Headaches. This should help

[theoldwolf]

I never get headaches, at least not since I was a kid. For the last month or so I've been plagued with incessant ones - not migraines, thank Mogg, but enough to keep me on edge and not feeling my best. Had my BP checked, saw the doc, he made supportive noises and gave me a few generic solutions, said to come back and schedule an MRI if nothing has gotten better by the New Year.

Tonight I think I finally figured out what's going on.

I got new glasses several months ago. New prescription that works fine for distance and reading, but left my midrange woefully inadequate - specifically, the distance at which I keep my monitor. Tonight the pain had settled in the back of my neck, and I realized that for months I've been sitting at my monitor craning my neck upward to get the very maxiumum magnification out of my progressive lenses. And with lousy posture, too.

For an experiment, I grabbed some reading glasses that I use for small, small print and slipped them on over my regular ones. Lo and behold, I could actually see the screen without bending my neck, and immediately I felt a release of pressure in the back of my head. As soon as the new year rolls over and my insurance benefit kicks in, I'm going to have some new specs made up designed for working at my desk. That should take care of my headaches forever... knock wood.

Comments

[alaskawolf.livejournal.com]

If it's the glasses are the problem that sure would be a big relief

[torakiyoshi.livejournal.com]

A less expensive, at least temporary, solution might be to adjust the height of the monitor.

-=TK

[carlfoxmarten]

Glad you found the source of your problems before they became big ones.
Would there be an advantage to getting custom glasses for using your computer instead of just using the ones you found?

My dad always had headaches back when he was in school. As it turned out, one eye was only slightly off-focus from the other. Combined with the brain's focusing operations (focus with one eye, then focus with the other eye, oh hey, the other one's out of focus now, ad infinitum), he had almost constant headaches.
(he almost didn't get glasses, either, as the prescription was too slight for most optometrists)

[ccdesan.livejournal.com]

The ones I found are only a stopgap solution - they help, but I have to balance them on top of my regular specs and it's not comfortable. What's more, my focus at that range is slightly different in each eye - so the custom Rx seems like the right way to go.

[kusanagi-sama.livejournal.com]

Despite the fact that I have astigmatism, I do not wear glasses. I stopped doing that about 5 years ago. It messed with my eye alignment whenever I look to the sides and kind of caused some headaches.

BTW, I like the icon you used in this journal. Just watched the "King and I" movie Saturday. (It was one of my Mom's Christmas present)