More details from the Bloomberg PR:

Kubota Glasses technology works to reduce the increase in axial length associated with myopia by projecting myopically-defocused virtual images generated using micro-LEDS on the peripheral visual field to actively stimulate the retina. Passive stimulation using myopic defocus is already in use in the US with a contact lens, “MiSight^® 1 day” by CooperVision, which is U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved to slow the progression of myopia. This product, which uses multifocal contact lens technology, passively stimulates the entire peripheral retina with light myopically defocused by the non-central power of the contact lens. Kubota Glasses technology leverages nanotechnology in its electronic glasses-based device and seeks to reduce the progression of myopia by actively stimulating the retina for shorter periods while maintaining high-quality central vision and not affecting daily activities.

Strip the jargon away and this sounds like it's saying "wear weaker glasses" and the device is just a fancy way to still see normally while having a weaker prescription in your periphery?

Anecdotally, among a bunch of my friends who are (a) nearsighted, and (b) mad about sailing ships, spending a couple of weeks out at sea staring at the horizon will make a significant temporary difference to their myopia.

I don't know why sibling poster is dead, it seems a fair question and I didn't know the answer so I've asked them and will update when I get a reply.

Edit: The person I asked said they wore their glasses some of the time but also spent some of the time without (when they were climbing in the rigging etc.)

Re that anecdote, I was just wondering, do they stare at the horizon with glasses on or without?

Key words: "reduce the progression". Which means that marketing this as a cure is a complete fraud.

Maybe there is a difference between active and passive retina stimulation in terms of ability to correct myopia? From the article it sounds like they are still determining if they can actually cure myopia and how long the effect lasts. Of course, at least in the US, how they are able to market them depends on what they get FDA approval for.

Perhaps if they are given to children, it would result in them permanently developing 20/20 vision.

20/29 isn’t some perfection. It’s merely typical. Many people with good eyes can see quite a bit better than that.

I read this as "We stuck a ring of LED's around some glasses based on some flimsy science. The glasses cost $0.50 to make, yet we can sell them for $10k a pair.".

Someone received $3000 surgical metal mesh gloves At their hospital.

Vendor forgot to takeoff the bass pro shop sticker.

From the article: It projects an image from the lens of the unit onto the wearer's retina to correct the refractive error that causes nearsightedness. Wearing the device 60 to 90 minutes a day corrects myopia according to the Japanese company.

How does this actually help treat nearsightedness when not wearing it? Does it change the shape of the eye ball?

No details in the article but I assume the "smart" part of the name implies it can adjust the image to adapt to different people. It's possible it has some kind of algorithm to slowly adjust the prescription over the 60 to 90 days so that your body begins to adjust by making eye muscles stronger. The visual equivalent of braces for your teeth. No real details, just speculation.

it's just a bunch of LED's in a ring. The 'smart' part is the person selling these...

(Speculation) Most non-surgical treatments I've looked into to help with nearsightedness are focused on strengthening the muscles that shape the eye's lens. I wonder if this is designed to train those muscles.

It's probably based on the theory that over a longer time frame the eye adapts to slightly defocused images in order to bring them in focus. The key is that the image must be defocused only slightly, not grossly.

It's amazing what the eye can adapt to. The story of the man who wore the glasses that turned everything upside down... and his brain just adapted to it and he saw things normally... is fascinating to me.

And then there's my eyes. I have severe double vision (as a result of surgery last year) and my brain is just like "meh, suck it up"; and I'm left walking into things on regular basis because there's two of everything. How come _his_ brain figured out upside down, and mine can't figure out 2 of everything? (I'm not actually asking, just complaining a bit /sigh)

Yeah, adaptation is incredible when it works but is also hit-and-miss. I don't like the trend of hyperventilating about "your body is amazing and can adapt to anything" because it comes with an unspoken rider of "so if you have problems it's probably just a character flaw".

So wear slightly weaker glasses? Yep.

I don't think this has been conclusively demonstrated yet.

There was one famous study that discovered wearing weaker glasses made myopia worse, and then everyone was too afraid to make further studies

I think you may be referring to Chung, Mohidin, O'Leary (2002) <https://doi.org/10.1016/S0042-6989(02)00258-4>. I know of at least one other study confirming this result (https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1444-0938.2006.00055.x). This was controversial since it seems to be contrary to results of similar studies on animals.

However, in both of those studies, participants wore their under-corrective glasses continually, regardless of whether they were doing near-work or just walking / looking at a distance. This is a crucial error, as pointed out by at least Hung and Ciuffreda: <https://www.oepf.org/sites/default/files/journals/jbo-volume...>. It makes intuitive sense to me that under-corrective or anti-corrective glasses should only be worn for a limited amount of time each time and only when doing near-work, in order to induce temporary pressure that the (feedback systems of the) eye can then attempt to correct.

Also see this 2009 review by Barrett regarding the more general practice of behavioral vision therapy: <https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-1313.2008.00607.x>. Behavioural vision therapy is a wider term, referring not only to the effort to slow myopia, but also to correct other vision problems through changes in behaviour.

Since it doesn't come in contact with the eye, that doesn't seem to be likely. It could be training the muscles that adjust the curvature of your lens.

It doesn't seem like it. They've had what you're talking about already: Orthokeratology[1], in which contact lenses temporarily reshape the cornea.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthokeratology

Nitpicking, but training eye muscles to tighten/loosen and thereby change the shape of the eyeball is more along the lines of what the technique apparently claims to do, and OP is asking about. Orthokeratology changes only the shape of the cornea, not the eye ball itself; it's a bit like talking about making a telescope physically longer/shorter vs. simply switching out the lens at one end for a different one.

Orthokeratology does both in developing children, according to a couple studies referred to in their link.

This is similar to the “active focus” method: https://endmyopia.org/

I’ve been in this Facebook group for a while and lots of people have great personal anecdata about their improvements. It’s really interesting to see a medical device come out and if they have clinical trials to back it up.

I've fixed my myopia from -4.25 to -3.25 over the last 5 years (I'm 32). The secret method optometrists don't want you to know, is that I've been staring at a screen just as much and just the same as I've always done.

My point is for some people it can fix itself naturally, so unless studies are double blind, anecdotal claims should be taken with a grain of salt.

this method is absolute snake oil. Google around. Most myopia is axial in nature - in layman terms - your eyeball is just too long. No amount of exercises or staring into the sun is going to reduce its length.

Vision guides the growth of the eye: if spectacle lenses cause images to fall either behind or in front of the retina (hyperopia or myopia, respectively), eye growth compensates for the optical effects of the lenses

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/elink.fcgi?dbfrom...

snap.

dame paper, different links.

The eyeball is not “just” too long. It elongates as a response to the stimuli from the lens projecting an image at a focal length behind the retina. Most kids are not born nearsighted. It develops over time. This is how.

So, they eye works pretty much like a camera - but it's not a camera: it's a complex dynamic self-assembling, self-tuning adaptive structure.

The fact that it's geometry is roughly static around a focal length that has sharp focus on the retina is a wonder of homeostasis with at least three known tuning loops:

1) the lens Moving on swiftly...

2) a slower feedback loop adjusting the choriod (hence focal length) in the order of hours.

3) an even slower loop adjusting the eye geometry over longer periods of time.

check out: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S089662730...

It doesn't work, this is terrible reporting.

Completely speculation, but I wonder if it's using the same mechanism explored in the famous upside down goggles experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upside_down_goggles Gizmodo article talking about the effect: https://io9.gizmodo.com/does-your-brain-really-have-the-powe...

Basically, if you wear goggles that distort your vision for long enough, your visual processing adapts and "corrects" for the distortion such that you can function normally. Then if you remove the goggles your brain still tries to correct for the distortion that isn't there (for a while at least), so the world appears distorted without the glasses.