Reel Repair by Alan Tani

I have epilepsy (absence seizures, no tremors, medicated and no episodes) but certain indoor lights really make me feel unwell which is problematic when shopping at some stores or watching my son play basketball in some gyms. ALso driving at night  when conditions are wet the glare from lights is very bad. I cannot drive at night when snowing at all unless I turn off the headlights (seriously safer when I lived in bfe MOntana on 20 miles of dirt).

I have some auto-dimming glasses that almost helped indoors, but maybe not so much at all anymore. Part of the problem with finding right lenses is needing to try different lenses under the right conditions.

Its early basketball season, my ankle is good enough where I can go to his games but the lighting in his home gym is killing me. 

ANy help or ideas is greatly appreciated

Joel,

Im not experimenting any of those symptoms or needs with my eyes / sight, but I know there are some good night Driving glasses by eagle-eye sunglasses, I bought some of those by mistake but noticed they werent blocking too much sun light after a short inspection I found out they were night driving glasses, pretty sure you can also use them indoors with good results.

you can try with some cheapo driving glasses for what you described and if it works go for a better quality ones.

My optometrist suggested yellow tint.

Yes, I too have heard the yellow tint can be a winner for nighttime use.  I have a pair of clip-on yellows that also work OK in daytime, but I seldom drive at night, or for any distance at night, so can't say I have tested them out in that context.

Frank

I wear eyeglasses full time. My everyday glasses are progressive, transitioning, with lightweight plastic lenses having anti-scratch and anti-glare coatings. So I know first hand there are solutions to problems through eyewear. My shooting glasses for instance are yellow with the progression reversed top to bottom. Whether or not there is/are sollutions for you I can't say howeve there are  ways to help you identify specifically what is going on. Online questionaires and light sensitivity tests can help you decide if you want try finding a clinical solution. It seems to me you are sensitive to certain wavelengths of light in which case lens coatings could be the answer. You could be sensitive to a strobing affect, imperceptable to most people, of certain types of  lights.

The one thing I can say with absolute certainty is if you find glasses with a tint or color that work for you get wrap arounds to keep light coming in at odd angles from reflecting off the back of the lenses and into your eyes.

Edit: I reread your post and see that you take medication. Certain medications are known to cause an increase in sensitivity to light. You might want to investigate that as well.

Regards,
OR

Thank you all for the help. Mr.Reely yours especially - My meds seems to help with the light sensitivity, I take Zonegran (sp) .  I need to find a forum for peoples in similar situations, an optometrist besides the hack in Costco that has experience in these matters.

I am trying to to determine which stores are using which types of lights that bother me but management is less than helpful as they seem to act like I am trying to instigate some sort of lawsuit.

I discovered I had epilepsy after losing consciousness  at  Costco, hitting my head on the cart behind me, waking up with my head in some mans hands.  The man in line behind me was a doctor and it was his cart that I hit my head on. Another man with epilepsy witnessed my event and said I was talking about intense dejavu before passing out and said he suffered similar events and that he was epileptic and said that it was very important that I relate as much as I could to a Doctor. Costco Roseville staff was wonderful. Roseville Fire dept was disgusting- while laying in the ambulance being prepped for travel two  RFD med guys standing outside the ambulance kept asking me what drugs I was abusing and were loudly discussing which drugs they thought I was ODing on- In front on my 12 year old son who was already quite upset. The the Fire dept sent me a bill for $500 just for showing up, this was aside from the ambulance company.  Then the ER Doc didnt want to believe I had any sort of seizure and sent me home even though I was feeling horrible and had severe memory loss of the event and the days before.  She did not put anything in my chart as to what my son or I had tried to tell as to what had happened. Luckily my young son insisted to my regular Dr that I see "Somebody who cares". Enter the neurologists and testing and losing my license for a year...and now things are much improved.

The local Walgrens has lighting so offensive that I barely made it to a chair before passing out the other day. I had to put my hood on and limp out as fast as I could. When I called to ask about the lighting they acted like I asked their religion. The local True Value has lights so nice and soothing its almost like I feel better in there than I do outside. If I knew the two different styles i could tell my doctor and then maybe have something to work with.

Light yellow polarized glasses help me a lot at night , in snow, or wet conditions while driving. The key is polarized to cut glare   -  Jimmer

I'm not sure if it's a matter of doctors being overworked and burnt out, an insurance-driven push to just get people in and out as fast as possible leaning towards the lowest cost diagnosis with a hope that problems resolve themselves, or just a general decline in the industry. But it seems like the new trend amongst medical professionals is to be extremely dismissive when people try to discuss their experiences. It's certainly not all doctors who are like that. But a dismissive and unhelpful doctor used to be a scorned rarity. Now a good doctor who actually listens and considers what you say instead of looking for an interpretation that gets you out the door quicker is remarkably uncommon, and more likely to be nearing retirement than just starting out. And it's even worse for women. The stories of heard are infuriating.

Im not sure I'd love the govt being in charge of healthcare, but this profit-based model is horrible.

I used to, but avoid early Am, and late PM, now in retirement. We have this stupid phenomenon here; there are very few streetlights(electricity is very expensive) and many people drive with their bright lights on all the time-no dimming for others approaching.
I started wearing lite-tinted sunglasses here for my early AM work commute. Worked ok.
The police here could make a fortune in tickets if they enforced 300 ft. dim your lights law, either on the approach or from behind, but no go... It's the smallville, rural, enforce what you want to thing here.

I wear Oakleys with their polarised Prizm lenses when driving in fairly low light but not in the dark proper. The color of any tint on the lens has a huge effect on how they perform at night.
I've extensively worn Smith's "Sensor" lenses in both yellow and a very light pink/rose in ski goggles for night skiing and found them to be excellent. I think for your use case the Sensor Mirror would cut a lot of the glare without reducing visibility by much, however I don't know if they're available in regular glasses or only in goggles.

This would be a great question to ask your specialist.   You might want to also ask if polarization and lens tint (such as cobalt blue) makes a difference and if the light reduction has to be so significant that you won't be able to use these for night driving. 

Us reel repair types are generally not the best source for medical advice.

Having said that, this topic interested me.  I am not medically trained, I just poked around the sciency end of the internet a bit.  As best as I can tell, seizures from light flickering at certain frequencies has a decent amount of medical literature.  It has to be in a certain frequency range, which can differ a bit by patient.  The amount of contrast in the field  of view, colors, specific patterns, and the brightness of the image are also factors. 

This can happen walking around a store, watching a specific sequence of images on your TV, driving past certain scenery (like dappled light through trees), etc.

So as far as I can tell, properly functioning fluorescent lights have too high a frequency to be a problem, but not malfunctioning ones.  So a store with a bad fluorescent light, maybe combined with the layout and light strength might be what is setting you off,  as opposed to specific types of lights being the problem.  One hack that I saw was covering
one eye in these situations, but strangely enough, not both. 

Here is one fairly readable source and a not too hard to read paper backing the article :

https://www.epilepsy.com/what-is-epilepsy/seizure-triggers/photosensitivity

https://www.epilepsy.com/sites/default/files/2022-10/Epilepsia_2022_fisher_visually_sensitive_seizures.pdf 

-J

Early florescent lights flicker at 100-120 hz. "modern" ones much higher.  I prefer LED lights in the 600K range for some things 7000k-8000k on my work bench.  The LED lights I have on my bench have 3 color settings and 3 watt settings and a remote controller. 

Quote from: Keta on Today at 02:36:30 AMEarly florescent lights flicker at 100-120 hz. "modern" ones much higher.  I prefer LED lights in the 600K range for some things 7000k-8000k on my work bench.  The LED lights I have on my bench have 3 color settings and 3 watt settings and a remote controller. 

For seizures, the paper says 3-60 Hz, and particularly 15-20.  So it seems that it would have to be one  that flickers more slowly when it was on its way out to be a problem here.

I have seen cheapo LEDs fail similarly.

-J

Low end LED lights do fail at a high rate.