Are our eyes getting worse? - The myopia boom | DW Documentary (2018)

I really hope people don't avoid watching this due to your comment, and I'd encourage you to watch a bit longer, the best of it is at the end.

I highly recommend looking at the actual studies which drove this doco, the results from the controlled environment and in the field have lead to practices dramatically reducing the incidence of myopia cumulatively by up to 10% per year.

Myopia does increase the risks of serious and irreversible loss of vision, but the incidents for complete loss of vision associated with myopia (i.e. rhegmatogenous retinal detachment) is very rare as I'm sure you already know. RRD does peak in old age and at higher incidence with myopia, which should be a cause for concern if we're seeing dramatic increases in it's incidence in young people (which is what lead to the studies and finally the discovery and this doco). Further to that, even after discovering the cause we still don't know yet if myopia onset by reduced exposure to high luminosity during childhood leads to degenerative or higher myopia later in life. Simply because it's only a recent discovery, and is currently most prevalent in young people. I don't know if anyone can make a claim either way until the current generation reaches old age. Having said that, personally, I think its more likely that it won't increase the incidence of RRD based on my understanding of the physiology of myopia given that the cause occurs during childhood whilst the eye is still growing, whereas other causes (i.e. genetic) seem a more likely candidate to lead to higher myopia and potentially RRD (i.e. the correlation seen in other studies). Really, this debate in the comments below yours on the prevalence of rrd and it's association to myopia I think is entirely redundant and is missing the point.

What I'm trying to say is, their discovery, (the amount of light you're exposed to as a child impacts the growth of your eye) has strong evidence, and given the outdoors is free and available to everyone I can't see any reason why we shouldn't encourage people to get their kids outside for 1-2 hours a day. We can prevent the most common cause of myopia amongst young people today. You should give it another go, or at least read the studies, it's something everyone really be aware of, and if they're entirely wrong and we take their advice, the worst that can happen is we have happier and healthier children

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