Don't be Myopic About Going Outside

I'm far sighted, I guess I spent too much time outdoors.....

I started needing glasses by age 10. Prescription got progressively worse until my mid-forties when it topped out at about -8 on both sides. It's getting better now, down into the minus sixes and I am 52 now.

I was very much an outdoor kid and adult. Very little time spent indoors, so I don't think there is that much to this hypothesis.

My dad had a similar situation. As he got older, the nearsightedness diminished to the point where he didn't need correction to pass the eye test for driver's license. Since he just recently had cataract surgery with lens replacement, he now has perfect distance vision and wears glasses for reading.

The change in your dad's eyesight after cataract surgery is exactly the same as a friend of mine experienced. I was really surprised that the surgery not only allows her to see clearly but it also allowed her to ditch her bifocals and use only reading glasses when she needs them. Did your dad's opthamologist offer any insights (pun accidentally intended)? Maybe when/if I have cataract surgery I can ditch these glasses I've worn since I was 4.

Yes, absolutely. Talk to your ophthalmologist. The replacement lenses can be selected to correct your vision to near perfect (single prescription). There are multi-focal lenses available too but not everyone is a good candidate for that as there is some brain training required to get used to them. They are also looking at replacement lenses that allow the eye's muscles to 'adjust' for reading and then relax for distance, but those are still very much in the developmental stages.

Although I wear contacts for distance vision and then reading glasses for close up work, I won't have anybody cut on my eyes until I HAVE to. At the point in which my eyes develop cataracts, then I will make that jump. And I figure by then, the technology will have improved. the longer I can put it off, the better.

I'm nearsighted in one eye and farsighted in the other. Not sure what that means.

I suggest you stop peering out through the keyhole :)

There is a contradiction in the logic here:
1. Myopia is caused by an elongated eyeball.
2. Outdoor light promotes eye growth.
3. Kids who spent more time indoors had a higher risk of developing myopia.

I'm another who got his first pair of glasses as an early teen (13). Near-sighted due to lack of bright light? Then why am I so familiar with dermatologists now? I spent so much time in the bright Texas sun getting blistering ultraviolet radiation burns during the first 20 years of my life that I have had to have things scrapped from and cut out of my skin every year for the most recent 20 years of my life.

Of course, my story may be like the "but I know someone who was thrown clear" type of rebuttal of the safety value of seat belts. But the increase of myopia coinciding with the decrease of outdoor activity does not, in itself, indicate a connection between the two.

I need to read the links and see what they have to say.

After reading the articles, I have several questions, which I should ask an ophthalmologist, I suppose.

First, myopia is from elongated eyeballs. In all cases? what is the "normal" length? (mean and std dev) How many std dev longer than the mean indicates myopia?

Second, when myopia is diagnosed, is length of eyeball measured in every case? Not calculated or inferred, but actually measured?

Third, the lens focuses the light on the retina. Is all myopia due to length of eye, or are factors surrounding the lens subsystem also causes? Eg, lens pliability. Muscle strength.

Here is my take: Given (from past reading, which I may document later) the normal state of the lens system is resting, with muscles relaxed, and focus set at far. Given, near vision requires lens muscles flexed and lens at max distortion from resting state. Hypothesis: Prolonged indoor activity forces the lens system into an attitude from which it may not fully relax, even when trying to focus on far. Result: increasing incidence of myopia.

That is, the "far" of outdoors is much different than the "far" of indoors, so the system calibrates itself to the indoors "far".

But I really, really, want to know if all myopia is from the focal point falling in front of the retina because the eyeball is too long, or if it can be because the focal system is defective.

From the Nature article:

"Ian Flitcroft, a myopia specialist at Children's University Hospital in Dublin, questions whether light is the key protective factor of being outdoors. He says that the greater viewing distances outside could affect myopia progression, too. "Light is not the only factor, and making it the explanation is a gross over-simplification of a complex process," he says."