I saw a report on NHK where it mentioned that the kids in Japan faced a similar problem, a policy to spend more time outdoors while at school actually yielded positive results.
The question is what was the actual factor that caused the change? Light? Depth perception? Changing backgrounds? Less predictable environment forces fast switching? Lets discuss..
The "cure" for nearsightedness in the 19th century was to send people on an ocean voyage so they would have nothing but the horizon to look at. Don't know if it actually worked.
@@thewatersavior your eyes have muscles that contract or protract when you look at objects at different distances. Stare long enough at the same distance and your muscles will atrophy. For example staring at a screen everyday for years will likely to cause myopia, and if you have a job that requires to look in a distance for a long period of time, like a trucker, you're likely to get hyperopia. Genetics also play role, some may get eye defects easier, some may not.
If you're knowledgeable on a subject and read news articles on it, you are often shocked at the level of ignorance shown, making you question their reporting on other subjects you know less about. This video had the opposite effect. I've done, and published, a lot of research on the myopia epidemic. Your summary of the state of research is very good, making me trust your other videos even more.
I don't think the limits of human cognition really allow us to appreciate the levels of entropy achievable by one person over 1 lifetime much less all people over all lifetimes. Throw in written language and the levels of abstraction become so innumerable they're, as far as monkey brain is concerned, functionally equivalent to infinity. We all get awestruck when we see a wider than usual perspective from a tall hill. Yet, most get bored fast when talk turns to lightyears. That same direct, visceral connection isn't possible through abstraction. To simultaneously consider more than a few of anything we must put a few in a mental box labeled output then combine output w/ a few inputs (apply a cause, consider a few effects) put all that in another box, and repeat ad infinitum to get much of anywhere with our brains. It's amazing what that can accomplish, but to understand how much is really going on inside all those boxes takes effort. We get by pretty well just using what comes out of the boxes. It's easy to forget how much could be inside. I'm convinced we could solve quite a few problems with regular reminders of this concept; what we know is a scrawny little manlet compared to the planetary sumo of all we don't.
Singapore here. My son was forced to do up to 10 hours of homework a day at primary school. During a very extreme period I brought this up to his form teacher. Her reply was that my son is slow, and the other children are able to do this in 2 - 3 h. Of course, I know from other parents that it's not so. On top of the school hours from 7:30 to 13:30 nearly all children also have tuition. The worst in my son's class was 18 h a week, most had around 6 - 12 h.
Crazy thing is all this pressure doesn't really make a population that much more productive. Nobody would argue Japanese are some of the worst about this but they're not much more productive than Germany where they have similar industries and don't have all this pressure on kids or as rigid an education system. They focus too much on test scores and memorization rather than a more varied, flexible approach such as magnet schools or Montessori schools
@@freddy4603 yeah these high pressure tactics dont really seem to work. The US doesnt have high pressure schools but they're ranked #6 in the world by worker productivity and they're mainly beaten out by countries where they have large tax havens or similar industries that throw their numbers off. Japan is a high income nation and have high pressure schools but the average Japanese worker only contributes $42.56/hr towards the economy while Finland s $58.44/hr the US is $73.70/hr. China meanwhile has a rather pathetic $11.69/hr and ranks #60 globally in terms of worker productivity below Thailand, Ecuador, and Columbia.
The number of strabismus cases we've been seeing in our clinics here in the Philippines also shot up pretty bad. There's no study on it just yet and it may be just bias but it may be from the extended lockdowns and online classes that kids have been taking. it's even worse because if we catch it too late, the brain shuts off the vision of the deviated eye so it doesn't get confused and dizzy. Getting that eye to work again is one hell of a fight
this happened to me, sadly my parents didnt know how to help and now I cant see at all from my left eye. I still wear glasses and have no chance to have correction surgery
I heard there were studies linking FPS games to having positive affects on hypertropia. I believe the figure was 1 hour of high intensity FPS play was equal to 400 hours of passively wearing an eye patch. The theory in the paper was that the active engagement and target seeking behavior caused both eyes to work in concert due to an unconscious feedback loop by the brain use all available resources for the activity. How much of the is rubbish or not... not sure. also, this was back in the day when frenetic games like quake or doom would have been the game, not the languid COD.
I have heard that myopia is mostly a consequence of staying inside and not being exposed to natural light. The Inuit population in Canada was apparently almost immune to myopia but now the new generation is also suffering from myopia as any sedentary and industrialized society. Edit. Finished listening... pretty much inline with what I believed.
Myopia is cause in part by high carb diets like SA(American)D, SC (Chinese)D and the Mediterranean diets plus too much close focusing. Perhaps reading lenses for small children?
Minute Earth made a short 3 minute video about why time spent outdoors is related with nearsightedness. Watch it if you can't be bothered reading a whole paper about it. th-cam.com/video/vbCobKbLJls/w-d-xo.html
I sent a comment here, yet I don't see it, so just in case it is sent, I have a correction to be made. Ignore it if there's no prior comment from me. Don't blindly trust whatever the video I linked says. If there's someone else who you trust more than the video I linked, then follow that person. I personally do that too. I have carelessly shared it, and I should be more careful in the future.
True. Eye testing has been pretty common in schools in the US since around the 50s and things got worse as more people became less agriculturally focused and worked indoors, especially offices, more
It's like there's a tongue in cheek recommendations from government and schools telling parents to do more outdoor activities for the kids. But subliminally do otherwise- they push the kids to tuition centres after school periods. Tuition centres is big business in Singapore!
I remember reading on this topic for a high school presentation years ago and I found that it wasn't just China but also India going through this and I also found out about a experimental set of mass producible adjustable glasses that use a liquid filling that focuses more or less depending on the pressure. No idea where these are at in the r&d or production stage but I wouldn't be surprised if they have been phased out by normal mass producible glasses
I remember reading a brief article on this exact issue last year. Always thought about it once in a while wanted to learn more about it and this video absolutely scratches that itch. Wonderful!
I had perfect vision until I was 14-15, my eyes have continued to deteriorate since then. I am IT for a living and before that I spent a lot of time on computer screens for gaming, etc. Both of my parents and my sister also needed glasses, but I wonder if I have made it worse with my choices.
Just like your muscles adapt to exercise, the animal eye adapts to visual distance. This was hard wired when the eye evolved millions of years ago. The eye can grow to change shape to change the focal length. Thus myopia isn't a disease of the eye, it is the natural adaptation of an organ to the environment. In the case of the eye it is adaptation for better performance at close focus. Like muscles can be strengthened or weakened by exercise or the lack of it, the eye can adapt to various focal distances. This process can of course take weeks, months or years.
imagine that your eyes are like a pair of binoculars, there is an adjustment ring that allows you to see between 5x and 10x. now imagine that you have used them for years at 10x only. and not having adjusted the ring in 5 years and now the ring is stuck in place. are you then farsighted? there are 6 muscles that coordinate to allow your eyes to move and focus. the way muscles work is that some must contract and some must stretch. the eyeball becomes shorter. in a reverse configuration, the muscles that were contracted are now stretched and vice versa. the eyeball becomes longer. to work together effectively all your eyes muscles must be of similar strength. if you hold your focus on things near you for to long, the muscles that are contracted are getting stronger (stiff) and the muscles that are stretched are getting weaker. your eyes muscles ability to coordinate movement becomes difficult. in order to correct your eyes, if nearsighted, you must practice seeing far away, to strengthen those muscles that have weaken over time. repeated cycles of eye muscle exercise and relaxation are needed to correct the problem. look up "The Bates Method"
The Bates method is an ineffective and potentially dangerous alternative therapy aimed at improving eyesight. Eye-care physician William Horatio Bates (1860-1931) held the erroneous belief that the extraocular muscles effected changes in focus and that "mental strain" caused abnormal action of these muscles; hence he believed that relieving such "strain" would cure defective vision.[1][2] In 1952, optometry professor Elwin Marg wrote of Bates, "Most of his claims and almost all of his theories have been considered false by practically all visual scientists."[3][4] No type of training has been shown to change the refractive power of the eye.[5] Moreover, certain aspects of the Bates method can put its followers at risk: They may damage their eyes through overexposure to sunlight, not wear their corrective lenses while driving, or neglect conventional eye care, possibly allowing serious conditions to develop.[3][6]
This is fascinating and something I never thought about. I’m near sighted and started reading at age 2, naturally. I wasn’t forced to read. I just did.
I got glasses when in high school for a small amount of myopia, which stopped increasing; I stayed about 7 years with the same prescription, until I was told it increased in 2021, and then again in 2022. Of course the main difference is that I stopped going out as much, and that was the first thing my eye doctor told me when I asked on a possible reason.
Awesome detail, thank you! Few questions \ comments: 1. Did the study mention anything about studying outside? 2. Did the studies contrast using "natural light" indoors and in all indoor settings - ex, they can mandate indoor school settings use natural light replicators? 3. Theory on being outdoors - Its not so much the light but the ability to perceive depth. Perhaps you have to train your eyes at this age to see at multiple ranges and being outside enables the brain to train on many focal distances. Indoors and while moving place to place we shut down our depth perception and live in a tunnel. Giving kids time to visually explore open spaces perhaps works those muscles. 4. Very interesting - environment was mentioned but nothing about "pollution" or specific location factors. This is good in that its sounds like environment is really the human behaviors, is that correct? 5. For the drops in study time are they seeing lower IQ ratings? You mentioned affording the cost of eye care - was that in the sense that they reap the benefits of a smarter population. That puts an interesting spin on the proliferation of doctors - China quickly becomes the center of eye care prevention and begins to sell that as a service to the rest of the world in 5 years when VR becomes a device 5 year old's watch Sesame Street on in the US.
In the early 80’s I learned about eye focusing routines. Very easy such as for long distance vision is pick various spots / targets far away outdoors and try to focus. For peripheral vision was likewise and trying to focus at the edge. No doubt kids that are really into VR will soon be myopic.
@@dv84sure Any reason that cannot be replicated in VR? The brain is just responding to stimulus - so perhaps there is something around light transform that can trick the brain into firing the same muscles. I know light source is an issue but it is also in the works...
@@thewatersavior I’ve tried VR quite a lot for aspects of VR for technical education at a company that specialises in tech-ed learning applications. I didn’t get / see anything close to getting the same type of distance / depth perception with VR as to reality outdoors. Everyone of us had a loss of balance after taking off the VR set - and it doesn’t take long - even just 10 minutes. This included VR with outdoor scenery. Most get used to that dizzy VR effect and takes less time to adjust after taking off the headset. I am guessing that some VR applications could be designed / made that would be better, but I don’t think it would ever be as good as simply going for a long walk and doing focusing routine as described. Anyhow the “focus” should be to get out and see the real world and while out there - take the shoes off and get “grounded”.
@@dv84sure not everyone has or will have the luxury of getting out and walking around. This is where tech can help level the playing ground / bridge the gap. Have you check out Thrillist recent VR headset videos? Looks like they are working to address the tech but curious if we will ever be able to bridge the cultural gap, hence the question on whether the study looks at the mechanics of why outside helps with myopia and what about that can be replicated for those that don't have the leisure. Ex, people who work 2 shifts 6 days a week.
There was a paper in Nature a few years ago that solved this riddle authoritatively. It's solely due to a lack of sufficient exposure to bright sunlight. Specifically exposure to high energy blue light or "diffuse sky radiation" is what is needed to cause a whole cascade of interacting gene activations in the eye necessary for correct eye shape formation during adolescence. The correlation was so high there was no need to invoke other explanations like close-up focusing on eg. paper for long periods of time studying, or video game playing. It's all high energy visible light exposure. To such an extent that it should be relatively easy to ameliorate the problem by simply using high power indoor lighting, in a similar way that "seasonal affective disorder" fad diagnosis in the West some years ago had people putting bright high color temperature lights at their desks at work. I'm sure something similar could be done for this problem, except in this case it would actually be doing something significant and easily quantifiable.
Well, video games are keeping people indoors, and using high-power artificial light isn't all that energy-efficient, since power literally means energy over time.
That is really interesting. Architectural fixes at schools should be possible. Skylights and/or high power lighting in classrooms and outdoor class gathering areas. That sounds like solid policy to advocate for.
holy shit man, your work ethic is amazing! you're pumping out SUPER informative videos so frequently. keep up to great work! (but don't feel pressured to rush)
This is anecdoctal of course, but personally I've seen my myopic power decrease during the time where I jogged outside 1 hour a day every day. It went from 5.00+ to around 3.00. The only change in my life back then was this additional outdoor time. However, I was 16 back then, so I'm not sure if doing this later in life will have similar effects. I think spending outdoor time not only reduces the chance of myopia but also helps reduce the severity of already occurring myopia. Light is important.
Like I wrote in my comment, if eye is still developing (growing) there might be case of shaping differently if you make it focus object further away. I also have noticed that in short period of time, if I take of my glasses/contacts for 10-15 minutes, and look around without them, I have better focus for some time after that. But if I do it to long without correction, I get sensation similar to having sand in your eyes. And it can lead to increase of myopia if you prolong looking without glasses/contacts.
@@AgentSmith911 It will never reverse. You will just be able to read without glasses (instead of reading glasses) when older, but that will probably just make myopia worse. Better to get progressive lenses in your glasses, or contact and reading glasses.
I too have pondered why Asian people seemed to have a higher prevalence of wearing glasses and did wonder if it was because of having to read small but highly detailed complex characters, and it does appear to be so. Thanks for shining a light on this issue. From my own job i have to focus on near objects for long periods and in artificial light i often find i'm casting a subtle but definite shadow on my work which i feel is causing eye strain, so with younger folk having to concentrate in a similar way & circumstances must no be good. Also looking down most often must cause certain eye-muscle strain that could change the shape of the eye as well as the lens focusing strain - this in particular must be a growing world issue as we are all more & more looking down at our mobile devices each with higher detailed fine objects we stare at. IMHO humans were designed to look ahead/forward more commonly (rather than down in the direction their feet) and into the middle/middle-close distance with the ability to focus far or near for short periods but mainly looking at the macro world, we have the ability to see close to the almost micro world but for only short periods. And being out in more space the eye is always looking around focussing at objects at varying distances (rather than basically static distance). Plus to use the range of natural light whilst we sleep through the dark.
About small detailed characters while true in theory, in practice they read text the same way we do: by quickly scanning the shapes of words and assuming (subconsciously) the most likely meaning. When you're reading this comment, you're not scanning each single letter, you're quickly skimming over words and the context and assumptions about semantics carry the weight here. For westerners characters look like indistinguishable magical symbols, but spend a bit of time learning them and you'll quickly see just how similar it all is to other languages (I mean, duh!) Cheers
I have strong myopia myself, in my case from birth. My father is also myopic, probably some genetic and nutrition factors. In the case of China / Japan, I think there is one elephant in the room that was not mentioned at all. Chinese and Japanese script is made up of complex, hard to discern characters. Look at the Chinese documents shown in the video, and you will see what I mean. Reading them requires much better focus than latin script, which is readable even when a little out of focus. Not sure what is the issue in South Korea, where the script is much easier to discern. Limited sunlight exposure and nutrition are probably the main factors there. Some research shows correlations with BMI. I would be careful with that, as myopia and study habits both may contribute to a lack of physical activity. In my case, my 3D vision was very poor as a child, which doesn't help with athleticism. School sports are too focused on ball sports, where kids with poor vision have a big handicap. Calisthenics, gymnastics or weight lifting would seem more appropriate for them.
Are you suggesting that reading chinese script causes or helps in causing nearsightedness? Do you have any sources on that? I thought the science was settled that the one and only cause of acquired (not inborn) nearsightedness is lack of exposure to sunlight in childhood.
@@sanjaymatsuda4504 I have not looked into sources, but follow along for a little bit: * Sunlight exposure is probably also connected to looking at a distance, as opposed to close in focus needed to decipher chinese script. * If you have even a little myopia, you will need glasses to decipher chinese script in a school setting (for example on a blackboard). Slippery slope to ever stronger corrections. * Learning to read and write chinese script or kanji takes massively more time than learning the simple latin alphabet with its measly 26 characters. I am sure we're talking of THOUSANDS of hours of practice and learning. This is time that the kids can't spend outside. * In the case of Korea with its simpler script, the reason may be cultural + the school system - kids get sent to cram schools, again no time for sunlight exposure. In the end we have to get kids outside more, and cut out unnecessary things from the curriculum to save time.
I lost one eye early in the pandemic, and am left with one myopic eye. I have been teaching myself braille for about a year and a half. It is possible to put your phone into VoiceOver mode, and do the bulk of your reading through your headphones. Your phone goes into a mode where you have to memorize a lot of swipe gestures, and you listen for descriptions of what you are touching, and double-tap to select things. When you hook up a braille terminal, you can use actual navigations keys (up,down,left,right,select); and in some ways, tasks like going through your email and twitter feeds is actually EASIER than using your eyes. This voiceover mode is generally hard to use because it's "made for blind people"; rather than "made for no-look scenarios", or even "made to support devices without screens". If somebody gave you an iPhone case with a braille keyboard on the back of it (it's only about 15 keys total, because you chord the keys) so that you can use it while looking at the screen; it should be superior to a QWERTY keyboard on a phone; especially if you are walking around. It only takes a few weeks to get comfortable with a simple braille alphabet. The only problem is that braille output cells are typically huge and brittle mechanical devices; so reading by sound is usually the way to go. Actual blind people use both at the same time. Audio for an overview, braille-output for detail, and usually both a qwerty and braille keyboard at the same time. Reading in the dark on a braille display in bed is actually more comfortable than staying up late reading; though it's usually only ok for linear reading without lots of symbols and formatting (like math). I am pretty sure that tech is going to start making the VoiceOver a mainstream thing, rather than something added only after accessibility lawsuits demand that they "do something" to comply.
I would add that my daughter bought a license for Speechify in the browser. It lets her do homework reading at about 4x speed. So she reads it multiple times as audio, at 2x speed. It's kind of similar to what blind people do. She stays up crazy hours doing homework of course.
If there's one thing I've learned about tech, it's the people that can bend tech. Apps and phone companies will only do what's profitable. Even fining them will not do much. If the people are visible, the profit incentive is high enough, and is wanted then so be it.
@@japhalpha yes. this is exactly the problem. if people with vision issues are tweeting about laws and regulation; then the system is not working. accessibility issues will get solved when it enabled the sale of new kinds of devices; such as earbud phones.
What's weird to me is I was the poster child of everything a kid shouldn't do to protect their eyes. Used a computer everyday for hours a day, didn't play outside a lot, sat too close to the TV, reading in low light, etc. Yet, like my dad, my vision is above average. It was measured at 20-15 last year. My sister is the same way. However my dad had 20-10 vision at my age, so maybe I'm missing out on even better vision from not being outside a lot.
@@raylopez99 Sorry, but it actually does, and destroys this entire videos argument that there isn't a genetic propensity in O haplogroup members to have this problem, which there clearly is, and it's limited to those people, and populations with large O genetic drift. You guys don't wanna be racist so you eat up this propaganda.
Interesting. All my friends who I played with outside never had myopia. All my bookworm friends had it. And in the long run, I became an engineer and most of the people I work with have it too. However, now that I have aged and now have accommodation issues with focus and have to wear readers, I envy my myoptic co workers who can see close just by moving their glasses aside whereas I have to put on readers or magnifiers to see what is going on.
Sounds like falling victim to the grass being greener on the other side. It's not pretty on the other side. You know you can have both myopia AND presbyopia right? Bifocals are terrible. The middle distances are always a constant struggle. Progressive lenses aren't much better. My mom wears them. I had a teacher who had one contact for myopia on one eye and one for presbyopia on the other. She lived in this distorted twilight zone. The video already mentions higher increase in the risk for retinal detachments, glaucoma, and other decidedly not fun things.
We need more outdoor-capable electronics. There was a company that made drop in replacement laptop/netbook displays which are (nearly) full colour indoors but turn (nearly) monochrome high contrast under strong sunlight. I'd like more of that sort of stuff.
@Zaydan Naufal Yeah i have Vizplex based e-readers, but they aren't very suitable for general tasks, actually i have one SONY with a touchscreen and it's an annoying piece of garbage, and i had one by Chinese company Hanlin customised by a Ukrainian partner company, LBook, it was actually top notch. I used to do quite a bit on my Casio PocketViewer and Psion5 in the late 90s, early 2000s. Those had monochrome screens, worked nicely enough in sunlight. I'm pretty sure i had some pretty hefty books on my PocketViewer as well. Oh wait i should just drop some batteries in there, i bet it still has all the data from back then... as opposed to Palm Pilot and Handspring Visor... although Visor Edge just feels SO NICE, i actually have one of those as well, so nice. I actually still play the original Gameboy Advance outdoors :D the only game console that works in the sun better than indoors.
@@XtraHidary No. Why. It's not a solution to anything in particular, i don't have ambitions of solving world myopia or anything like that - though i'd love to be able to do more work and stuff outdoors in summer, so i don't have to skip all the sunlight. I also don't suggest removing anything. You can have a more powerful laptop/pc/etc but having an extra netbook you can use in sunlight would be awesome, even if you aren't gonna watch movies on it - you can still do a lot of text work. If you have a better solution, please share. I am lead to believe that full colour reflective or incident-light display is technically impossible, physically impossible.
It doesn't solve the "nearsighted" problem. Other than the correlation of strong outdoor light, the other very strong correlation is nearsighted work, aka using a computer/smartphone or studying. It makes logical sense. As your eyes grow, they adjust to the most natural, least stressful state. And a long eyeball for nearsighted work fits the bill. Your body can adapt, for better or worse. Bringing the work outdoors only solves half the problem.
@@aoikemono6414 This is what I am thinking. Our eyes adapt. If this happens in a growing child, it eventually adapts permanently so that it ends up optimized for this distance. The solution is to optimize for a different distance. But there is no point telling them to go outside, if they bring their phones and books to read outside. If you are in Singapore (or Australia), they will only end up with more skin cancer. Instead of playing games on their phone, tell them to use the TV screen. Place your TV and chairs so that they are at opposite ends of the long axis of your room. Alternatively, make them wear glasses when they don't need them. Your kids have perfect vision? Make them wear +0.5 or +1.0 glasses when indoor. It would be like they are outside. A perfect solution if your houses are small, and the neighbourhood isn't nice and you don't want them outside. Old people glasses are not just for old people!
Once upon a time it was assumed that everyone would have their computer screen (almost always a cathode ray tube) six feet away from their eyes and that said screen would have a light to dark ratio of ≥ 1000:1. Today people are lucky to have 400:1 luminosity ratio screens and almost never are they more than four feet (≈1.2m) away. In the USA the lighting in most classrooms is horrendously bad. I really don't want to think too hard about what that means-it makes my eyes hurt.
A lot of people in East Asia are content to work in poor light, even when there is no need to. Keeping their irises open for so much of the time probably doesn't help with the myopia problem. Over 25 year living in Hong Kong I saw the rate of glasses wearing in China gradually catch up with the very high rate in HK. In HK, Singapore and Taiwan the number of opticians in any shopping area is kinda sad.
Low light could logically contribute if reading up close … Because low light means large pupil means narrower depth of focus means tighter controls on the lens diopter range. This means if the lens is stretched to a more extreme shape under low light. But the obvious culprit is formative biological eye development years spent focused 20 inches away locking in the lens shape as it hardens
Weird...also NEAT! I felt like I was always given conflicting information about what was bad or not for your eyes. Only now as I approach "middle" age do I notice any significant vision deterioration. Still don't need glasses but I have noticed my vision is temporarily much worse if I have been on my phone or reading a while. More reason to reduce screen time. As an aside I would think wealthier families tending toward near sightedness could just be because rich kids are more likely to have vision problems detected and corrected.
Glasses are literally everywhere, even in African countries starving of food. Accessibility really isn't the problem. Whether it's accurate, or changed yearly, that is another question. It's just a fact richer and more successful families have higher expectations for their kids academically, value education more, and have the means to give their kids more opportunities to learn and study, thus a higher prevalence for nearsightedness.
I sometimes dumbly wondered how ancient people survived with no glasses, as near-sightedness seemed like such an inevitability. Now I know it’s because they essentially didn’t have to suffer with the consequences of the industrial Revolution yet.
USAF had the same problem with pilot recruits, they would enter the training program with 20/20 vision but after months of intense studying many would become myopic. It seems the eye is quite flexible when you're young and a lot of reading will cause it to deform. The solution was very easy, each recruit was given glasses that caused their eyes to focus at infinity when reading closeup.
the problem is biģer than that the lack of use of the eyes muscle cause a permanent deformation of the eye and it must also be related with bad food habits too when you are outdoor you move the eyes when you watch the screen the things move around your eye
If being indoors looking at things nearby under less than bright light is causing myopia, it's possible a lot of the preventive effect of being outside is due to focussing on things at mid range and further away: at distances more commonly encountered by eyeball-havers over the last few hundred millenia. Something that is much easier to do when the sun is shining brightly on those things. If you hold a body part in a particular position as it grows - say, muscles shaping the lens and to some extent the eyeball for closer reading - it affects the form it takes. Neck stretching in africa and foot binding in imperial china used external apparatus, but perhaps we're seeing that sustained muscular strain is enough.
And this is only one half of the major problems of doing that. Another hughe problem reading laying down with the book on the floor is the spine. If you look at a side view of someone doing that, and imagine them standing like that, you'd see that the spine is bend suroisingly far back. And with so many things, the spine can do it, and is fine doing it occasionaly/for short periods, repeated prolonged bending back is not great to say the lwast.
As an American I'm continually astounded by stories of governments correctly recognizing a problem for the public, coming up with a plan to fix it, implementing said plan, and the fix working. Occasionally one or two of those steps is taken in the US, but almost never all of them, and certainly never all one after the other without a decade or two pause between steps.
Environment and culture have a heavy hand in this. I started wearing glasses too from an early age and I attribute it to my living conditions of overcrowding with little to no vast open spaces for my eyes to lay upon. The heavy emphasis on education is also deeply entrenched in Chinese culture with its scholastic past, forcing kids to study hard from a very young age stressing eyes. Modern media is not helping either as they are designed to get audiences hooked.
Cataracts are caused by bright light but myopia is a form of eye muscle weakness. Wearing corrective lenses exacerbates myopia over time. The way to improve myopia is to look around more and especially to focus on distant objects. That is why time spent outdoors helps so much because there are no distant objects to look at indoors. If you wear glasses then when you're relaxing outdoors take them off and look around to strengthen your eyes. If the light is too bright, use non-corrective lenses that block blue light. I decreased my myopia from -2 to -1 diopters by quitting wearing contacts and not wearing my glasses when I don't need them.
A german eyes professor did experiments with chickens, which gets special glasses, which shows, that the eyes is trainable to a certain refraction need. The hight Nearsight Problem in entire Asia is mainly due to extensive Mobilphone and Smartwatch usage. This divices urge the eye to focus to 10 - 20 cm distance. Working on a large computer monitor gives focus distances of 30 - 50 cm. Less awfull than mobilphones. A remedy could be to wear plus refraction glasses during using small monitors. So that they get an virtual focus distance from greater than 50 cm up to infinity. This would be the easiest measure to prevent Nearsightness problems when using electronic devices.
Yes. I saw a video about how the eye changes shape to adjust focal length, thus myopia is preventable and reversible, but it takes extreme discipline and months to reverse. Evolution hardwired this into animals, which is why chicken's eyes behave this way. Just like your muscles can adapt to exercise, your eyes can adapt to environmental changes.
@@Tribuneoftheplebs It is simply due to high academic intensity of East Asia. If you read the whole time paper books or mobil phones is not so important. Actually Asia has passed western world in modern technology like computer, photo etc.. This leading role is due to intensive schooling from early childhood. And the High-Tech-Aseans are forced to learn hard from early childhood. Thats the main point, not the small monitors nowadays popular, especial by children. But the entire problem could be relaxed, if children wear "Reading Glasses". This are enlargement glassses with positive refraction +1 to +5 diopries. This glasses are typically used from old senior people to enable reading with normal sighted fixed focus old eyes. The problem with myopia and children is, that they use mobil phones and asia hard studying without glasses and need minus refraction glasses for normal infinity sight. So the myopia is increased by application of minus refraction glasses in childhood. Children need plus refraction "reading glasses" for small computer devices and asian style hard learning, also from paper printed learning materials. Because western people are "decadent" in intensive learning for high tech industries, they have less myopia but also lose the huge production market of modern high tech goods like everey modern electronics and computer stuff.
Is this phenomenon (i.e. higher-achieving students are more myopic) also found in other nations with high PISA scores, such as Canada, Finland and Estonia?
No idea if there is any correlation to PISA scores, but a few years ago I saw a documentary that included studies on myopia spread in a couple european countries. While the results for individual countries were slihgtly different, all of them had a strong trend of kids going through the more intensive schools/educations, with more raw time spent in school/studying, had significantly higher myopia levels than other kids in the countires.
not true, I see some kids wearing thick glasses due to constantly playing online games. Some parents give their kid electronics devices even at young age - some like 3-4 years old
My father was a fighter pilot during WWII. Even in his last year of life (age 88) he had never worn glasses in his life. Other than needing a bit more light at a restaurant than me to read a menu, he had no issues. Yet by my mid 50's, I needed them.He read a lot in his later years, but almost never watched TV. He was over 40 when he bought his first TV, primarily to keep us kids occupied. TVs back then were CRT, where electron beams were projected on to phosphors. I have wondered if either looking at a flat screen and/or a CRT could diminish one's eyesight.
I'm guessing that the correlation has less to do with people being outside, and more with them not being inside. This sounds like the same thing, but I mean that they are not spending as much time doing "inside" activities: squinting at small text, staring at electronic screens (which are essentially like shining a low-intensity flashlight in your eyes for hours at a time), fiddling with small and intricate tasks, and generally trying to look at things in low-light environments. All of these things are, relatively speaking, very new in terms of our evolutionary history. Whether or not these kinds of modern activities are good for us to the matter of endless debate, but I think it is factual to say that at the very least they are things that we are not "well adapted" to. When we are outside we tend to look at objects that are nominally further away, not spend so much time trying to resolve tiny details, enjoying almost uniform illumination, and also being physically active. I don't deny it's possible that there is some unique benefit to sunlight, but, at the risk of stating the obvious, this is just living like humans have for almost the entirety of our history until very recently. There is very good evidence that nearsightedness was very rare, if it existed at all, in ancient times, and certainly in prehistory.
There is also some evidence that suggests having adequate exposure to sunlight may be necessary for proper eye development which is why increasing time outdoors decreases rate of myopia. Ofc research in this field is ongoing. Imo they both probably contribute to some extent.
Looking at neurological development, where your brain starts with all sorts of connections and then the neurological connections you use are the ones that strengthen and stick around, or muscle development, where muscles that are used grow and muscles that are not used atrophy, it seems intuitively save to assume our eyes develop depending on environment to utilize scarce resources carefully. If you spend more time looking close-up, then your eyes will become more biased towards seeing things right in front of you. If you spend more time looking in the distance, your eyes will become more biased towards seeing things in the distance. The fact that the outside has stuff that's far off and the inside primarily has stuff that's close by makes me think that's why there's a difference.
Cool! Finally have something good to attribute my poor study habits as a kid and constant desire to play outside with my friends! :) More serious, I think the obsession with grades and schoolwork for kids below grade 7 is a shame, especially when equal focus isn’t being put on developing physical strength and coordination by means of P.E. or even just recess. Children developing their physical proprioception turns out to be enormously important in creating lifelong health and even “sense of self.”
I am hooked on your videos and this topic affects me personally. Almost like having glasses doesn't affect much but when you start to get old presvice hits you and the glasses start dancing on your face especially annoying. Thank you
Singapore has high myopic rate too. It starts from childhood, Primary achool level. Could it be because of too much reading and confinement to small space of the houses most of the time and lesser outdoor activities?
Yes. This is why most book smart students always have glasses. It's just an observation. In South Africa you'd be hard pressed to find people with glasses.
As Myopic myself and both kids also have it, I can say that time spent learning and doing homework didn't have much influence. But time spent inside, watching TV, certainly had. They both developed myopia before school. Regarding what causes outdoors time to reduce myopia could be very simple case that children's eyes during development in early age are more strained to focus near things indoors, and focus far things outdoors. That could have impact on shape of the eye during growth, since myopia is most of the time caused by eyeball shape and not with eye lenses or muscles that curve lenses. Myself I have developed myopia in lower primary school, and I didn't spent much time reading at that time, but a lot of time in front of TV that had malfunction so the picture was only stable when it was covering less than 75% of the screen (it was old black and white CRT). Now I am 44, and have contact lenses and reading glasses, which I can attribute to much time spent behind computer (working, gaming, watching YT, in total probably 16 hours a day, and I sleep around 6hours).
Your eyes are optimized for what you most used them for. For me it was not TV. Yes I watched more TV than I should have. But the adults made sure I sat more than 10 feet from the TV. I also read a lot as a child. The adults think that was good. I was made to read with the book 1 foot from my eyes. When you are in your 30s or 40s, hypermetropia will start to set in. I am well past that age. My lenses are probably as hard as the ones on my glasses. My eye's natural focusing distance is now 30cm. If your myopia was caused by watching TV and computer screens at 2m, the good news is your eyes' natural relaxed focusing distance would settle to that distance. So you can do that thing that you do most without needing glasses. Because your eyeball grew to the shape to achieve that. I think this has to be done while the eyeball is growing though. PS: when I was in my 20s, I discovered that with my -6.50 eyeball, I could focus on things only 1 inch from my eyes. I could see things that people with normal vision could hardly see with magnifying glasses. This discovery came about at work, during a credit card fraud training session, when we were asked to check the microprints used as a security feature at the time. They were so small, they were hard to make out even with a magnifying glass. It was right at the edge. Not for somebody like me with strong myopia though.
Great work Jon, as always! I've been thinking about this topic several times here in Taiwan, as I also noticed a striking prevalence of kids with glasses. It's such a pity that Taipei City has so many wonderful free facilities for sports, and yet kids are rarely taking advantage of them.
I'm in Germany at my old school they force you to go outside during two bigger breaks for 15 minutes and 20 minutes a day. The classrooms are locked during every break. That probably is why i am not nearsighted then
I saw a documentary regarding the very studies mentioned in this video, where researchers investigated the impacts of sun light exposure (and the lack thereof) on the eyes of chicken. That was several years ago and the strongest correlation found so far afaik. But it apparently didn't receive enough attention, because many people are still under the impression that myopia (or any eye condition lol) is a cause of "not looking into the distance" or the "bad light" emitted by our electronics.
It costs more in China than in the US???? I mean I guess it makes sense due to a much larger population. But glasses are expensive here, even with insurance (Ironically, unless you order them directly online from China!).
If you're indoors a lot, NOTHING is ever more than 10-20 feet away. (and 20 feet is a high number). If you're outdoors, you actually have a chance to look at an object from a distance. If you don't look at things from afar, there's no reason for your eyes to remember how to focus on distant objects. This hardly covers the whole problem, but EYE think it's an obvious factor.
As an european engineering student, i totally agree with this video, since the time i started my college degree, about 2/3 of my coworkers started using glases because in peak months it is normal to spend about 16hours out of home, with about 12hours of studying in paper or coding in a laptop. Most of the students who pass the exams and get good grades have gotten miopía, and i can tell that during summer, i try to spend more time out Doors and can apreciate a small improvement in visual capacities, but it is not enough. I have just accepted in the future when i stop studying (or at least slow down) i will need a medical operation and hope to regain visual capacities to have a better quality of life. I just can't imagine how bud it must be for chinese Kids to start that deteriorating process so early, instead of starting at around 16~17 (when things get seriours in europe, or at least that was my case) they start at 7 or 8 years old! There must be a solution because it is a true and visible problem that affects directly on life quality
@@colinchampollion4420 lol, do you understand that most of people in europe dosen't have that "White skin & light eyes" and simplifying this that much... i don't think is just that simple, in general, the amount of visual problems is directly related to the amount of hours behind a screen, writing etc
You're gona want to look up the work of Andrew huberman. He specifically mentions lack of distance viewing as the cause of near sightedness in the smartphone generation.
I am impressed with your coverage this and other subjects. I am impressed (one of the few times that I have been) with the Chinese governments movement on this issue (hope it isn't a case of those who make the statistics ...). I wish them well. Thank you for the video and all the interesting topics you cover.
from my reading on the subject (and what I recall) myopia being the result of too much time reading/ doing very close up tasks. Because evolutionarily speaking our eyes are evolved to scan the African grasslands in search of food opportunities/ approaching threats which uses the opposite eye muscles (distance) to the ones needed for focusing on objects that are printed/ close.. The result being that the eye muscles used to focus the eye in super close up mode for such extended periods (a response to the demands of modern life) causes these muscles to hypertrophy and they are unable to relax enough for long distance vision. The reason why going outside is found to be helpful is because it generally allows the people to use the distance vision muscles which has the two benefits of strengthening the muscles we've adapted to use, and stretching the muscles now required prosper in the world
i think it has to do with having to read and watch stuff when studying or reading books or electronic devices. when outdoors, instead of straining your eyes trying to read stuff, u just need to move nearer to read from a comfortable distance. if u do not do that outdoors and still have to gaze far away frequently to read or watch something, you will also have problems with your eyes. meanwhile if you always lived indoors but rarely ever read or watched something, then your eyes would not be so strained.
Considering how much time kids spend study, easy way to migate some of it would having glass ceilings etc at schools and kindergardens etc. Letting in as much natural light as possible.
Call me surprised for such an issue to be a) causable by a physical ( or maybe lack thereof ) action like excessively staring at something close by and b) being preventable by going outside which I guess gives your eyes either some relief and/or exercise 🤔
I'm pretty sure the reason going outdoors helps is that your eyes have something in the far distance to focus on. That is why working in a sewing factory for instance (personal experience) is really hard on your eyes. When you aren't looking at what your hands are doing, the furthest away you are looking is a blank windowless wall.
I lived in Singapore in an apartment complex with lots of outdoor space and a big playground. It was very noticeable that the kids who were outdoors were nearly all foreign kids (Europeans, Australian etc) and the local Chinese kids were hardly seen playing outdoors at all. Singapore has a big myopia problem like China.
I spent about an hour and a half to 2 hours outside everyday as a kid and I have worse myopia and astigmatism, than my father who spent months hiding from the Nazis in caves.
Living in Taiwan, same here. It has to do with intense studying and environment. People don´t care about daylight and sometimes have less than 30 minutes of it daylie. So they study and read all the time, reading is also bad for eyes, not only screens.
The per country prevalence of myopia (nearsightedness) correlates pretty well with avg. smartphone/screen usage per day. I live in South East Asia end there is zero awareness to limit screen time to children. I see 2 year olds at the lunch table with their tablet watching endless series, because the parents don't want any engagement. The parents themselves also play with their phones during most of lunch time. I don't say western parents don't do this, but it's about the rate of parents who do this, which I argue is vastly different in the west. I would get my PC turned off, when I play games for more than a few hours during the weekend. I would also limit screen time for my children like most of my friends do. Also, most of Asia has a very ineffective education system, where they are taught by rote principle, spending hours with books every day.
I don't see physical myopia as any sort problem that needs to be fixed outside of corrective lenses or laser surgery. The costs of correcting it are fairly minor in the grand scheme of things. Sure, if there are things that could be done to lower its prevalence that wouldn't be a bad thing, but they would have to be weighted against the costs. That said, I don't think there's any real cost to forcing kids to spend 2 hours a day outside; you do better at any work, whether study or production, if you take breaks to relax and rejuvenate, so it seems like an easy solution to implement. I'm going to guess that if the amount of time forced to be outside were greater, they'd see an even larger drop of myopia, but getting much beyond 2 hours a day would force some real tradeoffs, especially when the weather's bad.
I used to teach in China and I noticed their myopia problem, I also made some observations. Chinese children are encouraged to study hard rather than to play so their eyes are trained at a short distance for long periods. Also, Chinese writing is very intricate and when these students practice reading and writing they are bent right over, their eyes very close to the paper. The myopia problem is even worse for Taiwanese students that use even more intricate traditional Chinese characters.
One hypothesis is that the growth of the eye is determined by a feedback mechanism stimulated by the muscles that control the lens of the eye. The eye grows in a way that minimizes the amount of energy used by by those muscles. When everyone lived outdoors, the eyes developed to cover from closeup vision to distance vision. Being outdoors in sunlight, the pupils were contracted which increased the depth of field, so the muscles didn't work as hard to keep something in focus. According to this hypothesis, spending a lot of time indoors in light much dimmer than sunlight and looking at things within arms length will result in the eyes growing so that the amount of energy expended by the lens muscles will be minimized when the default focus distance is at close distances. This also means that if you give a kid glasses to correct for nearsightedness, and they read while wearing those glasses, the myopia will get worse. If this hypothesis is correct then taking breaks to focus on distant objects, and spending time outdoors, which has both distant objects and bright light, prevents myopia by presenting the eye with a need to focus over a greater range of distances. Another possible solution (which I have never heard of anyone suggesting) is to attack the root of the problem by having children wear reading glasses when reading or any other close focus work. If the eyes are focused at 100 feet/30 meters, but the glasses refocus that gaze to 12 to 15 inches (reading distance)/30-40 cm, then the lens muscles don't have to expend a lot of energy trying to focus at a short distance. This is why old people use reading glasses; their eyes are focused at a distance too far away to read, and the glasses bring the focus close enough to be able to read. Using a higher magnification to over correct might even reverse mild myopia (in children) by forcing the eye to extend its focus, so the eye will grow less. That's just my hypothesis, but I think it is worth testing. Reading glasses are about $10 a pair, so this is a rather cheap experiment, and doesn't rely on reprogramming parents.
Or it could be people live in dense cities with almost no natural light indoors. Literate people have been around for thousands of years, but they didn't always live in concrete jungles.
that would mean no extended indoctrination and they would rather have half the population blind. like you can also see when they rather hire eye doctors than give the kids a more natural life.
The cause is obvious, that first statistic about school is the answer. The sitting and slouching over causes imbalances in the neck, jaw and sphenoid bone placement. The sphenoid bone muscles (Pterygoid Cluster) are a particular concern since an imbalance in the these can restrict the nerves and applies direct pressure to the eye sockets etc.
Wonderful reporting (the check is in the mail), i don't think it was specifically mentioned that "nearsightedness" was the ability to see up-close as apposed to far-away. Some of the imagery had me 2nd guessing myself. I am farsighted (the ability to see better far-away, for the laymen like me). Ironically I would prefer to see "up close' (nearsighted) for the reasons that are causing some of the problems - computers etc. I don't take this lightly but I wonder what others would accept as a choice. Thanks so much and your dead-pan humor is a joy. Cheers. p.s. I am ready to be schooled if I misstated anything. And those Chinese students RoCk.
Yes having a built-in microscope can be very useful. For most of my life I was 3 dioptres near-sighted which was great for working in electronics. I found that at a pinch I could resolve the grain on a 35mm negative. Now I am older and electronics has got smaller, I often have to work under an actual microscope.
@@timjackson3954 Thank you for reply, TJ. A "built-in microscope"?... I've never heard anyone describe Turbocharged myopia (so well). Life is truly a mad scientist. So a big thank you to Salvino D'Armati {Italy-13th century. Cheers my friend. Live Long & Prosper.
I wonder if "Spending time out doors" can be a stand-in for eyes that don't spend enough time focused at longer distances become worse at doing so over time.
Do you think this was considered in the US military switch to the 6.5 creedmoor? It adds about 200 feet of effective combat range over the bullets it was replacing.
Thanks for the video. I believe that it is possible to improve your eyesight. I spent a lot of time outdoors last year and when I got a checkup I was told that my glasses prescription improved from -4 to -3, or 25% better. The biggest factor was me going outside more. A daily walk can change a person’s life in many ways.
Changing your focus - try and focus on objects further away than a book, touch screen or TV. Your eyes work on muscle control and training those muscles is important.
I managed to avoid myopia as a nerdy American kid (now young adult) and I realize it's because I spent so much quality time outside when I wasn't playing video games or studying. Baseball and cross country were excellent at getting my eyes to change focal distance a ton.
My myopia started at an early age, and I got my first glasses at age twelve, which I believe was several years too late. But what I've noticed over the years is that my myopia has progressively gotten worse and I've found myself getting new glasses with ever increasing strength.
Check out Endmyopia. This actually slowed my myopia progression dramatically. It seems weird and takes a while to get going, but I'd say it's worth a try, especially if you are an adult.
So make study look like the outdoors which says project study material on a distant screen and use varying light levels to exercise the muscles in the eye, probably something worker cube housing will make difficult. So in the end the government blamed the uninvolved.
I wonder if vr can help here, from what I know the time spend focussing on things that are close, as vr sets have the focus point on infinity, it could in theroy help.
Looking at longer distances than 20 feet, when your always reading you don't look long distances. And read about instances where children that have night lights have more eye problems.
In European countries the trend of increasing myopia is battled by preventing that kids focus their eyes too long, too close by, such as with reading books or looking at handheld screens. They teach them to look away from the handheld screen or book, for at least 20 seconds, each 20 minutes. Playing outside for some hours is pretty normal for the youngsters in Europe.
My theory is that misopia is triggerd by looking at thing extensively close to your eye. It would make sense as it eases the strain on the lens in the long term. The spending time outside correlation fits pretty well into it. German Wikipedia states it as well but the reference is kinda shady. I personally only use my old (too weak) glasses when sitting in front of my monitor in hopes of preventing it from becoming worse (-4.5 dioptrin).
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I saw a report on NHK where it mentioned that the kids in Japan faced a similar problem, a policy to spend more time outdoors while at school actually yielded positive results.
The question is what was the actual factor that caused the change? Light? Depth perception? Changing backgrounds? Less predictable environment forces fast switching? Lets discuss..
The "cure" for nearsightedness in the 19th century was to send people on an ocean voyage so they would have nothing but the horizon to look at. Don't know if it actually worked.
@@thewatersavior There also is a good stress caused by gaming and fighting with peers. And to much studying can cause bad stress.
@@thewatersavior your eyes have muscles that contract or protract when you look at objects at different distances. Stare long enough at the same distance and your muscles will atrophy. For example staring at a screen everyday for years will likely to cause myopia, and if you have a job that requires to look in a distance for a long period of time, like a trucker, you're likely to get hyperopia. Genetics also play role, some may get eye defects easier, some may not.
it’s literacy, reading books while the eye is developing encourages myopia since that’s what’s it’s primarily being used for
If you're knowledgeable on a subject and read news articles on it, you are often shocked at the level of ignorance shown, making you question their reporting on other subjects you know less about.
This video had the opposite effect. I've done, and published, a lot of research on the myopia epidemic. Your summary of the state of research is very good, making me trust your other videos even more.
I don't think the limits of human cognition really allow us to appreciate the levels of entropy achievable by one person over 1 lifetime much less all people over all lifetimes. Throw in written language and the levels of abstraction become so innumerable they're, as far as monkey brain is concerned, functionally equivalent to infinity. We all get awestruck when we see a wider than usual perspective from a tall hill. Yet, most get bored fast when talk turns to lightyears. That same direct, visceral connection isn't possible through abstraction.
To simultaneously consider more than a few of anything we must put a few in a mental box labeled output then combine output w/ a few inputs (apply a cause, consider a few effects) put all that in another box, and repeat ad infinitum to get much of anywhere with our brains. It's amazing what that can accomplish, but to understand how much is really going on inside all those boxes takes effort. We get by pretty well just using what comes out of the boxes. It's easy to forget how much could be inside. I'm convinced we could solve quite a few problems with regular reminders of this concept; what we know is a scrawny little manlet compared to the planetary sumo of all we don't.
Singapore here.
My son was forced to do up to 10 hours of homework a day at primary school. During a very extreme period I brought this up to his form teacher. Her reply was that my son is slow, and the other children are able to do this in 2 - 3 h. Of course, I know from other parents that it's not so.
On top of the school hours from 7:30 to 13:30 nearly all children also have tuition. The worst in my son's class was 18 h a week, most had around 6 - 12 h.
Crazy thing is all this pressure doesn't really make a population that much more productive. Nobody would argue Japanese are some of the worst about this but they're not much more productive than Germany where they have similar industries and don't have all this pressure on kids or as rigid an education system. They focus too much on test scores and memorization rather than a more varied, flexible approach such as magnet schools or Montessori schools
@@arthas640 at least Finland got it right. Hopefully others follow their lead
@@freddy4603 yeah these high pressure tactics dont really seem to work. The US doesnt have high pressure schools but they're ranked #6 in the world by worker productivity and they're mainly beaten out by countries where they have large tax havens or similar industries that throw their numbers off. Japan is a high income nation and have high pressure schools but the average Japanese worker only contributes $42.56/hr towards the economy while Finland s $58.44/hr the US is $73.70/hr. China meanwhile has a rather pathetic $11.69/hr and ranks #60 globally in terms of worker productivity below Thailand, Ecuador, and Columbia.
The number of strabismus cases we've been seeing in our clinics here in the Philippines also shot up pretty bad. There's no study on it just yet and it may be just bias but it may be from the extended lockdowns and online classes that kids have been taking. it's even worse because if we catch it too late, the brain shuts off the vision of the deviated eye so it doesn't get confused and dizzy. Getting that eye to work again is one hell of a fight
I had to wear an eye patch for lazy eye when I was 4, and again when I was 7-8.
Same
this happened to me, sadly my parents didnt know how to help and now I cant see at all from my left eye. I still wear glasses and have no chance to have correction surgery
Yeah, I become nearsighted when I started working from home in 2020 and I'm the only one who wear glasses at my house. It's pretty alarming.
I heard there were studies linking FPS games to having positive affects on hypertropia. I believe the figure was 1 hour of high intensity FPS play was equal to 400 hours of passively wearing an eye patch.
The theory in the paper was that the active engagement and target seeking behavior caused both eyes to work in concert due to an unconscious feedback loop by the brain use all available resources for the activity.
How much of the is rubbish or not... not sure. also, this was back in the day when frenetic games like quake or doom would have been the game, not the languid COD.
I have heard that myopia is mostly a consequence of staying inside and not being exposed to natural light.
The Inuit population in Canada was apparently almost immune to myopia but now the new generation is also suffering from myopia as any sedentary and industrialized society.
Edit. Finished listening... pretty much inline with what I believed.
Myopia is cause in part by high carb diets like SA(American)D, SC (Chinese)D and the Mediterranean diets plus too much close focusing. Perhaps reading lenses for small children?
Minute Earth made a short 3 minute video about why time spent outdoors is related with nearsightedness. Watch it if you can't be bothered reading a whole paper about it. th-cam.com/video/vbCobKbLJls/w-d-xo.html
I sent a comment here, yet I don't see it, so just in case it is sent, I have a correction to be made. Ignore it if there's no prior comment from me.
Don't blindly trust whatever the video I linked says. If there's someone else who you trust more than the video I linked, then follow that person. I personally do that too.
I have carelessly shared it, and I should be more careful in the future.
The old people did not even know they had myopia.
True. Eye testing has been pretty common in schools in the US since around the 50s and things got worse as more people became less agriculturally focused and worked indoors, especially offices, more
I think a lot people (including me) thought it was about government policies that was near sighted from the title.
Yup😂
Hahaha... Was just about to say the same. I think it's a bit of a hidden criticism
@@emanggitulah4319 open criticism might not be tolerated
Exactly and it wouldn't be wrong though
It's like there's a tongue in cheek recommendations from government and schools telling parents to do more outdoor activities for the kids. But subliminally do otherwise- they push the kids to tuition centres after school periods.
Tuition centres is big business in Singapore!
I remember reading on this topic for a high school presentation years ago and I found that it wasn't just China but also India going through this and I also found out about a experimental set of mass producible adjustable glasses that use a liquid filling that focuses more or less depending on the pressure. No idea where these are at in the r&d or production stage but I wouldn't be surprised if they have been phased out by normal mass producible glasses
00:04 - “I wonder how long until we get a sight pun”
00:06 - “well, there it is” 🤣
Well, that's a sight for sore eyes. ;*[¶
I see what you did there.
ooh, didn't SEE that pun
I remember reading a brief article on this exact issue last year. Always thought about it once in a while wanted to learn more about it and this video absolutely scratches that itch. Wonderful!
I had perfect vision until I was 14-15, my eyes have continued to deteriorate since then. I am IT for a living and before that I spent a lot of time on computer screens for gaming, etc. Both of my parents and my sister also needed glasses, but I wonder if I have made it worse with my choices.
Just like your muscles adapt to exercise, the animal eye adapts to visual distance. This was hard wired when the eye evolved millions of years ago. The eye can grow to change shape to change the focal length. Thus myopia isn't a disease of the eye, it is the natural adaptation of an organ to the environment. In the case of the eye it is adaptation for better performance at close focus. Like muscles can be strengthened or weakened by exercise or the lack of it, the eye can adapt to various focal distances. This process can of course take weeks, months or years.
Technology will be the death of humanity in more ways than just making us lazy.
@@bloodbarage it's already killing us
imagine that your eyes are like a pair of binoculars,
there is an adjustment ring that allows you to see between 5x and 10x.
now imagine that you have used them for years at 10x only.
and not having adjusted the ring in 5 years and now the ring is stuck in place.
are you then farsighted?
there are 6 muscles that coordinate to allow your eyes to move and focus.
the way muscles work is that some must contract and some must stretch.
the eyeball becomes shorter.
in a reverse configuration, the muscles that were contracted are now stretched and vice versa.
the eyeball becomes longer.
to work together effectively all your eyes muscles must be of similar strength.
if you hold your focus on things near you for to long,
the muscles that are contracted are getting stronger (stiff) and the muscles that are stretched are getting weaker.
your eyes muscles ability to coordinate movement becomes difficult.
in order to correct your eyes, if nearsighted, you must practice seeing far away, to strengthen those muscles that have weaken over time.
repeated cycles of eye muscle exercise and relaxation are needed to correct the problem.
look up "The Bates Method"
The Bates method is an ineffective and potentially dangerous alternative therapy aimed at improving eyesight. Eye-care physician William Horatio Bates (1860-1931) held the erroneous belief that the extraocular muscles effected changes in focus and that "mental strain" caused abnormal action of these muscles; hence he believed that relieving such "strain" would cure defective vision.[1][2] In 1952, optometry professor Elwin Marg wrote of Bates, "Most of his claims and almost all of his theories have been considered false by practically all visual scientists."[3][4]
No type of training has been shown to change the refractive power of the eye.[5] Moreover, certain aspects of the Bates method can put its followers at risk: They may damage their eyes through overexposure to sunlight, not wear their corrective lenses while driving, or neglect conventional eye care, possibly allowing serious conditions to develop.[3][6]
This is fascinating and something I never thought about. I’m near sighted and started reading at age 2, naturally. I wasn’t forced to read. I just did.
We had a prof in med school in Germany who researched extensively on it. He gave us quite the lecture
What's the conclusion?
I got glasses when in high school for a small amount of myopia, which stopped increasing; I stayed about 7 years with the same prescription, until I was told it increased in 2021, and then again in 2022. Of course the main difference is that I stopped going out as much, and that was the first thing my eye doctor told me when I asked on a possible reason.
Awesome detail, thank you! Few questions \ comments:
1. Did the study mention anything about studying outside?
2. Did the studies contrast using "natural light" indoors and in all indoor settings - ex, they can mandate indoor school settings use natural light replicators?
3. Theory on being outdoors - Its not so much the light but the ability to perceive depth. Perhaps you have to train your eyes at this age to see at multiple ranges and being outside enables the brain to train on many focal distances. Indoors and while moving place to place we shut down our depth perception and live in a tunnel. Giving kids time to visually explore open spaces perhaps works those muscles.
4. Very interesting - environment was mentioned but nothing about "pollution" or specific location factors. This is good in that its sounds like environment is really the human behaviors, is that correct?
5. For the drops in study time are they seeing lower IQ ratings? You mentioned affording the cost of eye care - was that in the sense that they reap the benefits of a smarter population. That puts an interesting spin on the proliferation of doctors - China quickly becomes the center of eye care prevention and begins to sell that as a service to the rest of the world in 5 years when VR becomes a device 5 year old's watch Sesame Street on in the US.
point 3: what's the use of being outdoors if you're constantly looking at your phone?
In the early 80’s I learned about eye focusing routines. Very easy such as for long distance vision is pick various spots / targets far away outdoors and try to focus. For peripheral vision was likewise and trying to focus at the edge.
No doubt kids that are really into VR will soon be myopic.
@@dv84sure Any reason that cannot be replicated in VR? The brain is just responding to stimulus - so perhaps there is something around light transform that can trick the brain into firing the same muscles. I know light source is an issue but it is also in the works...
@@thewatersavior I’ve tried VR quite a lot for aspects of VR for technical education at a company that specialises in tech-ed learning applications. I didn’t get / see anything close to getting the same type of distance / depth perception with VR as to reality outdoors. Everyone of us had a loss of balance after taking off the VR set - and it doesn’t take long - even just 10 minutes. This included VR with outdoor scenery. Most get used to that dizzy VR effect and takes less time to adjust after taking off the headset. I am guessing that some VR applications could be designed / made that would be better, but I don’t think it would ever be as good as simply going for a long walk and doing focusing routine as described. Anyhow the “focus” should be to get out and see the real world and while out there - take the shoes off and get “grounded”.
@@dv84sure not everyone has or will have the luxury of getting out and walking around. This is where tech can help level the playing ground / bridge the gap. Have you check out Thrillist recent VR headset videos? Looks like they are working to address the tech but curious if we will ever be able to bridge the cultural gap, hence the question on whether the study looks at the mechanics of why outside helps with myopia and what about that can be replicated for those that don't have the leisure. Ex, people who work 2 shifts 6 days a week.
There was a paper in Nature a few years ago that solved this riddle authoritatively. It's solely due to a lack of sufficient exposure to bright sunlight. Specifically exposure to high energy blue light or "diffuse sky radiation" is what is needed to cause a whole cascade of interacting gene activations in the eye necessary for correct eye shape formation during adolescence. The correlation was so high there was no need to invoke other explanations like close-up focusing on eg. paper for long periods of time studying, or video game playing. It's all high energy visible light exposure. To such an extent that it should be relatively easy to ameliorate the problem by simply using high power indoor lighting, in a similar way that "seasonal affective disorder" fad diagnosis in the West some years ago had people putting bright high color temperature lights at their desks at work. I'm sure something similar could be done for this problem, except in this case it would actually be doing something significant and easily quantifiable.
If the paper came out of China, it would have solved this riddle "Authoritatianly"
Well, video games are keeping people indoors, and using high-power artificial light isn't all that energy-efficient, since power literally means energy over time.
You could do that. You could also take vitamin D pills and buy exercise equipment or you could just go outside.
@@dj_laundry_list cringe
That is really interesting. Architectural fixes at schools should be possible. Skylights and/or high power lighting in classrooms and outdoor class gathering areas. That sounds like solid policy to advocate for.
holy shit man, your work ethic is amazing! you're pumping out SUPER informative videos so frequently. keep up to great work! (but don't feel pressured to rush)
Longtime viewer. This is one of the best topics you have selected. Always love your content and narration. Keep it up!
This is anecdoctal of course, but personally I've seen my myopic power decrease during the time where I jogged outside 1 hour a day every day. It went from 5.00+ to around 3.00. The only change in my life back then was this additional outdoor time. However, I was 16 back then, so I'm not sure if doing this later in life will have similar effects.
I think spending outdoor time not only reduces the chance of myopia but also helps reduce the severity of already occurring myopia. Light is important.
how long did it take to improve? I might just try this
@@nothinleader I don't remember exactly but it was definitely over the course of at least 3-6 months
Like I wrote in my comment, if eye is still developing (growing) there might be case of shaping differently if you make it focus object further away. I also have noticed that in short period of time, if I take of my glasses/contacts for 10-15 minutes, and look around without them, I have better focus for some time after that. But if I do it to long without correction, I get sensation similar to having sand in your eyes. And it can lead to increase of myopia if you prolong looking without glasses/contacts.
I've got nearsightedness and am currently at -5.75 at both eyes. I'm 34 years old and hope that my myopia starts reversing soon.
@@AgentSmith911 It will never reverse. You will just be able to read without glasses (instead of reading glasses) when older, but that will probably just make myopia worse. Better to get progressive lenses in your glasses, or contact and reading glasses.
I too have pondered why Asian people seemed to have a higher prevalence of wearing glasses and did wonder if it was because of having to read small but highly detailed complex characters, and it does appear to be so. Thanks for shining a light on this issue.
From my own job i have to focus on near objects for long periods and in artificial light i often find i'm casting a subtle but definite shadow on my work which i feel is causing eye strain, so with younger folk having to concentrate in a similar way & circumstances must no be good. Also looking down most often must cause certain eye-muscle strain that could change the shape of the eye as well as the lens focusing strain - this in particular must be a growing world issue as we are all more & more looking down at our mobile devices each with higher detailed fine objects we stare at.
IMHO humans were designed to look ahead/forward more commonly (rather than down in the direction their feet) and into the middle/middle-close distance with the ability to focus far or near for short periods but mainly looking at the macro world, we have the ability to see close to the almost micro world but for only short periods. And being out in more space the eye is always looking around focussing at objects at varying distances (rather than basically static distance). Plus to use the range of natural light whilst we sleep through the dark.
About small detailed characters while true in theory, in practice they read text the same way we do: by quickly scanning the shapes of words and assuming (subconsciously) the most likely meaning.
When you're reading this comment, you're not scanning each single letter, you're quickly skimming over words and the context and assumptions about semantics carry the weight here.
For westerners characters look like indistinguishable magical symbols, but spend a bit of time learning them and you'll quickly see just how similar it all is to other languages (I mean, duh!)
Cheers
I don't know how it comes as a surprise to anyone that being outside with lots of light and looking at things farther away prevents nearsightedness.
"Everything is obvious once you know the answer"
I have strong myopia myself, in my case from birth. My father is also myopic, probably some genetic and nutrition factors.
In the case of China / Japan, I think there is one elephant in the room that was not mentioned at all. Chinese and Japanese script is
made up of complex, hard to discern characters. Look at the Chinese documents shown in the video, and you will see what I mean.
Reading them requires much better focus than latin script, which is readable even when a little out of focus.
Not sure what is the issue in South Korea, where the script is much easier to discern. Limited sunlight exposure and nutrition are probably
the main factors there.
Some research shows correlations with BMI. I would be careful with that, as myopia and study habits both may contribute to a lack
of physical activity. In my case, my 3D vision was very poor as a child, which doesn't help with athleticism. School sports are too
focused on ball sports, where kids with poor vision have a big handicap. Calisthenics, gymnastics or weight lifting would seem
more appropriate for them.
Are you suggesting that reading chinese script causes or helps in causing nearsightedness? Do you have any sources on that? I thought the science was settled that the one and only cause of acquired (not inborn) nearsightedness is lack of exposure to sunlight in childhood.
@@sanjaymatsuda4504 I have not looked into sources, but follow along for a little bit:
* Sunlight exposure is probably also connected to looking at a distance, as opposed to close in focus needed to decipher chinese script.
* If you have even a little myopia, you will need glasses to decipher chinese script in a school setting (for example on a blackboard). Slippery slope to ever stronger corrections.
* Learning to read and write chinese script or kanji takes massively more time than learning the simple latin alphabet with its measly 26 characters. I am sure we're talking of THOUSANDS of hours of practice and learning. This is time that the kids can't spend outside.
* In the case of Korea with its simpler script, the reason may be cultural + the school system - kids get sent to cram schools, again no time for sunlight exposure.
In the end we have to get kids outside more, and cut out unnecessary things from the curriculum to save time.
is that why they're squinting all the time?
I lost one eye early in the pandemic, and am left with one myopic eye. I have been teaching myself braille for about a year and a half. It is possible to put your phone into VoiceOver mode, and do the bulk of your reading through your headphones. Your phone goes into a mode where you have to memorize a lot of swipe gestures, and you listen for descriptions of what you are touching, and double-tap to select things. When you hook up a braille terminal, you can use actual navigations keys (up,down,left,right,select); and in some ways, tasks like going through your email and twitter feeds is actually EASIER than using your eyes.
This voiceover mode is generally hard to use because it's "made for blind people"; rather than "made for no-look scenarios", or even "made to support devices without screens". If somebody gave you an iPhone case with a braille keyboard on the back of it (it's only about 15 keys total, because you chord the keys) so that you can use it while looking at the screen; it should be superior to a QWERTY keyboard on a phone; especially if you are walking around. It only takes a few weeks to get comfortable with a simple braille alphabet. The only problem is that braille output cells are typically huge and brittle mechanical devices; so reading by sound is usually the way to go. Actual blind people use both at the same time. Audio for an overview, braille-output for detail, and usually both a qwerty and braille keyboard at the same time.
Reading in the dark on a braille display in bed is actually more comfortable than staying up late reading; though it's usually only ok for linear reading without lots of symbols and formatting (like math). I am pretty sure that tech is going to start making the VoiceOver a mainstream thing, rather than something added only after accessibility lawsuits demand that they "do something" to comply.
I would add that my daughter bought a license for Speechify in the browser. It lets her do homework reading at about 4x speed. So she reads it multiple times as audio, at 2x speed. It's kind of similar to what blind people do. She stays up crazy hours doing homework of course.
If there's one thing I've learned about tech, it's the people that can bend tech.
Apps and phone companies will only do what's profitable.
Even fining them will not do much. If the people are visible, the profit incentive is high enough, and is wanted then so be it.
@@japhalpha yes. this is exactly the problem. if people with vision issues are tweeting about laws and regulation; then the system is not working. accessibility issues will get solved when it enabled the sale of new kinds of devices; such as earbud phones.
I'm also myopic, the last study I heard also came to the conclusion that it was based on sunlight exposure.
yea I heard the same, sunlight is important variable I'm growth
What's weird to me is I was the poster child of everything a kid shouldn't do to protect their eyes. Used a computer everyday for hours a day, didn't play outside a lot, sat too close to the TV, reading in low light, etc. Yet, like my dad, my vision is above average. It was measured at 20-15 last year. My sister is the same way. However my dad had 20-10 vision at my age, so maybe I'm missing out on even better vision from not being outside a lot.
Base not case...one swallow does not a summer make...
@@raylopez99 Sorry, but it actually does, and destroys this entire videos argument that there isn't a genetic propensity in O haplogroup members to have this problem, which there clearly is, and it's limited to those people, and populations with large O genetic drift. You guys don't wanna be racist so you eat up this propaganda.
There is almost no environmental effect on vision. That’s all a lie. It’s genetic.
It's genetics
@@sebastianflynn1746 Nope. Environment says the literature.
Interesting. All my friends who I played with outside never had myopia. All my bookworm friends had it. And in the long run, I became an engineer and most of the people I work with have it too. However, now that I have aged and now have accommodation issues with focus and have to wear readers, I envy my myoptic co workers who can see close just by moving their glasses aside whereas I have to put on readers or magnifiers to see what is going on.
Sounds like falling victim to the grass being greener on the other side. It's not pretty on the other side. You know you can have both myopia AND presbyopia right? Bifocals are terrible. The middle distances are always a constant struggle. Progressive lenses aren't much better. My mom wears them. I had a teacher who had one contact for myopia on one eye and one for presbyopia on the other. She lived in this distorted twilight zone. The video already mentions higher increase in the risk for retinal detachments, glaucoma, and other decidedly not fun things.
I love your videos. They are so entertaining to watch and the topics are interesting aswell.
Didn’t even know this was an issue.
We need more outdoor-capable electronics. There was a company that made drop in replacement laptop/netbook displays which are (nearly) full colour indoors but turn (nearly) monochrome high contrast under strong sunlight. I'd like more of that sort of stuff.
@Zaydan Naufal Yeah i have Vizplex based e-readers, but they aren't very suitable for general tasks, actually i have one SONY with a touchscreen and it's an annoying piece of garbage, and i had one by Chinese company Hanlin customised by a Ukrainian partner company, LBook, it was actually top notch.
I used to do quite a bit on my Casio PocketViewer and Psion5 in the late 90s, early 2000s. Those had monochrome screens, worked nicely enough in sunlight. I'm pretty sure i had some pretty hefty books on my PocketViewer as well. Oh wait i should just drop some batteries in there, i bet it still has all the data from back then... as opposed to Palm Pilot and Handspring Visor... although Visor Edge just feels SO NICE, i actually have one of those as well, so nice.
I actually still play the original Gameboy Advance outdoors :D the only game console that works in the sun better than indoors.
Your solution sound like removing the head phone jack while introducing Airpods at the same time
@@XtraHidary No. Why. It's not a solution to anything in particular, i don't have ambitions of solving world myopia or anything like that - though i'd love to be able to do more work and stuff outdoors in summer, so i don't have to skip all the sunlight.
I also don't suggest removing anything. You can have a more powerful laptop/pc/etc but having an extra netbook you can use in sunlight would be awesome, even if you aren't gonna watch movies on it - you can still do a lot of text work.
If you have a better solution, please share. I am lead to believe that full colour reflective or incident-light display is technically impossible, physically impossible.
It doesn't solve the "nearsighted" problem. Other than the correlation of strong outdoor light, the other very strong correlation is nearsighted work, aka using a computer/smartphone or studying. It makes logical sense. As your eyes grow, they adjust to the most natural, least stressful state. And a long eyeball for nearsighted work fits the bill. Your body can adapt, for better or worse. Bringing the work outdoors only solves half the problem.
@@aoikemono6414 This is what I am thinking. Our eyes adapt. If this happens in a growing child, it eventually adapts permanently so that it ends up optimized for this distance.
The solution is to optimize for a different distance. But there is no point telling them to go outside, if they bring their phones and books to read outside. If you are in Singapore (or Australia), they will only end up with more skin cancer. Instead of playing games on their phone, tell them to use the TV screen. Place your TV and chairs so that they are at opposite ends of the long axis of your room.
Alternatively, make them wear glasses when they don't need them. Your kids have perfect vision? Make them wear +0.5 or +1.0 glasses when indoor. It would be like they are outside. A perfect solution if your houses are small, and the neighbourhood isn't nice and you don't want them outside. Old people glasses are not just for old people!
Once upon a time it was assumed that everyone would have their computer screen (almost always a cathode ray tube) six feet away from their eyes and that said screen would have a light to dark ratio of ≥ 1000:1. Today people are lucky to have 400:1 luminosity ratio screens and almost never are they more than four feet (≈1.2m) away.
In the USA the lighting in most classrooms is horrendously bad. I really don't want to think too hard about what that means-it makes my eyes hurt.
*Laughs in OLED TV*
A lot of people in East Asia are content to work in poor light, even when there is no need to. Keeping their irises open for so much of the time probably doesn't help with the myopia problem. Over 25 year living in Hong Kong I saw the rate of glasses wearing in China gradually catch up with the very high rate in HK. In HK, Singapore and Taiwan the number of opticians in any shopping area is kinda sad.
It's not caused by poor light or eye strain. Urban myth.
Poor light has nothing to do with myopia.
Its genetic and as those genes are still bred it will continue
@@danielch6662 low light conditions are known to be bad for reading
Low light could logically contribute if reading up close … Because low light means large pupil means narrower depth of focus means tighter controls on the lens diopter range. This means if the lens is stretched to a more extreme shape under low light. But the obvious culprit is formative biological eye development years spent focused 20 inches away locking in the lens shape as it hardens
Weird...also NEAT!
I felt like I was always given conflicting information about what was bad or not for your eyes. Only now as I approach "middle" age do I notice any significant vision deterioration. Still don't need glasses but I have noticed my vision is temporarily much worse if I have been on my phone or reading a while. More reason to reduce screen time.
As an aside I would think wealthier families tending toward near sightedness could just be because rich kids are more likely to have vision problems detected and corrected.
Glasses are literally everywhere, even in African countries starving of food. Accessibility really isn't the problem. Whether it's accurate, or changed yearly, that is another question. It's just a fact richer and more successful families have higher expectations for their kids academically, value education more, and have the means to give their kids more opportunities to learn and study, thus a higher prevalence for nearsightedness.
I sometimes dumbly wondered how ancient people survived with no glasses, as near-sightedness seemed like such an inevitability.
Now I know it’s because they essentially didn’t have to suffer with the consequences of the industrial Revolution yet.
USAF had the same problem with pilot recruits, they would enter the training program with 20/20 vision but after months of intense studying many would become myopic. It seems the eye is quite flexible when you're young and a lot of reading will cause it to deform. The solution was very easy, each recruit was given glasses that caused their eyes to focus at infinity when reading closeup.
the problem is biģer than that the lack of use of the eyes muscle cause a permanent deformation of the eye and it must also be related with bad food habits too when you are outdoor you move the eyes when you watch the screen the things move around your eye
@@jujubrio4916 Don't know what the typical Chinese eats but it's hard to believe it's worse than the mostly junk food diet of the average American.
If being indoors looking at things nearby under less than bright light is causing myopia, it's possible a lot of the preventive effect of being outside is due to focussing on things at mid range and further away: at distances more commonly encountered by eyeball-havers over the last few hundred millenia. Something that is much easier to do when the sun is shining brightly on those things. If you hold a body part in a particular position as it grows - say, muscles shaping the lens and to some extent the eyeball for closer reading - it affects the form it takes. Neck stretching in africa and foot binding in imperial china used external apparatus, but perhaps we're seeing that sustained muscular strain is enough.
make sense
Thanks for including the charts/tables. I've always heard reading laying down is bad. First time seeing a paper study putting a number to this.
And this is only one half of the major problems of doing that.
Another hughe problem reading laying down with the book on the floor is the spine. If you look at a side view of someone doing that, and imagine them standing like that, you'd see that the spine is bend suroisingly far back. And with so many things, the spine can do it, and is fine doing it occasionaly/for short periods, repeated prolonged bending back is not great to say the lwast.
As an American I'm continually astounded by stories of governments correctly recognizing a problem for the public, coming up with a plan to fix it, implementing said plan, and the fix working. Occasionally one or two of those steps is taken in the US, but almost never all of them, and certainly never all one after the other without a decade or two pause between steps.
Riiiiiiiight
Environment and culture have a heavy hand in this. I started wearing glasses too from an early age and I attribute it to my living conditions of overcrowding with little to no vast open spaces for my eyes to lay upon. The heavy emphasis on education is also deeply entrenched in Chinese culture with its scholastic past, forcing kids to study hard from a very young age stressing eyes. Modern media is not helping either as they are designed to get audiences hooked.
Except modern media has been demonstrated to have 0 correlation with myopia
@@rickgao5510 You wear glasses?
Cataracts are caused by bright light but myopia is a form of eye muscle weakness. Wearing corrective lenses exacerbates myopia over time. The way to improve myopia is to look around more and especially to focus on distant objects. That is why time spent outdoors helps so much because there are no distant objects to look at indoors. If you wear glasses then when you're relaxing outdoors take them off and look around to strengthen your eyes. If the light is too bright, use non-corrective lenses that block blue light. I decreased my myopia from -2 to -1 diopters by quitting wearing contacts and not wearing my glasses when I don't need them.
A german eyes professor did experiments with chickens, which gets special glasses, which shows, that the eyes is trainable to a certain refraction need. The hight Nearsight Problem in entire Asia is mainly due to extensive Mobilphone and Smartwatch usage. This divices urge the eye to focus to 10 - 20 cm distance. Working on a large computer monitor gives focus distances of 30 - 50 cm. Less awfull than mobilphones. A remedy could be to wear plus refraction glasses during using small monitors. So that they get an virtual focus distance from greater than 50 cm up to infinity. This would be the easiest measure to prevent Nearsightness problems when using electronic devices.
Yes. I saw a video about how the eye changes shape to adjust focal length, thus myopia is preventable and reversible, but it takes extreme discipline and months to reverse. Evolution hardwired this into animals, which is why chicken's eyes behave this way. Just like your muscles can adapt to exercise, your eyes can adapt to environmental changes.
Asian myopia problem was a thing way before phones existed
@@Tribuneoftheplebs It is simply due to high academic intensity of East Asia. If you read the whole time paper books or mobil phones is not so important. Actually Asia has passed western world in modern technology like computer, photo etc.. This leading role is due to intensive schooling from early childhood. And the High-Tech-Aseans are forced to learn hard from early childhood. Thats the main point, not the small monitors nowadays popular, especial by children. But the entire problem could be relaxed, if children wear "Reading Glasses". This are enlargement glassses with positive refraction +1 to +5 diopries. This glasses are typically used from old senior people to enable reading with normal sighted fixed focus old eyes. The problem with myopia and children is, that they use mobil phones and asia hard studying without glasses and need minus refraction glasses for normal infinity sight. So the myopia is increased by application of minus refraction glasses in childhood. Children need plus refraction "reading glasses" for small computer devices and asian style hard learning, also from paper printed learning materials. Because western people are "decadent" in intensive learning for high tech industries, they have less myopia but also lose the huge production market of modern high tech goods like everey modern electronics and computer stuff.
Is this phenomenon (i.e. higher-achieving students are more myopic) also found in other nations with high PISA scores, such as Canada, Finland and Estonia?
No idea if there is any correlation to PISA scores, but a few years ago I saw a documentary that included studies on myopia spread in a couple european countries. While the results for individual countries were slihgtly different, all of them had a strong trend of kids going through the more intensive schools/educations, with more raw time spent in school/studying, had significantly higher myopia levels than other kids in the countires.
Thanks so much for covering this intriguing topic! I've learned lots from this! Keep up the fantastic work!
The smarter a person, the thicker the glasses
not true, I see some kids wearing thick glasses due to constantly playing online games. Some parents give their kid electronics devices even at young age - some like 3-4 years old
My father was a fighter pilot during WWII. Even in his last year of life (age 88) he had never worn glasses in his life. Other than needing a bit more light at a restaurant than me to read a menu, he had no issues. Yet by my mid 50's, I needed them.He read a lot in his later years, but almost never watched TV. He was over 40 when he bought his first TV, primarily to keep us kids occupied. TVs back then were CRT, where electron beams were projected on to phosphors. I have wondered if either looking at a flat screen and/or a CRT could diminish one's eyesight.
I'm guessing that the correlation has less to do with people being outside, and more with them not being inside. This sounds like the same thing, but I mean that they are not spending as much time doing "inside" activities: squinting at small text, staring at electronic screens (which are essentially like shining a low-intensity flashlight in your eyes for hours at a time), fiddling with small and intricate tasks, and generally trying to look at things in low-light environments. All of these things are, relatively speaking, very new in terms of our evolutionary history. Whether or not these kinds of modern activities are good for us to the matter of endless debate, but I think it is factual to say that at the very least they are things that we are not "well adapted" to. When we are outside we tend to look at objects that are nominally further away, not spend so much time trying to resolve tiny details, enjoying almost uniform illumination, and also being physically active. I don't deny it's possible that there is some unique benefit to sunlight, but, at the risk of stating the obvious, this is just living like humans have for almost the entirety of our history until very recently. There is very good evidence that nearsightedness was very rare, if it existed at all, in ancient times, and certainly in prehistory.
There is also some evidence that suggests having adequate exposure to sunlight may be necessary for proper eye development which is why increasing time outdoors decreases rate of myopia. Ofc research in this field is ongoing. Imo they both probably contribute to some extent.
Looking at neurological development, where your brain starts with all sorts of connections and then the neurological connections you use are the ones that strengthen and stick around, or muscle development, where muscles that are used grow and muscles that are not used atrophy, it seems intuitively save to assume our eyes develop depending on environment to utilize scarce resources carefully. If you spend more time looking close-up, then your eyes will become more biased towards seeing things right in front of you. If you spend more time looking in the distance, your eyes will become more biased towards seeing things in the distance.
The fact that the outside has stuff that's far off and the inside primarily has stuff that's close by makes me think that's why there's a difference.
Afaik the light from screens doesn't cause myopia.
Cool! Finally have something good to attribute my poor study habits as a kid and constant desire to play outside with my friends! :)
More serious, I think the obsession with grades and schoolwork for kids below grade 7 is a shame, especially when equal focus isn’t being put on developing physical strength and coordination by means of P.E. or even just recess. Children developing their physical proprioception turns out to be enormously important in creating lifelong health and even “sense of self.”
I am hooked on your videos and this topic affects me personally.
Almost like having glasses doesn't affect much but when you start to get old presvice hits you and the glasses start dancing on your face especially annoying.
Thank you
it's an issue for submariners too. long periods of time spent in small enclosed spaces with little distances between surfaces
Singapore has high myopic rate too. It starts from childhood, Primary achool level. Could it be because of too much reading and confinement to small space of the houses most of the time and lesser outdoor activities?
Yes. This is why most book smart students always have glasses. It's just an observation. In South Africa you'd be hard pressed to find people with glasses.
As Myopic myself and both kids also have it, I can say that time spent learning and doing homework didn't have much influence. But time spent inside, watching TV, certainly had. They both developed myopia before school. Regarding what causes outdoors time to reduce myopia could be very simple case that children's eyes during development in early age are more strained to focus near things indoors, and focus far things outdoors. That could have impact on shape of the eye during growth, since myopia is most of the time caused by eyeball shape and not with eye lenses or muscles that curve lenses. Myself I have developed myopia in lower primary school, and I didn't spent much time reading at that time, but a lot of time in front of TV that had malfunction so the picture was only stable when it was covering less than 75% of the screen (it was old black and white CRT). Now I am 44, and have contact lenses and reading glasses, which I can attribute to much time spent behind computer (working, gaming, watching YT, in total probably 16 hours a day, and I sleep around 6hours).
Your eyes are optimized for what you most used them for. For me it was not TV. Yes I watched more TV than I should have. But the adults made sure I sat more than 10 feet from the TV.
I also read a lot as a child. The adults think that was good. I was made to read with the book 1 foot from my eyes.
When you are in your 30s or 40s, hypermetropia will start to set in. I am well past that age. My lenses are probably as hard as the ones on my glasses. My eye's natural focusing distance is now 30cm.
If your myopia was caused by watching TV and computer screens at 2m, the good news is your eyes' natural relaxed focusing distance would settle to that distance. So you can do that thing that you do most without needing glasses. Because your eyeball grew to the shape to achieve that.
I think this has to be done while the eyeball is growing though.
PS: when I was in my 20s, I discovered that with my -6.50 eyeball, I could focus on things only 1 inch from my eyes. I could see things that people with normal vision could hardly see with magnifying glasses. This discovery came about at work, during a credit card fraud training session, when we were asked to check the microprints used as a security feature at the time. They were so small, they were hard to make out even with a magnifying glass. It was right at the edge. Not for somebody like me with strong myopia though.
Great work Jon, as always! I've been thinking about this topic several times here in Taiwan, as I also noticed a striking prevalence of kids with glasses. It's such a pity that Taipei City has so many wonderful free facilities for sports, and yet kids are rarely taking advantage of them.
How will they get time for other activities when they are busy with academics 24/7
esports go brrr
Very interesting, thank you, thumbs up.
as always, great content!
I'm in Germany at my old school they force you to go outside during two bigger breaks for 15 minutes and 20 minutes a day. The classrooms are locked during every break.
That probably is why i am not nearsighted then
I saw a documentary regarding the very studies mentioned in this video, where researchers investigated the impacts of sun light exposure (and the lack thereof) on the eyes of chicken. That was several years ago and the strongest correlation found so far afaik. But it apparently didn't receive enough attention, because many people are still under the impression that myopia (or any eye condition lol) is a cause of "not looking into the distance" or the "bad light" emitted by our electronics.
for all videos like these sources in the bio are a must
It costs more in China than in the US???? I mean I guess it makes sense due to a much larger population. But glasses are expensive here, even with insurance (Ironically, unless you order them directly online from China!).
They are only expensive because of monopolies, especially for frames, by a handful of companies.
2:38 sooo doing too much homework gives bad eyesight, and nowadays just combine that with the electronics time and boom
4:06 nice, hidden, pun in the English subtitles. Well played.
If you're indoors a lot, NOTHING is ever more than 10-20 feet away. (and 20 feet is a high number). If you're outdoors, you actually have a chance to look at an object from a distance. If you don't look at things from afar, there's no reason for your eyes to remember how to focus on distant objects. This hardly covers the whole problem, but EYE think it's an obvious factor.
As an european engineering student, i totally agree with this video, since the time i started my college degree, about 2/3 of my coworkers started using glases because in peak months it is normal to spend about 16hours out of home, with about 12hours of studying in paper or coding in a laptop. Most of the students who pass the exams and get good grades have gotten miopía, and i can tell that during summer, i try to spend more time out Doors and can apreciate a small improvement in visual capacities, but it is not enough. I have just accepted in the future when i stop studying (or at least slow down) i will need a medical operation and hope to regain visual capacities to have a better quality of life. I just can't imagine how bud it must be for chinese Kids to start that deteriorating process so early, instead of starting at around 16~17 (when things get seriours in europe, or at least that was my case) they start at 7 or 8 years old! There must be a solution because it is a true and visible problem that affects directly on life quality
If your Nordic - European you don't have to worry sooo much your White skin & light eyes were made to work indoors with minimal sunshine!
@@colinchampollion4420 lol, do you understand that most of people in europe dosen't have that "White skin & light eyes" and simplifying this that much... i don't think is just that simple, in general, the amount of visual problems is directly related to the amount of hours behind a screen, writing etc
Are you an Olived-skinned PORTUGUESE?
You're gona want to look up the work of Andrew huberman. He specifically mentions lack of distance viewing as the cause of near sightedness in the smartphone generation.
I am impressed with your coverage this and other subjects. I am impressed (one of the few times that I have been) with the Chinese governments movement on this issue (hope it isn't a case of those who make the statistics ...). I wish them well. Thank you for the video and all the interesting topics you cover.
from my reading on the subject (and what I recall) myopia being the result of too much time reading/ doing very close up tasks. Because evolutionarily speaking our eyes are evolved to scan the African grasslands in search of food opportunities/ approaching threats which uses the opposite eye muscles (distance) to the ones needed for focusing on objects that are printed/ close.. The result being that the eye muscles used to focus the eye in super close up mode for such extended periods (a response to the demands of modern life) causes these muscles to hypertrophy and they are unable to relax enough for long distance vision. The reason why going outside is found to be helpful is because it generally allows the people to use the distance vision muscles which has the two benefits of strengthening the muscles we've adapted to use, and stretching the muscles now required prosper in the world
i think it has to do with having to read and watch stuff when studying or reading books or electronic devices. when outdoors, instead of straining your eyes trying to read stuff, u just need to move nearer to read from a comfortable distance. if u do not do that outdoors and still have to gaze far away frequently to read or watch something, you will also have problems with your eyes. meanwhile if you always lived indoors but rarely ever read or watched something, then your eyes would not be so strained.
Considering how much time kids spend study, easy way to migate some of it would having glass ceilings etc at schools and kindergardens etc. Letting in as much natural light as possible.
Those percentages are absolutely flooring.
Call me surprised for such an issue to be a) causable by a physical ( or maybe lack thereof ) action like excessively staring at something close by and b) being preventable by going outside which I guess gives your eyes either some relief and/or exercise 🤔
I'm pretty sure the reason going outdoors helps is that your eyes have something in the far distance to focus on. That is why working in a sewing factory for instance (personal experience) is really hard on your eyes. When you aren't looking at what your hands are doing, the furthest away you are looking is a blank windowless wall.
I lived in Singapore in an apartment complex with lots of outdoor space and a big playground. It was very noticeable that the kids who were outdoors were nearly all foreign kids (Europeans, Australian etc) and the local Chinese kids were hardly seen playing outdoors at all. Singapore has a big myopia problem like China.
I remember seeing something about it having to do with limited exposure to sunlight during early childhood
I spent about an hour and a half to 2 hours outside everyday as a kid and I have worse myopia and astigmatism, than my father who spent months hiding from the Nazis in caves.
yeah my father spent months searching for jews and also has great eyes, and very keen smell. helps on the job
@@gillsejusbates6938 didn't realize your dad had 4 legs
Living in Taiwan, same here.
It has to do with intense studying and environment. People don´t care about daylight and sometimes have less than 30 minutes of it daylie.
So they study and read all the time, reading is also bad for eyes, not only screens.
The per country prevalence of myopia (nearsightedness) correlates pretty well with avg. smartphone/screen usage per day. I live in South East Asia end there is zero awareness to limit screen time to children. I see 2 year olds at the lunch table with their tablet watching endless series, because the parents don't want any engagement. The parents themselves also play with their phones during most of lunch time. I don't say western parents don't do this, but it's about the rate of parents who do this, which I argue is vastly different in the west. I would get my PC turned off, when I play games for more than a few hours during the weekend. I would also limit screen time for my children like most of my friends do.
Also, most of Asia has a very ineffective education system, where they are taught by rote principle, spending hours with books every day.
I don't see physical myopia as any sort problem that needs to be fixed outside of corrective lenses or laser surgery. The costs of correcting it are fairly minor in the grand scheme of things. Sure, if there are things that could be done to lower its prevalence that wouldn't be a bad thing, but they would have to be weighted against the costs. That said, I don't think there's any real cost to forcing kids to spend 2 hours a day outside; you do better at any work, whether study or production, if you take breaks to relax and rejuvenate, so it seems like an easy solution to implement. I'm going to guess that if the amount of time forced to be outside were greater, they'd see an even larger drop of myopia, but getting much beyond 2 hours a day would force some real tradeoffs, especially when the weather's bad.
Myopia does have knock-on effects later in life including worsening eyesight and possible retinal detachment.
I used to teach in China and I noticed their myopia problem, I also made some observations. Chinese children are encouraged to study hard rather than to play so their eyes are trained at a short distance for long periods. Also, Chinese writing is very intricate and when these students practice reading and writing they are bent right over, their eyes very close to the paper. The myopia problem is even worse for Taiwanese students that use even more intricate traditional Chinese characters.
One hypothesis is that the growth of the eye is determined by a feedback mechanism stimulated by the muscles that control the lens of the eye. The eye grows in a way that minimizes the amount of energy used by by those muscles. When everyone lived outdoors, the eyes developed to cover from closeup vision to distance vision. Being outdoors in sunlight, the pupils were contracted which increased the depth of field, so the muscles didn't work as hard to keep something in focus.
According to this hypothesis, spending a lot of time indoors in light much dimmer than sunlight and looking at things within arms length will result in the eyes growing so that the amount of energy expended by the lens muscles will be minimized when the default focus distance is at close distances. This also means that if you give a kid glasses to correct for nearsightedness, and they read while wearing those glasses, the myopia will get worse.
If this hypothesis is correct then taking breaks to focus on distant objects, and spending time outdoors, which has both distant objects and bright light, prevents myopia by presenting the eye with a need to focus over a greater range of distances.
Another possible solution (which I have never heard of anyone suggesting) is to attack the root of the problem by having children wear reading glasses when reading or any other close focus work. If the eyes are focused at 100 feet/30 meters, but the glasses refocus that gaze to 12 to 15 inches (reading distance)/30-40 cm, then the lens muscles don't have to expend a lot of energy trying to focus at a short distance. This is why old people use reading glasses; their eyes are focused at a distance too far away to read, and the glasses bring the focus close enough to be able to read. Using a higher magnification to over correct might even reverse mild myopia (in children) by forcing the eye to extend its focus, so the eye will grow less.
That's just my hypothesis, but I think it is worth testing. Reading glasses are about $10 a pair, so this is a rather cheap experiment, and doesn't rely on reprogramming parents.
Or it could be people live in dense cities with almost no natural light indoors. Literate people have been around for thousands of years, but they didn't always live in concrete jungles.
no homework
then no written homework
as an avid enemy of homework (it's just school failing to teach kids in school)
that would mean no extended indoctrination and they would rather have half the population blind. like you can also see when they rather hire eye doctors than give the kids a more natural life.
It's almost universal in Singapore
The cause is obvious, that first statistic about school is the answer. The sitting and slouching over causes imbalances in the neck, jaw and sphenoid bone placement.
The sphenoid bone muscles (Pterygoid Cluster) are a particular concern since an imbalance in the these can restrict the nerves and applies direct pressure to the eye sockets etc.
Wonderful reporting (the check is in the mail), i don't think it was specifically mentioned that "nearsightedness" was the ability to see up-close as apposed to far-away. Some of the imagery had me 2nd guessing myself. I am farsighted (the ability to see better far-away, for the laymen like me). Ironically I would prefer to see "up close' (nearsighted) for the reasons that are causing some of the problems - computers etc. I don't take this lightly but I wonder what others would accept as a choice. Thanks so much and your dead-pan humor is a joy. Cheers. p.s. I am ready to be schooled if I misstated anything. And those Chinese students RoCk.
Yes having a built-in microscope can be very useful. For most of my life I was 3 dioptres near-sighted which was great for working in electronics. I found that at a pinch I could resolve the grain on a 35mm negative. Now I am older and electronics has got smaller, I often have to work under an actual microscope.
@@timjackson3954 Thank you for reply, TJ. A "built-in microscope"?... I've never heard anyone describe Turbocharged myopia (so well). Life is truly a mad scientist. So a big thank you to Salvino D'Armati {Italy-13th century. Cheers my friend. Live Long & Prosper.
ive never been this early to an asianometry video
I wonder if "Spending time out doors" can be a stand-in for eyes that don't spend enough time focused at longer distances become worse at doing so over time.
Do you think this was considered in the US military switch to the 6.5 creedmoor? It adds about 200 feet of effective combat range over the bullets it was replacing.
Thanks for the video. I believe that it is possible to improve your eyesight. I spent a lot of time outdoors last year and when I got a checkup I was told that my glasses prescription improved from -4 to -3, or 25% better. The biggest factor was me going outside more. A daily walk can change a person’s life in many ways.
Changing your focus - try and focus on objects further away than a book, touch screen or TV. Your eyes work on muscle control and training those muscles is important.
I managed to avoid myopia as a nerdy American kid (now young adult) and I realize it's because I spent so much quality time outside when I wasn't playing video games or studying. Baseball and cross country were excellent at getting my eyes to change focal distance a ton.
This was a surprisingly good video and we'll researchef
My myopia started at an early age, and I got my first glasses at age twelve, which I believe was several years too late. But what I've noticed over the years is that my myopia has progressively gotten worse and I've found myself getting new glasses with ever increasing strength.
Check out Endmyopia. This actually slowed my myopia progression dramatically.
It seems weird and takes a while to get going, but I'd say it's worth a try, especially if you are an adult.
Thks & I have this problem pretty bad.
Finally some no-clickbait channel about china
As a nearsighted person myself, I can relate. Watching this clip up close without my glasses and rewatching it later on the stand with my glasses.
So make study look like the outdoors which says project study material on a distant screen and use varying light levels to exercise the muscles in the eye, probably something worker cube housing will make difficult.
So in the end the government blamed the uninvolved.
I wonder if vr can help here, from what I know the time spend focussing on things that are close, as vr sets have the focus point on infinity, it could in theroy help.
Looking at longer distances than 20 feet, when your always reading you don't look long distances. And read about instances where children that have night lights have more eye problems.
How you find these interesting topic brother ? !!!
Awesome video 👍👌😊🙌
In European countries the trend of increasing myopia is battled by preventing that kids focus their eyes too long, too close by, such as with reading books or looking at handheld screens. They teach them to look away from the handheld screen or book, for at least 20 seconds, each 20 minutes.
Playing outside for some hours is pretty normal for the youngsters in Europe.
My uncle was an optometrist. His opinion was that I spent too much time reading or performing other close work, it would increase my myopia.
I am just loving the subtle puns throughout this video
My theory is that misopia is triggerd by looking at thing extensively close to your eye. It would make sense as it eases the strain on the lens in the long term. The spending time outside correlation fits pretty well into it. German Wikipedia states it as well but the reference is kinda shady. I personally only use my old (too weak) glasses when sitting in front of my monitor in hopes of preventing it from becoming worse (-4.5 dioptrin).