> Some people get their first reading glasses at 40 other’s 60, that’s a huge range.

It's a lot wider than that. I'm 66 and don't need glasses yet, neither for reading nor driving, but one of my children, aged thirty, does.

I think the comment you are replying to specifically meant age related far-sightedness when speaking about glasses. Plenty of people need them for issues which have nothing to do with age.

Age-related decline is happening at much younger ages these days. There is a growing belief that the way we prescribe and use glasses is leading to atrophy in young people that previosly was only seen in the old. Lenses get firmer eith age, but atrophied muscles from inactivity mean even soft/young lenses are unable to focus properly.

I read that lens muscle atrophy is negatively correlated with time outdoors. Stands to reason.

Last I checked, they'd finally narrowed down the main cause of near-sightedness (not far-sightedness, though) to insufficient very bright light (sunlight) exposure during certain formative years (I wanna say like 3-6?). Seems to play a role in getting the lens to stop changing at the correct time.

Seemed like they were pretty certain it was that, specifically, and not the list of other things people've blamed it on over the years.

No-one's responded to this by totally re-thinking how we do early childhood education (there's little sun in the Winter, schools have been cutting back recess time and getting much more timid about sending kids out in non-perfect weather, so I'd bet that's when most of the harm is being done) so maybe that turned out to be BS? Or maybe we just don't care about preventing a very high percentage of near-sightedness cases.

China is. It started with their air force pilots. They, like many air forces, have had to drop their 20-20 vision requirements for pilots as the VAST majority of well-educated potential pilots now wear glasses. In china/japan it can be upwards of 90% of young men, that a huge loss of potential recruits. (fyi, most air forces now require only that new pilots have vision "correctable" to 20-20 via glasses.)

https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1007440/to-protect-kids-eyesi...

>> China’s top education authority has asked all schools to give students more sports-related assignments and less text-based work during summer and winter breaks this year to curb climbing myopia rates among minors.

>> The Ministry of Education announced the new rule as part of its Bright Action project, a five-year plan to better protect students’ eyesight by increasing outdoor activities and minimizing screen time, which have been blamed for deteriorating vision among children and adolescents.

You mention recess time. I live in Helsinki and the school system here aggressively gets kids outside for regular playtime in any weather. There should be data here for further investigations of root causes.

In my part of the US, nicer private schools and daycares tend to act that way, but cheaper ones or public schools schedule less of that time to begin with and are quick to replace that with indoor activities if there's a light drizzle or it's a little cold outside. Perhaps counterintuitively, public schools seem much quicker to bow to the preferences of one or two nutty parents ("little Johnny was COLD at recess! You can't go outside when it's 35°F, that's unsafe!") than private schools do.

Also, public schools have responded to No Child Left Behind legislation, in part, by drastically cutting recess time, including in very early grades—which, AFAIK given the state of the art in learning research, might actually be counter-productive, but a key sentiment driving all US behavior is that one must always be able to say that one has "done something", even if that something was worse than doing nothing, and that it's preferable to so something that an uneducated person would think looks like it should help based on gut feeling, over what experts say would help.

I've read conflicting accounts around this. Some link "time outdoors" to exposure to "natural" light, which 99% of the time is brighter light. But others link time outdoors to a wider variety of focal distances. Someone walking in the woods is constantly refocusing from close to far, whereas someone sitting indoors is probably just staring at a fixed distance (computers/books etc). So the answer may be brighter indoor lighting (brighter computer screens) or maybe we need to continuously change our focal distances, something far more complicated to implement indoors.

> Age related decline is biological and not everyone has identical DNA

Agreed—my friend Chaz Ferrari is 70 and has no gray hairs. And swims miles every day.

It's also easier to overlook one's aging when one is not competing with youth. I'm 58, and I pair-program at my company, and the intellectual elasticity of the twenty-year-olds continues to astound me: they can read through code & digest it much more quickly than I can, my years of experience notwithstanding.

> Lack of energy is one of the signs of aging

True! I remember when I was 49 and had to resign from the rugby team. "This is my last season," I told the coach. "I'm tired all the time from practice and games, and I can't do it anymore. It's too much." I was forced to acknowledge that at 49 I could no longer do what I could at 48. But that doesn't mean that life is over: I play old boy's rugby, and it's a blast.

"he need for reading glasses varies quite a bit and is probably a good yardstick. Some people get their first reading glasses at 40 other’s 60, that’s a huge range." I'd like to meet someone at 60 who hasn't aged. They might not need reading glasses but pretty sure they will otherwise be old, with gray or balding hair, bad knees, etc.

My point was everyone ages, but young 60 and old 40 can look a lot alike.

Balding isn’t universal, a friend of mine is 70 and looks 50 with a full head of hair that not full grey, it’s kind of freaky. He’s still working construction and carrying heavy loads etc. Meanwhile I started going grey at 20.

I agree 40 and 60 can look similar but from what I've seen, being young at 60 is due more to taking care of yourself than genetics.

At least hair loss and going grey is genetic. I am sure being overweight etc plays a major role, but I wouldn’t rule out a genetic component to most signs of aging.

your use of "yardstick" (a measuring tool) confused people about what correlations you intended.

I'm 39 and I think during the last few months I have starting to notice first (very light) symptoms of presbyopia (difficulty to focus on very small print from up close while wearing my myopia glasses, that goes away without glasses). So I hope for my own sake it's not such a good yardstick!

Fortunately I'm rather optimistic, as I think I have a relatively good energy level for people my age. In fact, I can still party until 3 AM and go to work the next day (although not for several consecutive days, like when I was 20...).

This may be of interest, but vision therapy requires an order of magnitude more time/effort than buying expensive progressive lenses, https://www.visionsofjoy.org/pdfs/RayGottliebPresbyopia.pdf. Another option is monovision, which can sometimes occur as a natural adaptation, https://www.allaboutvision.com/contacts/monovision.htm.

You're right at the typical age to get bifocal glasses. For nearsighted/farsighted it's the shape of a person's eye as they grow. For close up text it's the flexibility of the eye that is the problem.

I managed to get to age 53 before needing bifocal glasses but I really should have had bifocals around age 47. Books were OK at age 46 but getting hard to read at 47. My phone screen was the final straw when I had to hold it with my arm nearly completely stretched.

Once you get them you realize it's not the "light is too dim", it's not "they make text too damn small these days!", or the font style, it's your eyes. With bifocal glasses (or just reading glasses) it's amazing to see small text again.

A great many people get glasses at 6, not 60, and thier vision is in decline before highschool. It is a widespread and very modern problem. In a couple decades the concept of reading glasses might be gone. Everyone may be in glasses 24/7 starting long before age-related decline.

Most people who need glasses at a young age are nearsighted. That is, their eyes can focus on near objects, but they need glasses to clearly see objects far away.

Vision decline in old age is frequently associated with farsightedness. Old people have more difficulty focusing on close objects, so they get reading glasses.

I've been nearsighted for most of my life. I've always worn glasses to drive a car, but glasses didn't impede my near vision until after I turned 40. Today I wear progressive bifocals when I drive so I can see the road, but also read the speedometer or the navigation app on my phone. Before I turned 40 regular glasses didn't prevent me from seeing the dashboard clearly.

As i predicted, your use of glasses in all circumstances has usurped the concept of reading glasses. Since you are using modern bi/trifocals you probably will just keep using those rather than have dedicated reading glasses that you switch to for close-in reading.

Even ignoring your omission of contact lenses, that doesn’t follow.

I have been wearing glasses since I was young and it has very little to do with how I feel about reading glasses. Bifocals are awful if you saccade regularly instead of moving your head, add that to astigmatism correction and it’s like you’re viewing the world through the portals of a bathysphere.

I will likely always be able to just take my glasses off and read. But when I wear contacts, reading glasses are my preferred option.

This is pretty strongly linked to insufficient time outdoors in natural light.

Age-related vision change is a different beast.

I refused to get reading glasses when I started having trouble reading small labels some years ago. I blamed the problem on computers and that might have something to do with it but probably mostly age.

Instead I got this book: https://www.amazon.com/Better-Eyesight-People-Gillian-Snoxal...

It's not even a book. More like a pamphlet and could fit the whole thing in a <li> almost. But it worked in my case at least. A few weeks of doing the exercises and I could read find print labels again!

The Bates Method has been “debunked” and is even considered dangerous [0]. In your case I would suspect that it isn’t the eyes that have improved, but your brain got trained to apply better “error correction” when reading small print. At least that’s an effect that I observed on myself after my eyesight worsened: At some point my brain learned to compensate by improved pattern recognition, but sometimes it messes up, a bit like an ML model, and “sees” details that aren’t actually there.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bates_method

I don't know if this is the Bates method exactly but it worked very well in my case. It didn't take long either. Maybe 10-15 sessions and I was back reading small print on labels. And could clearly make out each character and thus do not believe it's some sort of mental compensation or pattern recognition.

Certainly I do not believe rolling your eyes or blinking or the other exercises in the book could in any way be dangerous. Some are sort of weird and I don't know how effective "palming" is for example.

But it makes sense to me you can exercise your eyes like other parts of the body (or brain for that matter). I don't see how it could be otherwise.

"Dangerous" sounds like it might be Big Optical (is there such a thing?) disinformation. I kid. Maybe.

It worked. Was not pattern recognition or anything like that, I could actually see clearer and with less effort. No idea who "debunks" this kind of stuff or if there have been trials or what those might be worth nor do I particularly care.

Just relating my experience in hopes someone else gets the same benefit.

Not everything he said was dangerous, but Bates advocated sungazing which can cause serious damage the peoples eyes including cataracts, macular degeneration, pterygia, and sunburn of the cornea.

Palming as described can be safe, but if you applying pressure to the eyes it increase the risk of glaucoma.

I don't know the history or theory behind this and so don't know if this book is the Bates method proper but Bates advocated looking at the sun with open eyes?

If so ya, that could be dangerous.

Yes, he suggested looking directly at the sun.