The Silent Epidemic: Myopia's Meteoric Rise in the Modern Age
The Silent Epidemic: Myopia's Meteoric Rise in the Modern Age
Blog Article
Introduction:
Myopia, or nearsightedness, has increased exponentially on a global scale in the last several decades to become a modern-day epidemic of global public health significance. World Health Organization projections are that by the year 2050 the globe will be half-way to half of all world populations becoming myopic and one billion individuals being at risk for disabling high myopia and blindness. In addition to the trend being the "myopia epidemic," it serves to highlight the extreme transformations in lifestyle, habit, and environment that merit closer examination.
Understanding Myopia
Myopia is a refractive disorder where near objects are visible and distant objects are invisible. The reason being that the eyeball itself is too long, or the cornea is too protruding, so that light rays converge in front of the retina rather than on the retina. Myopia begins in childhood and continues on to adolescence. Near vision can be managed by contact lenses, refractive surgery, or glasses but is a chronic health condition with the risk of glaucoma, cataract, macular degeneration, and retinal detachments, and this may result in death.
Read Also: Why Sitting Too Long Is Harmful
The Lifestyle Connection
Lifestyle of today, the most powerful aetiological factor for myopia, is most powerful in near work like reading, mobile phone, tablet, and computer. It has an effect on the majority of young individuals and children since their eyes are still in formative stages. With the advent of computers, there came an age where study time is substituted by screen time and even other recreational activities to a larger degree than otherwise.
Increased proximity to work, especially with reduced outdoor activity, has been most associated with onset and development of myopia. A hypothesis has been that outdoor light would be protective, most likely through its effect on release of dopamine in the retina acting to inhibit eye growth.
Urbanization and Education
Urban life is also a cause of highly correlated increase of more myopia. Urban life children with high population density spend less time outdoors and more time indoors based on safety or school needs. School intensity, especially in South Korea, Singapore, and China, are also causes of myopia increase. They study and homework lessons for hours without breaks for gym or playing outdoors.
Conversely, rural residents whose more dispersed living styles keep them lower up the myopia ranking, although this too is being inverted with increasingly rapid speed as modernization reaches further and further into the remotest corners of the world.
Genetic and Ethnic Factors
Though environment and lifestyle causation is strong causation, genetic and in myopia causation are also present. Myopia will be inherited to children of individuals with myopia. Genetic factor by itself cannot be used as an accelerative cause in the last century but as a cause why the environmental factors are so low.
Ethnicity contributes a role that arises in the prevalence of myopia. In all studies together consistently, there is greater reported prevalence in East Asian compared to Caucasian and African populations, and the three increasingly have greater prevalence of myopia due to common environmental risk factors.
The Economic and Social Burden
Impact of myopia extends beyond the correction of refraction. Treatment of high myopia complications, surgery, lens, and glasses are economic expense. Eyes of low-income population are neglected up to the stage of the problem, and they are greatly undiagnosed and uncorrected.
There are also social and psychological impacts. Unaddressed myopia in children can make the child weaker in school or less self-assured. High myopia in adults carries work and life problems, particularly if the job demands good eyesight.
Prevention and Control Measures
There must be coordination of public policy, education, and behavioral change to stem the epidemic of myopia.
- More Outdoor Time: Minimum 2 hours of outdoor time daily can reduce myopia significantly. Outdoor sports and outdoor games should be encouraged by schools and parents.
- Prevention of eye strain: Prevention of close work, i.e., breaks (e.g., 20-20-20 rule—view something 20 feet away every 20 minutes for 20 seconds), and proper lighting on reading or on use of media devices can be helpful in prevention of eye strain.
- Early Detection and Monitoring: The need of frequent eye tests, especially in children. Early detection allows early treatment so that it would not progress further.
- Pharmaceutical and Optical Interventions: Multifocal lenses and glasses, and atropine eye drops low-dose, are some among the special lenses (e.g., multifocal glasses), which have also been found to prevent myopia progression in children.
- Public Information Campaigns: Risk and prevention education on prevention and risk of myopia can enable a population to mobilize en masse and can bring about policy change.
Conclusion:
Blinding myopia is an eye-opener to spin around and leave the trail and think about the effect that this new world places upon our health—and upon our eyes. As our own world becomes more and more digitally centred and world-wide urban, filling in green time on screen becomes increasingly important by the nanosecond. To break the epidemic of myopia will be a challenge to us all—families, schools, doctors, lawmakers in aggregates.
The most tangible sense to us is the sense of sight. If we are healthy today, then generations will seem healthy and in light. Report this page