How Your Computer Monitor Is Slowly Killing Your Eyes, And What You Can Do About It.

Hey, it's Ben Greenfield. And if you use a computer, maybe you're using a computer right now. Maybe you're using a monitor right now. If you look at a monitor ever. You should listen into this podcast episode. Now, I'm gonna warn you, my guest is. He's foreign. He's from, I think, Bulgaria or Hungary or one of these other G. One of these other countries in Europe with it with a G in their title. So there's a little bit of kind of like an accent barrier. But consider that to be extreme brain training for your br to have to be able to get through this dude's accent, because it actually is really good information. And the stuff that he's talking about, I'm now implementing on my computer. We talk about ways that you can literally make a monitor very healthy for your eyes and your body. And we get into a whole bunch of other things that I've always wanted to talk about when it comes to all the geekery that goes into choosing a monitor that's not going to destroy your eyes over time or give you myopia, which is the fancy term for nearsightedness. So this is gonna be a cool episode. But speaking of brain training, I don't know if you've tried it yet, but there is this Kimera coffee stuff. K I M E R A k o f f e-e.com is where you get it. And I didn't realize this, but they spent many, many months, I believe, close to a year and 54 different prototypes to actually get the ideal blend of nootropics and flavor in their. So neurotropics are different than smart drugs. They're natural. They're not processed by your liver. They actually allow you to turn up the dial in your brain, but in a more natural herbal way. So they have alpha gpc, which does a whole bunch of things. It increases nerve growth factor receptors in the brain, release of dopamine, recall, attention, reaction time, whole bunch of stuff. They've got taurine in there, which has some really cool antioxidant properties. But then I just recently realized this. It lowers cortisol. So even though coffee can raise cortisol a little bit, Taurine actually works in the opposite direction, cortisol, which is cool, especially when you can get it without having to slam a Red Bull. They've got L theanine in there, which helps to improve your sleep quality, even if you have it with coffee. And then a dmae, which they call a vigilance enhancer. That would be a Great name for a band. The Vigilance Enhancers. But anyways, it can reduce distractibility, improve sleep and it's some good stuff also when it comes to nootropic. It even promotes red blood cell function. So it's like you're getting illegal performance enhancing drugs shot up your right butt cheek, but instead you're just sipping a cup of coffee. So check it out. K I m e r a K-O-F-F e e.com and if you go over there and you use discount code Ben, you will save a boatload of money. You get 10% off anything from kameracoffee.com K I M E R A K O F F E-E.com I think I spelled it like 10 times now, so you should probably have that. Okay. Coconut oil. I do coconut oil pulling now. In the morning while I'm making my smoothie, I take about a teaspoon of coconut oil and I put it in my mouth and then I swish it around. And this is an ancient ayurvedic practice for removing bacteria from the teeth, whitening the teeth, etc. Keeping your Khmer coffee from staining your teeth. But I use a raw extra virgin coconut oil because I want the good stuff. I spit it out after about five minutes. A lot of people think you need to coconut oil. It's pull for 20 minutes but it's only five min. Then you rinse with water and that's it. And there is this company that makes sustainable coconut oil. They get raw organic coconut oil from Sri Lanka that utilizes every part of the coconut, the coconut milk, the water, the chips, the husks, the shells. Anyway, so it's a sustainable process for making coconut oil. But not only can you get the oil of the coconut from this nut company, but you can get any nut on the face of the planet. Tiger nuts, cashews, cacao, Brazil nut, almonds, you name it. And the name of this company is nutsnuts.com nuts.com I don't even need to tell you how to spell that. And when you go to nuts.com and you get anything, including that coconut oil that I talked about. For your coconut oil practice, you get to choose from over 50 different options and just throw four free samples of anything you want into your cart. That's a $15 value. When you go to nuts.com what you do is you click on the mic over there and you just enter the code fitness and you get all samples, sugar free items, Paleo friendly, certified organic, certified gluten Free and of course, coconuts. So check it out, nuts.com and click on the mic over there and use the code fitness. You got to jump through all the hoops to get those free samples. And then finally, I hear people say all of the time that they want to be in the fitness industry. They want to have a career in fitness and health. And our final sponsor for today gives you a way to do that. So they allow you to become a certified personal trainer, give you all the tools and training to do it. But they're actually really good. Like, I'm not just saying this because they're a podcast sponsor. Even before they were a sponsor, I've said, if you were going to get certified as a personal trainer, do well. I listed a bunch of different folks and just to be nice, I won't list all these folks as competitors. But the National Academy of Sports Medicine, or nasm, was indeed or has been for a very long time one of the folks who I recommend that you go to to get a personal training certification. And they're one of the best in the industry. It's not like the easiest test on the face of the planet, but when you do it, you'll actually be a legit personal trainer. So you can get a 14 day free trial of their certification program. If you go to myusatrainer.com that's myusatrainer.com and they guarantee you'll land a job within 90 days of earning your certification or your money back. That's a pretty cool guarantee if you ask me. So myusatrainer.com, some restrictions apply. See myusatrainer.com for details, but check them out. NASM, the National Academy of Sports Medicine. And become a personal trainer. There you go. You can do it. I have faith in you, in your personal training abilities. So let's go ahead and jump into how you can keep your monitor from slowly killing your eyes.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness show, we blink less because we focus on something. You blink less also when you read a book, so it's not something special. For the monitors, the simple fonts use hull pixel to render the font. This makes the fonts look edgy and crispy, but doesn't make the screen blurry, which is bad for the eyes. In order to sleep properly, you don't need to look at blue light at night. That's basically it. And to not look at blue light, you can decrease your monitor core temperature.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal train and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

Power.

Speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement. Get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy are.

All the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield, and I've got a quick question for you. Do you ever get headaches after you've been working on your computer for a long time, specifically your computer monitor? Or eye strain or maybe a little bit of actual irritation, grumpiness, or even brain fog? And these are all things that I think a lot of people get, including myself, when they are staring at a laptop or at a computer monitor. And one thing that you gotta bear in mind, and this is something that you'll notice if you ever take out like a video camera and record a computer monitor, is that monitors flicker. And that's one of the things, one of the many things that you'll learn about in today's podcast that is responsible for these issues with computer monitors, and there's even a term for this and the growing epidemic of nearsightedness and myopia caused by computers. It's known as computer vision syndrome, and it can actually destroy your eyes and create nasty headaches and strain and tired eyes long term. But my guest on today's podcast has spent a long time kind of figuring out how to tackle these issues. And he's even invented a special piece of software that you can install on your computer that does everything from controlling the brightness of the monitor with the help of your computer's video card to allowing you to have adequate clarity on your monitor without the actual flicker. It'll adjust your computer monitor settings based on the sun's position wherever you happen to be in the world. It'll decrease the amount of blue light from a computer monitor. And this guy also has a lot of really, really cool ideas in terms of setting up the software to be able to detect the number of blinks that you have. And he's got some great blog posts about everything from, you know, different LED lit back screens to, to older style screens that were built a little bit differently. And so we're going to navigate the whole world of computer monitors today and what the healthy ones are and how you can make your computer monitor healthy. My guest name is Daniel, and I'm probably going to butcher your last Name Daniel, but I believe it's Georgiev. Did I pronounce that correctly?

He's Bulgarian. This is what, that's the tough part.

And, and I'm, I'll admit I'm not that fluent in Bulgarian, but Daniel is the guy who actually invented this piece of software and he's actually himself also an athlete, He's a rower. He rode for Bulgarian's national team for.

I was, I was.

Oh, go ahead.

Well, my name is Daniel, I'm 20 years old, programmer from Bulgaria and I'm also the founder and creator of Iris. This is one pop war software for eye protection, health and productivity.

Yeah, it's called Iris, right? Iris.

Yes, Iris. Cool.

Oh, and by the way, as you guys listen to Daniel and I, you'll be able to access all the shownotes@bengreenfieldfitness.com IRISTech that's bengreenfieldfitness.com Iristech or if you just want to go check out Daniel's software, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com iris.

So you are a rower, Daniel?

Yes, I was a rower until 17 years old. And I'll tell you the story about my sport experience because I spent like 10 years training all kinds of things. Basically when I was young I was living at the countryside in my country, Bulgaria. And until second grade I was spending my time not training anything, basically drinking and smoking with friends. I'm not kidding. This was popular back then and I wanted to be cool. Maybe, I don't know. I just want to know that today I drink only water and I don't smoke.

Really? You guys don't have any crazy fermented beverages that you drink over there in Bulgaria like kombucha or anything like that?

Well, I try to drink only water, no coffee, no tea, only on hackathons when I need to stay awake like 48 hours.

Oh, you do those hackathons, huh?

I. I was doing them from time to time.

Interesting.

Then third grade, I started playing football. Not American football, but soccer. This is really popular sport in Europe and really high paid. I thought I can become really good player. And I trained a lot. And by a lot I mean that I trained every day and, and when I was not in the field, I was running and building my aerobic capacity. And this endurance actually helped me to be good at rowing several years later. So my goal was to become footballer. But I kind of sucked at football. And at 13, after five years of training, I got kicked out of the team for not being good enough. Then I tried one More team, but got kick it from there also. And this was a really sad period for me since I put everything I had in the sport and still failed. I remember that I cried a week or two and then decided to try some other sport. You know, it's not the end of the world. I have no idea how, but I choose rowing. It seemed good to me since I had a lot of endurance and I could run a couple of hours without getting tired.

Yeah, initially that's a painful sport, rowing.

Yes, initially I sucked throwing also. But the good thing about throwing is that it's up to you. If you have the drive and you put the hours, you can become the best. So I persisted, trained five hours per day, every day, more than anyone else. And after two years I qualified for our national team. And this was my first success in life. And I think that I become addicted to achievements after this. After this moment I realized that hard work beats anything. Since you know what? I don't have athletic body by default. When I started throwing, I was 180cm and 50kg, which was ugly to watch.

Yeah.

In the next.

That's the size of a computer programmer slash hacker, not a rower.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. But in the next years I put 50, 15 kilograms of muscles. But I was really skinny even then. I just trained more than anyone else. After the national team, I started to win some medals. To understand more about training, VO2, max endurance, nutrition, you know about these things.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So. So for your rowing training, what would like a typical. Typical training session look like for you?

Well, it was all kinds of things like running, swimming, skiing. It was crazy, just crazy. A lot of. I hit the gym. I started to train more and more professionally. About two years when I got to the national team, we had the trainers and managed to go to world championship. But I haven't become world Championship or anything like that. I think I hit the plateau after this year and I was close to my genetic limit without using steroids. I tried really hard, but there was no much improvement in my time and progress. And since I didn't want to use enhancers and I realized that I can become Olympic champion, I started programming. And after some months I stopped with drawing. I think there was also another thing. I get a girlfriend back then and started to become more and more comfortable. You know, when you get the girl.

Yep, I hear you. You got soft, you discovered love and lost your. You lost your drive.

You lost your drive, you lost your draft for becoming Olympic athlete. And you need this thing for. For this. Basically, I Know that being the best in something requires a lot of time and I don't want to put 10 years to it, you know, you need to put 10 years to become Olympic athlete, I think, at least.

So. So I'm curious, you know, to turn to the topic at hand. Did you run into an issue at some point along the way? You know, being a. A rower, slash computer programmer, which is an interesting mix of activities? Did you run into a problem with your eyes at a certain point where you actually got inspired by issues that you were having to begin to delve into monitors and how they affect the eyes?

So about programming. Well, I started reading some books about the same time that I started with drawing, I called it at night and I was reading books between training in the afternoon. This for four years. And I became programmer. The process, not rocket science. Like everything in life, you should just put the effort into it. At 17, I started working as the programmer. And this is the point when my eye problems started. My eye problem started by this time. Before this, I don't know. No, but maybe my monitor in home was good. It was some matte and glossy, which is nice for the eyes. Basically. When I started to work as a programmer, I spent also my nights working on side projects. So, you know, if I don't do something all the time, I'll just kill myself. I don't like doing nothing. And with all this combined, I was spending more than 40 hours per day in front of the computer.

And after six months, there's not 40 hours in a day. Do you say 14 hours?

14. 14. Oh, 14 hours per day.

Got it.

14 hours per day in front of computer. And sorry, my English is not so good.

And after six months, my eyes started burning like hell. You know, my first try was to start buying and using eye drops.

But after several more months and one dozen empty eye drops, bottles, I realized that this doesn't work. And I made an appointment with eye doctor ophthalmologist and he prescribed me glasses with 1.5 diopters. And I was like stunned. My vision was perfect my entire life. And I managed to it up by sitting in front of the computers a lot.

Yeah, yeah, so. So you were basically becoming myopic. You from. From having to, to strain your eyes. You were developing like nearsightedness.

Yes, yes.

Okay, so. So at that point you got prescribed glasses and what did you do?

Well, I know it was time for a change and I started to read everything about eye health and eye protection. I stopped using eyedrops and I started to take breaks every 30 minutes for five minutes. Initially, I used time around my phone, but I was postponing it when I was in the zone, you know. And this is actually the reason I started working on Iris. This was February last year. I wanted to make a programmer to program which locks my screen every 30 minutes. So I forced myself to get up.

So that was initially all the program did, was it just would lock your screen and force you to get up?

Yes. It's strange how something stupid like this can turn in one of the best hilt softwares a year later.

Yeah, I mean, obviously. I mean, you've probably heard of the pomodoro technique, right, where you'll stop every. It kind of depends, right? Like every 55 minutes for five minutes or every, you know, 25 minutes for three minutes. You know, there's a variety of different pomodoro timing techniques. And I. I personally do that, right? Like, my rule is I stop for every hour and I do 100 jumping jacks. That means, like, by the end of the day, I've done literally, like thousands of jumping jacks. And that's just my. My little trick to keep lymph fluid and blood fluid flowing. But you were going every 30 minutes, and you actually made a computer program that would shut down your ability to be able to work for a certain period of time every 30 minutes.

Yes, but I worked on this in the beginning, and I was reading all the medical students I can find on the Internet. I tried to use this, and at one point I found one software called Fuchs, which is for blue light reduction.

Maybe you have flux.

I've recommended that multiple times on the show where it'll decrease the amount of blue light produced by your computer monitor based on when the sun is setting or a certain time of night in whatever part of the world you happen to be in, right?

Yes, But I wanted to have manual settings for it and wrote to the developers like 10, 20 times via email, Twitter, and every contact I can find them, but never get response. And after a couple of weeks, I said to myself, okay, if they don't care them, I will do it myself and I will care about every user. And at this point, I started to get serious to develop Iris. I didn't have any users back then, it was only me. But I had a problem, which I needed to solve, and glasses, which I needed to remove. And this is the point. I started to do crazy things. I quit my job, left school, broke up with my girlfriend, and dedicated myself 100% to Iris.

I bet your girlfriend was Pretty happy about that. You actually dumping her just. Just to figure out how to decrease the blue light on your monitor?

Yes.

True, true hacker slash programmer.

I would say it was super hard to build something alone from scratch, but today Iris is awesome. It has more than 100,000 downloads. It's used in more than 140 countries and many people love it.

I like it. I use it now myself instead of flux, because it has. And we'll jump into some of the things that you've programmed into it that go kind of above and beyond, just decreasing the amount of blue light that the monitor actually creates. But before we jump into that and some of the things that Iris does, can you talk about Flickr, like computer monitor flicker and how that actually works? Like why do monitors flicker?

Let's start by saying that there are no flicker free monitors and screens. If you don't want flicker in your life, go live in a cave or buy a, a ink monitor and use it for everything.

Yeah, what about Kindles? Like the, like the Kindle Paperwhite and stuff like that? Do they flicker?

Yes, they're. They are a ink and they're good for dice.

Okay, so. So those are the. So when you're talking about screens that flicker, you're talking about like computer monitors, laptops, but there are some notepads that don't flicker, right?

Yes. Let me explain what I mean by flicker. The. The monitor is turning on and off all the time, but with high frequency, which most of the time we don't perceive. The different backlights use different frequency for on and off. For, for example, CCFL uses 170, 75 hertz. And for LED, it starts from 90 hertz to over 400.

So, so CCFL, those are the old school monitors. The, the cold cathode fluorescent lamps, right? That's what you call those.

Yes, but there is actually more. First this. Those with the lowest frequency are the worst for the eyes, obviously. And let me explain why is this. But actually CCFL are not so bad.

The color thing of our eyes is called Iris. Just like my software, it opens and closes to control the amount of light entering the eye through the pupil. The pupil is the black thing of the eye, right? In the dark, iris opens and when there is a lot of light, it closes. Now imagine what happens when your monitor turns on and off all the time. The iris starts to contract just like a muscle. The lower the frequency, the bigger it will be the amplitude of this contraction. Since the eye has more time for the movement, in order for our brain to not Detect this on and off thing. We need the frequency of over 2000Hz, which is not present in today's monitors. And it's actually not possible since the diodes in the backlight will burn after some time. Basically, this is the reason why we feel eye pain when we sit in front of computers. And what I do with Iris is to set this frequency to the biggest possible amount, or at least to not decrease it when you change brightness. When a monitor is set to maximum brightness, the LEDs are typically glowing at full strength, right? 100%. If you reduce your brightness settings in the menu, for example, 50%. The LEDs need to emit less light.

When you're saying the LEDs, you're referring to the LEDs.

Yes.

Okay, got it.

This is done by inserting small bricks or pauses in which the leds turn off for a very short time when reducing the brightness settings in the menu, for sure, the brakes become longer, basically.

Okay, so if I turn the brightness setting on my monitor down, like if I have a regular LED based monitor or even one of those old school CCFL monitors that have the backlighting on them, what happens is you actually create this catch 22 because your brightness is turned down. So you have maybe less glare on your eyes, but then the flickering increases when you decrease the brightness, right?

Yes. And this method of introducing brakes to reduce the brightness is called pwm. Post with modulation and it sucks.

Pulse width modulation.

Yes.

Okay, so. So when I reduce the brightness level on a monitor and the monitor automatically starts to introduce these little breaks in terms of, of what it is, I'm looking at this flicker, that's called pwm.

Yes.

Okay, got it.

This PWM technique is used by almost all monitors, since it's the cheaper one. In simple terms, if you reduce your brightness, you reduce your monitor frequency also, which is bad for the eyes. And Iris has innovative brightness, which reduces the emitted light without changing the frequency of the backlight.

So how do you actually remove the brightness without removing the frequency of the backlight? Why. Why wouldn't monitors just do this in the first place?

Because it changes colors a little bit. And for some people, color is important.

Okay, so for like a graphic designer, maybe like a gamer, they would want like a monitor with really bright, vibrant colors. And maybe they're willing to get that at the, at the risk of their eyes. Right, at a risk of more flicker or more brightness. But what you're saying is that most people wouldn't really notice the difference between a regular monitor producing a bunch of Flickering or a monitor with the Iris software installed that's allowing you to both reduce the brightness and reduce the flickering.

That's right. And I'm actually trying to help the designers also. Science. The new versions of Iris can make this kind of adjustments only on part of the screen and for example, your center part. Yes. And it will be really cool. But I'm not finished with this.

Got it. So what. So where does color temperature fit in here? Because I've seen that monitors and I have one of these. I'll get into the monitor that I just bought recently because I think it's interesting.

I'll talk about that in a second. But color temperature, does that have to do with color brightness as well?

Let's say that color temperature is about blue light. It's measured in kelvins.

Okay.

And basically, the bigger the value of the color temperature, the more blue light is emitted from the screen. The default color temperature of normal monitor is 6500 Kelvins. The important thing is that blue, blue light, it's important to be less at night. Let me explain why. The hormone responsible for our sleep is called melatonin. And in order to sleep, you need to produce X amount of melatonin. The interesting thing about melatonin is that it produces when there is no light and more importantly, when there is no blue light. So in order to sleep properly, you don't need to look at blue light at night. That's basically it. And to not look at blue light, you can decrease your monitor core temperature.

Okay, so the color temperature setting is. So if I go into like monitor settings and I just decrease temperature, that's going to literally decrease the amount of blue light. So we can say that temperature is synonymous with blue light. And then brightness would be synonymous with flickering, meaning that if I were to decrease the temperature, I would decrease the amount of blue light that I'm looking at. And if I were to decrease the brightness, unfortunately, I would increase the flicker. So those are. Those are a few settings that we would want to bear in mind when we're talking about eye glare or about the shutdown of melatonin production, correct?

Yes, that's right. And when you, when you reduce the core temperature, the monitor starts to look yellowish then red.

Yeah. And I've noticed that, like when I'll use flux or now when I use Iris, it'll start to. The color will start to change a little bit. And somebody who hasn't been accustomed to seeing these devices, they'll. Or these software programs in use, they'll look over my Shoulder at my phone or my computer and they'll be like, why is the color of the monitor yellow? Or why is it orange? And I don't even notice it anymore. It just automatically happens at night. What about glossy versus matte displays and glare? Does the actual glossiness of the screen matter?

I just wanted to finish the last one. It takes a day or two to to get used to the cores, but after some days you just can't live without this thing. I'm sure it's the same thing for you.

Yeah, well, absolutely. I mean, and I'll take that one step further. I mean, for me now, not only can I barely bear to at night look at a monitor that doesn't have something like Iris or Flux installed on it or the, you know, on the new iOS iPhone devices, the new sleep, I think it's called Sleep mode.

Night Shift.

On the Kindle, it's called Sleep mode. On the iPhone it's called Night Shift. Yeah, Night shift mode. So I can't bear to look at a device when it doesn't have that enabled in the evening because I feel like it just automatically jolts me awake. But I actually now, and especially more so after speaking recently with Dr. Mercola on my podcast, who wears these all day long now I just can't operate on a screen without wearing my glare blocking glasses in the evening. So yeah, I mean, I completely agree. It's really changed the way that I think about how my eyes interact with the monitor. And perhaps I'm a little bit spoiled now. But what about this? Because I know that some monitors will have a glossy display, some will have a matte display. How about that? Is that important? Is that something that you play around with as well?

Let's start with that. Matte. Matte is better for the eyes than glossy, but glossy, it's better to get exact colors on the screen. This thing is important for designers, artists and people who work with Core. You can turn glossy screen to matte with buying anti glare protector and putting it on the screen. But there is no way to turn matte screen into glossy. I will try to explain why glossy is bad for the eyes. When, when you use glossy screen, it's like mirror and you will see your reflection from the screen, but you also see the image of the screen. Your eye gets confused and tries to switch the focus between the two images all the time and your eyes start to hurt. This the reason why mate is better. Mate screens do not create these mirror reflections. But as I said, you can always buy anti glare protector for Glossy screens.

Okay, so. So mate screen would be like the Kindle Paperwhite for example.

It's not like that Mate screen is now it's not a ink display.

Okay so so do they actually make computer monitors that, that have a mate screen instead of glossy?

Yes, it's like 50, 50. There are many, many mate screens. They, they just don't, they don't reflect light. For example, all Apple monitors are glossy. They are like reflective, you know, like.

But there are screens. My screen is like this. There are screens which are made and they are something like sound coating. I'm not sure how it was.

I think. Sorry to interrupt. I think the. Have you heard of these IZO monitors? E I Z? Oh yes. Okay, I'm pretty sure because I have the Flex scan, the EIZO Flex scan and I just got this while researching monitors because I was trying to find something that would allow me to use your software, this Iris software, but also would allow me to have a non glossy display. And it's a little bit more looking, I guess it seems like I'm looking at a Kindle Paperwhite kind of like mate anti glare screen. But then what I do is I plug it into my laptop. So I've got an external computer monitor plugged into my laptop and then I've got the Iris software running on my laptop which I believe.

When it makes the adjustments on my laptop it affects this flexscan monitor that I'm using. So I'm kind of getting the best of both worlds. But that's the setup that I currently have because this flexscan monitor, it has settings on it that will allow you to do things like decrease the temperature and to using your software, decrease the brightness without increasing the flicker. But it is I think a matte display and for those of you listening in, that's M A T T E matte display versus glossy. So that's your recommendation, is to go with something that's matte when you can versus glossy. Right.

It. Or buy anti reflective anti glare protector.

Anti glare protector. Okay, I'll. I'll find that. Is there like a brand that you like?

I don't use, I don't use. I use Cyrus. I use Cyrus.

Okay, so. So if you have Iris installed in your computer, it'll automatically make it so that you don't necessarily have to buy like a, like a screen anti glare protector.

No, it's not like this. I mean if you have a light above your head, it will show a reflection and Iris can't fix this. Actually I think about how to fix this, but it's not fixable.

Okay, got it. But you could use. Have you used these Flex scan monitors before by Izo?

No, I know that BenQ monitors have some technology for eye protection.

What's that other brand that you just talked about?

BenQ.

BenQ. How do you spell that?

BEN CAPITAL Q. BEN capital Q.

Okay, cool. I'll put a link to that one in the show notes as well. BenQ. Okay, got it. All right, so we've got glossy versus matte. We've got the color temperature, We've got the brightness that we need to take into account. I've seen you talk. Also, because you have some great blog posts over on the Iris website about the actual font. Why does the type of font that you look at on a screen matter? And can you adjust the actual font settings to be able to increase the eye friendliness of what it is that you're looking at?

Yes, this was something I researched at the beginning of this year. Let's start that. Always prefer looking at bigger fonts and if possible, read sans serif fonts. What I mean by sans serif is that look at Arial and Verdun. Times New Roman sucks for your eyes, but only on screen. In print, it actually helps you to read faster and it's more pleasurable, but on screen, it's not good. Aside from the bigger font and read area, there is also font rendering technologies. No.

Explain how. Try to explain.

Okay, so before you jump into font rendering technologies, what you're saying is like that, like the Times New Roman, where it's got like little. If you look at it closely, it's got like, you know, almost like little designs on the end of each letter. What you're saying is like a. More of a. Like a plain Jane type of Arial font would be the ideal type of font to look at if you wanted to reduce eye strain on the screen. Okay, got it. So what is it about these font rendering technologies that you're going to get into?

Well, every pixel on the screen contains three diodes, red, green, and blue. They are close to one another on the backlight. And when the three of them glow at full strength, we see white pixel. If none glows, we see black pixel. The easiest way to render fonts is to use the whole pixel, but this makes the letters edgy and crispy. And.

There are only like 10 fonts which can be visualized good this way.

Even back when the first computers came out and when Apple II was created, they made new type of font rendering called Anti aliasing. After some time, Microsoft created subpixel rendering technology that we today know as clear type and table created also subpixel rendering. With font smoothing, I can try to explain how they work and which is best for the eyes, if you want.

Yeah, sure. Because I'm actually curious about what kind of font I should be looking at because I spend a lot of time writing, I spend a lot of time reading on the computer. So yeah, I definitely want to make sure that I'm using the correct type of font.

So the simple fonts use hull pixel to render the font. This makes the fonts look edgy and crispy, but doesn't make the screen blurry, which is bad for the eyes. Anti aliasing works by using shades of gray on nearby nearby pixels. This makes the font look better, but they are actually blurry and it's difficult for the eyes to focus on the letters.

The next generation of rendering technology uses not the whole neighbor pixel, but only one part of it. As I told you, one pixel has three subpixels, red, green and blue. So the subpixel rendering technology uses shaders of this sub pixel to render the font like blue, for example.

Okay.

This also makes the the fonts blurry, but not as much as anti aliasing. And it's better for this better sub pixel is better than antialiasing.

Apple also uses this kind of sub pixel rendering technologies, but they smooth the fonts more. And the Microsoft way, it's better for the eyes since the fonts are not so boring.

Okay, so the fonts are not blurry, even though you might not be able to detect the type of font rendering technology that's used on your monitor. What you're saying is that if you're looking at a pixel font that's sharp and crispy with no blurring, you're going to strain less, even if it's subconscious. But some forms of rendering of fonts that are used in current rendering technology introduces more blurriness based off of the way that font is presented on the monitor screen.

Yes, that's right. Simple font rendering.

And what's the name of the type of font rendering that would be considered more blurry or bad for the eyes?

Can you tell me again the question.

What'S the actual name of the type of font rendering that makes something look more blurry or that you would consider to be the type of font rendering that would be bad for the eyes? Is that the clear type rendering?

Well, all renderings, like all modern renderings, tantalizing subpixel rendering all the tool, they make the fonts blurry, but this is to make the font look better. So simple font rendering whole pixel, it's best for the eyes. But it's hard to read.

That doesn't seem to make sense that you mean it's hard to read like in terms of not looking quite as good or.

Yes, not looking quite as good.

Okay, but it's not hard on the eyes.

Yes, because you can focus on the edges. You know, your eyes moves on the screen in so colored cascades. It jumps from. You need to focus on something and when the font is blurry, it's hard for the eye to focus on something.

Gotcha. So you want the type of font rendering called simple font rendering.

Well, I have add all them to Iris. I don't know why, but some users actually prefer the Apple style font rendering, which is the most blurry. And they tell me that their eyes hurt less with this phone. So I have added all of them to Iris and you just choose them. I use basic for myself. I use clear type.

But if you're really hardcore about your eyes, use simple fonts.

Okay, so I can go into the settings on my Iris software and I can basically select. I've actually got it open right now. So if I. Is that under the advanced settings that I can go in and change the font?

Yes.

Okay.

It's fonts page.

So if I go here and I go to the fonts page.

Open. Open Notepad with big font and you will see the difference. If you open notepad and you write some letters and you see the difference immediately.

Yeah. Interesting. Okay, so I see here I can actually change the font rendering and I would want to use a simple font rendering.

You can also see the difference on the icons on the desktop.

Okay, got it. Cool. I love it. All right, so in addition to font rendering, you also talk about color.

In terms of like the color used on a website or the color used on a webpage. Does that also affect the eyes, like the type of color that you're looking at?

I actually researched the biological effects on color. Now, basically.

Blue light is not good at night for the reasons I told you before about melatonin secretion. It's the only scientifically proven color which when removed at night, helps your eyes hurt less and helps you to sleep better. The branch of science about this is called color psychology. But I still don't know a lot about the subject. Basically, colors are not the problem. It's the light actually.

Colors or not, but we see colors when there is absence of light. So our colors are good, but some of them make us respond in different psychological way. For example, green is for nature, black is for status and style, red is for aggression, and blue is for trust. Something like this.

Got it. Yeah, I know that there's a really fascinating book about this called Drunk Tank Pink, in which they talk about how websites will make a website a certain color to increase trust or increase your propensity to purchase or increase your propensity to. To click like. Apparently the best color, for example, for like a buy button on a website is the color orange because it makes you want to buy something. Or the best color for like a donation page would be like pink because it makes you feel like apparently more. More laid back or more willing to make a donation. But I notice on the Iris software you've got all these different settings where I can do like washout, I can do grayscale, I can do inverted colors in terms of the type of thing that would be best for my eyes. As far as like all the different color settings that you have available. As far as like color effects with Iris, is there something that you would recommend as far as like the best color setting to use? If I'm just like working, it's at night or I want to decrease eye strain, do you pretty much just switch to grayscale at that point? Is that the best way to go?

First sent me the link after this because this was super interesting. And then I actually made color effects for screen inversion. I wanted when I look at really white page to invert it to be not, not black and white, but white, black, you know, to invert the colors to make the, the whole page black and only the font white. This way I made color effects and some users wanted more settings and I just added them. I personally only use grayscale from time to time. And inversion.

And color inversion, yeah, I've been using grayscale because it's pretty simple. I just go in and click on the software to change it to grayscale. And it's actually when I'm writing, especially in blogging, I don't care that much about the colors. You know, if I'm shopping on Amazon, I kind of, I kind of like the colors because it's fun to see the colors of the things that you're buying, etc. But for just typing, working on blog posts, etc. I'm a huge fan of this grayscale setting that you have. So that's interesting how color plays such an important role as well. And I didn't realize I could actually change up all the coloring on my monitor until I started playing around with the software. What about blinking? I noticed you have a blog post about blinking and blink detection. Does your software actually detect the number of blinks or how does that work?

Yes, it's true, but I still haven't found a way how to make a good feature from this. And I actually disabled it by default in the newest version. Basically, as the time passed, I realized that it's a little bit creepy when you install some software and it turns on your camera. This scares some users and there is no benefit in knowing that you don't blink enough. You will never blink enough when you use your PC. And now I think that you don't need an app for that. Maybe, maybe you need to place some pictures somewhere to remind you to blink and this will be enough. However, I created something useful from this artificial intelligence code. And Iris can detect your room lighting by using your camera and can adjust your displayed brightness accordingly, which is useful and nice feature.

So if I'm in like a dim room, it will automatically detect that and increase brightness.

In dim room, it will decrease it.

Because you wouldn't want that contrast as much between a whole bunch of brightness on the screen and less light in like a dim room.

Yes, you want your screen brightness to match your room lighting. Something like this.

Got it. Got it. Now, in this blog post, I'll link to this, this blog post that you wrote that's really interesting on your website. On the Iris website, you talk about how we actually we don't blink as much when we're working on the computer. Why is that?

Let me just tell that I want to make something about yawning, since yawning is a better way to produce tears and moisture in dyes than blinking. Which points me to why blinks are important. They're important for moisturing dyes. When you blink, you moisture your eyes with tears, which helps to protect your eyes. However, as I said, I think that yawning is better for moisture your eyes. The reason is that it's the natural way to produce tears. And the second awesome thing is that yawning is contagious on subconscious level. Which means that if I yawn, you will yawn too.

Yeah, and that's actually all this talk about yawning is actually making me want to yawn right now. But I never actually thought about yawning when I'm working on my computer. What you're saying is like, if I yawn, it actually helps to moisturize My eyes? Yes.

At first I think that blinking more is better, but now I think that yawning more is better.

Interesting.

Try to yawn and you immediately notice how your eyes get moistured.

Yeah.

Which is really good. And you need only to blink one or two times to mature the entire eye after yawning.

So maybe you need, like if simply hearing someone talking about yawning, because this is making me want to yawn right now, or seeing someone yawn causes one to yawn. Couldn't you just have something pop up on the Iris software? Or maybe you do already, and I don't know about this. That would be like a picture of somebody yawning, like every 20 minutes or something like this. Have that actually appear or have just the word yawn appear to induce that yawning sensation in people.

Well, I'm thinking about playing yawning sounds or showing yawning people.

From time to time. But maybe it's better just to place some picture of you yawning on the desk and remind yourself. I mean, I want to make it really, really great. And I need really a big problem, because you can fix this problem only by showing a picture of someone yawning. You know, you don't need application for this. Yeah, maybe.

Yeah. Interesting. So if I activate the use camera setting, I'm looking at it right now on the Iris software that will. That's the setting that will allow my actual computer video camera to detect the dimness in the room and adjust the brightness accordingly.

Yes. If. When you. When you activate this, there is show blink screen somewhere in settings.

Okay, got it. Cool. I love playing around with this stuff. So go ahead.

Because you asked me about why do we blink less? We blink less because we focus on something. You blink less also when you read a book, so it's not something special for the monitors.

Okay, gotcha.

We blink like one time per minute when we look at the computer, which is bad. Try to blink always more Good blink rate for optimal eye health is about 15 times per minute. 15, 15.

Got it. Got it. So you've got a few other features kind of worked into Iris. You've got your breaks, which will automatically bring up a reminder to brake at certain intervals that you have set throughout the day. You've got the adjustments in the color, the adjustments in the color temperature, the adjustments in the brightness, and this will. This. This can all be based off of.

Using, for example, automatic detection of where you happen to be in the world. So it'll automatically detect, I'm assuming when the sun goes down Where I happen to be at in the world.

Yes.

Okay, gotcha. So very, very similar. Very similar to flux for something like that. Right.

Well, after they didn't respond to me, I made basically fox into iris.

Yeah, yeah. It's like flux on steroids. Now you've also got in here exercises, so eye exercises, neck exercises and back exercises. And will these, can I set these also to automatically pop up at certain intervals or these ones that I need to manually start.

I actually don't use them. This is why I don't spend many. I try to. If I use something a lot, this means that this important. I don't use. I exercise a lot and I actually think to remove them in the future because, you know, I want to everybody to use iris and not to be. Not everybody exercise, basically.

Yeah, I don't know. I like it personally. Like I'm looking at your eye exercises, for example. You've got the cue to do side to side eye movement. You've got the cue to do up and down eye movement, moving eyes diagonally, massaging the eyes, different concentration exercises. I like that. But you know what my recommendation would be is if I set this to interrupt my workflow, let's say every 30 minutes or every 45 minutes, then what I'd like ideally is for it to actually automatically bring up. Let's say I set it so that, okay, every 30 minutes I want the reminder to do the series of eye exercises that you have in here or the series of neck exercises for the next 30 minute break and then the series of back exercises for the next 30 minute break. I think that would be a cool feature. So that, so that for each of your pomodoro techniques, right, you have, you have a different body part that tends to suffer when you're working on a computer automatically getting work throughout the day. So it's almost like done for you. So, you know, automated. And your computer monitor is just telling you what to do when it's setting you onto that break that you're taking throughout the day. Does that make sense?

Just write this and I'll make it for you. I'll make an option, but will be disabled by default.

Call it the Ben Greenfield Iris exercise option.

Yes, it will only be exercise option. Sorry.

That's right. Then I want a royalty on all sales of the software. Cool. Yeah. So you've got your eye, neck and back exercises added in there as well, which I love. But I would love to see those also like automated as part of the pomodoro technique, which you can also Set. I see on setting, I think, I guess on the main screen of Iris I can have the Pomodoro technique to break every X number of minutes for X. Right now it's set on break every 30 minutes for five minutes. But you can set it, set it for whatever you want. This is really cool stuff. So I guess my last question for you is in terms of compatibility, etc. You know, we have some people who listen in, who are Windows people, some people who are Mac people. Does this work with any software? Are there any limitations on it right now? I mean can I use or I guess any operating system? Can I use it with like Windows operating system, Mac operating system?

Like, like will it work on any computer?

Yes, it works on any computer. But for example, because I need time to synchronize all the settings, the Windows version is.

The most developed. You know. For example, I have also Android application. If you write Iris tech into Play Store, you'll find the application. It's a game for blue light reduction and brightness reduction. It's free, absolutely free. But I don't want to monetize it because I don't think the phones are the problem. I think the. Well, I tried to make it to everything actually. There is also Chrome extension which can change some websites themes to make it black. For example YouTube, Facebook and other sites. I just work really hard to be on the. Cool, cool.

I like it. Well, I'll link to this in the show notes. So it's BenGreenfieldFitness.com IrisTech if you want to go to the Show Notes and see the BENQ monitors that Daniel recommended, the ISO monitor, the flexscan monitor is the one that I use, the anti glare screen protectors and some of the other stuff that we talked about. And then if you just want to go get this software, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Iris and you can grab this and download it to your laptop or to your PC or wherever else you want to install this software. And I'm using it every day now, so I have it installed on all my computers and it's what I'm using now to ensure that I'm not getting the eye strain and the irritation, the brain fog and all these things that tend to happen when you're a blogger like I am who's at a computer for a long period of time.

Daniel, this is really cool stuff and I want to thank you for not only coming on the podcast, but also for creating this excellent piece of software.

Thank you, Ben. Thank you.

All right, well cool. Well, this is Ben Greenfield and Daniel. I'll try your last name one more time. Daniel Jorgev.

Try with Georgia. Georgia Georgia.

I was close. Signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com check out BenGreenfieldFitness.com Iris and have a great day.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast.

Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sam.

Sa.