Three years ago at age 25 I booked an eye exam due after getting some new floaters. After imaging my eye doc came in and asked if I was comfortable driving while dilated, because he would be dilating and numbing my eyes before sending me off to the retina specialist for an urgent exam. The ophthalmologist immediately diagnosed me with lattice degeneration and saw a horseshoe tear. That same afternoon he sat me in a chair and used a laser to create a barrier of scar tissue around the tear to prevent it from progressing. Three years later I have had two rounds of prophylactic treatment of those weak spots in each eye. I most likely will never experience a retinal detachment, but annual dilated eye exams are in my future.

I don't even have very bad myopia (-2.75/-3.25), but I kick myself for not spending as much time outside during my childhood as some of my friends did.

I had the exact same situation happen, except my optometrist was visibly concerned. I usually explain it as spot welding my retina in place there. That was the weirdest sensation/discomfort ever. Last month or so I got a scan done and was able to see a really high res image of it.

Glad you got yours taken care of! They were definitely concerned about the tear, they're apparently common but when asymptomatic they're hardly noted (or even noticed if in the peripheral retinal areas).

The laser is definitely uncomfortable, hard to say if it's even pain when your ocular globe is injected with so much anesthetic. Brain freeze, but extremely acute and right behind your eyeball might be accurate. During one of the prophylactic treatments he did some 'spot welds' near my optic nerve. I couldn't tell if I was even looking at his ear like he told me to, every burst of green triggered my reflexes. It was impossible to keep my other eye open. At least the discomfort is so temporary, I forget about it until someone asks if it was painful.

Do you (/anyone?) know of any treatment that gets rid of floaters? I've seen a reference to some laser treatment, but not enough to seem trustworthy. If you don't mind me asking, did the laser-to-the-retina treatment generate any new floaters?

The treatment itself didn't generate any new floaters, but in the past year I did start experiencing a set of new floaters which correlates with the new atrophic hole my doc found. It's taken a few months but I can finally just ignore them or not even see them if I'm inside.

Isn't the main problem that myopia is genetically aggressive, and natural evolution stopped working because we correct for myopia through prescription glasses and contact lenses etc.?

The article talks about that a bit, there have been a number of 'causes' of myopia that are 'common knowledge' but end up not holding water. Genetics and close-up work being the two major scapegoats. Modern studies are showing a lack of dopamine in the eyeball to be the most likely factor, without a strong link to genetics.

I wonder how many more studies would it take them to do something about this, finally.

All the science since I was born seems to be all study, no fix.

Does this count?

https://www.aao.org/eye-health/news/low-dose-atropine-kids-w...

Is this a rigorous study with control group and large selection?

Otherwise it looks like an option not considered seriously. I'm not going to medicate daily for the rest of my life to "decrease or slow by about a half". The promised result is wimpy - you still need to wear the same glasses till the end of your life, but hey, they have different numbers.

I am 50 years old and -14.5 diopters in both eyes. Slowing by half would have been a great outcome by comparison.

This is an article summarizing multiple experimental studies.

You wouldn't medicate for the rest of your life, just until adolescence, when eye growth slows down.

The promised result is far fewer high myopes, which means fewer retinal detachments and other risks of high myopia.

This is a category problem, really. It’s up to private industry (for capitalists) or the government (for socialists) to actually take research results and do something eith them.

Who are they, and why do they have to do something about this?

According to TA, most cases of myopia are caused by being inside all day. There might be a genetic component, but it doesn't seem to be that relevant (yet).

That idea does not explain the shortsightedness epidemic in south East Asia.

If it’s genetic, the numbers should stay relatively stable.

If its from a behaviour, there might be variation

"Natural evolution stopped working"

You do realize that "natural evolution" doesn't happen within time scales of less than a single generation, right? The environment can change faster than that.

Do we know why outdoor lighting helps? I’ve seen people recommend super strong indoor lighting for various health impacts, would the at affect eyes?

Full midday sunlight is about 100,000 lux. Recommended illumination levels for office buildings are 300-500 lux. Domestic rooms will often be lit at less than 100 lux.

My workbench is illuminated to 10,000 lux, which compares to common daylight conditions. Just lighting that small area requires 120 watts of high-efficiency LEDs. Lighting the whole room to that level would require nearly two kilowatts of LEDs. Most "super strong indoor lighting" is in fact very dim compared to sunlight. We don't realise it, because our visual system is incredibly adaptable to changing illumination conditions.

I feel like it's not directly comparable because light gets reflected around indoors. I imagine having full sunlight indoors would turn everything white.

Illuminance (lux) is a measure of the amount of light falling on a surface, not the amount of light being emitted. Any reflected light will count towards the measured illuminance.

Sunlight is just incredibly bright. There's a reason why film crews often need to use huge metal halide lamps powered by a generator truck - it takes an immense amount of power to compete with daylight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminance

https://www.arri.com/en/lighting/daylight/arri-daylight-18-1...

You can just use a light meter to measure directly.

Normal indoor lighting is a few hundred lux and with the right setup, I was able to increase it to 1000 lux at where my head is generally physically located.

How much of this is related to very bright light versus IR? Compared to incandescent light, LEDs have little IR.

This is my concern as well, I think the preponderance of LED lighting could be causing more Myopia because of less IR and perhaps UV

Possibly unrelated, but a specific frequency of infrared light has been found to have a protective and possibly even regenerative effect on aging eyes.

"Upon transcranial delivery, NIR light has been shown to significantly increase cytochrome oxidase and superoxide dismutase activities which suggests its role in inducing metabolic and antioxidant beneficial effects. Furthermore, NIR light may also boost cerebral blood flow and cognitive functions in humans without adverse effects. In this review, we highlight the value of NIR therapy as a novel paradigm for treatment of visual and neurological conditions, and provide scientific evidence to support the use of NIR therapy with emphasis on molecular and cellular mechanisms in eye diseases." [1]

NIR = near infrared light, 670 nm wavelength. This wavelength is present in sunlight, but not found in basically any indoor lighting with the possible exception of full spectrum LEDs and IR bulbs. Another study found improvement from NIR exposure, but only from exposure in the morning (for three minutes, once a week, at 670nm wavelength), and only in individuals older than 38. The study proposes that the effects they found from NIR exposure is due to improved mitochondrial function in the retina. [2]

The human retina ages faster than other organs, with a 70% decline in functional ATP production by mitochondria over a lifetime. The aging mitochondria, in addition to not producing as much ATP, also spit out junk amino acids that can cause chronic inflammation in the area (and signal cell death where none is called for?). As an aside, improved mitochondrial function is also proposed to be responsible for the significant health benefits of fasting and prolonged calorie restriction.

Another study also theorizes this mechanism:

"Our data suggest, 670 nm light can significantly improve aged retinal function, perhaps by providing additional adenosine triphosphate production for photoreceptor ion pumps or reduced aged inflammation." [3]

More study is clearly called for the better understand what is going on here and why. It seems like it could potentially have implications for age-related degeneration throughout the entire body, not just in the retina.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7738953/\\ [2] https://academic.oup.com/biomedgerontology/article/75/9/e49/... [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5364001/

They have so many different recommendations they could do a "bullshit recommendation of the day".

Tell you to do something every day for the rest of your life. If it does not work, scold you for slacking off. If your vision does not degrade, praise it all on the topical bullshit therapy.

Why use so many words when few do the trick.

NIR has been known to be useful for a while. Closer to 1000nm, penetrates deeper, but isn't as 'potent'

670nm is great, but you can notice it when it's on, ESPECIALLY if it's the only light in your room, which can be annoying.

It's true that NIR stuff is healthy for your eyes, but HOW much so, is up to debate.

I've bought 10 30 W NIR bulbs to no effect (range from 650nm-950nm), but on the other hand blue light bulbs have been helpful with increasing visual accuity (shorter wavelengths appear to your eyes as fuzzy, so your eyes push themselves to refocus more often, though at the downside of low dopamine levels and no will to do anything {maybe this goes away with time? But I've spent a few days doing nothing due to blue light and I like to be productive}, while red light has no effect on motivation, but worsens my eyesight (light appears in focus, no need to refocus, eyes get "lazy")

All of this anecdotal, but I really do like reading/learning about this stuff and NIR seems to be more fad than not in real world situations

Wouldn't the indoor light have to be strong enough to make you want to wear sunglasses indoors?

You would probably have to put stage lighting in your house to get the same affect as being outside. My eyes behave pretty different and seem to get a "workout" when I am outside in sunny weather.

I imagine you'd be able to wear the same thing you do outdoors. Which is to say, i don't wear sunglasses outdoors.

But regarding the lighting itself, yes i do think it is similar to stage lighting (brighter, i assume). Thermal and power is a significant concern with the lighting iirc, but i'm not too familiar. If i recall correctly the post that advocated these as a video and had an explanation on the difficulties. It heated up the room significantly.

With that said i want to stress that this was some post i saw several years ago, and i can't seem to find the video anymore. Iirc the lights were insanely bright, though.

I briefly took up a hobby of trying to raise some tomato plants indoors. The lights that claim to emit the full spectrum of non-visible light to match sunlight are insanely expensive (thermally and otherwise). There's probably more to the sunlight's effects on dopamine production than lux.

Many years ago I had a coral reef aquarium. The lighting required was the biggest expense and challenge to place and keep cool.

As a child I spent most of my day outside playing and not using screens and I still had myopia as a kid

Interesting…is it severe? Is it some hereditary condition?

Could be. I'm in the same boat (tons of outside time as a kid, very little screen time, significant myopia by age 6-7).

Both my parents are past -8, maybe -9 or -10? I forget, got some realllly thick glasses.

This is like saying “well I’m 70 years old and perfectly healthy after smoking my whole life”.

We’re talking about probabilities and statistics over large populations. Not every child who plays outside will avoid myopia, like yourself. But looking at the population, the expectation is that children who get more sunlight tend to have a lower incidence of myopia and weaker myopia.

Research paper reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25907356

I spent most of my childhood outdoors and still developed myopia.

So maybe just being outside isn't enough, but it obviously has other health benefits.