After years of staring at screens at work, an optometrist told me I was shortsighted for life and insisted I buy prescription glasses. I then became a landscape gardener for four years. Guess what? My shortsightedness disappeared, as did my hayfever and weak knees. Now I am back in an office (much much better wages) and my shortsightedness is starting to return. So a combination of aggressive diagnosis and lack of eye exercise.
The Puzzling Rise in Nearsighted Children
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Re: The Puzzling Rise in Nearsighted Children
#12Kids should be outside playing, not coding. Adults, too.
Coding is playing. Just kidding, of course. One thing I've noticed is that my kids have vastly more homework than I ever had, and homework now starts in kindergarten. There are only so many waking hours in the day.
Can kids do homework outside?
Re: The Puzzling Rise in Nearsighted Children
#13After years of staring at screens at work, an optometrist told me I was shortsighted for life and insisted I buy prescription glasses. I then became a landscape gardener for four years. Guess what? My shortsightedness disappeared, as did my hayfever and weak knees. Now I am back in an office (much much better wages) and my shortsightedness is starting to return. So a combination of aggressive diagnosis and lack of ey…
The article claims it's the lack of sunlight, not the lack of eye exercise.
Re: The Puzzling Rise in Nearsighted Children
#14Kids spening too much time on phones, like Chinese got nearsighted spending too much time doing schoolwork.
No, apparently not. According to the Nature article http://www.nature.com/news/the-myopia-boom-1.17120, close work has been ruled out as a major cause of myopia.
Re: The Puzzling Rise in Nearsighted Children
#15After years of staring at screens at work, an optometrist told me I was shortsighted for life and insisted I buy prescription glasses. I then became a landscape gardener for four years. Guess what? My shortsightedness disappeared, as did my hayfever and weak knees. Now I am back in an office (much much better wages) and my shortsightedness is starting to return. So a combination of aggressive diagnosis and lack of ey…
The article claims it's the lack of sunlight, not the lack of eye exercise.
Lack of sunlight can mean eyestrain, but it also means lack of Vitamin D. Anyone out there giving their kids supplements?
Re: The Puzzling Rise in Nearsighted Children
#16Related article that made the rounds recently: http://www.nature.com/news/the-myopia-boom-1.17120
There are multiple startup ideas in that article.
Yes. Trying to fix myopia by getting children exposed to more sunlight is a bit of a "let them eat single-source organic asparagus" response: it makes would-be social reformers feel good, but it's not a realistic way to reliably give all children the (apparently) minimum three daily hours of 10,000 lux. Getting all children outside for three hours every day is not realistically possible, and wouldn't be pleasant or even desirable for all of them: bad weather, unsafe neighbourhoods, air pollution. In areas with often-overcast conditions and/or short winter[ days](EDIT) it wouldn't even be sufficient. Classrooms that admit more natural light would be great, but they're not a realistic means of getting to 3h × 10,000 lux across the board, if only because replacing almost the entire stock of primary-school classrooms would be a slow and expensive process. The most obvious solution is to rig up classrooms with multiple SAD lights, light-meter them to ensure that every desk gets at least 10,000 lux when the system is on, then run the system for maybe four hours every classroom day.
(Speaking of which, if I was in charge of a minor child I'd go ahead and stick a SAD lamp in its bedroom and leave it on for most of the day.)
Re: The Puzzling Rise in Nearsighted Children
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are multiple startup ideas in that article.
Yes. Trying to fix myopia by getting children exposed to more sunlight is a bit of a "let them eat single-source organic asparagus" response: it makes would-be social reformers feel good, but it's not a realistic way to reliably give all children the (apparently) minimum three daily hours of 10,000 lux. Getting all children outside for three hours every day is not realistically possible, and wouldn't be pleasant or e…
>Getting all children outside for three hours every day is not realistically possible, and wouldn't be pleasant or even desirable for all of them: bad weather, unsafe neighbourhoods, air pollution.
i don't understand that. Where do children are supposed to get daily multi-hour physical activity? On the treadmill in the basement? And if children aren't getting such amount of physical activity - that would border on neglect toward their health, physical and emotional. (of course my POV is affected by the fact that i'm a child of 197x-198x when we were "free-range" children back in USSR and from what i heard it was about the same in USA back then)
Re: The Puzzling Rise in Nearsighted Children
#18Related article that made the rounds recently: http://www.nature.com/news/the-myopia-boom-1.17120
I wonder, then, if the levels of myopia and SAD/circadian disruption are correlated. The calibration of one's circadian rhythm depends, basically, on getting the same sort of levels of sunlight that cause dopaminergic response.
Re: The Puzzling Rise in Nearsighted Children
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. Trying to fix myopia by getting children exposed to more sunlight is a bit of a "let them eat single-source organic asparagus" response: it makes would-be social reformers feel good, but it's not a realistic way to reliably give all children the (apparently) minimum three daily hours of 10,000 lux. Getting all children outside for three hours every day is not realistically possible, and wouldn't be pleasant or e…
>Getting all children outside for three hours every day is not realistically possible, and wouldn't be pleasant or even desirable for all of them: bad weather, unsafe neighbourhoods, air pollution. i don't understand that. Where do children are supposed to get daily multi-hour physical activity? On the treadmill in the basement? And if children aren't getting such amount of physical activity - that would border on ne…
This is why modern parents are so in love with structured extra-curricular activities like team sports: they're effectively isolated corrals in which "multi-hour physical activity" is encouraged, rather than discouraged.
Re: The Puzzling Rise in Nearsighted Children
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are multiple startup ideas in that article.
Yes. Trying to fix myopia by getting children exposed to more sunlight is a bit of a "let them eat single-source organic asparagus" response: it makes would-be social reformers feel good, but it's not a realistic way to reliably give all children the (apparently) minimum three daily hours of 10,000 lux. Getting all children outside for three hours every day is not realistically possible, and wouldn't be pleasant or e…
Natural sunlight is the most abundant resource humanity has. If we can't get our kids three hours of it per day, there's something that needs to be fixed with how we treat them.