Are my glasses making me more tired than I should be?
I have these Owndays glasses that I bought specifically for screen time -- blue-light blocking, subtle orange tint (as part of its transition thing), the whole pitch. They were supposed to help with eye strain from staring at code the whole day.
They're a little small on my head and they sit a bit weird, but I figured -- close enough, and I like how they look.
But man, I've been exhausted at the end of most days lately. Not just in an "I worked hard" way -- also in a "my eyes feel heavy and I want to lie down immediately" way.
Turns out my glasses might actually be making things worse. And it's probably not placebo: there are at least three mechanisms at play here, and apparently they can work together.
1. Less light means my eyes work harder
That orange tint doesn't just filter blue light -- it cuts total light transmission. One study found that blue-blocking lenses can reduce low-light sensitivity by 5-24%, which means my pupils dilate more to compensate and my visual system strains to maintain contrast with a dimmer signal all day. That's real extra work that just compounds hour after hour.
2. Orange light tells my brain it's nighttime
This is the one that got me. Strong amber/orange filters shift the color temperature of everything I see toward warm tones, and my brain reads warm color temperature as "evening" -- which can trigger inappropriate melatonin release during the day. So I'm not tired because my eyes are strained; I'm tired because my brain thinks it's almost bedtime for hours on end.
3. Bad fit causes optical stress
"A bit small on my head" isn't just a comfort issue. If the optical centers of the lenses don't align with my pupils -- and with ill-fitting frames, they often don't -- I get something called unwanted prism, where my eyes constantly correct for it to maintain single vision. That's a subtle but sustained muscular effort, and tight frames add physical tension on top of it. Headaches, visual fatigue, optical strain -- they all feed into each other.
The funny thing is, the science on blue-light blocking glasses has been pretty clear for a while. Multiple systematic reviews -- including a big 2023 Cochrane review and a 2026 update in Therapeutic Advances in Ophthalmology -- found no significant evidence that they reduce digital eye strain. The premise might just be wrong: blue light from screens probably isn't what's causing eye strain at all. It's blink rate, screen distance, and prolonged near-focus.
But I didn't read any of that before I bought them. I just saw "blue light bad" and grabbed a pair.
I'm gonna try a week without them and see what happens. Maybe I'll save them for evening use only -- that's where the circadian argument actually has real evidence backing it up.
Sometimes you spend money on a solution, and the real problem is that the solution was the problem all along.