Just realized my desk lamp was the reason I kept getting headaches

For months I thought it was eye strain or too much screen time. Turns out the cheap LED lamp I got on Amazon had this terrible flicker you can't see but your eyes definitely feel. Swapped it for an old incandescent desk lamp my grandma gave me and the headaches stopped in like 3 days. Anyone else run into this with modern lights?

2 comments

2 Comments

jennifer2043d ago

Yeah, 5 days after I got one of those cheap LED strip lights from ikea I started getting these dull headaches right behind my eyes. I figured it was allergies or something. Switched back to my old desk lamp and it was like night and day. It's wild how much those invisible flickers mess with you, nobody really talks about it either. Glad you figured yours out too, that stuff can drive you crazy.

taylor.sean3d ago

Hang on, I gotta push back on this a little. I've had those same IKEA LED strips in my office for like three years now, right above my desk, and I've never gotten a single headache from them. Maybe it's about the specific model or something, because I know there's a ton of different cheap LED strips out there, some with better drivers than others. I've actually seen some people say the flicker thing is way overblown, that most modern LEDs are actually way more stable than old fluorescent tubes that definitely used to give me migraines in college. It could just be that your eyes were adjusting to the new brightness, you know? Like when you swap from a yellow bulb to a white one and it just feels weird for a week. Not saying you're wrong about your own experience, but I think there's a lot of confirmation bias happening with this whole LED headache thing online.