Two mysteries solved

[Argh. This phantom post is courtesy "Session-Saver", the firefox 1.5 plugin which restores tabs when my browser crashes. It helpfully loaded the page which last night contained my latest LJ post. Thank you firefox.

I do have two discoveries I just learned at the optometrist. So I'll reuse this post for those.

The first: if you get headaches when the atmospheric pressure changes, coffee might help. It does for me, and it does for the optometrist. She explained why: she thinks it's because coffee is a vasodilator. I'm a bit suspicious, because a quick googling didn't prove it, but it didn't disprove it either.

The second: melted_snowball, kraig, and I have been. Don't read this until after you've been debriefed."> ...is behind a cut in case anyone here is part of the same optometry study melted_snowball, kraig, and I have been.

Sorry for that, I don't want to be accused of foiling a research study. :)

The second is that my research-study lenses are... progressive bifocals. With a value of +1, which is somewhat low for bifocals.

The research study is trying to describe how people between 30-45 who use computers all day, get eye-strain; we don't have an inability to focus close-up, as with older people who get bifocals, but it's more work for our eyes.

The research lenses are supposed to ease the strain, and also have some other properties that are supposed to minimize the distortion on the sides of the lenses.

It's funny that I described the lenses in my first post about them, as if they were bifocals. Also, I had a suspicion the second set of research lenses were placebos, and they were.

Anyway, here's to fewer headaches, a free pair of glasses, and most of all, to *science*. Yay, science.
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