Myopia, or shortsightedness as it is commonly known, is on the rise. It’s the most common eye disorder in the world, and the biggest cause of visual impairment, especially in children. The facts are there for all to see. In 2010, an estimated 27 percent of people were struggling with a significant level of myopia, and by 2050, that figure is expected to rise to 52 percent.

The fact that myopia is linked to genetics is not disputed. However, genetics alone would not be enough to account for the rising incidence of myopia, and it’s now believed that environmental factors also play a role. Whatever the reasons for the rise of myopia, there have also been advances in its treatment. According to Australian behavioural optometrist Jacqueline Gattegno, reducing the progression of myopia is a real possibility – provided that intervention happens soon enough.

Myopia Control Treatments

Jacqueline says that contrary to popular belief, Myopia is a childhood problem. “It’s related to an increase in the axial length of the eyeball which results in poor focus on the retina. The progressive lengthening of the eyeball occurs during growth, with the eyes generally stabilising around the age of twenty. If myopia’s progression is to be slowed, treatment must occur during this time,” says Jacqueline. “Various non-surgical, drug-free methods have been explored, with the greatest successes coming from orthokeratology and the use of peripheral defocus lenses.”

Atropine drops appear in a lot of the research literature, but Jacqueline isn’t convinced that their use should be attempted or that they will result in the best possible outcomes. “There are side-effects,” says Jacqueline, “and the drops only seem to offer myopia control benefits during their first year of use. Following excellent results in early trials, it’s now widely believed that atropine drops don’t have sufficient long-term benefits to justify their use. Orthokeratology is drug-free and it works. There’s no reason to use a drug-based treatment.”  

Efficacy of Orthokeratology in Myopia Control

Studies support Jacqueline’s confidence in orthokeratology for myopia control, and the treatment itself is remarkably simple. Optometrists carefully map the eye and then create hard contact lenses that gently mould the cornea to allow for better light focus on the retina. The lenses aren’t worn by day. Instead, they’re worn during sleep, and the eye maintains the correct shape during waking hours.

Research shows that orthokeratology, or Ortho-K, can slow the progression of myopia in children by 36 to 56 percent. “It’s known that the higher the level of myopia in people of any age, the greater the risk of certain ocular pathologies that can lead to vision loss,” says Jacqueline, “so reducing myopia in childhood not only offers a good chance of better vision during adulthood, but may even prevent conditions like retinal detachment and age-related blindness’ later on.”

Myopia Control at Home

There’s at least one other therapy that can help children in slowing the progression of myopia – and parents can practice it for free at home. “Tell the kids to go and play outside,” says Jacqueline. “There have been some remarkable studies that have shown that just spending more time outdoors reduces the risk of rapid myopia progression. There was a measurable reduction in axial elongation and myopic shift during trials in Asia, and some experts even theorise that reduced time outdoors might be at least partially to blame for the myopia epidemic that’s currently being witnessed.”

It’s Time the World Started Talking About It

Jacqueline believes that the combination of orthokeratology and a healthy, active lifestyle can make a difference in combating the rise of myopia but is concerned that myopia control isn’t more widely talked-about. “Many parents have never heard of ortho-K or myopia control. They know about glasses and contact lenses, and they bring their children to get prescription eyewear. That provides an opportunity to tell them about treatment options, but it isn’t ideal.”

“Myopia control should be headline news. It’s exciting. The benefits are beyond price. It’s time the world started talking about it because we’re rapidly heading towards a situation in which half the world’s population is myopic with high myopes facing further risks to their vision,” concludes Jacqueline.

Smart Vision Optometry clinics are located in Sydney. Book a Smart Vision Comprehensive Vision Skills Assessment or Advanced Eye Health Test for any child or adult by calling the Bondi clinic (02) 9365 5047 or the Mosman clinic (02) 9969 1600, alternatively book an appointment online.Written and syndicated by: YDMA News, YDMA Group

Sight begins in the eyes. But it doesn’t end there. The brain is needed to process and interpret data from the eyes. It’s not a simple process. One part of the brain conjures up an image based on the data it receives from the eyes. Other parts of the brain interpret it. The gift of sight involves much more than just the eyes. Gary Rodney, a behavioural optometrist and an expert in the field of myopia control guides us through a complex process that is often taken for granted: seeing.

The Brain’s Role in Vision

It all begins when a person decides to look at something. A part of the brain stem known as the “pons” tells the eyes to move towards the object, setting the surprisingly complex process that is vision into motion.

The brain is clearly divided into lobes, and the first part of the brain to process visual information is the occipital lobe which is situated at the back of the brain. The occipital lobe’s role in vision is proven and not just a matter of conjecture. When people suffer damage to this part of the brain as a result of illness or injury, they may experience visual disturbances, or even lose their sight completely.

There’s a difference between having an image and understanding it, and the occipital lobe can’t help with the latter. Instead, visual information requires further processing, and different parts of the brain do the work.

Visuospatial cognition takes place in the parietal lobe. This part of the brain is the seat of depth perception and helps with the coordination of movement based on data such as direction and distance. Reaching for, and successfully grasping an object, for example, requires several pieces of information. Recognising the object is a good start, but if it is to be handled, it’s location in relation to the body is a vital piece of information.

But recognition doesn’t take place in the parietal lobe. For that, the temporal lobe must contribute its share to the process of vision. It’s the seat of memory and it’s able to turn an image into something that’s recognisable based on prior experience.

Until quite recently, experts believed that the frontal lobe wasn’t involved in processing visual information, but it’s now believed to have a rather important role. The theory is supported by information from MRI scans that showed frontal lobe activity during the performance of certain visual tasks.

It’s believed that this part of the brain “focuses” on specific objects. To illustrate this, imagine a room full of various objects. A person is looking for his or her car keys, but plenty of other things are in view. The frontal lobe might be the part of the brain that helps with spotting those car keys among the clutter of other objects in view.

Super-Quick Communication Through a Neural Network

In order to transfer information from the eyes to the different parts of the brain that use and interpret visual information, a super-fast information highway is needed. The retina of the eye has special light-sensitive cells called rod and cone cells. When light strikes one of them, it sends a nerve impulse through the optic nerve to the occipital lobe which processes the information to make up part of an image.

But the image is without any meaning until the occipital lobe is able to match it with a memory. If there’s no match, this part of the brain will store it as a new memory, or it will still retain the memory, if only temporarily, categorising it into understandable information that can be used like “Oh that’s where the car keys are!”

It’s remarkable how quickly this all happens. Some researchers have equated the “speed of sight” as being equivalent to that of a good Ethernet connection, but that’s rather conservative as estimates go. It can be even faster. It’s theorised that the brain prioritises information and works a little more slowly when it deems information less than vitally important, saving its top speed for urgent data – like that obtained from rapidly approaching objects.

Behavioural Optometry: When Eye Tests are About More Than Just Eyes

With so much more than eyes involved in vision, it should come as no surprise that some optometrists do much more than just test the physical ability of the eyes to see clearly. “There’s a lot more to vision than just seeing,” says Gary. “That’s why behavioural optometrists test for visual skills as well as visual acuity. When visual skills need to be developed, it’s more than just a matter of prescribing glasses, but proven therapies can often help with vision problems that go beyond mere eyesight.”

For more information on vision therapy and how it works, or to book an appointment, visit the Smart Vision website: Optometrists Sydney: Optometry Services For Children and Adults | Smart Vision; for specific information about Myopia treatment and prevention visit Myopia Prevention: Solutions, Control And Treatment In Sydney; and for detailed information about Myopia Treatment visit Orthokeratology In Sydney: The Non Surgical Alternative.To book an appointment for a thorough eye check-up, click here or Call the Bondi clinic on (02) 9365 5047 or the Mosman clinic on (02) 9969 1600.

He said the refraction error negatively affects many other vision problems, as well as educational, psychological, behavioural, and physical issues. As a result many countries, eye health organisations and practitioners like him are currently campaigning to increase the awareness regarding myopia and the often-overlooked consequences of this refraction error.

This, Rodney says, is in a bid to find ways to control or manage the incurable (but treatable) impairment, and slow its progression from low myopic levels to the pathological area of high myopia, while reducing the speed at which it is spreading round the globe.

The Most Common Vision Problem in the World

The eye impairment which causes the data-bearing light rays, which carry information on what is seen, to land in front of the retina instead of on it, is now the most common vision problem globally. Already blurring the vision and lives of one in three people globally, it’s also affecting far more children every year (and at younger ages) as well as progressing further and faster as it climbs the ladder of its levels of severity.

According to Rodney, other vision problems are also increasing in response to myopia’s increasing impact as its prevalence grows. It’s upping the impact of cataracts and glaucoma and sometimes delivering its own brand of non-age-related macular degeneration, which can lead to loss of sight. And that’s still not where it stops. It’s also giving rise to more and more learning difficulties, as well as emotional and psychological issues such as anxiety, depression, difficulty socialising, negative personality traits and low self-image in myopics who perceive and understand the world around them differently.

How Myopia Can Affect Lives

“Everything, including life, and how they react to it in directions they take, career choices, future plans, action and behaviour, can be affected by nearsightedness. To those with myopia, all of these can seem just as blurred and hard to interpret, understand, or apply to their lives, as those objects they try to look at which are more than 20ft away,” Rodney says.

“Only items close by are clearly seen. This can lead to an adjustment of interests, actions and entire lifestyles to match with what they can see clearly and easily understand. Avoidance, on the other hand, van appear to make better sense to them when either sight or mind are challenged by what’s physically or mentally far away, or requires the ‘bigger picture’ that broadens interest, increases curiosity, and allows for being able to explore different perspectives when viewing long-term concepts or thinking about the future.”

For more information on myopia, its treatment and management, or to make an appointment for a consultation, visit the Smart Vision website: Optometrists Sydney: Optometry Services For Children and Adults | Smart Vision; for specific information about Myopia treatment and prevention visit Myopia Prevention: Solutions, Control And Treatment In Sydney; and for detailed information about Myopia Treatment visit Orthokeratology In Sydney: The Non Surgical Alternative.

To book an appointment for a thorough eye check-up, click here or Call the Bondi clinic on (02) 9365 5047 or the Mosman clinic on (02) 9969 1600.

Syndicated by Baxton Media, The Market Influencers, Your Digital Marketing Agency.

Epidemics Don’t Leave Quietly

Rodney says these eye experts are concerned that the myopia epidemic will bring about a “new normal” of its own, and they are even more concerned that it may have already done so through its close relationship with urban areas and the lifestyles people follow there.

“Any epidemic, or a pandemic like the current Covid-19 virus, will leave chaos in its wake as it runs through the world’s population. And it won’t be just its effects on the physical health of those it’s targeted that will be left behind. There will also be a trail of physical, emotional, and social stress that will affect millions of people’s lives and how they live them. And the Myopia epidemic is no exception. It’s been leaving a widening trail of people with this refractive error since it started its upward curve in the 1970s,” Rodney says. 

Statistics show that developed and urbanised countries like the USA, UK, South America, East Asia and some European countries, have been hardest hit by the myopic onslaught and have the biggest number of people dealing with the eye impairment which leads to their seeing anything further than 20ft away as a blur, and only having clear vision when looking at something close to hand. Unable to see the whole or long-term picture the same way as those with normal vision, many myopics (and specially those who have severe levels of myopia) tend to adopt a world view based on their own shortened and narrowed perception of views, objects and actions that are only clear when close by.

Urbanisation Growing Alongside Myopia

According to Rodney urban lifestyle could seem to be an ideal place for myopics to thrive. It’s surroundings, environment, culture and focuses revolve around speed in manufacture and development; quick turn-around time; short-term investments, and large debts; close work; inside living; take-out meals; and multiple screens, all of which exclude long-term views, plans and concern about consequences. And it seems the cities have happily accepted them, as well as the wider understanding and use of the word “myopia” and concept of shortsightedness, which are both becoming popular topics and descriptions of attitudes outside the vision arena. After many years of dormancy, these old-fashioned terms are back in political and business rhetoric to challenge speeches or decisions considered to be ignoring the long term and its consequences; and in psychology, “mental myopia” is being used to describe someone’s narrow and biased reactions to others.

However, instead of seeing this as an ideal arrangement, Rodney says matching urbanisation and myopia appears to increase the onset of myopia and the speed at which it progresses, while increased numbers of myopics may raise the influence of short-term approach to work and lifestyle in the city as it expands its share of the population.

The jury is still out as to which came first, and which will have the greatest impact on living and seeing in a myopic world. That’s because alongside the myopia epidemic, and with similar timing, urbanisation numbers have also been soaring upwards in their own “epidemic” since the 1970’s. Since then it’s risen from 1,3billion, or a third of the population living in or near cities, to 3,3billion (or half the population) by 2007, and reached 4,62billion in 2019. And by 2050, 6billion city dwellers (or two out of three of the world’s population), are expected to be crowded into cities which already house more than half the world’s population on less than 10% of the earth’s habitable land.

For more information on myopia, its treatment and management, or to make an appointment, visit the Smart Vision website: Optometrists Sydney: Optometry Services For Children and Adults | Smart Vision; for specific information about Myopia treatment and prevention visit Myopia Prevention: Solutions, Control And Treatment In Sydney; and for detailed information about Myopia Treatment visit Orthokeratology In Sydney: The Non Surgical Alternative.

To book an appointment for a thorough eye check-up, click here or Call the Bondi clinic on (02) 9365 5047 or the Mosman clinic on (02) 9969 1600.

Syndicated by Baxton Media, The Market Influencers, Your Digital Marketing Agency.

Why It’s Important to Contain the Surge of Myopia

Rodney says that the effects of the refractive error stretch far further than how it influences vision by causing myopics to see everything close by clearly but anything further away as a blur. It affects and worsens other eye dysfunctions, and impairments like cataracts, non-age-related macular degeneration, glaucoma and retinal detachment, and it can also impact on the emotional, functional, learning and social aspects of the lives of those who have it, as well as their self-image, and ability to feel that they fit into a world they can’t see properly. 

Passed-on Lifestyle Habits Could be at Core of a Spiking Myopiademic

According to Rodney, studies that show children born to myopic parents are more likely to also be myopic, (three times more likely if only one parent is myopic, and six times more if both are) have long attributed this to a variety of genes. However, Rodney says researchers and eye doctors are currently shifting their focus towards the possibility that the parent-child increase in myopic risk might have less (or nothing) to do with genes after all.

The catalyst may instead be entrenched in the passing down, generation after generation, of the family lifestyle to young children who, in learning about their new world, tend to copy their parents’ lifestyle patterns as if these are the blueprint of life. And, Rodney says, if the family has lived in or around a city for generations, the “blueprint” passed on in terms of family history will be that of the second biggest threat in terms of prolonging the epidemic, the urban lifestyle. This way of life involves confined indoor-living in which too little time is spent exercising, or outdoors under natural light; and too much is spent in front of screens in small areas lit by artificial light, all of which have been identified as increasing the onset, and speeding up the progression of myopia.

How Myopia Could Take Over the World’s Vision

Myopia has been increasing its prevalence at a fast rate since the 1970s when under a million people were myopic. Currently it’s believed to be affecting nearly 3billion people, or one third of the world population, and projections suggest it could rise to impacting on one out of two (or around 5 billion) people by 2050.

“ The current myopia epidemic has been running up the graph fairly closely in sync with a similar but slightly faster surge in urbanisation, which is projected to reach a point by 2050 where two out of three of the global population will be living urban lifestyles,” Rodney says.

What concerns him is that this could lead to an even more blurry future in the decades that follow 2050, perhaps even leading to a world in which almost everyone could be subject to low myopia, at the very least. And where a far bigger share of those myopics than the 10% (up from 2,2 % 50 years ago) projected for the more severe levels of high or pathological myopia in 2050, may become a very harsh reality.

These statistics and projections may seem trivial with regard to the prevalence of myopia down the line, Rodney says, when the intrinsic risks to children of being born to myopic parents are taken into account. This suggests that everybody could be at risk of being affected by myopia because in a world half populated by myopics, at least one parent (and probably both) of every child born in the second half of the century, would be likely to be myopic. And this could start an endless vicious circle which could propel myopia still further and faster towards taking over the whole world’s vision.

To learn more about the myopia epidemic, its treatment and management, and more importantly what you can do to prevent it, or to make an appointment, visit the Smart Vision website: Optometrists Sydney: Optometry Services For Children and Adults | Smart Vision; for specific information about Myopia treatment and prevention visit Myopia Prevention: Solutions, Control And Treatment In Sydney; and for detailed information about Myopia Treatment visit Orthokeratology In Sydney: The Non Surgical Alternative.

To book an appointment for a thorough eye check-up, click here or Call the Bondi clinic on (02) 9365 5047 or the Mosman clinic on (02) 9969 1600.

Syndicated by Baxton Media, The Market Influencers, Your Digital Marketing Agency.

But Rodney, the founder of Smart Vision Optometry, said that what is comforting, is that effective treatments for controlling the progression of this refractive disorder are already available. Ongoing campaigns are being run in many countries, including Australia and the US, to increase awareness of Myopia and to look for new solutions to cut it’s progression and its prevalence, which has currently reached epidemic levels.  

The refractive eye impairment is the result of the cornea or lens having an abnormal shape or the eyeball being longer from front to back and the light rays which convey messages about what’s seen to the eyes fall in front of the retina instead of on it. Rodney says that why this happens is still not certain, but links to genetics and lifestyles such as too little exposure to natural light, and too much time spent on close work or screen viewing have been made.

Drop in Myopia for First Time in 10 years 

In Taiwan the latest statistics show a drop in myopia among elementary schoolchildren for the first time in the past 10 years. This follows their Health Promotion Administration introducing its “Vision Protection 123” campaign based on vision protection, more time outdoors, and increased access to natural light. Recent data showed the numbers decreasing for the first time in decades, dropping by 5% from a prevalence of close on 50% to just over 44%. This is also a first for Asia, where statistics have continued to swing higher into and beyond the 80 and 90 percentile in many areas.

Heading Towards Myopia Affecting One Out of Two by 2050

The number of children and adults dealing with its consequences globally has been growing exponentially since the 1970’s. And in the past decade has reached a point where its current epidemic speed suggests that by 2050 every second person in the world may only see objects that are close clearly, and those at a distance as a blur. Unfortunately, Rodney said a  proportion of them will go on to age-related blindness due to the eyeball stretching.

“We now know that for every dioptre of increased myopia there is an exponential increase in the risk of age-related blindness,” he said. “Lower levels do not necessarily reduce the likelihood of serious vision problems completely, nor does it indicate that the levels won’t change with progression.”

Rodney says that is why it is so important to check children’s eyes regularly, with a practitioner aware of myopia treatment options, and to continue doing so if there were any signs that the myopia is progressing quickly and likely to enter the high or pathological myopia level of -6.00 diopters or more.

Rodney said many options are available wen it comes to managing Myopia, and ways to control progression, including the special night-time gas-permeable contact lenses which are used in Orthokeratology. These lenses temporarily reshape the cornea to lesson the refractive errors which confuse vision, and can be used both as primary therapy and a way to slow the progression. 

For more information visit the Smart Vision website: Optometrists Sydney: Optometry Services For Children and Adults | Smart Vision; for specific information about Myopia treatment and prevention visit Myopia Prevention: Solutions, Control And Treatment In Sydney; and for detailed information about Myopia Treatment visit Orthokeratology In Sydney: The Non Surgical Alternative.

To book an appointment for a thorough eye check-up, click here or Call the Bondi clinic on (02) 9365 5047 or the Mosman clinic on (02) 9969 1600.

Syndicated by Baxton Media, The Market Influencers, Your Digital Marketing Agency.