Children in China are not only heavy in school, but also in myopia. According to statistics, the prevalence of myopia in China is over 25% for elementary school students, 70% for middle school students, and 85% for high school students, and the trend is increasing.
Every winter and summer, there are always a large number of parents who bring their children to see their eyes, because they find that their children love to squint, watch TV and tilt their heads. After a checkup, they find that their children are nearsighted. However, parents are often reluctant to accept this fact, and some even take it out on the doctor, “My child’s eyesight is fine, why is he nearsighted when he comes to you for a checkup?
Yeah, I don’t know. Why do you think you got hungry when you arrived at the restaurant? You’re a restaurant owner who wants to misbehave, right? Jokes aside, most parents are aware of the seriousness of the problem and accept the doctor’s advice to fit their children with glasses, monitor their vision and review it regularly as prescribed by the doctor. But is this enough?
I have given an example before that parents who are fat tend to raise a small fat child. Parents who are both nearsighted tend to raise a nearsighted person as well. This speaks of a problem of lifestyle habits. And myopia, and lifestyle habits are closely related.
First of all, what are eyes born to do?
From the nature of animals, survival in nature is the main thing. And to survive, you need to avoid natural enemies as well as to get food. And having a pair of keen eyes is a must-have condition. Otherwise, you will be starved to death or killed by natural enemies. The survival of the fittest, the survival of the fittest, this is the law of nature.
Man as a senior animal, the highest end of the biological chain, the same applies to this law.
It can be speculated that when the ancestors of humans in the fight against nature, and Mongolian beasts in ancient times, to survive the human vision must be more than 1.0, because those humans with poor eyesight, either because they can not search for food, or can not find the Mongolian beasts lurking in the distance, and thus either starved to death or eaten. Thus, the human gene of good eyesight is thus inherited and preserved.
And to maintain good eyesight, in addition to the innate acceptance of good genes given by parents, there are also environmental factors that will not be myopic later in life. Human ancestors only do three things a day, eating, hunting, and sleeping. They do not read, do not read newspapers, do not write homework, do not play the piano, do not watch TV, do not look at the computer, do not play pads, do not play cell phones. They also do not have OU and various training courses. In short, their eyes are used in the grassland or woods to find wild fruits, hunting. Brainstorming a scene 6 million years ago, man opened his keen eyes, a few hundred meters away in the grass, found a lion is quietly watching him. So, hurry up and run. Can not find the Mongolian beast of mankind, if you can time travel to modern times, after dilated pupil optometry, must be a nearsighted.
To ancient society, the literati who can afford to read is, after all, a minority, the vast majority of people are farmers, work at sunrise and sunset. They also do not need to read and write. Farming is also a refreshing thing, the turquoise fields, the green plants that make people refreshing. In those days, the literati read and wrote books with turtle shells and bamboo pieces, and it was estimated that that size was effortless for the human eye to see. But, after all, humans use their eyes more at close range, and the ancestor of human myopia must have appeared at that time because his genes mutated and thus his offspring became more prone to myopia.
By the time modern civilization came along, with the advent of a large number of books, texts, and media, there were more and more occasions to use the eyes at close range, and more and more nearsightedness. Western civilization brought glasses and the concept of myopia. At that time, of course, only intellectuals and people with better economic conditions could afford glasses, so it was not unreasonable for the common people to think that they were learned when they saw those wearing glasses. Of course, there are also a lot of common people of myopia, perhaps a lifetime without knowing that they are myopic. Since they just can’t see far enough to see, they won’t be starved to death or bitten by wild animals, but they must be very inconvenient, or at least, they will affect their lives.
Modern civilization, which has brought advanced thinking and life, has also brought more myopia. Computer, network, cell phone, tablet, 3G, 4G, 5G. before a month of cell phone traffic package 5M is enough, now a month of 6G someone is not enough. The lifestyle of sunrise and sunset has been completely overturned. Modern people’s biological clock has been completely messed up, or completely changed. Sleep during the day, work overtime at night, nine to five in front of the computer, the night battle in front of the computer, take the time, but also to look at the phone.
Modern society has become a handheld era, information society. Newspapers and magazines are gradually dying out, the bookstore should be closed are closed, even the big supermarkets, specialty stores are also closed one after another, replaced by online shopping through cell phones, and then delivered by courier to your door. It is estimated that in the future, even the hotel will be closed, after the party dinner without looking for a hotel, directly find a large table, and then pull out the phone to order food, courier directly to the banquet.
Chattering so many seemingly irrelevant words, in fact, I want to say one thing, the close eye has dominated the world. The great unification is not modern civilization, but myopia that comes with the use of eyes at close range. The human eye is not born to see far, but to see close. If good eyesight was an advantage in ancient times, is it true that myopia is an advantage in modern society?
It is true that some people say so, that human myopia is not a disease, but a variation of adapting to society. Because, modern humans have to look close for a long time, they need to keep the ciliary muscle tense regularly, thus making the lens more convex and focusing on the near. In ancient times, a good hunter, on the contrary, had to regularly keep the ciliary muscles relaxed, so that the lens became flattened and the focus shifted to infinity, thus seeing far for a long time. It is easy to understand that in ancient times there was more good vision and less myopia, while in modern society the opposite is true. Genetic inheritance must have played a role. At least, several genes for myopia on chromosomes have been identified in current studies of high myopia. Ordinary school myopia, although not much related to genetics, we see many clinical examples of parents with myopia and children with early myopia. Perhaps, in addition to genetic susceptibility to myopia, there is also the influence of myopic parents’ habits on their children by ear. For example, if the parents are myopic, their habits may be those of myopic eyes. For example, if parents are myopic, their lifestyle habits may be myopic habits, such as reading and writing close to each other, watching TV without paying attention to the distance, having bad eye habits, and eating a diet that favors sweets. Their children follow the same example and naturally do the same as their parents. In addition, parents themselves are indifferent to their own myopia, not to mention to care or correct the bad eye habits of their children. Over time, children also become myopic.
Often parents realize that their children are myopic and regret it, but it is too late. They beg their doctors to provide the best way to get rid of their child’s glasses and refuse to accept the result of their child’s myopia. It is understandable, but there is no way. Every now and then, it feels as if you are a judge, with the privilege of life and death. With a few simple words, a child is sentenced to be married to glasses from now on.
What is the difference between myopic children and non-myopic children?
In fact, during adolescence, the developmental trajectory of their eyes may be the same, except that myopic children’s eyes develop too early and too fast, while non-myopic children just follow the developmental trajectory of their ancestors. Occasionally, there will be slow development, and that becomes farsighted. We’ll talk about farsightedness later.
Developing fast, as it were, presupposes or overdraws the growth of the eye axis, thus causing the position of the light focus to fail to catch up with the rate of elongation of the back wall of the eye. Conversely, if one could intervene in a way that would allow the focal point to move backward to catch up with the rate of elongation of the posterior wall of the eye, then myopia would be cured. Of course, this is very unlikely and most of the time, we use glasses or surgery to force the focal point back or move the back wall of the eye forward so that the external light is focused on the retina and we can see clearly.
Myopia may seem like a flooding beast, and indeed in the eyes of parents, it is. It is because of the poor treatment that various methods have emerged in society. There is the eyeglass industry that denigrates myopia surgery, and there are also strange theories that denigrate glasses correction, claiming that you can cure myopia up to 1000 degrees without wearing glasses.
The future, myopia will only be more and more, not less and less. Just as we have more and more skyscrapers, there will be less and less endless grasslands and forests. Just as we face more and more time on the computer and cell phone every day, we have less and less time for our family and outdoor activities. Just as our children have more and more homework and less and less time to sleep. Human civilization has changed the environment and lifestyle of the earth, and the same environment and lifestyle has changed us. And we, in turn, can only suffer in silence.
Of course, some people are asking, then why there are still some people who will not be nearsighted? Yes, the most terrible diseases in this world are cancer and AIDS, but there are just some people who do not get infected. Perhaps, people who are not nearsighted have a strong set of genes that are not affected by environmental factors. Or, these people, perhaps, have good self-control, eliminating the susceptibility to myopia occurring in adolescence.
Finally, I hope that you can understand myopia, believe in science and medicine, and not worry too much about myopia, but don’t think nothing of it either. You can’t be self-righteous and turn a blind eye to myopia, nor can you blindly believe and follow various false myopia treatment methods.
Currently, the only way to correct myopia is to wear glasses or surgery to correct vision, so please keep this in mind.