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Shortsightedness has become an epidemic

economist.com

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Re: Shortsightedness has become an epidemic

#91

Post by vasco »

b112 wrote: post #31
frereubu wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My daughter’s primary school teacher recently got a “beach teaching” qualification and she now has one school day a week on the beach, rain or shine. I was really pleased about that anyway as the school doesn’t have a lot of outdoor space for the kids to run around, but this gives me even more reason to be happy.

I scoffed at first, but I guess the qualification is about water safety and things, just in case?

You should've stopped at the scoff. Someone qualified to handle children in a classroom and in field trips is already qualified to take them to a beach.

Re: Shortsightedness has become an epidemic

#93

Post by kwhitefoot »

0dayz wrote: post #56

This has me perplexed, if it has to do with sunlight, wouldn't then Nordic countries have a very high level of shortsightedness?

Outdoor activities are very common in Norway winter and summer. The skies are often quite clear too.

And, at least where I live, kindergartens have the children playing outside most of the time, summer and winter, rain or shine.

My impression is that short-sightedness is in fact rarer in Norway than in the UK but it's not something I actually have statistics for.

I fear that it might be changing now as so many children, boys in particular, spend so much time using computers.

Re: Shortsightedness has become an epidemic

#94

Post by simonh »

mattlondon wrote: post #57
inglor_cz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we manage to have a kid, long walks everyday are planned :) More movement, less screen time is always good for health, parents' and kids' alike. Also, getting used to all sorts of weather improves the immune system. By spending too much time indoors we are becoming glasshouse flowers.

Good luck with the plan :) Under the age of about 1 to 1.5 then you get to call the shots of what happens when. Walk as mu h as you like. After that age, the kids start to get their own opinions and won't always just do what you want them to do. You may want to go for a long walk, but the kid wants to do something else. They'll spend 95% of the time trying to escape the buggy/stroller or trying to run off or just sit…

It very much depends on the relationship you have with your kids. Respect and trust are really important.

However beyond that IMHO frankly it's critical safety imperative that children do what their parents tell them when it matters. If you're in the street near traffic a child disregarding parental instructions is a life and death issue. There are other safety critical situations too. This is why I feel it's vital that children and parents have a relationship of trust and respect, in both directions, that allows for that. It's not easy, I know.

Re: Shortsightedness has become an epidemic

#95

Post by occamrazor »

eastbound wrote: post #74

Why can we have 2-lense glasses that move the focus to infinity? ELI5: In opticals, “rays” coming from a near object (=mobile phone) are angled, while rays coming from afar (=end of a landscape) are parallel. The job of pupils is to bend the rays from the focal point ahead to the focal point on the receptors in the eye. The eye is a rest when looking afar, because rays come parallel, and thus there isn’t much to do.…

Assuming that it’s technically practical, the results would be very unsettling: the phone screen would look like a window with the content “behind “ the window, very far away.

Re: Shortsightedness has become an epidemic

#96

Post by kamaal »

Pretty sure in the recent times COVID has worsened this. I do exercise often these days. But its nothing like the morning workout, lunch time socialising, and tea time walks with colleagues before COVID.

These days apart from the workout in the morning I get no outdoor activity, its just staring at every decreasing(sizes of) screens. I'm showing early symptoms of Shortsightedness. Several other colleagues tell me the same, there's also additional problem of people getting obese staying at home.

Though schools have opened. Last two years were equally worse for kids, no play, classes on smartphones and laptops.

Humans have not evolved to live like this.

Re: Shortsightedness has become an epidemic

#97

Post by Asraelite »

simonh wrote: post #84
ldx1024 wrote: post #79

It may just be a pet peeve, but it rankles me a bit when the term "epidemic" is used to describe widespread conditions that are not communicable/infectuous. Looking at the dictionary it appears the usage here is legitimate, but my guess would be that it is a misuse that has become accepted, like using the term "begging the question" to mean suggesting the question.

All novel linguistic constructs are 'misuses' in some sense or another that have become accepted. In this case that's not so though, the etymology is from the Greek '(upon|near|against) the people, and does not necessarily refer only to disease.

Etymology in interesting, but has almost zero relevance in determining how acceptable a use of a word is.

Re: Shortsightedness has become an epidemic

#98

Post by ldx1024 »

simonh wrote: post #84
ldx1024 wrote: post #79

It may just be a pet peeve, but it rankles me a bit when the term "epidemic" is used to describe widespread conditions that are not communicable/infectuous. Looking at the dictionary it appears the usage here is legitimate, but my guess would be that it is a misuse that has become accepted, like using the term "begging the question" to mean suggesting the question.

All novel linguistic constructs are 'misuses' in some sense or another that have become accepted. In this case that's not so though, the etymology is from the Greek '(upon|near|against) the people, and does not necessarily refer only to disease.

The term does appear to have a long history. This source states that using it as a term for widespread non-infectuous conditions is relatively recent:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3373038/#!po=96...

Re: Shortsightedness has become an epidemic

#99

Post by inkblotuniverse »

wiseowise wrote: post #43
rhinoceraptor wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> It is abnormal for humans to need glasses. It's also abnormal for humans to need braces and to need their wisdom teeth surgically removed. It's not. Just because there wasn't a documented cases of weakly sighted people doesn't mean that they didn't exist. Or do you seriously believe all prehistoric humans had 20/20 eyesight? And unless your teeth are crooked line vines you probably don't need braces from medical st…

Soft foods cause crooked teeth. Ancestral humans ate raw tubers and other very chewy things that exercised their jaws, and the growing human body needs this resistance/exercise. If you look at modern hunter-gatherer tribes with traditional diets, they have a far lower rate of crooked teeth we'd solve with braces than the developed world.

Sterile environments/too-low pathogenic load causes allergies. The immune system expects a base-rate of infection; if it doesn't see that, it upregulates. Allergies are a first-world disease; they're far less prevalent in less developed countries, and you even see the effect in immigrants- their allergy rates go up after a few years of living in a developed country.

Re: Shortsightedness has become an epidemic

#100

Post by lock-the-spock »

ldx1024 wrote: post #79

It may just be a pet peeve, but it rankles me a bit when the term "epidemic" is used to describe widespread conditions that are not communicable/infectuous. Looking at the dictionary it appears the usage here is legitimate, but my guess would be that it is a misuse that has become accepted, like using the term "begging the question" to mean suggesting the question.

I don't know about shortsightedness but for instance obesity is a legitimate epidemic. Whipe it is behavioural it is well known that social groups influence each other on this, so like a virus it spreads between people. The same may be true for shortsightedness too to some degree.
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