Excess Time Indoors May Explain Rising Myopia Rates 144
Nature reports that an unexpected factor may be behind a growing epidemic of nearsightedness: time spent indoors. From the article: Because the eye grows throughout childhood, myopia generally develops in school-age children and adolescents. About one-fifth of university-aged people in East Asia now have this extreme form of myopia, and half of them are expected to develop irreversible vision loss.
This threat has prompted a rise in research to try to understand the causes of the disorder — and scientists are beginning to find answers. They are challenging old ideas that myopia is the domain of the bookish child and are instead coalescing around a new notion: that spending too long indoors is placing children at risk. “We're really trying to give this message now that children need to spend more time outside,” says Kathryn Rose, head of orthoptics at the University of Technology, Sydney.
Congratualtion Sherlock (Score:4, Interesting)
I work in a basement 200 feet under the ground and I know it feels good to get outside once in a while.
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Yeah yeah, ls671 likes to go outdoors, and therefore knew all along what causes myopia [wikipedia.org], right?
Re:Congratualtion Sherlock (Score:5, Funny)
Of course I know. When younger, I use to work outside and I had no myopia. Now I am older, I work underground and I have myopia. See? you can't deny scientific facts like that.
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Well, I can't argue with that logic.
Re:Causation does not imply correlaton! (Score:5, Funny)
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I work in a basement 200 feet under the ground and I know it feels good to get outside once in a while.
Yeah yeah, ls671 likes to go outdoors, and therefore knew all along what causes myopia [wikipedia.org], right?
No. Obviously, ls671 works in a Minuteman [wikipedia.org] silo and feels less twitchy and sees things more clearly after spending time outside every so often. This is a *good* thing... Naysayers are welcome to send him their GPS coordinates.
Damn... (Score:2)
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Agoraphobia is not a fear of the outdoors or open spaces. Agoraphobia is a fear of any place/situation not easily escaped from. If you watch anime and want a humorous take on it find "Anime de Wakaru Shinryounaika - EP06" where for the format and time it is covered pretty well. If you prefer something a bit more rigorous try http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000923.htm or better still http://www.dsm5.org/Research/Documents/Wittchen_Agoraphobia.pdf
BTW for your other replier, agoraphobes do seek
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I'm no doctor, but I fail to see how the application of panic will improve your situation. :)
Then you're not inducing panic in the right people :)
Re:Unfortunately (Score:5, Insightful)
But NOT going outside increases your risks of bone deformity from vitamin D deficiency, and now also increased incidence of myopia.
However, the REAL problem is that helicopter mummsy and daddsy are TERRIFIED that pedobear will rape little timmy and throw him away in an old icechest, because Fox News said so.
Re:Unfortunately (Score:5, Informative)
However, the REAL problem is that helicopter mummsy and daddsy are TERRIFIED that pedobear will rape little timmy and throw him away in an old icechest, because Fox News said so.
It's not just Fox News, and it's not just pedophiles. If you've been keeping up with the news in recent years, you know that the newest trend is for do-gooders to call the police when they see even a 9 or 10-year-old walking alone (e.g. back from the park) or sitting in a car reading while Mommy's doing some shopping.
And guess what happens in too many cases? Parents get arrested for neglect. Children sometimes get removed for a while by protective services and parents may need to fight to get them back.
I'd be much more scared of police or child protective services kidnapping my child than "pedobear," because that's certainly the case. (In case you think I'm exaggerating, look up the stats. Roughly a HALF MILLION kids are removed by CPS for short or long term every year in the US... And CPS's own stats admit that in a full 1/3 of those cases, after review there is NO evidence of abuse or neglect... Not counting the cases where the claims are questionable, just the removals where the removals are completely unwarranted.)
Also, here's a blog [freerangekids.com] that keeps track of some of the more egregious stories in the news.
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http://news.discovery.com/huma... [discovery.com]
"Between 1990 and 1995 the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children handled only 515 stranger abductions"
100 stranger abductions a year vs. 166,000 non abused kids taken by CPS.
literally more than 1000 times as likely your kids will be kidnapped by the government than a 'stranger'.
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I wonder what this kind of treatment is doing to the kids. Do kids growing up these days feel more excluded from society?
Re:Unfortunately (Score:5, Insightful)
oh my godsies, parents have to take care of their kids. Wow, that's terrible. Next thing you know they'll have to find them too... tough shit, have a kid, you better be there to take care of them and raise them.
"Being there" and "taking care" of a kid also involves gradually giving them the freedom to make their own choices and do their own things as they grow. If you don't do this, you end up with kids who never learn to take care of themselves and are still living at home in their late 20s or 30s.
Anyhow, this needs to be based on age and maturity level, obviously. But nowadays we can't trust a 10-year-old to play outside with a 6.5-year-old younger sibling or to walk home from a park together [washingtonpost.com] (and yes, the parents ultimately were found responsible for neglect [go.com]), nor can we trust an 11-year-old alone in a car [wfsb.com] for a few minutes while Mommy goes into the store.
Etc., etc. Sadly, these stories are not uncommon [slate.com]. There are things like this that come up on a regular basis across the U.S., and if you search a bit you can also read some of the harrowing stories of parents who are force to spend months or years struggling to get their kids back or living under draconian state "supervision" by CPS when they do.
Yes, as parents, you need to supervise your kids when they are little, and then you gradually allow them more freedom. It's called "growing up." But nowadays, people call the cops if they see a kid younger than 16 without a parent around, and CPS comes knocking.
You don't think that's extreme?
Re:Unfortunately (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, as parents, you need to supervise your kids when they are little, and then you gradually allow them more freedom. It's called "growing up." But nowadays, people call the cops if they see a kid younger than 16 without a parent around, and CPS comes knocking.
You don't think that's extreme?
And it's getting more extreme.
http://www.westernjournalism.c... [westernjournalism.com]
The concept of Extended childhood has become pathological.
So you might need to add another 10 years onto the age where they can be taken away from you. To me, it is subtle abuse. Children as people will remain children as long as they are treated like children. And this is robbing them of years of adulthood. And I have to say, at least in my case, I enjoy adulthood a lot more than childhood.
I had completed my first education, had a good job and my first retirement plan by age 25. I fail to see how my remaining a child until that time would have helped either myself, my parents, or society in any way. Hell a lot of people are starting to get gray hair at 25.
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I'm inclined to ignore everything that link says, because the writer can't go two sentences without invoking a 'leftist' conspiracy.
Basic rule: Never link to a column commenting on another column. Follow the chain, link to whatever the commenting is commenting on. Repeat until you reach the end, or find a column that doesn't specify a source. The site you linked is actually commenting on a Daily Mail column, which is in turn commenting on a BBC story, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/maga... [bbc.co.uk]
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I'm inclined to ignore everything that link says, because the writer can't go two sentences without invoking a 'leftist' conspiracy.
lBasic rule number 6. I don't do your research for you. Do you have a newsletter for proper internet research?
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There were three stories you could have linked to:
- A reputable source, the BBC story.
- A slightly-less-reputable but still decent enough source, a Daily Mail column commenting on the BBC story.
- A rambling political nut commenting on the Daily Mail story while trying to turn it into a rant about how leftists are trying to destroy adulthood in order to force everyone to live off the government.
Why did you decide option number three was appropriate?
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Why did you decide option number three was appropriate?
Because here on slashdot, people act like if there is no cite, so I put one in.
While in fact, I know that people are trying to extend the length of childhood even further than it is now. I've listened to people agitating not for 25, but to 30 as being the age that a person is considered an adult.
That's starting to leave precious little time to do things like find a mate, raise a family, prepare for retirement, and enjoy life as an adult.
So seriously, a big whatever on your incredible umbrage at my
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Don't forget that life expectancy is going up too, and old age is getting more manageable - that should partially compensate. Extended childhood may take some years of adult life away, but medical technology will give them back at the other end.
Here in the UK, the age of independence is shooting up. For practical reasons: We've got a housing shortage. Can't afford a mortgage, can't afford rent, no option but to stay with the parents a few more years. I moved out, but I had to move back in again for financia
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Don't forget that life expectancy is going up too, and old age is getting more manageable - that should partially compensate. Extended childhood may take some years of adult life away, but medical technology will give them back at the other end.
Not all that great a bargain if you ask me. I'd happily trade ten years of my life to avoid my parents parents in law and step parent's in laws fates. Yeah, they lived to a ripe old age. Cathetersized, dementia, bedridden. Old age isn't for cowards, and there is a reason that extended care nursing homes are a growth industry.
p.s. I'm a bit older than you, perhaps that is the difference in our perspective. Im nowhere near dotard, but I gotta tell you, I wouldn't delay adulthood and independence a day long
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A 45 year old woman is fairly close to menopause.
In truth, Its a cruel lie we tell ourselves. So many of us seem to think that all we have to do is be put on a gazillion maintenance meds, and we'll live forever. Even then, a 45 year old person is going to be 66 or later when theier children turn 21. Because it is more difficult to become pregnant at that age. So assuming their offspri
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I'm 'guilty' of leaving the kids (9 and 11) to read in the car if I know I'll only be in a store for less than ten minutes. But even lately I've limited that to things like a quick pop-in at the drug store, since it seem more likely people would overreact to seeing a child in a car at the grocery store, where the average time the child would be left along is much higher. That I even have to worry about that is just crazy.
The problem with
Re:Unfortunately (Score:5, Interesting)
Wait, they're admitting to doing it for no reason? Something isn't right with that. I've never seen a government agency acknowledge any wrongdoing, they go out of their way to avoid any such thing.
That's not what I said. There are cases where CPS admits -- after investigation -- that they found "no evidence" of abuse or neglect.
At the least, they'd have to claim they couldn't take the risk, that the mere possibility of harm wasn't acceptable.
Yes, and that's what they do. But that doesn't change the fact that they are basically admitting that 1/3 of child removals are done without any substantiated evidence.
Don't get me wrong -- if a child seems in imminent danger, perhaps CPS needs to step in. But the policy with CPS nowadays seems to be "take kid first, ask questions later," which if you're a parent who hasn't done anything wrong seems... well, wrong. Doesn't it?
But don't limit this to police/CPS for children. It hits adults as well. It's bad enough that people with actual mental illness are neglected because nobody can be bothered to care, both in and out of care, it's worse when people are mistreated by those who are supposed to help them
Okay, yeah. I know there are other things wrong in the world. But the topic of TFA is kids not going outside enough. One reason they may not be outside as much is because parents can't always be around their kids, and nowadays society seems to be saying if you can't personally supervise your kid until he/she is 16, you can't have them out of your sight (like outdoors). The abuse of people with mental illnesses and other "wards of the state" is another significant problem, but I'm not sure it's particularly related to TFA.
Re: Unfortunately (Score:1)
WTF? I played outside on the street in the dark when I was a kid. Hide and seek is so much more fun when you can hide "in the open" but you're still hidden because it's dark. Obviously that's on a quiet residential street.
Obviously my mom still looked out for us through the kitchen window but that wouldn't be visible from the outside. Strange new world. Guess I won't be able to let my daughter do that then.
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Wait, they're admitting to doing it for no reason? Something isn't right with that. I've never seen a government agency acknowledge any wrongdoing, they go out of their way to avoid any such thing.
I don't know if you know it, but calling CPS and reporting possible abuse was an early version of Swatting. And CPS knows it, but they have to check it out. They aren't doing it for no reason, the people who enjoy fucking with other people's lives are doing it for whatever reason they have.
Think of the tactic that some women had when going through a divorce, where they didn't want to shar ecustody, so they made a false report that the husband abused the children - that sort of thing.
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It's not at all justifiable. Yes, they have to check out all reports, but they do not have to be hamfisted about it. They certainly aren't justified in doing the children and their parents more harm than the parents were alleged to have done. They could ask a few questions, tick a few boxes and then apologize for the intrusion.
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Their job is to serve children and families, not cover their asses.
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No, it's still their job. They're just not doing it.
It takes a special kind of lowlife to routinely traumatize children just to cover your own ass.
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Oh, I certainly have. They get their reputation mostly because so many shirk their actual job and busy themselves with ass covering and building a fiefdom.
That does not change what their job is at all, it just changes how well they (don't) do it.
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Oh, don't worry. They still refuse to acknowledge any wrongdoing. They also refuse to acknowledge any harm they do to children when they 'interrupt' parental custody and leave the children perpetually afraid that bad people (that is, CPS) will steal them away again. They also fail to acknowledge that too often, conditions for kids in the system would meet criteria for taking them away if they weren't already in the system.
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If I go outside, statistics say I've got a 93% chance of dying eventually (as about 93% of humans who have ever existed are dead now).
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The wive's tale must be TRUE!!
Mom always said that I would go blind!
(LOL)
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The wive's tale must be TRUE!!
Mom always said that I would go blind!
(LOL)
You gotta stop at the point where you need glasses, man.
Surprisingly badly written article (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't actually say what "this extreme form" is, exactly. Presumably cut out in editing and nobody noticed that this was left stranded. There was probably a reference to so-called "high myopia", which does indeed cause people typically in their teens to go from the ordinary fully-corrected-with-glasses myopia to being much more so, with potential "myopic degeneration" of the retina. It's a mystery why this only happens to some myopes.
The figures are scaremongering. Although this has indeed been a notable public health problem for a good while - the government of Singapore has been concerned about it for over a decade - it is nonsense that 10% of student-age people will go blind from it.
I'm an ophthalmologist. I specialise in diseases of the retina.
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I don't think there's anything missing, although it doesn't name a specific "syndrome" or such:
In severe cases, the deformation stretches and thins the inner parts of the eye, which increases the risk of retinal detachment, cataracts, glaucoma and even blindness. Because the eye grows throughout childhood, myopia generally develops in school-age children and adolescents. About one-fifth of university-aged people in East Asia now have this extreme form of myopia.
I think the middle sentence makes it harder to connect the two outer sentences.
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Actually, I've got an increased risk of retinal detachment, although my ophthalmologists never mentioned increased risk of cataracts or glaucoma. I function normally with rather thick glasses, and would find it very difficult to function without them. No big deal, really, but it annoys me now and then.
Re:Surprisingly badly written article (Score:5, Interesting)
In Seoul, a whopping 96.5% of 19-year-old men are short-sighted.
Say what you want about fear-mongering, that's a pretty crazy statistic. Sounds like I should invest in some Korean laser correction company.
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By what definition of short sighted? Less than perfect vision?
Technically you are short sighted when you do not have perfect vision, nor are far sighted. Its not hard to trick.
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Please, to a man it looks a lot longer than it actually is, therefore he's not short-sighted but long-sighted.
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I'm a pro dog trainer, specifically retrievers, which need to have good distance vision. I've noticed that if puppies around weaning age don't have a long line of sight available, they never really learn to see distance later on, either. (Incidentally, there once was a bloodline that was infamous for myopia, so there is an inherited component too. Those dogs are not improved by environment.)
I recall a study some years back that found if babies sleep in a lighted room, they are likely to become myopic.
I'm th
Use it or lose it (Score:4, Insightful)
So, as with many of the bodies abilities; it's just a case of use that distance vision, or lose it when your eyes adapt to shorter ranges.
Just like muscle strength, flexibility, cognitive function, etc.
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That is exactly the PROBLEM though, they ARE using it, way too much.
Focusing requires more effort that looking at far away things.
Reading, being inside, watching TV, videogames, anything near you done long periods, all seriously damaging to your vision.
Focusing too much on nearby things is causing you to tone the muscles in said eyes, which leaves their rest state at a larger size, which ends up being a size capable of shifting your max focal point closer and closer the more toned it gets.
This can happen tw
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Strange, isn't it? I thought it was new-age BS when I read that blue light tends to cure myopia in Linda Clark's The Ancient Art of Color Therapy (1981). 20 months ago I painted my house deep sky blue, and noticed after that staring at a blue wall for several hours, my vision was noticeably better. I'm over 60; this was a surprising result. I wonder what part of the eye is changing.
Re:Use it or lose it (Score:4, Informative)
Except according to the article, that isn't the mechanism. It's the intensity of light that causes the body to prevent myopia due to changes in dopamine levels.
Not only that, but in animal studies, if chicks were given a drug that inhibited dopamine's effects on the eyes, they'd develop myopia in the same conditions that the control chicks would not.
So it's not "use it or lose it". It's "you need bright light".
Light levels, not computer games (Score:4, Informative)
For those who didn't pick up on the bit in the summary, this is not due to close work, it's most likely due to exposure to bright light:
But time engaged in indoor sports had no such protective association; and time outdoors did, whether children had played sports, attended picnics or simply read on the beach. And children who spent more time outside were not necessarily spending less time with books, screens and close work.... Close work might still have some effect, but what seemed to matter most was the eye's exposure to bright light.
If this is the case, then what we should do to reduce the myopia problem is to use brighter lights inside.
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Internal lighting is so much dimmer than light outside that this is probably not practical.
The eye is very accomodating and will adapt to great extremes of light.
This is credible as a mechanism. Optical acuity is improved by having a smaller pupil (this is why squinting to improve your vision is a thing - you're sacrificing light collection to reduce the number of stray unfocussed lightpaths entering your pupil). Therefore if you don't get enough light, your iris muscles will atrophy making your pupil wider
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This seems to be counterintuitive. Bright lights cause pupils to contract, increasing the depth of field and reducing the work that the ciliary (focusing) muscles have to do. The more work these muscles have to do, the stronger they get and the more they flex the lens, keeping it pliable.
In times past, the best test for visual acuity was the ability to resolve double stars.
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Even though a tiny iris opening means not having to do as much work to achieve acceptable focus, that's not how the body works. Regardless of light level, eyes try to reach perfect focus, which does not change with different light levels.
It could easily be argued that overworking the eyes' muscles by trying to focus in dim light would lead to exhaustion or even spasm - see the hypothesis of William Bates. I don't accept that argument, but it has been seriously proposed.
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Just get the kids outside. There are so many other benefits.
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Replace a room lit with incandescent lights with LEDs consuming a similar amount of power, and that's getting close to this level of light (5,000 lux vs 10,000 lux using today's technology). So it's not too much extra energy required to get to 10,000 lux.
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You'd need a lot more fixtures. It would not only require more power but the cost of retrofitting a school would be very high. Thoug
A mirror on the wall seems to help (Score:4, Interesting)
A few years ago I worked at a desk facing a wall and I got the feeling that it wasn't good for my eyes that they never focussed on anything more than a metre away, so I put a mirror on the wall and I think this has helped my eyes.
I tilted the mirror up a little so I could stare into it whenever I wanted without making eye contact with others.
Re:A mirror on the wall seems to help (Score:4, Funny)
Re:sOrRy ChArLiE WrOnG tUnA (Score:5, Insightful)
You're still focusing on the mirror in both cases.
No. If you are looking at objects seen in the mirror you are focussing at the total distance of : you-mirror plus mirror-object
The mirror wraps the distance but does not reduce how far the light must travel or the object appears.
At last : all those hours I spent in school physics drawing light ray diagrams has come in useful.
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My optician has a rather cramped testing room. So they put the eye chart thingie (Actually a set of different charts, some illuminated) on the wall above the patients' chair. Flipped. The opposite wall has a mirror, so the effective patient-to-chart distance is almost twice the length of the room.
Re:sOrRy ChArLiE WrOnG tUnA (Score:5, Insightful)
It's you who is the dumbass. Perhaps you should actually think about it, or research it, before calling people out.
This is school level physics.
The mirror doesn't emit light, it reflects it. Which means the light has the same path as before, just bounced into a different angle, convergence and everything.
Try this simple experiment - hold a mirror close by so as to reflect a tree in the distance. Hold a page of text (or a glistening penis, I suppose) next to the mirror. Focus on the text. Now focus on the tree.
Can't do both at the same time, can you?
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This isn't even physics. This is geometry. Light follows a straight path. Mirrors reflect it almost perfectly. Now get your laser range finder, and point it at a mirror. What happens? The range finder reports the total distance between you and the mirror + the mirror and the diffuse object it hits.
For a more accessible experiment, hold a mirror up in your face but at an angle so you can see the world behind you as well as your eyes. Your eyes are heavily crossed when focused on the dust on the mirror itself
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I'm a photographer, and this is a common false assumption. The actual focus is on whatever is in the mirror. It's exactly like seeing the same subject through clear glass.
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This is actually another false assumption. You see the right/left reversal because you are facing the other way when viewing the reflection. That's why up/down are not swapped also.
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AFAICS the TV can't be a problem unless you are sitting down right in front of it, anything beyond a couple of meters is near infinity focus.
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"Bookish" vs Indoors (Score:2)
They are challenging old ideas that myopia is the domain of the bookish child and are instead coalescing around a new notion: that spending too long indoors is placing children at risk.
Doesn't that amount to the same thing? Not spending much time on distance focussing?
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FTFA :
They are challenging old ideas that myopia is the domain of the bookish child and are instead coalescing around a new notion: that spending too long indoors is placing children at risk.
Doesn't that amount to the same thing? Not spending much time on distance focussing?
Yeah, I laughed when I saw that. Someone's pretty clueless.
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Yes, *someone* is. Read the rest of TFA to find out who!
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Not enough time spent distance focusing is possibly a cause of myopia, but the article presents an alternative hypothesis: that it is the reduced level of light indoors that is the problem.
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If you had kept reading, you would have seen that the new theory (backed by experimental evidence) is that it's the light level that makes the difference.
Here's a test for this hyoothesis (Score:4, Interesting)
Can we develop an e-book reader that presents a virtual image that must be focused on as though it were at a distance? Let a cohort of Asian kids go through childhood reading from this device and see what happens to their vision.
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You can just let the kids wear reading glasses.
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PS. there are parents who actually do this it seems.
http://www.myopia.org/savechil... [myopia.org]
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As I post further down, you can just wear +1D reading glasses.
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Stop it (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Stop it (Score:5, Insightful)
Or at least go outside and masturbate.
Preventative Glasses (Score:4, Insightful)
I started noticing this when I was revising for A-Levels. (17-18)
My distance vision would start to fuzz after hours on the books, and be restored by a long walk.
It's pretty much done the same thing ever since.
One thing I do is make sure to focus on distant objects while looking out of the window a few times an hour.
The other thing that helps is wearing +1D reading glasses (just cheap ones from the supermarket). These are designed for oldies who can't focus on close objects anymore - so they move the focal point of close up material much further away. A foot or two away, my monitor is basicaly at infinity, which stops/reverses the atrophy of my distance vision.
Focussing is mediate by muscles! Like any others, use them, or lose them.
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1 meter away, actually. +1D is 1 diopter; a diopter is an inverse meter.
There are those who state that muscles are used only to close-focus, changing the shape of the lens and the whole eyeball, and that distance focusing is a state of relaxation. Others claim that muscles are also used for far-focus. If the first group is correct, no amount of eye-exercise will help the myopic.
So send the kds outdoors (Score:2)
So they can breath polluted air. Soon to become even more polluted due to deregulation in the US and lack of regulation elsewhere.
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Does your mom's basement have a filtered air intake?
stop the tech the test ideas and have recess come (Score:2)
stop the tech the test ideas and have recess come back in schools.
Children should wear reading glasses (Score:1)
Cure for Myopia? (Score:2)
Ask the kids to focus on owning their own home some day.
It'll cure 'em in minutes.
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Of course. (Score:1)
I've been spending all this time indoors, and now my eyesight is around -9.00 diopters. (yes, true, and yes, that's pretty high powered myopia right there).
Of course, as a child of the '60s, I spent plenty of time outside. And it was always baffling that my eyes where so bad, because none of my parents had this bad of eyesight. Both could actually carry on without prescription lenses, unlike my daily life. Turn out, both carried the recessive gene for it, and those are the ones that I inherited.
I needed
Bullshit! (Score:2)
I call "bullshit", as would my opthamologist.
Most childhood-developing myopia is a result of growth factors (The eyesocket changes size and shape as you get older and the eyeball can end up with distorted curves. Only 1-2mm variation is enough to cause issues). The predominant cause is genetic, not environmental.
Anything beyond 3 meters is close enough to "infinity" as makes no odds, so "indoors" would have to be extremely claustrophobic to even factor into this.
Bookish children tend to be myopic for the si
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There are multiple factors here, including genetic predisposition. When I was 10-11, my eyes got noticeably worse in the winter but recovered almost completely in the sunny summer. In the age 11-12 school year they got much worse in the winter and I had to get glasses in April. A reasonable explanation is that a genetic predisposition or some other flaw was fighting against the beneficial effects of sunlight, and sunlight lost.
There are a lot of subtle things going on here and interacting. Neither your case
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