How my new wireless headphones caused me eye problems
(I know the title of this post looks like a total click-bait, but please bear with me.)
Nine months ago, in early September 2022, I began experiencing eye problems. My eyes would become bloodshot, dry, and start itching, sometimes with sharp pain behind the eyeballs. Here is just one photo showing the symptoms.
I work as a programmer, spending at least 8 hours a day in front of a monitor, so obviously I put a lot of strain on my eyes. But such rapid development of symptoms was very surprising. Interestingly, there seemed to be no general rule as to when this would happen. Sometimes I would go to bed without any problems and wake up in the morning with my eyes hurting. Or I would experience the most severe symptoms during the weekend when I didn’t spend any time in front of the screen. Sometimes only one eye would be affected, while the other was fine. All of this was worrying.
My first attempt at dealing with the problem was using over-the-counter eye drops available at the pharmacy. I tried these for about 4-5 weeks but when things did not improve I went to the optometrist. Examination showed no clear cause of problems and I was prescribed steroid eye drops. These somewhat alleviated the symptoms, but the problems persisted. I went to another optometrist to get a second opinion but again everything seemed fine wit my eyes and there was no obvious cause for the problems I was experiencing. I got some other medicine, including gel with vitamin A, but these at best temporarily helped with the symptoms.
My problems started in September. It was January already and the whole thing was significantly affecting my daily life and general well-being. As an act of desperation I told everything to my physio. She’s a real genius and in the past helped me with problems I would never think are musculoskeletal. She began asking me about any possible changes in my desktop setup: “Have you changed font size?”, “Is your screen closer or farther than it was?”, “Have you changed your chair?”, etc. I answered all these questions with “no”. My setup remains unchanged for the past several years: same chair, same table, same monitor, same UI settings. Nothing has changed.
Or has it? Two days after talking to her it dawned on me: I have new wireless headphones. I bought them online so it was easy to check the purchase date: 26th of August. Just a few days before my problems began. Could this be the problem? I remember first using the headphones they were a bit too tight, causing my jaw muscle to hurt during the first couple of days. But then the jaw pain went away and things seemed fine, except I didn’t thought eye problems could be the caused by headphones. I had to test this hypothesis and, with a lot of regret, put the headphones away and went back to my old wired earbuds. From that moment things gradually began to improve. Recovery process wasn’t immediate. It took several weeks before I could declare my eye problems to be practically gone.
It seems that my eyes were hurting due to eye muscles being strained, though I still don’t know what was directly causing this strain. Was it the pressure from headphones on the jaw muscles or the extra weight placed on my head straining neck muscles? Either way it looks like I can’t go back to my wireless headphones. Once the symptoms disappeared I thought I’ll try using my new headphones again and this time it only took 15 minutes before the characteristic sharp pain behind my eye reappeared.
I’m sharing this in hope it helps someone who might be struggling with a similar problem and can’t find the cause. I’m specifically not saying which exact headphones I got since I think that is completely irrelevant here.