In this episode of Truth About FX, Walter gives some juicy tips on how to minimize eye strain from looking at computers, laptops, and other gadgets for too long. He points out that while having a strong “dedication” towards monitoring the charts is a good sign, having a healthy body is still the best way to achieve success.
Download (Duration: 06.02 / 6.90 MB)
In This Episode:
00:52 – intense trading
02:17 – blue light
03:25 – health hack
05:18 – prescription glasses
Tweetables:
Eat well, re-hydrate, and do some eye exercise. [Click To Tweet].
Wear gaming glasses to minimize the blue light. [Click To Tweet].
Use some softwares to help adjust your gadgets’ lighting. [Click To Tweet].
Announcer: Sometimes, forex trading is a wild and wooly place to be. That’s why Hugh is here, to post your questions to Walter, the naked forex guy. Hugh’s got questions and Walter’s got the answers. Here at the Truth About FX Podcast.
Hugh: Hi, Walter. My eyes get tired after a long trading session, do you have any ways to minimize eye strain?
Walter: Yeah. First thing is it sounds like you are probably trading the lower time frames. If you are trading the lower time frames, you probably have a background in sports or martial arts or something because you are able to focus, maybe had a meditation background. That’s great!
You probably eat well, you probably exercise. All these things are going to help you if you are doing these intense trading sessions but in terms of your eyes — I’ll put a link below this podcast down in the shownotes .
You can get these gaming glasses that I use. I am not even on the computer that much. Today, I think I am going to be on the computer between 90 minutes and two-hours. That is going to be all my computer time today. The rest of the day, I will be out doing something.
I am trying to minimize that but what you would do is you would wear these gaming glasses. I do not know but have you seen these, Hugh. These gaming glasses?
Hugh: Yeah. I actually bought a pair recently, too.
Walter: Yeah, they are awesome. It cuts out the light. I mean, it is a great way to do this. I think it cuts the blue light or something. The other thing that you can do is I’ve got these software that is really a good idea if you spend a lot of time in the computer.
I’ll link up in the shownotes too here, to this podcast episode, so you can download it. I put it on my phone, my tablet, my computer. For whatever reason, I do not think it works on iPhone. I think it has to change something in the iPhone and iPhone would not let you do this.
Hugh: The thing is with the iPhone, it is already built into the system.
Walter: Is that what it is? Really?
Hugh: It is in one of the settings, yeah.
Walter: So, what this does is this software changes as the sun goes down. For example, one of the big worries about being on the computer late at night is you get too much blue light and that keeps you awake and and keeps you stimulated.
What this software does — and you can use it on your phone, on your tablet, on your computer — is you set it to your location in the world. Your screen will mirror what the sun is doing.
For example, as we are recording this in Australia, it is winter. The days are really, really short now so at around 5:30 when the sun goes down, my computer will actually change and the blue light is removed from the screen.
If I am on the computer after sundown, it seems a little bit weird in the beginning but then you’ll get used to it and you didn’t even notice it. So at night, if I am on the computer or on my phone or whatever, I am not going to see the blue light which is really what leads to eyestrain.
It is why people cannot fall asleep because they are on their devices all the time, they are always looking on the phone or whatever. I would also recommend that and you can download that on the shownotes to this episode. That is the way of doing that.
Another thing that I learned from a friend of mine who’s really cool. He’s into these health hack things. He is a really smart guy and he has taught people how to get off their glasses.
People who use glasses get off glasses by doing these eye exercises and, basically, what you’ll do is teach yourself to look at something at pause. You might look at your finger right in front of your face, like I do not know, ten inches from your nose.
You focus in on your finger print and then quickly you shift your gaze out the window and you try to look at something. Like, I am looking at the headland that is twenty kilometers out past this beach so the beach wide is like five beaches away.
I am looking at the headlands, you try to focus in on the tree out there or whatever. Something farther away than your finger and you keep doing that. What you are doing is you are training your eye muscles to get a little bit stronger like you would any other muscles on your body at the gym.
I think what happens overtime is our eyes get lazy and by just keeping them locked into the computer screen, that is something that is probably… It is almost like your muscles are really good at a certain distance but after that they start to hurt.
I would definitely try eye exercises like that and I’ll post some links to some of those exercises in the shownotes below this episode too so you can check that out if that is something that resonates with you. That might be another way.
If you have the glasses, that should definitely help and if you download the software, that might help as well. If you are really, really into this tuff, then maybe you can use the exercises too. I hope that at least one of those will be something that would make sense to you.
Hugh: Really cool! I just want to mention that I bought the glasses because I think we talked about it before and I just wanted to give them a try. I thought it was like a “What the heck is this?” But, it really does work and I actually — just by using those glasses — I haven’t used my prescription glasses in like six months.
I’ll give the exercises a try too. That sounds great.
Walter: Wow! That is awesome, Hugh. I didn’t know that. That is so cool. You found that the glasses work quite well, then?
Hugh: Yeah.
Walter: That is great. There you go guys, we’ve got testimonial number one. That is a great question too. It comes in for traders who are on the screen all the time. It is one of the things that they have to deal with.
Hugh: Yeah. It is an occupation hazard.
Walter: Exactly. Thanks, Hugh.
Hugh: Thanks, Walter. See you.
SHOWNOTES
4 Yoga Exercises for Eye Strain
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