My cellphone was giving me migraines, so I made these 5 adjustments

Round 2022, I used to be identified with power migraines. Not like regular complications, migraines include a wide range of neurological signs on prime of the ache, comparable to nausea, mild and sound sensitivity, and issue concentrating.

As I took the time to determine what my migraine triggers had been, a couple of culprits stood out, together with the time spent on my smartphone. The intense display would usually set off migraines or worsen my present signs — so I needed to make a couple of adjustments to scale back the influence it had.

Most of those adjustments additionally assist scale back eye pressure, so you may strive them out even in the event you don’t have migraines or complications from display use. Since altering these settings and options, I discover my eyes don’t twitch after utilizing my display for lengthy durations of time. However the greatest impact was on my migraine signs, with me experiencing fewer migraines triggered by display use and guaranteeing I might nonetheless use my cellphone throughout gentle migraines.

Whereas there could also be explanation why you would possibly need to keep away from darkish mode, the function is crucial for me. I used to solely use darkish mode at evening time once I was making ready for mattress, however I’ve now made certain that darkish mode is the default mode on all of my gadgets.

In some ways, darkish mode has develop into an accessibility function for me. With out it, I wouldn’t have the ability to use my gadget with out risking triggering a migraine or making an present migraine worse.

On my Oppo Reno 10 Professional+, I even have the choice to set a darkish mode fashion: Enhanced, Medium, or Light. Since Enhanced contains essentially the most darkness, with a black background, I opted for this fashion.

Switching over to darkish mode on my cellphone additionally implies that most of my apps are additionally on this mode. For the few that didn’t swap over routinely, I manually toggled darkish mode inside the app settings.

Eye Consolation, often known as Eye Safety or Evening Mild (relying on the precise OS you’re utilizing), is a blue mild filter out there on Android smartphones. I used to make use of a blue mild filter app on my cellphone, however since Android launched the flexibility to customise the filter setting, I can use the function immediately by my smartphone software program.

I additionally made certain to toggle Eye Consolation to the default setting, quite than limiting it to sure hours. In the meantime, I all the time regulate the temperature to as heat as doable to enhance my consolation when experiencing mild sensitivity.

Since my eyes regulate to this filter, it’s not as distracting because it might sound. Nevertheless, the disadvantage is that it may possibly have an effect on the colour accuracy of pictures you’re viewing. However I favor this caveat over the choice of getting my cellphone trigger complications and eye pressure.

I’ve been that means to make the swap away from Chrome for some time now since I need to be much less reliant on Google apps. However the lack of the flexibility to make use of my darkish mode extension on Chrome’s Android app was the ultimate push I wanted to cease utilizing the app as my default cellular browser.

As a substitute, I’ve switched to Courageous, which permits me to power darkish mode on internet pages that use a light-weight theme by default. Whereas many web sites assist darkish mode, there are nonetheless a couple of that solely have a light-weight theme. I seen this essentially the most when studying information or trying up recipes.

The function to power darkish mode is accessible in Courageous’s Look settings, the place you may select to allow evening mode.” Thus far, I haven’t encountered any points with getting websites to ship a black background and white textual content, which has made the change to a unique browser worthwhile.

Whereas Adaptive Brightness on Android is helpful, I discovered that my mild sensitivity usually meant that the brightness my cellphone routinely set was just too vibrant. That is particularly an issue at evening, once I set my display to 0% brightness once I’m in mattress.

The principle downside of this can be a slight lack of comfort. Once I go exterior, my cellphone display doesn’t routinely regulate, and I’ve to make use of muscle reminiscence to show the brightness again up. However the primary profit is that my cellphone doesn’t routinely flip the brightness again up as soon as I’ve turned it down.

Typically I might be utilizing my cellphone once I began to really feel the acquainted ache in the back of my eyes, and I’d notice my display was too vibrant — however by this time it was already too late, the migraine cascade had began. So, manually adjusting the brightness has been well worth the comfort trade-off.

Whereas most of my adjustments profit eye pressure normally, this one is a little more particular to migraines. Movement sensitivity is a standard symptom in migraines, and I discover that sure motions on my smartphone could make my nausea worse.

That’s why I all the time make sure that my show refresh fee is about to my cellphone’s most (120Hz). This greater refresh fee reduces stuttering on my display whereas scrolling, which in flip helps me not really feel as sick from the jittery movement.

In fact, rising my display’s refresh fee doesn’t do something on the subject of watching movies that set off my movement sensitivity — like movies recorded with a shaky digicam. However not less than I can simply scroll by my cellphone’s settings and Reddit threads with out inflicting points (so long as I don’t scroll too quick).

Making these adjustments not solely decreased my eye pressure and lightweight sensitivity but in addition made my cellphone a lot much less of a set off for my migraines. When a migraine does hit, these adjustments enable me to nonetheless use my gadget once I’m caught in mattress and must make amends for messages.

If you end up having the same expertise or experiencing eye pressure from display use, I’d additionally recommend making an attempt out alternative ways to scale back the influence of display use — each in your smartphone and your laptop.