Tag Archives: health - Page 4

Gunnars

Posted by on May 30, 2013 No comments

I’ve been a Woot buyer for a while, from back when Woot was cool.  But even now, you can still get some good deals.  Anyway, that aside, it was a few months ago that I saw one of my co-workers wearing these yellow glasses.  He said he got them on Woot.  I recognized them as Gunnars and was curious as to whether they were worth the money.  He said he noticed the difference.  I tried them on and because of the slight magnification of the lens, I took them right off and said “no way.”

Weeks go by and my co-worker is wearing his Gunnars every day.  Every once in a while I ask, “they’re working ok?” and he says they’re great.  The joke in our department is that they are future glasses and when wearing them you can “see future.”  On a more practical level, if the glasses didn’t work, he would’ve stopped using them.  So, the next time Gunnars showed up on Woot, I went for it.

I purchased the Groove model.  When I got them, I was slightly underwhelmed.  The arms were simple rubber and the nose pads were stationary and tiny.  But I got over that and wore them to work.  After an extended time, the nose pads started really hurting me.  I adjusted them over and over but couldn’t find a good position.  So I ended up wearing the glasses less and less and eventually they just ended up in a drawer.

Another Woot sale came along and I decided to purchase another pair, one with a different bridge.  I decided on the e11vens, since they had a solid plastic bridge.  When I got the glasses, again, I was slightly underwhelmed.  The whole frame was a glossy black plastic and felt a little on the cheap side.  But the glasses look like something Tony Stark would wear, so there’s that, anyway.  At the time I ordered the e11vens, I played around with my Groove’s one more time and found a very comfortable nose pad position.  With that modification, I started wearing the Groove’s consistently.  Now I had a pair for work and one for home.

The real question is, do they work?  Yes, they do.  You’ll see a lot of reviews saying that Gunnar’s are overhyped, overpriced, and pointless.  After using them, I have to disagree.  I’ll admit, when I first researched Gunnars, I was totally put off by the hyper-aggressive, buzzword-laden marketing they used.  Since that time, the company seems to have toned the hyperbole down and the message is a lot more palatable.  I read some quotes from their founder and they made a lot of practical sense.  Basically, Gunnars are safety eyewear, and that’s not sexy.  It wouldn’t be very cool to be wearing “safety glasses” at work, and who would ever buy them with that label?  So I understand why they did what they needed to.  Now, with some real testimonials and word-of-mouth behind them, they can afford to be more realistic and practical with their message.

Now, some of the arguments against Gunnars say that that all they are is tinted glasses and all you need to do is go out and buy blu-blockers from the dollar store to get the same effect.  That’s fairly untrue.  Some of the features that Gunnars profess (and probably way over-hyped) are actually beneficial.  I’m not going to look up what their special marketing words are when discussing the features, because they don’t matter.

One feature -  I ‘m pretty sure they call this “microclimate” – is the wraparound style of the lenses.  It doesn’t need a buzzword to be effective.  I know this works because my eyes don’t dry out throughout the day.  You may think it’s a placebo effect, but physical proof that my eyes aren’t drying out is that I get “sleep” in my eyes at the end of the day, which means my eyes are tearing more than sufficiently.

Another feature is the slight magnification, the part that freaked me out when I first put the Gunnars on.  This magnification is optimized for up to about a 3 foot distance.  Don’t wear Gunnars for driving or even for walking around, they don’t work for far distances and you’ll get a headache. 

Gunnars hype the optically pure lens material and anti-glare coating.  Eh, I would hope glasses would be clear and anti-glare, especially at that price.  And the tinting, it’s not sunglass tint, it’s like shooting glasses.

So, can you use blu-blockers?  Sure, but you won’t get a wraparound fit, so your eyes will dry out.  The tinting will be darker and more pronounced, which I can’t see that doing any good.  You could use shooting glasses, but you won’t get the near-range magnification.  Cheap sunglasses probably aren’t as optically pure as specialized glasses, so maybe there would be a bit of distortion.  And, purely for vanity’s sake, in an office environment, wearing Gunnars may be considered edgy, but wearing actual sunglasses would be either tacky or plain weird.

The other real question is, are they worth it?  For $100, I wouldn’t think so.  Luckily, they are a Woot recurring item, so you shouldn’t have to pay that much.  At Woot prices, they are definitely worth the money.

Payback is a Bitch

Posted by on April 25, 2013 No comments

Yesterday during work break, I went on a walk.  It was a strange, rather painful walk, as my feet were killing me most of the time.  I resolved that I would wear different shoes if I was going to go walking again.  After getting back and settling down, I found that I couldn’t sit.  My back would twinge in that way that says “get ready, here it comes…”  So, I did what was reasonable.  I put some ice on my back and left work to get home and lie down.

At home, I applied the TENS belt and was disappointed after an hour that it wasn’t doing any good.  So I did some leg stretches and then knocked myself out with my in-case-of-emergency-take-these medpack and slept the night away.  I woke up in the morning very, very slowly.  During this extended period of reflection, I found that the stabbing pain was still there, recurring every 10-20 minutes.  Additionally, I found the pain radiating down my leg.  Ohhhhh….  Nice to see you again, sciatica.  How have you been?  I thought I kicked you out years ago.

In my experience, I have two types of back problems.  One affects me when I move and one affects me when I stay still.  It’s my good fortune these two problems don’t occur together.  The first case is severe.  It starts with little warning jabs like I had, then when you don’t expect it, bam.  You are frozen solid and then immobile for about a week.  These incidents have been chronicled in older posts.  The second case isn’t as bad.  I mean it’s not awesome or anything, but it’s not debilitating.  I can take care of it with a few weeks of leg stretches, focusing on the hamstrings.  The important thing is that since I know it’s the second case, I don’t have to necessarily be cautious about moving about.

However, the timing of this recurring injury is interesting since I’m scheduled to take classes this weekend for Reiki.  Reiki, for those that don’t know, is energy healing.  I have a series of pages that I’m writing for this blog on my Reiki experiences that aren’t released yet, but will be shortly after my classes.  This is going to be an excellent first test of the healing ability of Reiki.

Deviation

Posted by on April 6, 2013 No comments

In a Talking Heads song, there is a line, “Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.”  In statistical terms, the enjoyment level of heaven would be 100% with a standard deviation – or variance – of zero.  The song tries to express that as long as the deviation is zero, the enjoyment level could be 100%, 80%, 40%, or 0% and it would all be the same.  Because, without variance, how would you know any different?

An oft-used phrase, “It’s all relative,” has more meaning than we typically intend when we casually toss it out.  Any evaluation of any experience is based upon past experience.  Our report of that experience is either expressed in relative terms or, failing a basis of comparison, a threshold evaluation.  How was your day yesterday?  “Good.”  Good, relative to other days I’ve had.  How was your skydive yesterday?  “Awesome!”  Awesome, compared to other activities like working.  Or maybe, “Good.”  Good, compared to dying.  Living through an experience is an example of a threshold evaluation.

I bring all this up in memory of getting over a nasty cold.  I don’t get sick.  Well, although that sounds like an absolute, I mean I don’t get sick with any regularity.  Less than once a year.  Living like that, you forget and take for granted how good it feels to be healthy.  My standard deviation was falling.

This can apply to just about anything in life.  You don’t know how bad (or good) your relationship was until you start a new one.  You don’t know what life can be like when you’re suffering chronic pain.  You don’t recognize how convenient having a car is until your car doesn’t start.  Breaking out of a rut is nothing more than adding a deviate sample to your population in order to increase the mean.