[HN Gopher] Nearsightedness is at epidemic levels - and the prob...
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Nearsightedness is at epidemic levels - and the problem begins in
childhood
Author : pseudolus
Score : 79 points
Date : 2024-04-24 19:44 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theconversation.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theconversation.com)
| navjack27 wrote:
| The heck? My earliest memories before I was walking I couldn't
| see far away. I was born nearsighted and with a lazy eye that
| caused me to see double. There wasn't anything anyone could do to
| prevent this. This article is bringing up a whole lot of data but
| it's not passing the scrutability test. It almost sounds like it
| wants to blame people for having nearsightedness.
| mort96 wrote:
| .. what, how does that track? The article is inscrutable
| because you happen to have been visually impaired at an early
| age? What's the logic here?
| austin-millan wrote:
| i.e. "proof by example"
| choilive wrote:
| people weight their anecdotal evidence higher than scientific
| evidence. _shrugs_
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I have been nearsighted nearly my whole life. I started wearing
| glasses in 2nd grade, probably needed them before then but who
| knows. I played outside a lot -- we had recess 3x day in school
| and most days I played outside until dark when I got home. Had
| very little "screen time" as the only screen in the house was a
| 12" black and white television.
| metabagel wrote:
| Yeah, I think there is a genetic component. I had glasses
| from the third grade, and I recall spending lots of time
| outdoors as a youngster. There wasn't much else to do.
| vundercind wrote:
| My suspicion is a lot of it is due to Winter, and shortening
| recess times, plus increasing reluctance of schools to send
| kids outside in anything but perfect weather.
|
| Go to school just as the sun's coming up -> inside recess
| because it's too cold or it's raining a little -> sunset
| around 5:00PM.
|
| Schools get kids five days a week for most of the winter, so
| as parents it's damn hard to get them outside much while the
| sun's up on those days if the schools won't do it
| consistently. And you need _lots_ of time in very-bright
| light to cut your odds of myopia to something very low.
| mikestew wrote:
| _There wasn 't anything anyone could do to prevent this._
|
| Maybe they are not talking about you personally. There seems to
| be strong evidence for time outside being a contributing
| factor, as one example. That doesn't automatically discount
| your personal experience, but at the same time any HN reader is
| well aware the label placed on data from one's personal
| experience.
|
| --
|
| A guy who also has probably been near-sighted since birth
| Terr_ wrote:
| In early elementary-school I would memorize what color clothes
| my friends were wearing each morning, so that during outdoor
| recess I could find them without meandering between clusters of
| kids trying to get close enough to check faces.
|
| Then with glasses: "You mean _everybody_ sees like this!? "
|
| So I was already nearsighted when I still cared about climbing
| trees and trampolines etc., the books and computers phase came
| later.
| m463 wrote:
| I read that vitamin d deficiency might be related to myopia. It
| seems controversial though.
| devmor wrote:
| If the article was about people who've lost arms in childhood
| and you were born missing an arm, would you still assume it
| were about you?
| mywittyname wrote:
| > This article is bringing up a whole lot of data but it's not
| passing the scrutability test.
|
| I disagree. The _environmental causes_ of myopia are very well
| understood, and have been an area of research for decades and
| the treatments have been known for nearly as long. Exposure to
| sunlight at an early age will reduce prevalence of myopia.
|
| They are not saying it's the _only cause_ of myopia. There are
| people with congenital myopia, such as yourself. But the the
| bulk of myopia cases are not congenital, they are developed.
| This is why myopia prevalence increases as a country
| industrializes, and children spend more time indoors.
| mattpallissard wrote:
| We've known for all of history that sitting inside for extended
| periods, allowing yourself to atrophy, not socializing with
| others, self-indulgence, and neglecting your spiritual and mental
| health are bad for you.
|
| I get why people study this sort of thing and why it's useful.
| The thing that I don't understand is why people need studies to
| tell them they should skip desert, leave the phone on the
| counter, go outside, and ask your neighbor how they're doing.
|
| As an aside, I was born nearsighted as well. /shrug
| aidenn0 wrote:
| First of all, I predict that approximately zero people will
| change their behaviors because of this study. So saying "people
| need studies to tell them" is a bit much.
|
| > We've known for all of history that...
|
| I don't want to go too far into the epistemological weeds here,
| but we've also known that the earth was the center of the solar
| system and that many health problems are caused by an imbalance
| of the humors.
| infotainment wrote:
| _> We 've known for all of history that sitting inside for
| extended periods, allowing yourself to atrophy, not socializing
| with others, self-indulgence, and neglecting your spiritual and
| mental health are bad for you._
|
| This, IMO, is why WFH is a bad thing and should be avoided.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Only for those who depend on the workplace for their social
| life. Which might even be most people, but I don't think it's
| healthy.
|
| But here we go again with a rehashed debate.
| iwontberude wrote:
| The bigger issue is why should we be forced to subject our
| biology to the pathogens in the office. Why should I have
| to sacrifice my health?
| cannonpr wrote:
| I chose to live next to a lovely forest and get to enjoy a
| walk when ever I like during my workday. When working from an
| office I was stuck 2 hours each way in an underground tunnel,
| and then in a tiny box office, preconceptions are a funny
| thing.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| > This, IMO, is why WFH is a bad thing and should be avoided.
|
| yes WFH bad. Drive 3 hours to sit in a cube instead with
| 1/6th the space of your room at home.
| seam_carver wrote:
| I agree, but only because the office is a 25 minute walk
| away. If I was driving an hour I'd feel different.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I have no real opinion on whether or not WFH is better, but
| I feel compelled to point out that only a very small
| minority of people are working that far away from home.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| In LA where I live, it's the opposite. There are 14
| million people in metro LA area. A 2h daily commute is on
| the average side. Some of my colleagues would drive north
| of 3h. Per day. 5 days a week. About 660 hours per year.
| Spent in a car, constantly endangered, paying for gas,
| polluting their own biosphere to the point of guaranteed
| impact on lifespan.
|
| No thank you.
|
| It would blow my mind to see people in Bentleys on my
| commute. Hard for me to imagine having enough money for
| such a car and not deciding to avoid the inhumane agony
| of forced commute.
| Supermancho wrote:
| Ok, 3 is not typical. There is a behavioral reason for
| this. Like in most economic considerations, there's a
| tradeoff, where humans will tolerate a certain amount of
| time travel, for the money. So this tends to be stretched
| out to the maxima, over time.
|
| Given driving time and train time, it's easily 2 hours of
| a commute in any of the top 20 metros for the majority of
| the population. From personal experience: Seattle, San
| Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, Orange County (just
| Santa Ana to Irvine!), or the rest of the inland empire
| was all 1.5 or more, each way. Ofc there will be less
| general cases around the nation, where you might
| characterize a "very small minority" opposed to what I
| would believe was 1/3 of the nation doing 2 hours _total_
| before WFH was popularized. Some people (including people
| we each know) still make these commutes.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| versus being stuck in a car alone during that time instead?
| then go to work and don't have friends because I can't say
| anything that can get me fired
| smolder wrote:
| The take away should probably be that while indoors for long
| periods, you should sit with a window nearby and within view,
| so you can focus on far away objects periodically. (I've
| heard 15 second every fifteen minutes or 20 every 20 as rules
| of thumb.) And maybe take walks outside more often.
|
| Do you have less opportunity to sit next to a window you can
| look out of periodically, when working from home? I'd think
| not. Less time to take walks outdoors? Nope. For many people,
| offices are going to be more of a detriment than a help.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| We do science because sometimes common sense turns out to be
| wrong.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I wish my parents would have known that sending me outside
| would prevent my needing glasses. Or that schools would have
| offered some sort of treatment to help prevent it.
|
| I feel like society generally accepts myopia as something you
| just get, instead addressing it like a disease that can be
| prevented. Sure, it's manageable with corrective lenses or
| surgery, but prevention is so simple. Better education, through
| articles like this might catalyze some of the changes we need
| to make to allow a lot of children grow up being able to see
| things naturally.
|
| it's like diabetes, sure, some people are born with it, but
| others develop it through lifestyle choices. Except in this
| case, this effects children, who have very little control over
| their lives. It's up to adults to help them grow up to be
| healthy.
| electriclizard wrote:
| The west has shifted into believing subjective experience is
| useless compared to objective knowledge.
|
| This is like a BackEnd engineer saying that he doesn't believe
| the FrontEnd exists.
|
| We've been studying the FrontEnd for the majority of human
| history, and while many things we've found are just plain wrong
| in an objective sense, they still have subjective value.
|
| Case and point: look at how meditation has been receiving
| continuous affirmation from the scientific community.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > Case and point: look at how meditation has been receiving
| continuous affirmation from the scientific community
|
| Has it?
|
| Most of traditional medicine is quackery, as useful and
| correct as a broken clock.
| swatcoder wrote:
| > We've known for all of history that sitting inside for
| extended periods, allowing yourself to atrophy, not socializing
| with others, self-indulgence, and neglecting your spiritual and
| mental health are bad for you.
|
| That doesn't really capture the risk-carrying lifestyle they're
| highlighting in the article, though.
|
| Spending your days contributing to your community in a safely
| sheltered school, office, etc as part of a social community and
| then your home time further learning and socializing indoors,
| with others, doesn't really look anything like what you
| described but seems to carry the similar risk here.
|
| While some have an intuition that's already skeptical of that
| life, _many_ people wouldn 't give it a second thought. You're
| being productive, social, healthy, and maybe even physically
| active. Doesn't sound too bad! But you're not getting much
| sunlight, you're not seeing a lot of distant focal points, and
| you're specifically probably doing a lot of reading and
| watching -- that's where the increased risk of myopia quietly
| slips in.
| MeImCounting wrote:
| Except that thats how progress is made. If people like Hooke,
| Newton and perhaps every other genius who made monumental
| contributions spent their life outside socializing with others
| and acting all spiritual we wouldnt have calculus or know about
| atoms.
| greatwave1 wrote:
| Hooke and Newton did spend a considerable amount of time
| outside and socializing with others lol
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _I get why people study this sort of thing and why it 's
| useful. The thing that I don't understand is why people need
| studies to tell them they should skip desert, leave the phone
| on the counter, go outside, and ask your neighbor how they're
| doing._
|
| People have all kinds of weird beliefs, and there are entire
| industries selling quack remedies and therapies that people,
| willingly and unwillingly, buy into.
|
| Sure it won't reach everyone, but it might reach some people
| who genuinely thought their previous beliefs and behaviors were
| "correct".
| sydbarrett74 wrote:
| TL;DR: Myopia can be staved off by spending more time outside.
| Unfortunately, accelerating climate change will mean that fewer
| people will be able to thrive outdoors for extended periods. I
| hope things like full-spectrum indoor light sources paired with
| larger screens or projected images 10+ feet away can allow people
| to regain some of sunlight's benefits without having to contend
| with scorching temperatures.
|
| I suffer from horrible myopia. I've been an indoorsy bookworm and
| techie for most of my life and had my first pair of glasses at
| age 9. Now that I'm almost 50, my eyes are atrocious.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| Hah. Climate change be damned -- if I had to do it all over,
| I'd still be inside constantly! :D Miss out on the best things
| in life (video games, coding) so my last few decades are
| better? That doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. You
| should accept you gotta go sometime, and you should have a good
| time until then!
|
| "Spending time outdoors" is a pre-computers anachronism. You're
| better off hoping for cybernetic eye implants.
| Hasz wrote:
| I think this wired article is an excellent dive into the issue.
| Focuses on Taiwan, which has seen an insane rise in myopia.
|
| https://archive.is/ybLnZ
| thelastgallon wrote:
| > Just like in humans, if visual input is distorted, a chick's
| eyes grow too large, resulting in myopia. And it's progressive.
| Blur leads to eye growth, which causes more blur, which makes the
| eye grow even larger, and so on.
|
| So, all the disney/cartoon characters with BIG eyes are myopic?
| TMWNN wrote:
| I guess Alita: Battle Angel and actresses Cristin Milioti and
| Ella Purnell are also myopic!
|
| (Joking aside, is there any correlation between large eyes and
| myopia?)
| alphazard wrote:
| Reading glasses cost $20 on amazon, and make close objects appear
| far away.
|
| In case any of you look at something close up all day, and want
| to make it appear further away.
| amluto wrote:
| > Fortunately, just a few minutes a day with glasses or contact
| lenses that correct for blur stops the progression of myopia
| [link], which is why early vision testing and vision correction
| are important to limit the development of myopia.
|
| That's the first time I've heard of that, so I clicked the link.
| It's a fascinating, and rather distressing, study in chickens,
| that does not say what the article claims at all.
|
| There is an actual, properly tested (in humans!) childhood
| intervention that is effective, though: low dose atropine. I'm
| surprised it wasn't mentioned.
| https://www.aao.org/eyenet/article/how-to-use-low-dose-atrop...
| bradfa wrote:
| There's lots of interesting myopia control techniques now for
| kids. Hard and soft contact lenses as well as extremely low dose
| dilation medications have all been shown to reduce myopia
| progression. Some really neat stuff that can definitely help
| along with getting outside more and staring at close things less.
| j45 wrote:
| I recently learned sleeping in a very, or nearly dark room is
| critical to not develop nearsightedness.
| juris wrote:
| To my memory, I played outside as a kid and had perfect vision. I
| didn't have access to a television growing up. I grew, my skull
| changed, my eye size changed, so my vision got blurry in 1st
| grade. I was very nearsighted. The teacher noticed, so they put
| glasses on me. The controversial claim: it is normal for eyesight
| to change during childhood and in adolescence and glasses may
| lock in a child's myopia.
|
| Now I'm sure genes and environment, television and computer use,
| food quality, etc play a big role (my father also wears (weaker)
| glasses, and we were always low-income / made poor dietary
| decisions), but if it's the case that eyesight strength is
| malleable to some extent (with exercise, with playing outside in
| sunlight vs looking at television), and if it's the case that the
| epidemic outstrips genetic variance here over this timeline
| (surely?), I'd bet good money that slapping lenses on a kid
| during developmental years is as bad as giving a kid a tablet.
|
| I find it interesting that sometimes -my brain- can make out what
| faraway text reads as is but it is apparently -blurry- to my
| eyes. Like a blindsight phenomenon? Like the mechanics of sight,
| the muscle apparatus, etc is weak and underdeveloped, but the
| brain can still piece it together. Totally subjective, probably
| wrong.
|
| Curious what folks might think in countries with traditional
| Hanzi / Kanji script might think. Are they really seeing what
| they read? How about their elders? How is it the case that after
| many years of reading such incredibly small script old folks
| retain their eyesight, but suddenly their children's children
| cannot (over a comparatively smaller span of time)? The answer is
| pretty obviously development. But why weren't those old folks
| also screwed? Well they didn't write / read at a young age -> no
| need for glasses for them.
|
| This could be a developmental disparity occluded by the advent of
| the LCD screen, but not directly caused. What if glasses
| themselves and an increased effort to get kids glasses is playing
| a role in developing a myopia epidemic?
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