This could be placebo. Anything related to sleep or headaches there could be a psychological factor ie because you “know” blue light is bad it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
I used flux for a long time and thought it was only relevant for sleep. I found myself using it more during the day as it hurt my eyes less and as a result I also got migraines and headaches less often. Could be a total coincidence or even still placebo, just sharing my anecdote.
I also started using redshift (linux equiv to flux) several years ago and gradually used it more, even during the day, as I also found it seemed to help mitigate migraines at least to some extent and it just generally reduced my eye fatigue.
I have a shortcut on my KDE desktop that runs this command:
/usr/bin/redshift -O 3500 -b 0.7
It instantly makes the screen easier to look at, no matter the lighting conditions. I also have a command to revert to normal color:
/usr/bin/redshift -O 6500 -b 1.0
Curiously, "redshift -O 2700 -b 0.7" is less comfortable than 3500K because it's too yellow. I think what bothers me about screens is heavy saturation in any color.
I agree there's likely a lot of placebo effect going on around this topic. I think there are certain people who are more photo-sensitive and chroma-sensitive than others, however, I suspect it's not a huge percentage of the population. There are also some potentially huge confounding factors making it harder to tease out the practical effect in our everyday lives. As a first-order effect, there's artificial room lighting itself without blue or screen light that's de-blueified. It seems likely that non-blue artificial light is going to have more effect above baseline than the delta between blue artificial light and 'corrected' non-blue artificial light.
The even bigger effect I wonder about is that the screens we look at generally have content and we look at them because that content is engaging our minds and holding our interest. It's often interactive and involves two-way communication. All of those things are going to be highly stimulating to our brains and I think that will likely swamp the effect of removing blue from the artificial light. We already know that reading or watching exciting content is going to make it harder to fall asleep for some time afterward - regardless if it's on a printed page, live or via a screen. Personally, I find that factor to be much larger than any chroma-effect.
Is it possible or ethical to offer a research option to f.lux? Like you would let the user pick that option and have the software dim the luminosity with or without cutting more specifically blue light then have them report and if they felt any difference after a week/month or a month, repeating the process for a few months/week while either alternating or changing the mode.
Maybe it is a dumb idea as it is too easy to tell whether the software is in full effect or not.
Trouble with f.lux is it reduces blue. Doesnt eliminate it. Speciality glasses give more dramatic results.
Axon or Thermaspecs brand name.
I’m hyper sensitive to lights and medications, 10 minutes of exposure is enough to trigger a migraine. Plus side, it makes trial and error testing Much easier.
I remember reading somewhere about placebo effects changing over time, but I thought that was across populations over time, not for an effect on an individual over time. Do you have more info on what you mean?
