I had a similar situation/concern a few years back… went to Dr and Optician got glasses, light therapy etc. No improvement and became exasperated.
What solved the mental focus for me was light movement while reading (walking on treadmill etc) and/or laying down to relax most core muscles. Second, shockingly NOT chewing gum or doing too much downward facing iPhone reading made a massive difference to my vision.
Causality? The impact of posture and/or movement on breathing has a big impact on brain focus. If you have a blood O2 meter you can test this while your are reading. Ironically the more worried you become about not focusing the more you hold your breath and the more clenched your posture. It’s a vicious cycle.
Gum was the shocker, I would habitually chew in the morning for an hour or two (mindlessly) and it turns out it was over taxing the jaw and neck muscles. This caused the eye muscles to be impacted and resulted in blurry strained vision. Cutting out gum for a week almost entirely removed my need for glasses. Lastly, I would still get blurry vision occasionally and finally narrowed it down to iPhone “texting neck”.
I’ll post a couple of refs in a minute. May be unrelated but if there’s a thread to pull on here I hope it helps.
I've found this too, even at 30. Walking on a treadmill (or using a stationary bike) while reading makes it so much easier, though I am starting to find it easy enough to read in bed without moving again. It took some time to build back up to it though.
Anyone wanting to understand the “why” behind this is encouraged to read Ray Dalio’s latest book. As the worlds largest hedge fund his firm put big bets against Europe last year and doubled down more this year. There are generational macro effects that make this far more predictable and yet uncontrollable at play. Also checkout Peter Zeihan’s book that briefly made it to the NY top 10 a couple of months back. Both have done the scholarly work so you don’t have to…
Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail https://a.co/d/glYQyNV
+1 … anyone looking for science, checkout this sample report from a testing service for mental health doctors. It explains the symptoms and the likely deficiencies (like Magnesium) which likely lead to them.
Importantly the last few pages have example treatment for common conditions. You should still seek medical support though, with great power comes great responsibility. Don’t trust your powerful cloud data center to a junior sysadmin.
Thanks for commenting and for the link -- it seems like a fantastic resource.
The HN comment (I wish I had saved it!) surprised me because I'e searched online as to whether this was even a real problem and what solutions existed, but most of the posts I came across were vague and unhelpful.
Very interesting. I can’t help feel the irony given Alexa itself was a brand Bezos acquired* in 1999 to get in on being a Search Engine just when Google was on the rise...
I can hear it now “We finally have a use for that brand we spent all that money on..”
Slow burn of this topic, this deeper analysis looked at Netflix’s impact on Hollywood too. This[1] is from 2019:
“[Netflix] now routinely ends shows after their second season, even when they’re still popular. Netflix has learned that the first two seasons of a show are key to bringing in subscribers—but the third ... don’t do much...”
It seems most of us develop astigmatisms from using our screens less than an hour, particularly when at a 40 dev angle (like a laptop, phone) [1] and despite being temporary (mins, hours, days) the astigmatisms themselves vary in angles and wavelengths (read dark text, light text) effected from person to person. All of this adds up to no one person having the same level of strain from the same colors/brightness, and then compounded by it constantly changing and shifting with eye strain. For example, one of my eyes has trouble focusing on dark blue on bright white as the day progresses, the other eye hates red on black.
Late to this discussion, but witnessing the amazing community support is uplifting and I thought I'd drop a couple of links I don't think I saw in any other comments:
2. Gordon Gund - Blind later in life, conquered the market by speed listening. Quote: "Meanwhile his (acquired) blindness seemed to pour gasoline on the fire of his life, and he began to flourish in unexpected arenas."
https://vimeo.com/296637627 (TED-style inspiring video, speed listening at ~8:45)
https://n-magazine.com/blind-curing-blind/
3. CRISPR holds promise, never stop hoping for a cure. It's an amazing time to be alive, keep building amazing tech for the world, and perhaps even learn to program the big data tools used to find the solution.
https://www.cell.com/molecular-therapy-family/methods/fullte...
Unfortunately, can't link directly, but search for jobs at "Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard" with the title "Bioinformatics" or "Python" in the query.
Posting because I think its about time the diversity discussion also includes the negative labels which exclude people with different mental strengths (ADHD, Aspergers to name a few). Our differences start at a genetic level, gender, race, physical abilities and mental strengths. Reducing them each to a label which can be portrayed as a binary good/bad misses the huge opportunity of embracing the differences. If we empower each other to accentuate and enhance our uniqueness instead of repressing it for conformity, then identify how it can be best applied for maximum positive impact we will have a greater chance to succeed as individuals, teams, nations and as a species.
What solved the mental focus for me was light movement while reading (walking on treadmill etc) and/or laying down to relax most core muscles. Second, shockingly NOT chewing gum or doing too much downward facing iPhone reading made a massive difference to my vision.
Causality? The impact of posture and/or movement on breathing has a big impact on brain focus. If you have a blood O2 meter you can test this while your are reading. Ironically the more worried you become about not focusing the more you hold your breath and the more clenched your posture. It’s a vicious cycle.
Gum was the shocker, I would habitually chew in the morning for an hour or two (mindlessly) and it turns out it was over taxing the jaw and neck muscles. This caused the eye muscles to be impacted and resulted in blurry strained vision. Cutting out gum for a week almost entirely removed my need for glasses. Lastly, I would still get blurry vision occasionally and finally narrowed it down to iPhone “texting neck”.
I’ll post a couple of refs in a minute. May be unrelated but if there’s a thread to pull on here I hope it helps.