HACKER Q&A
📣 dizzythrowaway

Anyone else experience dizziness after prolonged computer monitor use?


After many months of experiencing dizziness, I think I’ve finally tracked it down to monitor usage —- the dizziness was most prevalent after work, and was worse after busy days where I’ve been focusing hard and not taking breaks from the screen.

I’ve gotten a lot better by taking regular breaks (fully away from the desk every hour), following the 20/20/20 rule, and getting out for a walk at lunchtime. I also cut monitor and screen usage outside of work down.

Anyone else experienced something like this? I hear people regularly discussing eye strain, but not dizziness as such.

  👤 helph67 Accepted Answer ✓
Used to suffer severe bouts, perhaps once per year. Cause unknown until a doctor suggested "maybe due to caffeine". Removed most from diet and problem solved! Worth a try?
👤 mattmanser
Have you had your eyes checked?

I used to get headaches and feel nauseous by the end of the day, it was simply that I needed glasses.

👤 the_only_law
Less dizziness but I find if I spend a lot of time playing a game or something I’ll feel moderately lightheaded and out of it after stopping.

The feeling is similar to the morning after taking moderately strong sleep aids without the drowsiness.

👤 tyroh
For me it, was because of the lousy resolution of my laptop monitor. I just got an extra monitor to solve it.
👤 6r0k
I personally have not experienced dizziness per se, but have certainly felt the effects of prolonged screen usage. For me it generally manifests as pressure headaches and irritability.

> I’ve gotten a lot better by taking regular breaks (fully away from the desk every hour), following the 20/20/20 rule, and getting out for a walk at lunchtime. I also cut monitor and screen usage outside of work down.

I think you nailed it with this. As difficult as it may be at times, complete separation from the screen is the best solution.

I'm actually extremely interested in health implications of computer hackers and write about it on my blog. So, there are a couple of other considerations to keep in mind that may be contributing:

1. Your posture; particularly your shoulders and head/neck position. The tl;dr is poor posture puts a significant amount of strain on your nerves and blood vessels which can lead to a whole host of problems including dizziness. I wrote a bit about that here [0] if you'd like to read more.

2. Electromagnetic sensitivity [1]. Our computer monitors, amongst every other electronic device around us, emit electromagnetic fields, and some of us are more sensitive to them than others. And one of the most commonly mentioned symptoms is dizziness. An interesting way to combat that this is with a concept called "earthing", which is basically a means of discharging the buildup in your body by direct physical contact with the vast supply of electrons on the surface of the earth [2]. This is a new concept to me and so have limited details. It is something I'd like to look into more and write about, but wanted to share in case it may help.

[0] https://healthyhacker.co/the-ideal-posture-for-typing-on-a-k...

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26372109/

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3265077/