The simple thing he didn't mention as the cause of his headaches -- other than alluding to it -- is eyestrain. As programmers we are consistently straining our eyes. I'm always in the doghouse with my optometrist because I am always breaking her rules. She understands programmers and what they do to their bodies (fingers, wrists, eyes, posture), but obviously her bias is the eyes so she has a few rules that I should live by:
- don't strain the eyes reading small text. Smartphones are especially bad at this.
- don't always look at the same distance. It strains the muscles. We were meant to look at short and far distances, but monitors are always 2-3 ft from our face.
- Take A LOT of eye breaks. Every 10-15 minutes just look somewhere else. That's all.
- Blink. When people read screens, they blink less. If you don't blink, your eyes don't lubricate themselevs and you can develop sores under your eyelids (especially so with contact lenses).
- Get more sleep.
- Wash around your eyes every night. This is good advice for women as well as men. If you mistreat your eyes, you can get protein build-up around the eyelids and follicles. Make sure you gently clean all of it away with a warm compress.
Basically, treat your eyes like precious little jewels. Pamper them and they'll last a long time.
My laptops resolution is 1920x1080 which makes HN text look almost microscopical, and I spend reading HN 1/3 of my day. I think from this day on I will ctrl++ :) Thanks for advice!
- don't strain the eyes reading small text. Smartphones are especially bad at this.
- don't always look at the same distance. It strains the muscles. We were meant to look at short and far distances, but monitors are always 2-3 ft from our face.
- Take A LOT of eye breaks. Every 10-15 minutes just look somewhere else. That's all.
- Blink. When people read screens, they blink less. If you don't blink, your eyes don't lubricate themselevs and you can develop sores under your eyelids (especially so with contact lenses).
- Get more sleep.
- Wash around your eyes every night. This is good advice for women as well as men. If you mistreat your eyes, you can get protein build-up around the eyelids and follicles. Make sure you gently clean all of it away with a warm compress.
Basically, treat your eyes like precious little jewels. Pamper them and they'll last a long time.