Hi Kenny. Nice of you to share this. I hope you tell more people to get more rest and sleep. Even in my case, when the strain just started becoming chronic, the pain was more on the right eye. Do check that your spectacle lenses are properly aligned and that you are using the correct power. It'll probably take a few years to recover. In reply to your points:
1. Seven or six hours sleep might initially seem sufficient, but my strain was more severe. I could notice even small differences, and I had noted this for many months. There is a distinct difference in getting 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep versus 7 hours. Yes, the muscles do heal a bit even if you get less than 8 hours of sleep, but the healing is far more potent when it's 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep.
2. I do agree to some extent about the light sensitivity during the initial stages of chronic strain, but I don't remember having trouble with daylight or light from any bulb. You might also want to check with a doctor.
3 & 4. Sure, 10 minutes intervals are perfectly fine. The lesser the strain duration, the better.
5. There are free night-light or night-shift or red-shift apps available for all major operating systems and even for the mobile phone. Setting your monitor to the "warm" colour setting works well too.
Answering your questions:
1. I don't have astigmatism, so I cannot answer you about that. Even I have blurry vision when I don't wear my spectacles, but in my experience, not wearing glasses does not cause more strain (unless I start squinting and trying hard to focus on something). Astigmatism may be different, so all I can say is that I don't know about your case. I had to do a lot of searching to find opticians who had access to glass lenses. Actually all of them would have access to it. Many of them just bluff that it isn't available. Be persistent. Keep asking around. I'm sure telescopes and binoculars are still being manufactured with glass lenses, so somebody would know where you can contact someone to get glass lenses. But whatever you do, make sure the power is correct. Also, merely buying glass lenses wouldn't help if your power is wrong. If I was in your place, I'd have tried getting my eye power measured by an ophthalmologist, and then avoided wearing spectacles for a month (and obviously would have avoided doing anything that required clear vision during that period) and ensured that I got a good amount of rest and sleep during that month and then gone and checked my eye power at a different ophthalmologist's place again at the end of the month to see if there was a variation in power. Since I don't know what it is like to have astigmatism, I don't know if this would be appropriate for you, so do ensure due caution and commonsense. Ideally an experienced doctor should be advising you. The very fact that you have astigmatism shows that your eye muscles have been through a complex phase of having to adjust and strain to focus properly.
2. I didn't have to consume any supplements. Unless there's some specific digestive issue, the human body is fully capable of getting the necessary nutrition from the normal well balanced diet and well cooked food we eat. Emphasis on "well balanced" and "well cooked". For getting better sleep, there are natural foods that help. An internet search will show you. In my case, I noticed that (good quality) curd gave me longer duration sleep and almonds gave deeper sleep. Chicken meat also helped a bit. The almonds and curd won’t work if you eat badly cooked food though. Food has to pass my stomach test https://nav9.medium.com/does-your-food-pass-my-stomach-test-43dc28fa0338. Don't forget to check if you have allergies to certain foods. Again, a doctor or a nutritionist can advise you better based on your health.
3. I'm in India. I've been exposed to bright sunlight right from childhood. I never needed sunglasses. If it helps you, then sure, go ahead and use sunglasses (provided there are no safety issues), but I assume you'd use sun-glass lenses with power, so again, you'd need to ensure the right power.
4. When not using gadgets also, my eye muscles felt very sore. Not sharp pains, but there was a constant dull pain.
5. Mostly indoors, but I did have daylight exposure everyday. If this question is related to research on eye health depending on exposure to outdoor light, I would say that I haven't done research in that direction, because my first priority was to reduce the muscle pain.
6. I don't understand what you mean by ups and downs, but if it's about phases of improvement and going back to being strained, yes it has happened plenty of times when I was still in experimentation mode. But ever since I realized for sure the points about rest, sleep and nutrition, and knew what kind of spectacles to avoid, it has been a constant improvement. No ups and downs.
7. No, I have not experienced such pain after getting proper rest. I'm assuming your problems are more complex because of astigmatism and maybe your spectacle lenses too. In case there are any other eye defects, these should be immediately be examined by a doctor. No point asking a stranger on the internet.
8. I need to close my eyes from anything ranging from 5 to 10 minutes or occasionally longer. It depends on whether I got proper sleep the previous night, it depends on whether I've been consuming meat (which gives strength to the muscles), it depends on whether I've used high or lower powered lenses, and it depends on the intensity of the strain that I've put my eyes through. As of now I don't have enough information to say if the duration of closing my eyes gets shorter as I recover. I'll be able to answer that only a few years later, but I do believe it might be true.
I wouldn't say I'm fully recovered, but I have recovered to an extent that I can work. Not taking the breaks after 20 minutes makes my eyes strained and sore as usual, but compared to a few years ago, the constant soreness goes away faster. Five years ago, one day of strain would make my eye muscles constantly sore for more than a week. Few years ago, it reduced to 4 days. Last year it was one day. Now the constant soreness goes away within the same day (provided I get proper rest and sleep).
For you, I'd recommend finding a doctor among your family or friends, who could advise you in the long-term. Doctors at medical colleges or experienced doctors who can spare the necessary amount of time to examine you and try out experiments to see what gives you the most relief, will also help. A lot of misconceptions still exist about how to heal eye strain, so the doctors need to listen to your symptoms and experiences instead of just sticking to what they studied.
