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Study suggests education causes myopia
For more than a century various studies have linked education with myopia. However, until now researchers have not been able to shed light on whether one causes the other or if a third factor is responsible. Various prospective trials have shown that the risk of myopia is reduced by the amount of time spent outdoors. The study has been difficult to conduct. One reason is because researchers have not been able to rule out the hypotheses that being myopic actually stimulates people to spend more time studying. They also have not been able to determine whether a factor such as intelligence or higher socioeconomic status could do two things; cause myopia and lead people to spend more time studying. Study results: Ultimately the researchers found that for every additional year spent in education, the participants had an increase in myopic refractive error of 0.27D. In layman’s terms, this suggests that a university graduate with 17 years of education in the UK would, on average, be one diopter more myopic than an individual who left school at 16 with 12 years of education. This difference in myopia severity is enough to blur vision for driving below legal standards which is a significant amount. Because the majority of axial eye growth happens during school years, one conclusion of the study is that any interventions to stop or prevent myopia need to be handled during childhood. Some researchers think that current educational practices implemented with children may be having the unintended consequence of causing increased levels of myopia which result in visual disability as the children get older. Time spent outdoors varies for children in different countries Children from developed East and Southeast Asian countries regularly say that they spend less time outdoors than children from Australia or the United States, where the prevalence of myopia is lower. It is also possible that individuals who spend more time in education have less exposure to natural light. Studies have found that the progression of myopia is faster in winter months, which supports this theory. The researchers concluded that the best recommendation for preventing myopia is to spend more time outdoors, and say that their findings could have important implications for educational practices. Myopia is one of the leading causes of visual disability in the world. The global prevalence is rising rapidly and has reached epidemic levels in the developed countries of East and Southeast Asia. |
According to researchers at the University of Bristol, UK, the more educated a person is, the more myopic they are likely to become. 