Surrey optician warns of the growing rates of myopia
Recent figures suggest the condition could effect nearly 50% of the population by 2050
A Surrey optician says the increase in time spent looking at screen and decrease in time spent outdoors is leading to a rise in myopia cases
Myopia is an eye-condition which causes near-sightedness and develops significantly faster in children compared to adults
Recent figures suggest that the condition could effect nearly 50% of the worlds population by 2050
Roop Maini is an optician for Surrey opticians, he says that there is a mix of things that couse the condition
"Myopia is influenced by numerous things. One can be genetics. So if say for example your one member of your parent of a one of the parents is myopic, the child has a has a chance of becoming myopic by about three times risk. If both parents are actually myopic, it actually doubles to six times.
Also, there can be environmental factors. A lot of kids nowadays, especially when we went through COVID and people were locked indoors and weren't allowed to go outdoors we did find a little bit spike."
Maini adds that children should be outdoors for around two hours a day in order to get sufficient sunlight.
Maini also spoke about the impact of phone screens on myopia rates.
"Also, we find that a lot of kids nowadays, if you're on a dinner table, you see everyone's got a mobile phone on them. Kids are actually talking to each other on the on the dinner table with their mobile phone.
At school now the days of pen and papers have disappeared. We find a lot of kids now working on iPads and stuff like that. We see more kids with myopia now than we did when I was qualified"
Maini told us about the 20-20-20 rule when it comes to using screens to look after our eyes
"What the 20-20-20 rule is after every 20 minutes you should actually look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. It is difficult to do, but it's important to try and take the strain off your eyes."
However Maini says despite no way of stopping the condition, modern treatment has proved very effective with slowing down its rate of development
"So what we do nowadays, we do actually provide myopia control, glasses, contact lenses. So these are now available to try and slow down the progression of myopia and it's clinically proven to reduce to slow down the micro nearly 67%. There's nearly 70% reduction in myopia with kids, which is amazing."
Maini hopes that this research can go against the projection of nearly half of the population having the condition by 2050
"I think hopefully with what we what we can give an offer now with micro control glasses and contact lenses, hopefully we can change that
My hope is if people do adopt these forms of correction, we shouldn't see that happening"