There's a husband and wife team of optical scientists who have been studying myopia and theorize that high contrast across the retina signals the eye to elongate which leads to myopia. "Their big breakthrough in understanding myopia occurred in 2008 when they studied a particular group of people who had a genetic form of myopia that’s very severe. They discovered a gene mutation that was causing the myopia." As a result, they patented glasses that blur your peripheral vision, and a trial has shown them to be more than 50% effective at reducing myopia.
This is a fascinating article. We know that we need to get kids outside more, but aren't able to prioritize that (except in Taiwan). Instead we're trying to find ways that let us keep using classrooms and screens the same way.
I'm very interested in the increased indoor light therapy (for my own use). I would really like for it to be as bright indoors as it is outdoors, matching the spectrum of the sun, without being horrifically expensive.
Is it now known that light is the primary mechanism?
It's crazy that we still don't know for certain. Being outdoors also often means just looking at things that are further away as well as more eye movement.
A few years ago I heard about a method of using bundles of fiberoptic cable to "pipe" sunlight from a rooftop into rooms. My impression is that it's cheap as hell but impractical.
Sometimes I truly feel like I'm living in a parallel world completely separate from contemporary media. Where I'm at, kids play outside constantly and everything is very rural and low tech. Many kids spend their free time at the voluntary fire force - basically forcing them to be out and about in the village. It's this way in almost every community all over my country.
Almost no-one I know here needs glasses and if they do, they're far-sighted.
>> This uniformity of focus is what tells the eye to stop growing, contends Ian Flitcroft, a paediatric ophthalmologist at the Centre for Eye Research Ireland in Dublin. “An effective stop signal is where the whole retina is seeing a clear image,” he says.
Driving. Driving cars is one of those rare activities where your eyes are constantly refocusing on objects at radically different distances, often several times per second. I would be very interested in a study tracking myopia in truckers. Imho, the end of human-controlled cars will result in a profound uptick in myopia.
It's been ~10 years since I reversed my myopia and I'm surprised that it's still a mystery to the medical community. Mine started around 2014 I worked at a law firm and was constantly looking for files up close all day every day. My distant vision got VERY blurry and it freaked me out. It stayed like that for about 1 year. I just thought it was my "time" because a lot of people around me had glasses. I went to Clarkson Eyecare for and they gave me a prescription for long distance glasses. My gut didn't trust it. So I read a bunch of (what was at the time) conspiracy theories on what caused myopia.
The websites explained:
(1) Do NOT to use distance glasses because they actually elongate the eye even more over time and you'll have to get more and more powerful glasses as the years go by.
(2)Get lots of UV sunlight without sunglasses so the eye can "regenerate".
(3) Myopia is caused by looking at things very upclose for long periods of time and the eye muscle that focuses the eye to look that upclose over time gets "stuck that way" and trains the eye to elongate.
To stop and reverse moderate or beginning stage Myopia you need to wear 1x to 2x magnification glasses anytime you are doing upclose work. This way your eye muscle doesn't activate to focus the eye on the extremely upclose object. Get lots of outdoor time to relax the muscle. Move computer monitors back, avoid gaming or reading on your phone. Move objects away from your face, give it more space. When you are on the computer, wear the 1-2x magnifying readers.
After 1 year my myopia went away. The distance is crisp and sharp. This began my distrust of the medical community. Why didn't they tell me this was a treatment option?
I've been nearsighted since I was a kid. My guess is that myopia isn't so much a disease, but rather your eyes becoming specialized in what you use them for. Lots of close range and dim environments (like indoor lighting) = eyes that are good at seeing in that environment.
One of my eyes is significantly more myopic. One eye was about -4.5, the other -6.5. Despite that I will frequently use my phone without glasses. This made me realize that the "worse" eye can actually focus on what I'm looking at a slightly closer distance than my "better" eye.
I don't know why you're being downvoted, this has been my experience as well.
I had a problem with my eyeglass prescription creeping up by about 0.5 diopters every visit to the optometrist! I started wearing glasses that were about 0.75 diopters less powerful than my 20/20 prescription and my prescription stopped increasing.
Interestingly, when I switched to HO during Corona, I put my glasses away as I was working on a notebook (sometimes even outside). My eyesight has improved markedly over these last years. I still need glasses gut the effect is definitely unexpected for my optometrist. I even joked that he might not see me ever again if this trend continues.
I'm nearsighted, and as I get older, I've started taking my glasses off more and more when I work on the computer.
But it's not my eyes getting "better" due to anything I'm doing - from what I recall, people naturally tend to get more long-sighted as they age. So it's just counter-acting my near-sightedness.
Take myopia into your own hands, is my best suggestion. Communities/movements like endmyopia (and many other forums) help understand what you can do.
Unfortunately I haven't found an easy way to keep up with the exercises that really improve things. If anyone has a way to make them easier to accidentally do, would love to know.
Safeeyes is a timer for Linux that every 15 min tells you to perform a simple eye exercise.
(I'm using 10m intervals and slightly longer exercise time and my eyes are better the more I spend in front of PC working - program doesn't stop movies and games).
Doesn't help with astigmatism tho, bugger :\
There is a mac alternative called Eye Leo
If anyone has a Windows version, pls post it. I'd love to get my mom on that.
how does that work? ophthalmologists would say that it's impossible, but it feels like most physicians are probably 10-20 years behind the bleeding edge...
My wife and I are both from multi generation lines of nearsighted people. I saw a study about how kids of Sigapor parents have less myopia if they grow up in Australia. When I was discussing w a physican parent of my kid's classmate, he mentioned that a theory is that switching focus far and near back and forth prevents this. I taught my kid to look at roof and other far details and the shift local. He's 15 and eye Dr gave him a clean bill of health that he avoided childhood myopia.
The key is shifting focus near and far out doors or looking outside.
Why not make lightbulbs that produce the 350-400nm wavelength to stimulate/prevent eye elongation? I’m sure companies like Philips would love to sell you therapeutic LED bulbs at premium.
It’s probably the brightness, too. Outdoors during the day under a big tree is brighter than basically any indoor lighting you see outside a movie set.
My eyesight deteriorated significantly during 2020-2022 to the point where I could no longer legally drive without glasses (I had been 20/20 or better my entire life). I bit the bullet in 2023 and had LASIK, which brought me back to the baseline I'd been used to for 35+ years. Age definitely played a part, but the speed of decline was really wild to experience and I attribute at least some of that to my lifestyle and work changes during covid (working 12+ hours per day from a small bedroom in San Francisco). LASIK is amazing, for anyone who is considering it.
LASIK is amazing when it’s no side effects. I’m needing to repair my corneas about 7 years post LASIK through stem cell therapy. My eye surgeon told me that LASIK severs an incredible amount of nerve endings and many eyes basically stop producing tears. The surface of the cornea then slowly erodes away. There are alternative procedures that don’t destroy as many nerves. I wasn’t aware of any of this before I went under the knife, wish I did.
Go outside and touch grass every day. Go for a walk if you can. It will improve your mental and physical health, and can even help you solve problems. If it also keeps your eyes healthy, that is a bonus.
[+] [-] krenzo|1 year ago|reply
https://newsroom.uw.edu/news-releases/glasses-stop-myopia-ar...
https://bjo.bmj.com/content/bjophthalmol/107/11/1709.full.pd...
https://patents.google.com/patent/US11493781B2/
[+] [-] aredox|1 year ago|reply
That's not a dig at them; more like life having a laugh at us.
[+] [-] beaugunderson|1 year ago|reply
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/refractify-myopic-d...
[+] [-] citruscomputing|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] aeternum|1 year ago|reply
It's crazy that we still don't know for certain. Being outdoors also often means just looking at things that are further away as well as more eye movement.
[+] [-] Eric_WVGG|1 year ago|reply
I can't find the article, but this seems to refer to the same idea: https://www.quora.com/Can-fiber-optic-cables-be-used-to-carr...
[+] [-] bozhark|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] pdog|1 year ago|reply
The problem isn't the kids. It's the adults.
[+] [-] rcbdev|1 year ago|reply
Almost no-one I know here needs glasses and if they do, they're far-sighted.
[+] [-] sandworm101|1 year ago|reply
Driving. Driving cars is one of those rare activities where your eyes are constantly refocusing on objects at radically different distances, often several times per second. I would be very interested in a study tracking myopia in truckers. Imho, the end of human-controlled cars will result in a profound uptick in myopia.
[+] [-] xxpor|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jerlam|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ChrisNorstrom|1 year ago|reply
The websites explained: (1) Do NOT to use distance glasses because they actually elongate the eye even more over time and you'll have to get more and more powerful glasses as the years go by. (2)Get lots of UV sunlight without sunglasses so the eye can "regenerate". (3) Myopia is caused by looking at things very upclose for long periods of time and the eye muscle that focuses the eye to look that upclose over time gets "stuck that way" and trains the eye to elongate.
To stop and reverse moderate or beginning stage Myopia you need to wear 1x to 2x magnification glasses anytime you are doing upclose work. This way your eye muscle doesn't activate to focus the eye on the extremely upclose object. Get lots of outdoor time to relax the muscle. Move computer monitors back, avoid gaming or reading on your phone. Move objects away from your face, give it more space. When you are on the computer, wear the 1-2x magnifying readers.
After 1 year my myopia went away. The distance is crisp and sharp. This began my distrust of the medical community. Why didn't they tell me this was a treatment option?
[+] [-] Aerroon|1 year ago|reply
One of my eyes is significantly more myopic. One eye was about -4.5, the other -6.5. Despite that I will frequently use my phone without glasses. This made me realize that the "worse" eye can actually focus on what I'm looking at a slightly closer distance than my "better" eye.
[+] [-] DaveExeter|1 year ago|reply
I had a problem with my eyeglass prescription creeping up by about 0.5 diopters every visit to the optometrist! I started wearing glasses that were about 0.75 diopters less powerful than my 20/20 prescription and my prescription stopped increasing.
Didn't get better, but it did stop increasing.
[+] [-] choeger|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] pavel_lishin|1 year ago|reply
But it's not my eyes getting "better" due to anything I'm doing - from what I recall, people naturally tend to get more long-sighted as they age. So it's just counter-acting my near-sightedness.
[+] [-] swsieber|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] codemac|1 year ago|reply
Unfortunately I haven't found an easy way to keep up with the exercises that really improve things. If anyone has a way to make them easier to accidentally do, would love to know.
[+] [-] wafflemaker|1 year ago|reply
(I'm using 10m intervals and slightly longer exercise time and my eyes are better the more I spend in front of PC working - program doesn't stop movies and games).
Doesn't help with astigmatism tho, bugger :\
There is a mac alternative called Eye Leo
If anyone has a Windows version, pls post it. I'd love to get my mom on that.
[+] [-] coryrc|1 year ago|reply
I have terrible astigmatism so can't get away without them.
[+] [-] Apocryphon|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] hooverd|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mathematicaster|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Projectiboga|1 year ago|reply
The key is shifting focus near and far out doors or looking outside.
[+] [-] nijuashi|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] vundercind|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] incognition|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] localhost3000|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] cityofdelusion|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] abdullahkhalids|1 year ago|reply
Most of the research I see is on preventing or slowing down the progression of myopia.
[+] [-] gregwebs|1 year ago|reply
https://www.losetheglasses.org/ https://endmyopia.org/
[+] [-] ralph84|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] guruparan18|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] hn8305823|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] outdoorsun|1 year ago|reply
any experiment that shows no statistically difference in myopia progression between sunbright and no sun periode?
[+] [-] outdoorsun|1 year ago|reply