For many people, eye exercises are indelible memories of their schooldays.
However, this set of eye exercises has evolved and been promoted for half a century. If it can really prevent myopia, why is the number of myopia among Chinese teenagers still surging?
Dr. Clove, let’s talk about it carefully.
Eye fatigue leads to high incidence of myopia in adolescents.
It is generally believed that genetic and environmental factors jointly lead to myopia.
For example, children from myopic two-parent families have a higher incidence of myopia.
The main reason is bad eye habits.
Teenagers’ eyeballs are at the stage of development. Overuse of eyes, poor light environment and bad eye habits are easy to cause eye fatigue and exert pressure on the eyeballs. If you don’t get rest, the anterior and posterior axes of the eyeball may become longer over time and eventually develop myopia.
However, even children with genetic factors of myopia can avoid myopia if they use their eyes reasonably.
Eye Massage Can’t Prevent Myopia
The movements of the whole set of eye exercises are all to stimulate the periphery of the eyes by pressing.
Simple massage can neither improve the genetic factors of myopia nor affect the length of eye axis.
Therefore, eye exercises cannot prevent myopia.
Professor Wang Liren of Beijing Tongren Hospital once conducted a control experiment to compare the effect of eye exercises on correcting vision. The final conclusion is:
- In a short period of time, eye exercises may make eyes feel relaxed, but they have no clinical corrective significance. In the long run, eye exercises have no obvious effect on preventing myopia.
Let the eyes rest is the key.
Does this mean that eye exercises have no effect at all?
Although eye exercises cannot prevent myopia, they do give eyes a rest.
In fact, in the new edition of the Eye Exercise Instructions released in 2008, the main function of eye exercise is to [relieve eye fatigue], not to prevent or even treat myopia.
The most useful sentence is: Eye exercises begin now, close your eyes…
If you have been in class and doing homework all the time, your eyes are in a state of fatigue. During recess, you can do a set of eye exercises under the supervision of the school, so that your eyes can stop working, relax and have a good rest.
One thing to note:
Touch your eyes with your hands, and be sure your hands are clean and sanitary.
If you use dirty hands with bacteria that have just touched books and repeatedly touch them on your eyes, it is especially easy to cause eye infection, which may do more harm than good.
The Real Way to Prevent Myopia
The State Health Planning Commission, the Ministry of Education and the State General Administration of Sports recently jointly issued a document calling for strengthening the prevention and control of myopia among children and adolescents. Early formation of healthy eye use habits is really effective in controlling the progress of myopia.
1. Correct bad eye habits
Long-term and close use of eyes is an important cause of eye fatigue and myopia.
2. Outdoor exercise is an internationally recognized effective method to prevent myopia.
- Take advantage of recess to relax outdoors instead of doing homework on the table. Increase outdoor sports to ensure more than one hour of sports every day.
For example, playing table tennis is a good training method. During the gaze process of the eyeball from far to near, the collection function and adjustment function have been strengthened.
3. If myopia is found, correct it in time.
Early detection of myopia symptoms of teenagers, early correction and treatment.