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I didn’t realize the evidence is strong that daylight keeps kids from becoming near-sighted. Making young kids study all the time is killing their eyesight!
by nilsbunger 4y ago
I didn’t realize the evidence is strong that daylight keeps kids from becoming near-sighted. Making young kids study all the time is killing their eyesight!
- solarmist 4y agoI thought this was relatively well known.
- Simon_O_Rourke 4y agoIt'd be interesting if someone could try and relate this statistic to the typical solar index for an area - https://globalsolaratlas.info/map https://globalsolaratlas.info/map I thought it would have been to do with the consumption of starches and carbs https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2003/sep/21/shopping.foodanddrink https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2003/sep/21/shoppin...
- etaioinshrdlu 4y agoI sometimes wonder if UV protective glasses block some possible benefit of UV light to eyes.
- TheSpiceIsLife 4y agoI have often wondered this myself, but the dangers of UV light seem to be well documented, with no benefits. If you wear UV protective glasses most of the time you can almost elimate cataracts. The UV index here in southern Australia tends to be high to extreme most days during the warmer months, so I tend to wear UV protective sun glasses anytime I'm outside.
- InvaderFizz 4y agoI'm not sure there are any known benefits that outweigh the costs of UV exposure. That said, there is emerging research that the lack of NIR light is very detrimental to all kinds of health conditions[0]. Over the past two years, I've moved to ensuring that I get plenty of indirect sunlight. As NIR can go through most clothing and foliage produced shade, it's quite pleasant and relaxing to spend time in it. I also have large concerns with the move to thermal insulation efficiency that we now have. Indoor Air and quite easily become stagnant due to lack of outdoor exchange and the the low-emissivity glass used in high end windows block most NIR. Couple that with a lack of NIR emitters (incandescent is gone, camp fires are gone), and I think we are in for a world of hurt, even more so than today. Indoor Air quality can be mostly solved with use of ERVs to cycle the air with minimal energy loss. I'm not sure how you solve for low-emissivity glass other than not using it and designing your structure to limit direct sunlight exposure for the window itself and use shade/curtains/blinds for thermal control when needed. 0: https://doi.org/10.32794/mr11250016 https://doi.org/10.32794/mr11250016
- OskarS 4y agoYeah, I hadn’t heard about this ”daylight” thing either. I’ve been nearsighted since I was a kid, and back then people said I got it because I read to much, focusing on things too close to my face. I thought that was a pretty fair trade-off, since I liked reading, and didn’t particularly mind wearing glasses. This sunlight thing makes a lot of sense though. I kept hearing proposals during the pandemic about holding classes outside if the weather allowed for it. Might not be such a terrible idea in climates where it’s suitable.
- frereubu 4y agoMy daughter’s primary school teacher recently got a “beach teaching” qualification and she now has one school day a week on the beach, rain or shine. I was really pleased about that anyway as the school doesn’t have a lot of outdoor space for the kids to run around, but this gives me even more reason to be happy.
- b112 4y agoI scoffed at first, but I guess the qualification is about water safety and things, just in case?
- vasco 4y agoYou should've stopped at the scoff. Someone qualified to handle children in a classroom and in field trips is already qualified to take them to a beach.
- frereubu 4y agoI think you may be misunderstanding, which is perhaps understandable given that I didn't unpack what it meant - see my sibling comment. But scoffing without asking for more information isn't a great strategy for learning.
- throw0101c 4y ago
- _the_inflator 4y agoIn earlier years, this was correlated with highly giftedness, because IQ kids used to suck in more information which means reading a lot: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19127804/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19127804/ ;)
- achenet 4y ago"nerds wear glasses, study finds"
- rightbyte 4y agoIf this was the case people living far north should be in a really bad spot for nearsightness. Maybe it is that if pupils are outside they focus far away when looking up, rather than sun light?
- gspr 4y agoOr maybe the effect takes years of sustained lack of light to work, and northern summers compensate?
- astrange 4y agoI think (weakly) the nearsightedness issue is indeed from not exercising focusing rather than sunlight. But apparently there is an issue where mothers with low vitamin D in Scandinavia (especially immigrants from sunnier places) are more likely to have autistic children.
- nalllar 4y agoAnecdote, I started fidgeting by varying eye focus and depth - can't get forced to sit still if your fidgeting is barely perceptible - at a very young age and have the best range of accomodation of anyone I know. Can also easily perceive chromatic aberration/my eyes needing a different focus setting for different wavelengths. I'd love to know if some sort of focus training exercises for eyes starting as children would help everyone.
- inglor_cz 4y agoIf we manage to have a kid, long walks everyday are planned :) More movement, less screen time is always good for health, parents' and kids' alike. Also, getting used to all sorts of weather improves the immune system. By spending too much time indoors we are becoming glasshouse flowers.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoEveryone thinks this, until they pop out a second one and there is no time or energy to do anything outside work, cook, clean, and all the baby/toddler tasks.
- Aeolun 4y agoHuh? Walks outside with the toddler are the best. Stick him in either the stroller or bike seat and it’s the only time they sit still. Guess it’s a bit hard to combine with a baby <6 months, but eventually they should both fit.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoIt is rough if both parents are working. Lining up all the schedules and breastfeeding and whatnot is harder than it sounds, especially in northern (and southern) areas with less daylight hours. Just cooking and feeding and cleaning up after a picky toddler and baby learning how to eat can kill an evening. And then at least one is bound to be sick every other week if they are in day care…the list goes on for why plans have a low tendency to work out. See also mattlondon’s comment.
- throwawayarnty 4y agoIt has been pretty easy on our end. We live walking distance to work and daycare. so it’s no problem to even have both of us pick the kids up, walk home to eat lunch, walk kids back to daycare, and go back to work.
- 4y ago
- rhinoceraptor 4y ago
- XorNot 4y agoWisdom teeth used to just be a problem that either killed you, or you lived with lots of pain from, or you paid a guy to try and do something about them. I don't know why people are so big on "we used to not need X in the distant past" tropes: yes we did, but we also just let lots of people die from it, or live a life of agony or being shunned as ugly/unclean/unable.
- coffeeblack 4y agoIf they killed that many people, how did they escape natural selection?
- wiseowise 4y agoKilled<>eradicated.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoIf it happens after the person has a chance to raise offspring to a sufficient survival age, then it would not adversely affect natural selection.
- jen729w 4y agoThey didn’t kill you. You needed them, after your second teeth - what we call your ‘adult teeth’ - had rotten and fallen out.
- Nitramp 4y agoCrooked teeth really didn't exist in the farther out past. If you look at the jawbones of Neolithic people, they all have perfectly aligned teeth. The theory is that we're not chewing hard enough food, which leads to insufficient jawbone growth as a kid, leading to not enough space for your teeth.
- wiseowise 4y agoI spent all my childhood outside and still near-sighted.
- donthellbanme 4y ago
- charles_kaw 4y agoOne person's anecdote does not qualify or disqualify a concept.
- wiseowise 4y agoNever said that it disqualifies a concept. Just stating that there might be something else, give my anecdote. And given amount of upvotes on my comment, I'm not the only one.
- sschueller 4y agoSame and I am very near-sighted.
- tomp 4y agoI spent all my childhood (and continuing into adulthood) staring at a computer screen and I've 20/20 vision.
- chasebank 4y agoMy friend has never had a vaccine and brags he's never gotten measles...
- ejb999 4y ago>>Making young kids study all the time is killing their eyesight! reply I very much doubt kids 'studying too much' is the problem - staring at iphones all day watching tiktok and playing video games is more like it.
- toastal 4y agoI bet not long before that the old folks were complaining about the kids watching too much TV, reading too many comics, or playing too much backgammon.
- saiya-jin 4y agoThat doesn't certainly help, but there was already a disproportionate army of myopic asian (mostly chinese IIRC) kids that were spending their entire young lives burried in books, way before modern world glued their eyesight to those tiny crappy screens.
- Qem 4y agoNow wonder if Chinese children must spend more time buried in books because their writing system is more time-demanding to learn (~4000 logograms vs. a few dozens letters in languages with alphabetic writing systems).
- grapeskin 4y agoI’m thinking it’s the heavy metal that the rapscallions these days are hipping and hopping to. The reality is near-sightedness is a massive problem in countries with insane childhood studying hours, eg all across east Asia.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> I very much doubt kids 'studying too much' is the problem - staring at iphones all day watching tiktok and playing video games is more like it. Civilizational myopia is not a new phenomenon. It is much older than iphones or video games.
- tootie 4y agoStaring at a book or a chess set has the exact same effect.
- ajsnigrutin 4y agoYep... focusing (as in, your eyes keeping focus) on a thing that's at a fixed distance infront of you for extended periods of time seems to be very bad for your eyesight... "back in my times", the parents used to blame stuff like this on screens (tv back then), but books do the same thing. Basically all the workplace safety trainings here include the "stare at something in the distance every now and then", so you focus on something else, not just the screen <1m away from your face.
- FooHentai 4y agoAnecdata, but I lived in a low light environment for most of my life (North UK), then spend the last ~15 years in a much brighter environment (NZ). My prescription has dropped from a mid -5 to a low -4 in that time, which is a fairly large and uncommon improvement for someone middle aged. The optician put it down to where I've been living.
- jeffbee 4y agoDecreased myopia is very common in middle-aged people. Mine went from -2 to 0 in my 40s. I did not move to New Zealand.
- FooHentai 4y agoI know that it's common to stabilize in middle age once you stop growing, but can't find any info about it being common to reverse. Regardless, congratulations! That's a great outcome.
- jeffbee 4y agoAs I understand it, the reversion to normal vision is not caused by changing length of the eye (as you say, nobody is growing in their 40s) but rather by a degeneration of the refractive power of the materials in the eye.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]