
Stopping the Shortsigtedness Epidemic - rfreytag
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427331.100-generation-specs-stopping-the-shortsight-epidemic.html
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jackfoxy
About 17 years ago I took instruction from a teacher of the Bates Method (as
refined by some woman whose name I cannot recall). It’s a lot of work. You can
expect to put at least an hour a day into it if you want any results. My
results were a big improvement, but not an improvement to even close to 20/20
after about a year, so I lapsed and my eyesight eventually deteriorated back
to very myopic. I went from -7.25d for 20/20 to -2.00d for 20/40. Not
correcting your vision for perfect 20/20 with lenses is one part of the
method, and I also tired of never having perfectly corrected vision.

"Outdoor seeing" has a big role in the Bates method with emphasis on horizon
focusing and outdoor lighting, as mentioned in this article too, but as well
as brighter light, Bates put emphasis on full-spectrum natural lighting. I
went so far as to buy full spectrum light bulbs for my house. Unfortunately I
could never come up with a good solution for doing computer work in natural
lighting. Bates had some downright wrong ideas, so his entire work was never
taken seriously by established medicine.

During this time I also ran across an Israeli teacher of his own method
(pretty much the same as Bates), who liked to say he had a blind certificate
from the state of Israel and a driver’s license from the state of California,
and he didn’t wear any corrective lenses. However, when his son was born with
the same defect he had, he had his son undergo an operation removing the
lenses and making his son dependent on contact lenses. He said the natural
vision thing was just too hard and he didn’t want his son going through it.

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reedlaw
I have also benefited from the Bates Method (at least portions of it). The new
findings about spending time outdoors particularly accord with Bates' idea
that sunlight is beneficial to eyesight. Bates said that pointing the head
towards the sun and swinging the closed eyes through the path of its rays
could relax muscles in the eye. It feels good but I never spent much time
purposefully doing it. Instead, the biggest benefit for me was the knowledge
of eyestrain and the damage that over-prescribed lenses could do if used in
close-work for prolonged periods. I saved my vision from deteriorating further
by reducing my prescription and even wearing reading glasses over my contact
lenses while reading in order to reduce the prescription (negative diopters in
the contacts plus positive in the reading glasses = reduced prescription).

I'm still longing for a time when I can take off my glasses and live outdoors
for an extended period to see if I can manage some real reversal of my
nearsightedness.

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scotty79
With longer eyeball you don't tire muscles in your eye by looking at close
objects so it's actually a gain not a loss.

I'm attributing my ability to look at screen for 8-16 hours per day, every day
for last 15 years to this.

Of course progression of myopia is very bad but I think it can be almost
completely attributed to wearing corrective lenses. If your eye elongated to
adapt and you trash benefits of this elongation by wearing glasses without
changing you lifestyle then you encourage further elongation.

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SirWart
Interesting, so do you wear glasses only when you need to be able to see
distant things?

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ujnubub
I don't wear them in front of a screen because they reduce contrast an there
are reflections - however clean they are. But I wear them to drive home.

As far as I am concerned I have evolved from something that needed to spot
lions on the horizon to something that needs to spot trolls 0.5m away

~~~
SirWart
That makes sense, but for me it would be more convenient if I could wear
glasses while using the computer and not while doing other activity, which
hopefully will be possible with the research that's going on.

~~~
ujnubub
Wait for old age! As you age your ability to focus closely gets worse (the eye
muscles weaken) but your distance vision generally doesn't change much.

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NathanKP
I have both myopia and astigmatism, in which the image is warped as well as
blurred. I would be interested in research to see if astigmatism is also
correlated with these same factors which help induce myopia.

Also I wanted to point out the spelling error in this entry title:

"Shortsigtedness" should be "Shortsightedness"

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rfreytag
sigh - too late for me to fix it - thanks though.

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fnid
I thought this was going to be about our short-sighted vision about the
future.

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silvestrov
That isn't an epidemic, that have been with us from the beginning of time.

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joe_the_user
I'll admit it's always been here and that it's incredibly hard to measure in
any case.

But still _feel_ that shortsightedness _has_ increased in the last twenty or
thirty years. The housing bubble is closest I can come to concrete
verification of this but that's a long way, I'll admit.

It would be nice if someone could do a study akin to Bowling Alone, to study
shortsightedness instead of social isolation.

~~~
khafra
At least you can do something useful with a house, even when its value drops
50%. The 17th century Dutch imploded their economy with _tulips_.

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dpatru
Myopia is one of the characteristics of bright but late-talking children that
Thomas Sowell talks about In his book, "The Einstein Syndrome: Bright Children
Who Talk Late" ([http://www.amazon.com/Einstein-Syndrome-Bright-Children-
Talk...](http://www.amazon.com/Einstein-Syndrome-Bright-Children-
Talk/dp/0465081401)). Other characteristics include above-average math and
music abilities, good memories, and strong wills.

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mcav
I've had to wear glasses since I was in preschool. Anecdotally, of course, I
doubt conditions had that much to do with my poor eyesight.

Ah well. One day I'll get Lasik.

~~~
mtts
Equally anecdotally, I've spent pretty much the entirety of my 34 year long
life indoors, either staring at a book or staring at a computer screen and my
eyesight is absolutely perfect.

