Given that the Nature research (above) shows that eye exercises don't seem to work, we should focus [1] on what does. Research shows more outdoor time can help with myopia. See https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/aos.13403
I recently was required to renew my glasses prescription because the other one was 2 years old (so considered expired). When I got my new prescription, my optometrist said "your vision improved". I have been spending more time outside. I have found that time on the water seems to make my vision improve. I also suspect that walking through forests and experiencing the parallax effect might function as something like a depth perception calibration. It's also worth noting that I do wear glasses, but not all the time - intentionally so I can exercise my eyes.
I’ve heard this is important for young kids when eyes are developing. Once the weakness is built in, there’s not much t that can be done.
But I definitely recommend this to people I know with new babies. We do a bad job consciously recognizing the difference between indoor and outdoor light, but they’re orders of magnitude different in actual brightness.
Taiwan had something similar, found it it has to do with outdoor lighting (because many kids in both China and Taiwan stay indoors to study), and started a program to let kids play outside. Along with an early childhood intervention, myopia rates have been dropping.
I remember teaching in China nearly 20 years ago and all the kids did this. I thought it was so strange. Crazy music would come on between each class, which was the prompt to start “eye exercises”. They all stopped what they were doing and massaged their eyes and forehead for about two minutes. Then got back to doing whatever they were doing. Non-participation was punished.
"Overall, the results suggest that eye exercises have limited to no efficacy in preventing or controlling myopia progression. Until robust evidence supports their efficacy, available evidence suggests retiring the eye-exercise policy."
It's poorly grown orbits primarily from lead deficiency possibly also from iron poisoning (which blocks it, as well as several other metals) and the lack of other heavy metals.
So, what is important is what sort of exercises are being used. From the paper, the types are
1. 3D visual training combined with ciliary muscle exercise training
2. Massage (point, eye muscle, head and neck, facial massage roller, automated eye massager)
3. Dazhui vibration (looks like acupuncture)
4. Auricular plaster therapy (some sort of acupuncture using magnetic seeds applied to ear)
5. Badminton training
6. Yoga eye therapy
7. Eyesight gymnastics with physical exercise for health maintenance
First of all, it would be reasonable to concentrate on the interventions where there is a plausible causal model. Should 1 and 7, and maybe 6 (depending on what exercises are being done) be looked at more carefully?
Be being a mere physicist cannot read the forest plots in Fig 2, to determine which of the studies had some positive effect. Can someone else do that?
I started noticing a drop in visual acuity about a year ago. The LCD clock on the stove was blurry from across the room.
After listening to this podcast episode
Building Better Vision - Jake Steiner #96
REWILD YOURSELF
JUN 29, 2016 ⋅ 1:29:41
I started wearing my reading glasses for all nearby work, going outside more often, looking further away rather than a short distance ahead while walking, and generally trying to reduce eye strain. I have not yet read Steiner's blog, which he urges for a more complete understanding.
I also stopped playing games on my Steam Deck screen, opting for an external monitor to increase the focal length and thus reduce strain.
Anecdotally, things don't look so blurry now, and the stove LCD clock is easier to read.
Off the top of my head, from reading about this a few months ago, I think it's mostly a critical period as a child to young adult where this has the most effect.
Some opthalmologists invented glasses for children that reduce the worsening of myopia:
Again, off the top of my head, the eye is stimulated to grow longer by dopamine, and the dopamine release is influenced by the focus difference between what's at the center of the eye versus what's at the edge. Somehow, those glasses reduce that effect, so the eye doesn't continue to lengthen past farsightedness and into nearsightedness.
I remember my eyesight was 20/20 all my life until I started playing more and more with phones and tablets, now I can barely see any font in a regular browser tab at 100% zoom so I set it to 150% by default.
One thing that changed for good is using a 50" TV as monitor connected to my mac mini at 4' distance from my chair. Now my eyes don't cross anymore and my sight has improved a lot.
So yes, I concur that looking at clouds and the horizon everyday may be a good way to recalibrate our eyes. Spend more time outdoors.
[edit] Oh, and whenever I can, I cast my phone to my tv in the bedroom so I don't spend countless hours on tiktok forcing my eyes. I wish tiktok and instagram were available in landscape mode.
Had a conversation yesterday with an optometrist about this. My daughter's myopia jumped from -.75 to -2.0 in a year. Asked about the atropine drops, special contacts, etc. He said the number one thing was to make sure my daughter was outdoors in sunlight. You can read or be on screens, just outdoors. His opinion was mixed on the drops and special contacts. The tricky part is you don't know how bad the myopia would be without interventions. So my child's myopia might be progressing, but maybe would have been even worse if we didn't do the drops or whatever. He also said growth spurts correlate with myopia progression.
Since the Nature.com link just basically says "myopia exercises don't work"...
NPR just had a piece talking about a 2-yr study in Sydney that found that spending time outdoors reduces myopia in children and a 15-year-old program in Taiwan to ensure primary school children are sent outdoors more, which has reduced their % of myopia.
Theory is that we change our focus distance regularly when we're outside. ("hey look, a bird!" "i think i'll stare blankly at that tree while I ponder that document" etc)
Notably -- I guess -- the study was about children. Maybe adults are screwed. It certainly is easier to get kids outside more if the govt is backing the changes.
if your doctor put new prescription, do not throw away your old glasses
try these instead. it's free and reproducible.
test on variations:
on bright day with sun light (outdoor) focus on a fixed distance, say 4 meter. wear old glasses of -.5, -1, -2 ... and your new prescription
keep note which if those glasses give clear vision
then vary the distance to 15cm, 30cm, 1m, 2m ... very far
then vary the brightness level, next go to building with low light intensity, like underground parking
then do the variation on distances
and glasses' power
keep notes of all your experiments
the idea borrows from design of experiment of 2^3 factorial design:
high and low brightness
short and long distances
old and new glasses
the conclusion would be use the least power for different situations and best if you dont use any glasses (well, there's plus lens therapy which is the next step)
say if you can see clearly thing on your phone (15 cm, light emiting screen -- i always use max brightness) without glasses, the don't use glasses
if your -1 glasses are sufficient for desktop work, don't use higher power although no glasses wont hurt (i increase the font size till legible)
anyway, if you're determined to do the experiments, please let us know
Talking about Myopia - I have it (~2 and ~3 degrees, so not particularly bad), I am in my mid 40s, and I have been considering a surgery to fix it. Let's assume that for this particular case, money is not an issue.
There's a ton of different types of surgery available [0] to fix refractive errors.
Besides Lasik, which I think is the most popular but not necessarily the best, there's at least two other options out there:
1) Photorefractive keratectomy (PRK) - 1st gen
2) Laser-assisted stromal in situ keratomileuses (LASIK) - 2nd gen
3) Small incision lenticule extraction (SMILE) - 3rd gen
However, I am not fully convinced that SMILE is absolutely by far the best; and it's not easy to find the right provider (outside the US).
Anyone with experience or knowledge that could help navigate this mess?
Maybe for minor IQ improvements. Because if said kid actually has a high IQ they'll learn faster and have time for both outdoors and indoors activities.
There are many ways that these two traits could become correlated. For example, poverty is associated with both poor childhood nutrition (which is possibly the biggest cause of low IQ) and with more outdoor activities (due to more unskilled physical labor, more rural living, fewer electronics at home to keep kids entertained indoors, etc.).
It seems this is a mainland China study. “Eye exercises” here has a particular form, which is called 眼保健操. IIRC it was developed during the cultural revolution based on traditional Chinese medicine. In short, the conclusion is that this particular exercise doesn’t work, not that exercises for eyes in general don’t work.
I’ve improved my night vision (headlights on the highway at night kind of thing) with some exercises I made up. I think shifting from light to dark focus uses muscles and those muscles can just get weak. You can just exercise them and they get better at adjusting
It can't work, because myopia is caused by poorly grown orbits. Take a careful look, and you can tell who is myopic, and who isn't, with fairly reasonable accuracy.
Or, perhaps try training AI to tell the difference, to remove any bias for it.
I have monofixation syndrome without amblyopia, discovered only after age 40 when an ophthalmologist who actually knew what they were doing did their job. My understanding is there no durable or neuroplastic adaptation to double vision, amblyopia, or monofixation syndrome after youth because it is permanently wired that way in the ocular-vestibular systems. Corrective eyewear, eye surgery, and/or weaker eye training at early ages may help, but show no evidence of correction in later years. Monofixation syndrome is a neurological adaptation of the brain to minimize the experience of double vision.
I have double vision from strabismus. There are quite a number of eye therapy exercises that you can do to improve the condition. The older you get, the more of it that it takes. I have made improvements, but before I made this discovery and started the therapy I was too far gone and too old to fully cure. But... I can get decent life improvements if I put in the effort.
If you look hard enough you may find an optometrist that specializes in eye therapy for strabismus and similar vision issues. Expect to be the only adult in the waiting room that is not a parent, most patients will be early-grade-school-age kids.
1. Taking breaks more often.
2. Using bigger monitor with bigger fonts, so I could sit further away.
3. Using Apple Vision Pro as a monitor replacement as it gives you 4-5 feet focal distance.
The last one lets me work at my computer all day without getting double vision, but it's not very comfortable and you start to feel the weight after 2 hours or less. Plus the friction on putting it on, connecting, etc.
I only ever heard about seeing double after some sort of accident. Do you know what causes yours? The sibling comments seem to assume it is from looking at screens for too long, is that it or does that make it worse?
As a teenager, my myopia led me to a book promising clear vision through eye exercises alone. My doctor quickly dismissed it as nonsense, insisting only "science" could help.
Fast forward 30 years, and this post reminds me how valuable it is to approach even expert opinions with a healthy dose of skepticism.
It's a funny twist, highlighting that while expertise is valuable, it's crucial to maintain a discerning mind and not blindly accept any claim as absolute truth.
Every other body system—pulmonary, circulatory, nervous, skeletal, and muscular, just to name a few, shows marked long term physical changes, called adaptations, to stresses. See Selye for the basics.
Why would the optic system be any different? We know beyond a reasonable doubt that myopia is a kind of environmental maladaption. The only question is what stressors cause it and which can act as training stimuli to mitigate or reverse it.
That’s not to say that training stimulus will look like exercises. I don’t really know what it will look like. I do know however that my own myopia stopped progressing when I stopped letting my optometrist change my prescription.
I would not be at all surprised if the standard of care is actively harmful and significantly contributing to the skyrocketing myopia rates. But good luck funding that study or getting enough optometrists to go along with demonstrating their entire field has been screwing up for a century.
According to Dr Goldberg, who I heard on Huberman's podcast[1], morning sunlight so you can get red light. Dusk/twilight also has red light, but I've heard that it's helpful to combat the effect of bright light before sleep, like that from screens, for some reason I forget. Now I make sure to get a bit of both.
This is a welcome study indeed. Eye exercises always seemed like grift, often being promoted by types who hawk other kinds of grift cures and mindfulness techniques. Now here is actual evidence.
These were some of the first 'self help' books that were sold by internet 'marketers'. Most of them you could find for free, but they would charge a few $ for them and 'cure your eyesight'. Never knew that could actually work because of that.
[+] [-] xpe|1 year ago|reply
[1] See [1] what I did there?
[+] [-] calebm|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] medstrom|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jeremiahbuckley|1 year ago|reply
But I definitely recommend this to people I know with new babies. We do a bad job consciously recognizing the difference between indoor and outdoor light, but they’re orders of magnitude different in actual brightness.
[+] [-] napoleoncomplex|1 year ago|reply
(Just something I've wondered since sunglasses are super prevalent)
[+] [-] matthewdgreen|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] amelius|1 year ago|reply
Also, what if you wear glasses that move points close by (e.g. your screen) to infinity?
[+] [-] hiAndrewQuinn|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Anotheroneagain|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] incognito124|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tremon|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Galatians4_16|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] billconan|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] hosh|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rojeee|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rahimnathwani|1 year ago|reply
This study wasn't conclusive: https://iovs.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2360831
[+] [-] colinb|1 year ago|reply
"Overall, the results suggest that eye exercises have limited to no efficacy in preventing or controlling myopia progression. Until robust evidence supports their efficacy, available evidence suggests retiring the eye-exercise policy."
[+] [-] Anotheroneagain|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] onemoresoop|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] abdullahkhalids|1 year ago|reply
1. 3D visual training combined with ciliary muscle exercise training
2. Massage (point, eye muscle, head and neck, facial massage roller, automated eye massager)
3. Dazhui vibration (looks like acupuncture)
4. Auricular plaster therapy (some sort of acupuncture using magnetic seeds applied to ear)
5. Badminton training
6. Yoga eye therapy
7. Eyesight gymnastics with physical exercise for health maintenance
First of all, it would be reasonable to concentrate on the interventions where there is a plausible causal model. Should 1 and 7, and maybe 6 (depending on what exercises are being done) be looked at more carefully?
Be being a mere physicist cannot read the forest plots in Fig 2, to determine which of the studies had some positive effect. Can someone else do that?
[+] [-] meristohm|1 year ago|reply
After listening to this podcast episode
Building Better Vision - Jake Steiner #96 REWILD YOURSELF JUN 29, 2016 ⋅ 1:29:41
I started wearing my reading glasses for all nearby work, going outside more often, looking further away rather than a short distance ahead while walking, and generally trying to reduce eye strain. I have not yet read Steiner's blog, which he urges for a more complete understanding. I also stopped playing games on my Steam Deck screen, opting for an external monitor to increase the focal length and thus reduce strain.
Anecdotally, things don't look so blurry now, and the stove LCD clock is easier to read.
[+] [-] snozolli|1 year ago|reply
Here's a study summary on giving student pilots reading glasses to prevent myopia from reading all the training material:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31080964/
Off the top of my head, from reading about this a few months ago, I think it's mostly a critical period as a child to young adult where this has the most effect.
Some opthalmologists invented glasses for children that reduce the worsening of myopia:
https://newsroom.uw.edu/news-releases/glasses-stop-myopia-ar...
Again, off the top of my head, the eye is stimulated to grow longer by dopamine, and the dopamine release is influenced by the focus difference between what's at the center of the eye versus what's at the edge. Somehow, those glasses reduce that effect, so the eye doesn't continue to lengthen past farsightedness and into nearsightedness.
[+] [-] komodus|1 year ago|reply
One thing that changed for good is using a 50" TV as monitor connected to my mac mini at 4' distance from my chair. Now my eyes don't cross anymore and my sight has improved a lot.
So yes, I concur that looking at clouds and the horizon everyday may be a good way to recalibrate our eyes. Spend more time outdoors.
[edit] Oh, and whenever I can, I cast my phone to my tv in the bedroom so I don't spend countless hours on tiktok forcing my eyes. I wish tiktok and instagram were available in landscape mode.
[+] [-] francisofascii|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] inanutshellus|1 year ago|reply
NPR just had a piece talking about a 2-yr study in Sydney that found that spending time outdoors reduces myopia in children and a 15-year-old program in Taiwan to ensure primary school children are sent outdoors more, which has reduced their % of myopia.
Theory is that we change our focus distance regularly when we're outside. ("hey look, a bird!" "i think i'll stare blankly at that tree while I ponder that document" etc)
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/05/13/1250555...
Notably -- I guess -- the study was about children. Maybe adults are screwed. It certainly is easier to get kids outside more if the govt is backing the changes.
[+] [-] outdoorsun|1 year ago|reply
try these instead. it's free and reproducible.
test on variations: on bright day with sun light (outdoor) focus on a fixed distance, say 4 meter. wear old glasses of -.5, -1, -2 ... and your new prescription keep note which if those glasses give clear vision
then vary the distance to 15cm, 30cm, 1m, 2m ... very far
then vary the brightness level, next go to building with low light intensity, like underground parking
then do the variation on distances and glasses' power
keep notes of all your experiments
the idea borrows from design of experiment of 2^3 factorial design: high and low brightness short and long distances old and new glasses
the conclusion would be use the least power for different situations and best if you dont use any glasses (well, there's plus lens therapy which is the next step)
say if you can see clearly thing on your phone (15 cm, light emiting screen -- i always use max brightness) without glasses, the don't use glasses
if your -1 glasses are sufficient for desktop work, don't use higher power although no glasses wont hurt (i increase the font size till legible)
anyway, if you're determined to do the experiments, please let us know
thank you in advance
[+] [-] simonebrunozzi|1 year ago|reply
There's a ton of different types of surgery available [0] to fix refractive errors.
Besides Lasik, which I think is the most popular but not necessarily the best, there's at least two other options out there:
1) Photorefractive keratectomy (PRK) - 1st gen
2) Laser-assisted stromal in situ keratomileuses (LASIK) - 2nd gen
3) Small incision lenticule extraction (SMILE) - 3rd gen
However, I am not fully convinced that SMILE is absolutely by far the best; and it's not easy to find the right provider (outside the US).
Anyone with experience or knowledge that could help navigate this mess?
[0]: https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?con...
[+] [-] Der_Einzige|1 year ago|reply
This is just one of the many studies which have shown this relationship: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19127804/ and https://www.ajmc.com/view/nearsightedness-correlates-with-hi...
Seems to validate all of the stupid lore of "four eyes" being objectively on average more nerdy and smarter.
Seems time spent outside trades off with time spent sharpening the mind in the way that benefits IQ tests - do I want my kid to be a nerd or a jock?
[+] [-] nottorp|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] RoyalHenOil|1 year ago|reply
There are many ways that these two traits could become correlated. For example, poverty is associated with both poor childhood nutrition (which is possibly the biggest cause of low IQ) and with more outdoor activities (due to more unskilled physical labor, more rural living, fewer electronics at home to keep kids entertained indoors, etc.).
[+] [-] meyum33|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] barbariangrunge|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Anotheroneagain|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jurassicfoxy|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] hi-v-rocknroll|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dbcurtis|1 year ago|reply
If you look hard enough you may find an optometrist that specializes in eye therapy for strabismus and similar vision issues. Expect to be the only adult in the waiting room that is not a parent, most patients will be early-grade-school-age kids.
[+] [-] Eugr|1 year ago|reply
1. Taking breaks more often. 2. Using bigger monitor with bigger fonts, so I could sit further away. 3. Using Apple Vision Pro as a monitor replacement as it gives you 4-5 feet focal distance.
The last one lets me work at my computer all day without getting double vision, but it's not very comfortable and you start to feel the weight after 2 hours or less. Plus the friction on putting it on, connecting, etc.
[+] [-] 4gotunameagain|1 year ago|reply
Although I would advise to reduce screen time rather than treat just the symptoms that arise because of it.
[+] [-] lucb1e|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] arijo|1 year ago|reply
Fast forward 30 years, and this post reminds me how valuable it is to approach even expert opinions with a healthy dose of skepticism.
It's a funny twist, highlighting that while expertise is valuable, it's crucial to maintain a discerning mind and not blindly accept any claim as absolute truth.
[+] [-] tarentel|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] aatd86|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] User23|1 year ago|reply
Why would the optic system be any different? We know beyond a reasonable doubt that myopia is a kind of environmental maladaption. The only question is what stressors cause it and which can act as training stimuli to mitigate or reverse it.
That’s not to say that training stimulus will look like exercises. I don’t really know what it will look like. I do know however that my own myopia stopped progressing when I stopped letting my optometrist change my prescription.
I would not be at all surprised if the standard of care is actively harmful and significantly contributing to the skyrocketing myopia rates. But good luck funding that study or getting enough optometrists to go along with demonstrating their entire field has been screwing up for a century.
[+] [-] outdoorsun|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] brigandish|1 year ago|reply
[1] https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/dr-jeffrey-goldberg-how-...
[+] [-] Cold_Miserable|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] noobermin|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tluyben2|1 year ago|reply