On the bus to uni this morning I read a really interesting article on a possible link between myopia and the amount of time spent outside.

The article is in a last November issue of New Scientist Magazine – Generation specs: Stopping the short-sight epidemic. To get the full picture make sure you read the full article it is very informative, but to keep with New Scientist’s 200 word extract policy here are the highlights:

Today, in some of the worst-affected countries such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan, around 80 per cent of young adults are myopic, compared to only 25 per cent a few decades back.

Rates are lower in western countries – between 30 and 50 per cent – but myopia seems to be rising steadily here too. What could be causing this mysterious epidemic? It is clear that genetics alone can’t explain the condition, and the long-standing theory that reading was to blame has failed to play out in subsequent studies.

The article then goes on to explain a possible link between the amount of time spent outside in bright natural sunlight and looking further ahead to build depth perception and its effects on the development of short-sightedness.

Since time spent indoors seemed to be such an important risk factor, Saw and Rose asked whether it might explain the extraordinarily high prevalence of short-sightedness in Asia. To find out, they compared two groups of 6 to 7-year-old children, one in Singapore and one in Australia. The team looked only at children of Chinese ethnicity, to rule out genetic differences between races as an explanation for higher myopia rates in certain countries.

The result? On average the children in Sydney spent nearly 14 hours per week outside, and only 3 per cent developed myopia. In contrast, the children in Singapore spent just 3 hours outside, and 30 per cent developed myopia.

I don’t have any real issue with my eyes but I do suffer eye strain at times from over using electronics, but maybe those stories my mom used to tell me about developing square eyes hold some truth.