5 ms·

Related article that made the rounds recently: http://www.nature.com/news/the-myopia-boom-1.17120 http://www.nature.com/news/the-myopia-boom-1.17120

by sjm 11y ago

swamp40 11y ago
There are multiple startup ideas in that article.
- leoc 11y ago
  Yes. Trying to fix myopia by getting children exposed to more sunlight is a bit of a "let them eat single-source organic asparagus" response: it makes would-be social reformers feel good, but it's not a realistic way to reliably give all children the (apparently) minimum three daily hours of 10,000 lux. Getting all children outside for three hours every day is not realistically possible, and wouldn't be pleasant or even desirable for all of them: bad weather, unsafe neighbourhoods, air pollution. In areas with often-overcast conditions and/or short winter[ days](EDIT) it wouldn't even be sufficient. Classrooms that admit more natural light would be great, but they're not a realistic means of getting to 3h × 10,000 lux across the board, if only because replacing almost the entire stock of primary-school classrooms would be a slow and expensive process. The most obvious solution is to rig up classrooms with multiple SAD lights, light-meter them to ensure that every desk gets at least 10,000 lux when the system is on, then run the system for maybe four hours every classroom day. (Speaking of which, if I was in charge of a minor child I'd go ahead and stick a SAD lamp in its bedroom and leave it on for most of the day.)
  - trhway 11y ago
    >Getting all children outside for three hours every day is not realistically possible, and wouldn't be pleasant or even desirable for all of them: bad weather, unsafe neighbourhoods, air pollution. i don't understand that. Where do children are supposed to get daily multi-hour physical activity? On the treadmill in the basement? And if children aren't getting such amount of physical activity - that would border on neglect toward their health, physical and emotional. (of course my POV is affected by the fact that i'm a child of 197x-198x when we were "free-range" children back in USSR and from what i heard it was about the same in USA back then)
    - derefr 11y ago
      This is why modern parents are so in love with structured extra-curricular activities like team sports: they're effectively isolated corrals in which "multi-hour physical activity" is encouraged, rather than discouraged.
    - leoc 11y ago
      It's not a matter of whether it's generally desirable for all children to spend three hours outside every day. One problem is whether admonishing parents about it is actually going to make it so for all children. Another problem is whether it's actually possible and safe for all children no matter how desirable it might be in general. A third problem is how the strong the sun actually is while they are outside playing. For five days out of seven in the winter millions of children in northern Europe travel to school around sunrise, get maybe an hour outside during the day, then come home and play football under grey evening skies and sodium lights.
    - jacalata 11y ago
      Most Russian children probably don't get 'daily multi-hour physical activity' - here is a study showing self-reported hours of activity: http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/content/eurpub/9/3/166.full.pdf http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/content/eurpub/9/3/166.full... I don't know of any developed country where kids are all getting that much activity, to be honest.
  - qq66 11y ago
    Natural sunlight is the most abundant resource humanity has. If we can't get our kids three hours of it per day, there's something that needs to be fixed with how we treat them.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      We can't get it for them, and we can't get it for ourselves. Your average 9-5 worker doesn't get much sunlight either.
    - thaumasiotes 11y ago
      You talk as though the kids want three hours of sunlight a day. Why oppress them more than they already are? I wear glasses. They're painless. Better that than being forced to spend all my time outside.
  - lewisl9029 11y ago
    I'm actually looking to get one of these 10000 lux lamps and use it for myself when working at night. Anyone know of any research on possible side effects of getting too much sustained light? I plan on having one on pretty much all the time when working with computers.
    - BSousa 11y ago
      Don't know of any research about those lamps specifically, but based on research from blue light devices use and what I know about our circadian rhythms, you will probably end up with sleep issues (difficulty falling asleep as well as low quality of sleep)
  - Symbiote 11y ago
    > Getting all children outside for three hours every day is not realistically possible Then something is very wrong. - Walk (or cycle) to school: 10 minutes. - Morning break: 20 minutes. - Lunch: 45-60 minutes. - Afternoon break: 20 minutes. - Walk home from school: 10 minutes. That's around 2 hours already, and that's structured time at school. Add a sports lesson two or three times a week, and add one hour playing outside after school every day. In England, break and lunch was outdoors unless it was actually raining. (Very light drizzle doesn't count.) Being inside wasn't allowed until I was 16-17, in 2002. I read an article in an old New Scientist on this topic, and it said bright light wasn't sufficient -- it had to be combined with open spaces, which let the peripheral vision be in focus at the same time as the core vision.
    - leoc 11y ago
      If you're suggesting that a typical school day in England delivers enough or nearly enough hours of strong-enough sunlight then that seems hard to square with the large increase in myopia right across the developed world, not just Asia (unless one rejects the strong-light hypothesis, of course). If strong light on its own isn't sufficient then of course adding artificial light to classrooms won't be sufficient; but in that case the Yangxi school experiment presumably won't be successful either.
      - Symbiote 11y ago
        I'm not going quite that far, but I am suggesting it is realistically possible.
    - superuser2 11y ago
      Recalling public middle school in Wisconsin: >Walk (or cycle) to school: 10 minutes School starts at 7:40a; most days walking between 7:15a and 7:30a; for most of the year that walk is in the dark or the sun is very low and not very bright. >Morning break: 20 minutes Never got one of those >Lunch: 45-60 minutes Try 20. >Afternoon break: 20 minutes Never got one of those >Walk home from school: 10 minutes. Figure one extra-curricular with a duration of 1 hour. For most of the year, the walk home for me was 4:00p-4:15p which was entirely dark.
  - rrss1122 11y ago
    All the reasons you gave for why it's not possible are situational. It is possible for kids to get three hours of sunlight, either at school or at home by playing outside. (By the way, who refers to a minor child as "it" anyway?)
    - leoc 11y ago
      It's perfectly possible for many families. But for others it is not so safe and easy, while many others probably just won't do it even if you exhort them to. (The answer is 'someone who can't edit his comment after the timeout'. But I suppose it can be my daily blow struck for social justice.)
    - thaumasiotes 11y ago
      > (By the way, who refers to a minor child as "it" anyway?) People from the 19th century. I reread E. Nesbit's 5 Children and It a few years ago, and was quite surprised to notice that the 5th child, a baby known to be male, is invariably referred to by the other characters and the narrator with the pronoun "it" (no relation to the It of the title, which is a magical creature). When I read that book for the first time, either it had been modernized or (more likely) I was in more of a young-child grammar-absorbing mode than a grammar-checking mode.
  - sanoli 11y ago
    Elementary schools could have less classroom time and more outside time. Some countries that don't start serious schooling (classroom time, homeword, teaching pre-defined curricula, etc) until ages 7 or 8, do just fine on those standardized tests that compare students around the world. Of course, geography plays a HUGE part in this, but even then, more time outside would still be better.
derefr 11y ago
I wonder, then, if the levels of myopia and SAD/circadian disruption are correlated. The calibration of one's circadian rhythm depends, basically, on getting the same sort of levels of sunlight that cause dopaminergic response.

Related article that made the rounds recently: http://www.nature.com/news/the-myopia-boom-1.17120 http://www.nature.com/news/the-myopia-boom-1.17120

by sjm 11y ago

Related article that made the rounds recently: http://www.nature.com/news/the-myopia-boom-1.17120 http://www.nature.com/news/the-myopia-boom-1.17120

swamp40 11y ago

There are multiple startup ideas in that article.

leoc 11y ago
Yes. Trying to fix myopia by getting children exposed to more sunlight is a bit of a "let them eat single-source organic asparagus" response: it makes would-be social reformers feel good, but it's not a realistic way to reliably give all children the (apparently) minimum three daily hours of 10,000 lux. Getting all children outside for three hours every day is not realistically possible, and wouldn't be pleasant or even desirable for all of them: bad weather, unsafe neighbourhoods, air pollution. In areas with often-overcast conditions and/or short winter[ days](EDIT) it wouldn't even be sufficient. Classrooms that admit more natural light would be great, but they're not a realistic means of getting to 3h × 10,000 lux across the board, if only because replacing almost the entire stock of primary-school classrooms would be a slow and expensive process. The most obvious solution is to rig up classrooms with multiple SAD lights, light-meter them to ensure that every desk gets at least 10,000 lux when the system is on, then run the system for maybe four hours every classroom day. (Speaking of which, if I was in charge of a minor child I'd go ahead and stick a SAD lamp in its bedroom and leave it on for most of the day.)
- trhway 11y ago
  >Getting all children outside for three hours every day is not realistically possible, and wouldn't be pleasant or even desirable for all of them: bad weather, unsafe neighbourhoods, air pollution. i don't understand that. Where do children are supposed to get daily multi-hour physical activity? On the treadmill in the basement? And if children aren't getting such amount of physical activity - that would border on neglect toward their health, physical and emotional. (of course my POV is affected by the fact that i'm a child of 197x-198x when we were "free-range" children back in USSR and from what i heard it was about the same in USA back then)
  - derefr 11y ago
    This is why modern parents are so in love with structured extra-curricular activities like team sports: they're effectively isolated corrals in which "multi-hour physical activity" is encouraged, rather than discouraged.
  - leoc 11y ago
    It's not a matter of whether it's generally desirable for all children to spend three hours outside every day. One problem is whether admonishing parents about it is actually going to make it so for all children. Another problem is whether it's actually possible and safe for all children no matter how desirable it might be in general. A third problem is how the strong the sun actually is while they are outside playing. For five days out of seven in the winter millions of children in northern Europe travel to school around sunrise, get maybe an hour outside during the day, then come home and play football under grey evening skies and sodium lights.
  - jacalata 11y ago
    Most Russian children probably don't get 'daily multi-hour physical activity' - here is a study showing self-reported hours of activity: http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/content/eurpub/9/3/166.full.pdf http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/content/eurpub/9/3/166.full... I don't know of any developed country where kids are all getting that much activity, to be honest.
- qq66 11y ago
  Natural sunlight is the most abundant resource humanity has. If we can't get our kids three hours of it per day, there's something that needs to be fixed with how we treat them.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    We can't get it for them, and we can't get it for ourselves. Your average 9-5 worker doesn't get much sunlight either.
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    You talk as though the kids want three hours of sunlight a day. Why oppress them more than they already are? I wear glasses. They're painless. Better that than being forced to spend all my time outside.
- lewisl9029 11y ago
  I'm actually looking to get one of these 10000 lux lamps and use it for myself when working at night. Anyone know of any research on possible side effects of getting too much sustained light? I plan on having one on pretty much all the time when working with computers.
  - BSousa 11y ago
    Don't know of any research about those lamps specifically, but based on research from blue light devices use and what I know about our circadian rhythms, you will probably end up with sleep issues (difficulty falling asleep as well as low quality of sleep)
- Symbiote 11y ago
  > Getting all children outside for three hours every day is not realistically possible Then something is very wrong. - Walk (or cycle) to school: 10 minutes. - Morning break: 20 minutes. - Lunch: 45-60 minutes. - Afternoon break: 20 minutes. - Walk home from school: 10 minutes. That's around 2 hours already, and that's structured time at school. Add a sports lesson two or three times a week, and add one hour playing outside after school every day. In England, break and lunch was outdoors unless it was actually raining. (Very light drizzle doesn't count.) Being inside wasn't allowed until I was 16-17, in 2002. I read an article in an old New Scientist on this topic, and it said bright light wasn't sufficient -- it had to be combined with open spaces, which let the peripheral vision be in focus at the same time as the core vision.
  - leoc 11y ago
    If you're suggesting that a typical school day in England delivers enough or nearly enough hours of strong-enough sunlight then that seems hard to square with the large increase in myopia right across the developed world, not just Asia (unless one rejects the strong-light hypothesis, of course). If strong light on its own isn't sufficient then of course adding artificial light to classrooms won't be sufficient; but in that case the Yangxi school experiment presumably won't be successful either.
    - Symbiote 11y ago
      I'm not going quite that far, but I am suggesting it is realistically possible.
  - superuser2 11y ago
    Recalling public middle school in Wisconsin: >Walk (or cycle) to school: 10 minutes School starts at 7:40a; most days walking between 7:15a and 7:30a; for most of the year that walk is in the dark or the sun is very low and not very bright. >Morning break: 20 minutes Never got one of those >Lunch: 45-60 minutes Try 20. >Afternoon break: 20 minutes Never got one of those >Walk home from school: 10 minutes. Figure one extra-curricular with a duration of 1 hour. For most of the year, the walk home for me was 4:00p-4:15p which was entirely dark.
- rrss1122 11y ago
  All the reasons you gave for why it's not possible are situational. It is possible for kids to get three hours of sunlight, either at school or at home by playing outside. (By the way, who refers to a minor child as "it" anyway?)
  - leoc 11y ago
    It's perfectly possible for many families. But for others it is not so safe and easy, while many others probably just won't do it even if you exhort them to. (The answer is 'someone who can't edit his comment after the timeout'. But I suppose it can be my daily blow struck for social justice.)
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    > (By the way, who refers to a minor child as "it" anyway?) People from the 19th century. I reread E. Nesbit's 5 Children and It a few years ago, and was quite surprised to notice that the 5th child, a baby known to be male, is invariably referred to by the other characters and the narrator with the pronoun "it" (no relation to the It of the title, which is a magical creature). When I read that book for the first time, either it had been modernized or (more likely) I was in more of a young-child grammar-absorbing mode than a grammar-checking mode.
- sanoli 11y ago
  Elementary schools could have less classroom time and more outside time. Some countries that don't start serious schooling (classroom time, homeword, teaching pre-defined curricula, etc) until ages 7 or 8, do just fine on those standardized tests that compare students around the world. Of course, geography plays a HUGE part in this, but even then, more time outside would still be better.

derefr 11y ago

I wonder, then, if the levels of myopia and SAD/circadian disruption are correlated. The calibration of one's circadian rhythm depends, basically, on getting the same sort of levels of sunlight that cause dopaminergic response.