, and now discomfort glare with a reaction to the absolute brightness) oh, and now that I focus at infinity, getting reading glasses is easy. the formula for it is: 1 / distance-in-meters = +x.xx diopters. So to read your phone at .5 meters, use 1/.5 = +2.00 diopter reading glasses. My computer screen works out to +1.25 diopter. Really close project stuff is +3.0 or more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataract https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataract https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glare_(vision) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glare_(vision) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dioptre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dioptre
01100011 5mo ago
Yeah I've got all the fun eye issues of aging and also a decent case of HPPD which adds a lot of snow to my vision. It seemed to get worse after a spate of ocular migraines a few years ago. It almost feels like my optic nerves were a little fried from the migraines.
WarOnPrivacy 5mo ago
At about 50 I began getting corneal abrasions. My eyes dry out while sleeping and when I open them in the morning, my eyelid would take a certain amount of my cornea with it. Usually just one eye but sometimes both. I trained myself to not open my eyes when I wake up. I work them carefully until I feel safe. Sometimes it still happened a few blinks later. Besides being excruciating, the abrasion mostly blinds me for a few hours. One eye is shot and the other is gushing water. It's a tough way to start the day and I can't recommend it. For a few weeks afterward, I'll see a 25% halo just above a light source. Together they resemble a parasailer at a distance.
- ninala 5mo ago
  This is likely because your eyes are not closing all the way when you sleep. Close your eyes casually and have someone look. They probably will see the whites of your eyes. Try training yourself to close your eyes completely when you sleep. Tape them shut if necessary. See if that helps.
- mjuarez 5mo ago
  Having had this on my right eye a few months ago, I can confirm, the pain is excruciating, and my body was in panic mode. I rushed to the ophtalmologist, who confirmed I had a large abrasion. She says some people sleep with their eyes half open, and because you don't blink while sleeping, that exposed part of your eye completely dries out, and when you blink in the morning, you can rip away a chunk of the cornea. After that, I've been doing Systane ointment or gel, right before going to bed, and eye drops in the morning, as soon as I wake up. Every single day. The doctor said it doesn't happen overnight, it's usually a drying out over multiple days, but I'm not taking any chances. Do yourself a favor and have a doctor check it out.
- miki_tyler 5mo ago
  It happens to me when I am taking creatine. As you did, I trained myself to keep my eyes shut until it is safe to reopen them. I do this automatically now.
erwincoumans 5mo ago
I got bifocal monthly contact lenses (-7, +2 and correction for astigmatism). It has been such a relief to read screen/phone without needing to wear reading glasses while still seeing far away). The daily soft lenses didn't correct as well as the firmer monthly ones.
anjel 5mo ago
The over the counter supplement, Astaxanthin is, when taken once daily, pretty much an opthalmic fountain of youth. YMMV, but I've recommended it to many others who all report its great for age related focusing fatigue.
- walterbell 5mo ago
  Thanks for the pointer.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
myops 5mo ago
I'm 50 and my -7 myopia is now joined by early presbyopia. Buying glasses is a hassle, strong dislike! Bifocals/progressives are expensive. Stores here (nordics) upsell annoyingly, on both frames and lenses. Never regular prices, always sales or 2-for-1 style campaigns. Hard to tell apart quality steps from mere money grab upsells. For progressives different stores offer 3-5 lens qualities, each using vague naming like "better" and "supreme", so cross store price/quality comparison is opaque. Then there's lens thickness options (1.6, 1.67, 1.74 where higher is thinner and costlier). One store said 1.74 is the only feasible option with my -7. Another said 1.6 is ok if I don't mind a thick lens look. Lots of treatment options (basic anti scratch vs more "advanced"). Expensive to just iterate (buy, try, buy differently), especially since the presbyopia will worsen over a period of years, which means buying new again in a year or two.
- walterbell 5mo ago
  See Chemistrie, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48427032 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48427032
retinaros 5mo ago
4k screen is minimum for dev work and text clarity should be priority above any other feature. this will help a lot over the years
- madduci 5mo ago
  As owner of 4K monitors, I can confirm. When in go to the office, where only HD monitors are there, I am basically degrading my work productivity, since I can barely read, since big windows are overall too.
potus_kushner 5mo ago
there's also the factor of display technology. when i got a new laptop with LED-driven display, i couldn't even look at it longer than 5 mins without getting watery eyes. switched back to the vista-era laptop only because of its 1280x800 TFT display - zero issues with that.
daggersandscars 5mo ago
If you have a sudden increase in floaters or start seeing flashes of light, this is a medical emergency. If you’re unlucky, it’s a retinal detachment and you need medical attention to keep your vision. If you’re very lucky, it was only flashes and you’ve had a specific type of migraine. If you’re lucky, it’s posterior vitreous detachment which usually heals on its own.
MarceliusK 5mo ago
What struck me here is how much "good UI" changes with age
- jareklupinski 5mo ago
  as most "U's" do :)

114 points by speckx 5mo ago

Interesting. I've actually been making more use of light mode lately, even for code. Granted, I'm not that old yet but I'm almost 40, and I have astigmatism so dark mode was already difficult to read, but now I feel like its gotten much worse for me. I lament the lack of good light theme choices though because the majority use dark mode, and dark mode is increasingly becoming the default setting which I don't particularly like, but as long as there's a choice its fine. I don't do much work on a screen in the dark anymore though to where dark mode would be necessary. My home office is surrounded by big windows with a ton of natural light.

mikestorrent 5mo ago
Light mode has its place! I think I am far happier reading light mode text, but when I code I want dark mode. Dark for _everything_ is sometimes overwhelming, it always seems like there are too many things to look at.
loloquwowndueo 5mo ago
This. I hate dark mode because it’s difficult to read for me (myopia due to age) - the glowing letters on dark background get much blurrier for some reason. Most people who like dark mode use it so they can be in a dimly lit room and not have the display blast their eyes with light but I’ve found that under low ambient light my vision is far blurrier - a well lit room complemented by light mode (ie natural, default) display is the easiest to read.
- jorl17 5mo ago
  Hear, hear. Back when I attempted to be an edgy college guy, I carried my Gentoo with green foreground on a black background. EVERYWHERE. My pcmanfm (yes, I was one of those) looked glorious in true matrix style (and I did have a matrix screensaver). I did it because it was "cool", not because I felt that dark mode was better. Then when I changed to MacOS, since there wasn't native dark mode, I don't think I ever _thought_ of even changing it. Things just looked great and I had no complaints. And, as I've aged, dark mode started to actually hurt my eyes. There's a special kind of dark mode which I can never put my finger on and literally makes my head hurt. I can feel my light adjusting itself to the change and the blurriness settling in. Every letter seems to transfer some of its weight onto neighboring letters, even those in a previous paragraph with quite a large vertical gap! I don't see the letters overlap but it's like my mind is telling me that they ARE overlapping. It's bizarre but it's the best description I can give: my brain is convinced they overlap, even though my eyes disagree. I can never focus on those websites and have to quit immediately. Usually pitch black is bad, but I've seen some websites make it work. I once read it has to do with astigmatism and ever since then I've paroted that, but I have friends with astigmatism who scoff at my white/light mode. Examples (most of them from random googling): - This is terrible. The green makes my head hurt and it's very hard to focus on it. https://anilkody.framer.website/?ref=darkmodedesign https://anilkody.framer.website/?ref=darkmodedesign - This is ok. https://www.danielsantos.co/ https://www.danielsantos.co/ - Our company's website is fine https://www.cron.studio/ https://www.cron.studio/ - Also ok https://superset.sh/ https://superset.sh/ - Unbearable: https://www.omnius.so/web-development https://www.omnius.so/web-development I'm a guy who loves to have the maximum brightness, and incredibly bright lights. I'm not kidding: if I work against a black wall I'll go crazy. Back at my parent's place I pointed 4 different strong ceiling lights at the place where I used to have the computer to make sure it was LIT. It sort of sucks because there's an increasing amount of dark-mode only websites and I've had to occasionally apply custom styles to them just to browse...
  - com2kid 5mo ago
    Ooh do me! My site is purposely annoyingly retro! https://generativestorytelling.ai/ https://generativestorytelling.ai/
    - jorl17 5mo ago
      Your website is ok. The blue-on-black text in the footer is very blurry but that's also part of the CRT-filter design. Since most of the actual text is not "white on dark", but "dark on blue", it's very readable. The blue version is fine. The best of all 3 by a large margin The amber version signals me that I should stop looking at it eventually, though I hang on for a while The green version hurts my eyes. I want to leave as soon as possible I think the green is brighter to me than the amber and, on top of that, the black text on green background somehow also gets hard to read. So you definitely made the right choice going with that default!
      - com2kid 5mo ago
        It's funny how over saturated that green is on my phone's OLED screen vs my desktop's LCD. The green is retro on my desktop my very not retro on my phone. It is supposed to be a subdued retro green not the overly saturated color that mobile makes it out to be! The blue comes across truest to my vision on both LCD and OLED displays. Thanks for giving it a look! :)
  - kps 5mo ago
    > Every letter seems to transfer some of its weight onto neighboring letters, even those in a previous paragraph with quite a large vertical gap! This is probably astigmatic halation. For me it looks something like this: https://www.threads.com/@mrmedina/post/CuciL0Uvam9 https://www.threads.com/@mrmedina/post/CuciL0Uvam9 If a product/service/site is dark-mode only, I can't/won't use it.
    - picofarad 5mo ago
      Only some dark mode does this to me, and only on some screens. I find "light mode" bearable, but anything else cute like custom fonts or whatever and I am seeing 33 as 88 and 100 as loo. I have schwas in my vision, like swishy halos around light sources. At one point I counted 12 distinct mirrored images. Driving was awful. Reading my 4k screen was impossible, gave it to my wife and switched to a 2k HDR at 175%. I still have swishes but only 1.5-2 and much dimmer. It used to be impossible to read the clock on my stove at night because it would just be a green smear!
piskov 5mo ago
I don’t know how anyone with a glossy display can work on a dark theme. I see my whole room unless it is pitch black inside.
- EvanAnderson 5mo ago
  I don't know how anybody can stand glossy screens, period. The mirror effect is wildly distracting. All my daily driver machines have matte screens. If I could get a matte screen on my phone I would.
  - piskov 5mo ago
    You can easily “stand” glossy screen with white background: you only see reflection on dark background: like check your phone screen. Also not that there were many alternatives to my 32″ 6k display at the time of purchase.
walterbell 5mo ago
Lower ambient light, including dark mode, leads to pupil dilation, which is a loss of about 0.5 diopters. Higher ambient light with low-blue content (from lights and screens), where the room and screen are matched has several benefits. Natural light is always best and only light mode screens can match natural light.

cwbrandsma 5mo ago

My eye sight got MUCH worse after a covid infection. I was 20/20 or better before covid, now everything is blurry outside of a very narrow distance range, and white anything can hurt. Granted I'm over 50, so I was expecting my eyes to go bad at some point.

mkl 5mo ago
May be a timing coincidence - I'm in my mid 40s and my eyes are changing rapidly and getting much less flexible in terms of range. I'm switching between three different pairs of glasses for different distances, and need new prescriptions every year.
functionmouse 5mo ago
fever triggering impending physiological changes maybe

cyanydeez 5mo ago

I think there may be even more issues with brain health and vision. https://www.nccdp.org/the-connection-between-dementia-and-vision-loss/ https://www.nccdp.org/the-connection-between-dementia-and-vi... The eyes connect to the back of the brain and just above the evolutionary older cortext. When those signals start failing, there's some deeper change going on.

bluechair 5mo ago
I’ve started going down a similar path for scent and ADHD. I have a horrible sense of smell and just learned that it might correlate with symptoms of ADHD.
- mkl 5mo ago
  Interesting. Research results seem mixed, and I wonder if ASD comormidity is affecting them. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7369237/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7369237/ has a reasonably large sample size and finds an effect for ASD but not ADHD.
downrightmike 5mo ago
Blind people do not develop schizophrenia
- cyanydeez 5mo ago
  isnt that from birth though.

jasperry 5mo ago

Retinal detachment is one thing that can cause vision loss as we age. My optometrist says that people like me with a strong nearsighted prescription are especially susceptible to it. Another is high pressure inside the eye, which can lead to glaucoma. Get your eye exams regularly, folks.

bluechair 5mo ago

I’ve had surprisingly positive results with these red light glasses: https://www.eye-power.co.uk/product/eyepower-red/ https://www.eye-power.co.uk/product/eyepower-red/ I don’t know who on Hackernews first mentioned these red light glasses but bought them for my mom in the hopes it could alleviate some vision problems she was having. After reading the precautions and fine print she was scared to try them, so I figured, why not see if there’s a difference for me. I don’t know how to describe it other than my eyes feel well rested when I use these consistently. I can see better in the dark and depth perception is just slightly better. I’ll use these puppies forever.

nikolay 5mo ago
Really? I bought them when they were released, but never wore them because I thought they were gimmicky once I got them.

Nevermark 5mo ago

> Instead of a single row of data on a spreadsheet, I saw two, one below the other I have keratoconus, where the cornea loses its shape and creates multiple focal points. I have several focal points in each eye. It got so bad I couldn't read. So many copies of every letter that text looked like nests of spiders. Not an exaggeration, you could give me a page and a week and I wouldn't be able to decode it. I also got headaches. Imagine trying to focus when all that does is vary which points in one eye match the other eye. It took a long time for my brain to stop trying. If I look at a little "power dot" on some device across a pitch-black room, I can clearly see all the focal points, at random distances from a presumed center and each other. And a web of smeared focal lines connecting them. It sounds cool, but you really don't want a focal web! Fortunately, surgery involving soaking my cornea with a strengthening substance, and applying lasers to set it, improved my left eye considerably. And then, for unknown reasons, both eyes have improved spontaneously since then. I feel very lucky to be able to read effortlessly, or at all, again. For some reason, I sometimes have bad days and see mildly offset multiples. But mostly, the focal points are so closely clustered I don't notice them. Unless I try and read tiny tiny pill-cannister writing. Now about my damn myopic lenses, ... For most of my life I had noticeably better than 20/20 vision. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keratoconus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keratoconus (I am happy to say, my eyes never looked anything like that picture. They didn't have any visible misshaping. I think my corneas had subtle soft rippling.)

EvanAnderson 5mo ago
Fellow keratoconus sufferer here. Glad to hear about your successful treatment and spontaneous improvement. I definitely notice day-to-day differences in my acuity but nothing miraculous like that. Hope it remains good for you. I "missed" corneal collagen crosslinking w/ riboflavin (the treatment I assume you're eluding in your paragraph re: soaking your cornea and applying lasers). When I was initially diagnosed the treatment was in trials outside the US. By the time it was approved in the US my corneal specialist said I'd "stabilized" and was likely to see no benefit for the procedure, only risk. My prescription has been reasonably stable for the last 10 years (at least as far as my astigmatism and keratoconus goes). Now I'm just descending into presbyopia hell. Out of curiosity, do you have a history of allergies with ocular symptoms (itching, swelling)?

piskov 5mo ago

PSA: if you have floaters, try VitroCap for at least 6 months. It doesn’t help everyone, but makes life much easier for some like my mother If I remember correctly, it contains some stuff from ordinary grape seeds that helps to orient back the fibers in a vitreous body. Hence the at least 6 months to understand whether it works or not — new tissue takes time.

assimpleaspossi 5mo ago
There are no fibers in a vitreous body. Nor does it contain tissue. Just for fun: if you ever had eye surgery, there's a 50/50 chance the machine used is the one I designed.
- piskov 5mo ago
  Literally wiki: vitreous collagen is organized as thin *fibrils* 10–25 nm in diameter with cross-striations. Or did you come here to say that ackkhhualy fibrils are not fibers and gel-like structure is not a tissue? :-) English is not my native language so excuse me for not knowing 50 words for snow. Regardless of the terms, are you saying vitrocap cannot help orient those fibrils, reduce clumps / improve transparency of collagen and what have you to alleviate floaters?

EvanAnderson 5mo ago

I'm nearly 49 now. Presbyopia (the loss of ability to close-focus) came on strongly for me at about 46. It was almost like an overnight change. I've also lost significant acuity in low light, but that seemed to come on more slowly. I got my first bifocals last year. I got the "no line" variety and, so far, I hate them. The focal distances I need for reading, viewing my phone, and other close work are at the absolute bottom of the lens. Likewise, I find the top of bifocal area of the lens interfering with straight-ahead vision sometimes, too. I'd like to try a set of bifocals with traditional discrete lenses to see if that improves my experience. I'd be curious to hear others' experiences. re: light - I can definitely tell I have better acuity in bright settings when my irises are "stopped down" to a small pupil. I'm glad of my experience shooting manual focus / aperture cameras because it gives me a good intuition for what the optical instruments in my head are doing. Edit: Oh, and the damned floater in my right eye. I've had it for 15+ years, and they're not increasing (so it's unlikely a symptom of retinal detachment). Reading on paper or a screen and, oddly, driving, always seems to bring it to the center of my vision. I flick my eye around randomly for a few seconds and it goes away for awhile. I haven't even broached the subject with my ophthalmologist because it's not too bad-- just annoying.

TacticalCoder 5mo ago
Like you but it began at 51 y/o. No glasses 'till 52 y/o. We had good runs mate! Same: presbyopia and I hate low-light now: it's just as you wrote: better acuity in bright settings. Either during day time or with proper lighting. Still can read signs from the car (say while on the highway) before anyone else so there's that. Can't really share any experience as I don't have a good understanding of glasses/focals.
- WarOnPrivacy 5mo ago
  > Like you but it began at 51 y/o. No glasses 'till 52 y/o. 40s but it's been a slow grow. I got by on magnifiers until 50 or so. I'm still on my original script. My indy eyeglasses guy got taken out by a hurricane and he was the last one. I can't bring myself to visit s vision mill.

comrade1234 5mo ago

I have keratoconus. It's where there is one or more thin spots in my cornea making my eye pointy in those spots as the internal pressure of the eye pushes out. When I lived in s.f. my ophthalmologist asked me to go to Berkeley to test the students - only one of dozens diagnosed me correctly over a few years. I had to wear contact lenses since junior high because my eyes were so warped that glasses couldn't correct my vision. This was fine but when I hit fifty I started wondering what I'm going to do when I'm really old - I couldn't see myself caring for my scleral lenses at 80 or whatever. My eyes started to develop cataracts at 50. I was lucky and found a great eye surgeon who implanted custom toric lenses. I can now see well enough that I can legally drive a car without lenses. I can read books at night on my phone without lenses. I start my day in the morning on the computer programming without lenses but in the afternoon I usually put on reading glasses and continue... Anyway, I'm so much better off after my cataract surgery than I was before. However I have relatives that are worse off after. I think part of it is my warped eye - I can focus different distances because of it. But also I had a great ophthalmologist which sounds like the major difference.

m463 5mo ago

The lens of the eye usually degrades as you get older. For most people it becomes inflexible first, and you might have trouble squeezing the lens and it limits your range of focus. This is when most people need reading glasses. I had problems with cataracts, when the lens further gets cloudy. Most people eventually get cataracts due to age, but some conditions can speed up the process and you get them earlier. When I had the problem, I had trouble with glare while driving, and seeing a bright computer screen was a chore. I switched to dark mode for reading and computer use and it really helped. It was such a relief. For driving, the glare was like shining headlights on a dirty windshield. Some situations like bright tuner headlights on a rainy night were confusing and required extra care. It helped to use polarized driving glasses, but only a bit. When this stuff gets to be too much, people get cataract surgery to replace the lens. This operation is pretty well sorted, it takes a few minutes to replace the lens, and most people really enjoy the results. for me, I chose single-vision lenses. I got very very good 20/20 vision at a distance and used reading glasses for near vision. There are lots of types of reading glasses available and I have lenses for my computer. I can use very small fonts, and dark mode is completely optional. Funny, but driving at night is a big change. I can see clearly and headlights have switched the type of glare. I can now focus on bright headlights and now the problem is all that light focuses perfectly on probably one cell on my retina and is almost painfully bright. (there are two kinds of glare - disability glare the kind I used to have, and now discomfort glare with a reaction to the absolute brightness) oh, and now that I focus at infinity, getting reading glasses is easy. the formula for it is: 1 / distance-in-meters = +x.xx diopters. So to read your phone at .5 meters, use 1/.5 = +2.00 diopter reading glasses. My computer screen works out to +1.25 diopter. Really close project stuff is +3.0 or more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataract https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataract https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glare_(vision) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glare_(vision) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dioptre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dioptre

01100011 5mo ago

Yeah I've got all the fun eye issues of aging and also a decent case of HPPD which adds a lot of snow to my vision. It seemed to get worse after a spate of ocular migraines a few years ago. It almost feels like my optic nerves were a little fried from the migraines.

WarOnPrivacy 5mo ago

At about 50 I began getting corneal abrasions. My eyes dry out while sleeping and when I open them in the morning, my eyelid would take a certain amount of my cornea with it. Usually just one eye but sometimes both. I trained myself to not open my eyes when I wake up. I work them carefully until I feel safe. Sometimes it still happened a few blinks later. Besides being excruciating, the abrasion mostly blinds me for a few hours. One eye is shot and the other is gushing water. It's a tough way to start the day and I can't recommend it. For a few weeks afterward, I'll see a 25% halo just above a light source. Together they resemble a parasailer at a distance.

ninala 5mo ago
This is likely because your eyes are not closing all the way when you sleep. Close your eyes casually and have someone look. They probably will see the whites of your eyes. Try training yourself to close your eyes completely when you sleep. Tape them shut if necessary. See if that helps.
mjuarez 5mo ago
Having had this on my right eye a few months ago, I can confirm, the pain is excruciating, and my body was in panic mode. I rushed to the ophtalmologist, who confirmed I had a large abrasion. She says some people sleep with their eyes half open, and because you don't blink while sleeping, that exposed part of your eye completely dries out, and when you blink in the morning, you can rip away a chunk of the cornea. After that, I've been doing Systane ointment or gel, right before going to bed, and eye drops in the morning, as soon as I wake up. Every single day. The doctor said it doesn't happen overnight, it's usually a drying out over multiple days, but I'm not taking any chances. Do yourself a favor and have a doctor check it out.
miki_tyler 5mo ago
It happens to me when I am taking creatine. As you did, I trained myself to keep my eyes shut until it is safe to reopen them. I do this automatically now.

erwincoumans 5mo ago

I got bifocal monthly contact lenses (-7, +2 and correction for astigmatism). It has been such a relief to read screen/phone without needing to wear reading glasses while still seeing far away). The daily soft lenses didn't correct as well as the firmer monthly ones.

anjel 5mo ago

The over the counter supplement, Astaxanthin is, when taken once daily, pretty much an opthalmic fountain of youth. YMMV, but I've recommended it to many others who all report its great for age related focusing fatigue.

walterbell 5mo ago
Thanks for the pointer.

deleted 5mo ago

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myops 5mo ago

I'm 50 and my -7 myopia is now joined by early presbyopia. Buying glasses is a hassle, strong dislike! Bifocals/progressives are expensive. Stores here (nordics) upsell annoyingly, on both frames and lenses. Never regular prices, always sales or 2-for-1 style campaigns. Hard to tell apart quality steps from mere money grab upsells. For progressives different stores offer 3-5 lens qualities, each using vague naming like "better" and "supreme", so cross store price/quality comparison is opaque. Then there's lens thickness options (1.6, 1.67, 1.74 where higher is thinner and costlier). One store said 1.74 is the only feasible option with my -7. Another said 1.6 is ok if I don't mind a thick lens look. Lots of treatment options (basic anti scratch vs more "advanced"). Expensive to just iterate (buy, try, buy differently), especially since the presbyopia will worsen over a period of years, which means buying new again in a year or two.

walterbell 5mo ago
See Chemistrie, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48427032 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48427032

retinaros 5mo ago

4k screen is minimum for dev work and text clarity should be priority above any other feature. this will help a lot over the years

madduci 5mo ago
As owner of 4K monitors, I can confirm. When in go to the office, where only HD monitors are there, I am basically degrading my work productivity, since I can barely read, since big windows are overall too.

potus_kushner 5mo ago

there's also the factor of display technology. when i got a new laptop with LED-driven display, i couldn't even look at it longer than 5 mins without getting watery eyes. switched back to the vista-era laptop only because of its 1280x800 TFT display - zero issues with that.

daggersandscars 5mo ago

If you have a sudden increase in floaters or start seeing flashes of light, this is a medical emergency. If you’re unlucky, it’s a retinal detachment and you need medical attention to keep your vision. If you’re very lucky, it was only flashes and you’ve had a specific type of migraine. If you’re lucky, it’s posterior vitreous detachment which usually heals on its own.

MarceliusK 5mo ago

What struck me here is how much "good UI" changes with age

jareklupinski 5mo ago
as most "U's" do :)