Re: Health problems for programmers

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From: Larry Serflaten (serflaten_at_usinternet.com)
Date: 02/28/04 

Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2004 04:51:56 -0600

"Faraz Azhar" <itz_faraz@hotmail.com> wrote
> What do you think might be the secrets of good health for a
> programmer? Its very likely to get the eys damaged with long hours. Do
> people take breaks in between ? I dont think so.
>
> Do any of you guys have started getting health problems after spending
> long hours of programming? What do you do about it?

About the only serious problem I've had is from a cheap keyboard I
picked up. The keys were loose, or had a lot of side to side play at
rest and when pressing down they gave resistance down to about
40 or 50 mm from the stop position. At the tail end of the down
stroke all resistance was removed so the down pressure required to
depress the key would have my fingers slam into the stop when
resistance was removed. 6 months of that and my fingers began
to hurt when typing, and at 9 months, it was real painful after just
5 minutes of typing. My joints were near normal otherwise but as
soon as I started typing they quickly began to hurt. Because I
had been typing for many years, I thought all that typing was
catching up to me, but when I had need to use a different computer,
I noticed my fingers did not hurt near as bad. I then replaced the
keyboard and after a few months of healing, I have been fine ever since.

I also have noticed eye strain when sitting in front of the monitor
for hours (playing Quake, or other such activities). I would suggest
2 things to help reduce the problem from using CRTs;

1. Do not sit in front of your monitor. Move the monitor off to one
    side such that you can easily see the back corner of the monitor.
    Make it so that you have to lean over to put yourself in front of
    the monitor. The purpose is to take your self out of the path of
    the electron gun at the back of your picture tube. Sure, those
    electrons are suppose to stop at the screen, but considering their
    size, do you think they are all stopped?

2. Increase your display rate to 75 Hz or faster. If you have ever
    taken a picture of a TV screen, you may have noticed part of
    the screen is dark. The electron beam is actually at the lower
    edge of the lighted area, with the lighted area partly from
    having the camera shutter open while the beam is moving and
    partly from the persistance of the phospher used in the monitor.
    The dark area is where the phospher has lost its brilliance. So
    why do we not see that? It is because our own eyes have a
    persistance value also. So, like the monitor, it is being bombarded
    on and off, on and off, at the rate of 60 times a second. Whether
    that persistance is in the retina, or in the pathways to your brain,
    I have no clue, but wherever it is, it is getting exercised and can
    become fatigued. When you increase your scan rate, you rely
    less on that ability. It seems to help....

 Try those for a week and see if you notice a difference....

LFS

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