[AJ007]

I think there is something with reading angle too: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aos.13148/abstrac...

"Reading in a sitting posture at myopia onset predicted the greatest myopic progression to adulthood and reading face up on one's back the lowest. Reading with eyes on turned more downwards was slightly connected with greater myopic progression."

I had some major vision problems a couple of years ago, to the point I didn't touch a computer for about 4 months. iPad and iPhone screens weren't bothering me so I got to keep working.

My suggestion to people having severe problems is to strip apart every variable and test. A few things I have suspicions about which I have rarely seen addressed:

- switching between low & high DPI screens

- lights/screens which are not on the same frequency

- viewing angle (referring back to the myopia study.) Prior to a standing desk I would always lean back in my chair - going back to when I was like 11 years old.

From my opinion, if you took best practices and worst practices, and then like did all the worst ones you would be fucked pretty quickly. You could take someone in great health and give them chronic pain in weeks or a few month. Doctor's advice shouldn't be ignored, especially when something fatal may be occurring, but in many cases they may have no helpful advice.

Ergonomic / RSI / Carpel tunnel issues apply here as well. I've mentioned before I had severe RSI with chronic, 24/7 pain for years, and exhaustive attempts to fix it eventually cured it. Unfortunately as I get older I've also had to acknowledge that our bodies get less and less capable of fixing themselves. At the least we can try really hard to do things which aren't aggravating the decline.

[orpheansodality]

How did you eventually get over your RSI? I've been struggling through my own for a few years now and haven't had any real improvement.

[dvtv75]

I realize you weren't asking me, but as I had it many, many years ago I'll describe it, before I go into what I did.

One day, I woke up and both hands felt a bit odd, painful and tingling all the time. The next day, I woke up and both hands were burning. I had no strength, and no fine control at all. When I did tense them, it felt like I was holding my hands under a running hot tap. I couldn't hold a fork to get food to my mouth, I couldn't even hold a key to get it into the lock to open the door.

I was studying at the time, and obviously couldn't continue that. No doctor was able to help me, I was put on anti-inflamatories that were completely ineffective. I started drinking to deal with the pain, and within a couple of months I was drinking 3.2 gallons (12 liters) of beer a day, just to dull the pain.

Once the pain died away, I was still left with some serious problems. Fortunately alcohol dependence was not one of them (I just stopped drinking). Any repetitive motion that lasted more than a few minutes would cause me a day or more of pain. I found I was unable to reliably hold things, and I could just lose my grip on whatever was in my hands. Many glasses and cups were smashed because I just couldn't hold them.

So here's when I figured out what was wrong: many of my problems were related to a significant loss of strength. Because I had been unable to do anything for more than three months, I had lost much of the strength in my hands and forearms. Stamina, too. This meant that when I did anything repetitive, I was straining the muscles beyond their ability to cope.

I sold my computers, and grabbed a pair of free weights I had lying around. The "free" part is important, because machines reduce the load on ancillary muscles. I started doing some very basic arm strength exercises (curls and reverse curls). However, training yourself is something I would recommend against - find a reputable physiotherapist and have them set you out a basic rehab program, and get a muscle balance assessment, too. You could find that you have other issues that are causing your problems - I still have serious muscle tension issues that I am working on, with the assistance of a physio.

I studied personal training some years after, and I've found that it's so very easy to screw it up when you do it all yourself. I met one guy who thought he was just a paragon of bodybuilding - he was bench pressing well over 200 pounds, but his lat pulldowns were limited to just 30 or 40 pounds. His shoulders were rounded so far forward that you couldn't see any definition in his pecs.

The main reason I recommend a physio rather than a Personal Trainer (PT) is that, as I said, you may have some biomechanical issues that need sorting out, and no matter how much a PT may claim they can do this kind of thing, they are not medical professionals. A PT would be helpful in making sure you you are biomechanically sound in implementing the physio's program, but there's no substitute for real medical help.

I hope this helps you, good luck.