Naked Science Forum
General Science => General Science => Topic started by: RamBv on 03/07/2020 13:10:28
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Can eye exercises really work to reduce myopia in children and how it improves vision?
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I have often thought if straining your eye leads to sight problems, surely straining your eye the other, through a lense designed to do such would reverse the problem. It is the problem of your lense changing shape. Change it back and you can see again. Why do lenses not revert naturally ? I should think people stop trying to focus. The exersises you type of unfortunatley are probably short term measured in minutes a day, so are not useful, but if you had a pair of glasses with one good lense in the other eye would surely strain itself back to shape under continual exersise, which is the reverse of how you develop sight problems in the first place.
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In children, studying indoors in subdued light can produce increased myopia.
- Send them outside to play and exercise in open spaces with lots of light. That is useful eye exercise.
As we get older, the cornea gets stiffer, and the muscles of the eye are unable to bend it so well, and the range of focussing is reduced.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-sightedness
Wikipedia provides links to 2 sources to conclude that:
Scientific reviews have concluded that there was "no clear scientific evidence" that eye exercises are effective in treating near-sightedness and as such they "cannot be advocated"
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I heard that watching screen too close or for too long effects eyes.
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Actually, we don't have any scientific proof regarding exercise that will improve your eye vision.
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I agree with Petrochemicals: it's avoiding straining your eyes that has the best effect. The eye is relaxed when focused to distance, and it's working muscles continually to focus closer than that, so if you rarely look to distance, the eye decides that it's too short and grows longer, leading to you losing the ability to focus to infinity. I've lost the ability to focus to infinity for a few months on two occasions, and both times I managed to reverse it by systematically using reading glasses whenever working on a computer even though I could focus on the screen comfortably without them. I selected reading glasses that allow my eyes to be focused to infinity while sitting a comfortable distance from the screen. I thought it wasn't going to work the second time as took longer than the first time, but bit by bit, it recovered. I still prefer not to wear reading glasses while using a computer, but have to ration the amount of time I do that - I keep checking every few days that I'm not losing the ability to see distant things sharp, and then use glasses more if I can't. What people normally do though is get glasses for driving as soon as the problem shows up, and then those add to the damage by making their eyes grow even longer by making them spend even less time focusing to distance. Do that for too long and it becomes impossible to get that distance focus back, so people need to be told about this so that they can do the right thing early and not go on doing the damage, but the experts (who make a mint out of selling glasses) know better and say this is pseudoscience. My eyes say otherwise.
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I think the main problem with children and myopia these days is that they are growing up with way too much screentime. Most children have a phone or tablet around the age of ten and are constantly on those devices rather than playing outside. I fear that the future generations are gonna have worse and worse eye sight. :-\
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Yes, I agree with queenofscience… this will certainly be decisive in some kind of way. Kids should go to the outside every day, cause the daylight offers a necessary protection for the eyes and it’s important for them to look into the distance from time to time.