Is Reading Fine Print Good or Bad for Your Eyes
Doctors Explain the Truth Behind xi Popular Eye Myths
Why eating more than carrots won't give y'all super sight.
Oct. 27, 2009— -- Reading this -- no affair how large or small-scale you've set the font size, no matter how dark the room is -- will not permanently impairment your eyes.
And the number of carrots yous eat isn't likely to impact how well yous can read this either.
Many of us take gotten advice growing up about how nosotros tin protect our optics, just much of this advice would be better off going the manner of those thick frames yous wore to school in the third grade.
You may know that crossing your optics too many times won't get them stuck that way, simply you may think that reading in a dimly lit room will put you lot on the path to early on nearsightedness.
So, keep your eyes on your brightly lit monitor -- it won't do more than maybe some temporary eyestrain.
With the launch of our OnCall+ Eye Health section, we're going to accept a closer look at 11 of these eye myths, and dispel them -- or explain what truth there may be behind them.
Fact or Myth? Squinting a lot damages your vision.
Answer: Myth
Squinting may be a sign that you need spectacles, but information technology isn't going to make your demand for spectacles any worse.
"You lot can squint all you want," said Dr. Jay Pepose, an ophthalmologist with the Pepose Vision Establish in St. Louis and an OnCall+ contributor.
"Squinting is an effort to make the educatee smaller -- information technology lets in less light," said Dr. Richard Rosen, director of ophthalmology research at New York Eye and Ear Infirmary. "By closing your lids together it further enhances your focus."
For this reason, squinting can help someone who might need glasses meet meliorate.
"Squinting suggests that you really have a refractive error [where the eye cannot bend light correctly, resulting in blurry vision -- such as near- or farsightedness], and this is how someone can go around wearing glasses," said Dr. Kenneth Chang, a comprehensive ophthalmologist at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary.
People who squint a lot aren't permanently damaging their vision, only at that place are some side effects:
"What it does, it gives you a headache sometimes considering it [involves] contraction of the muscles of your confront," said Rosen.
Fact or Myth? Reading in poor light or reading too much fine print will eventually damage your vision.
Reply: Myth
"It's like saying if you accept a moving-picture show in poor calorie-free, then the camera is going to be damaged," said Rosen, who worked as a photographer earlier he went to medical school and became an ophthalmologist.
The camera analogy may as well explain why vision becomes worse in the dark.
"In low light the pupil is enlarged, and so whatever defects there are in the lens…are not corrected," said Rosen. "When information technology'due south bright, y'all have a much greater depth of focus."
So, more than exterior low-cal tin certainly help y'all see ameliorate. At the same time, though, your retina is not damaged by the high amount of light that is allow in by an expanded pupil in the dark.
Similarly, having to focus on a smaller area is probable to cause strain on the eyes, but not lasting damage.
"Basically, it's getting calorie-free to the retina and getting it in focus," said Rosen.
Fact or Myth? Sitting besides shut to the TV or staring at a computer screen is bad for your optics.
Answer: MythSitting besides close to a TV or staring at a computer screen for too long volition injure your eyes -- but just temporarily.
Much of the problem can come up from the screen, because people staring at them for long periods of time tend non to glimmer.
"If a tear pic is a little on the dry side from non blinking sufficiently…so the quality of vision suffers," said Rosen. "Information technology's sort of a temporary phenomenon."
Some of the strain tin can be avoided, Chang said. If you are looking at something up shut, information technology's a good idea to take breaks and look into the altitude.
"I don't remember people were meant to be looking at a computer screen all solar day long," he said, just "it's non going to cause long-term damage."
He said children may sit shut to the screen because they tin. "You accept more of a range of accommodation and you lot can sustain information technology for long periods of time."
Of grade, it may likewise signal a problem.
"If a kid is doing that, information technology may exist that they need a pair of glasses," said Chang.
Fact or Myth? We are jump to suffer the same centre problems every bit our parents.
Answer: SometimesMany eye problems are genetic, but as with all genetic issues, inheritance is not guaranteed.
"There's a higher hazard, but it doesn't mean you're going to suffer," said Pepose.
"The important thing is that some eye conditions can definitely be passed down," said Chang.
"Things like glaucoma are definitely inheritable," he said. "That really reinforces the fact that it's more often than not skillful to get a general eye examination."
Chang said some issues are greyness areas -- combinations of inheritance and environment -- such as refractive errors.
Studies show that problems such equally nearsightedness and farsightedness seem to have some relation to whether a parent had the problem.
Of class, some vision bug take zip to exercise with genetics.
"Cataracts is an age-related degeneration of the lens -- that'south something that happens to everybody," said Chang.
Fact or Myth? As y'all become older, there's nothing you can do about your worsening vision.
Answer: Myth
Some age problems are inevitable.
"Cataracts are not a disease," said optometrist Harvey Moscot of Moscot Eyewear and Eyecare in New York City. "It'southward a normal crumbling alter, not different grey hair. If anybody lived long enough, they would get cataracts."
But at the same fourth dimension, cataracts, like many vision problems, can be fixed.
Cataracts, a clouding of the lens caused by the folding of proteins, tin can be removed to fix the problem.
"At that place's a lot of enquiry now on preventing cataracts," said Moscot. Merely for other ailments, preventatives are known.
Many of the eye ailments that affect people when they historic period can exist eased past post-obit general health advice. A balanced diet tin can play a function in preventing some problems, as can giving up smoking. Rosen added that controlling cholesterol and saccharide levels could aid equally well.
Of class, not all problems can be stock-still completely. Moscot said that for many eye ailments, he tells his patients that their options are limited to LASIK laser center surgery and glasses.
Fact or Myth? Eating carrots will improve your vision.
Respond: Myth -- mostly
Nutrition is important to proficient vision, just that doesn't hateful that eating carrots all mean solar day will give yous hawkeye eyes.
Vitamin A deficiency may lead to poor vision, but having an backlog of the vitamin does not enhance vision further.
"In America information technology'due south not an upshot, because our diets have plenty of vitamin A," said Moscot.
Some foods tin can help eyes, however.
Dark green vegetables, such as spinach and broccoli, for example, contain lutein, which is found every bit a xanthous spot in the retina, called the macula.
Rosen explained that these nutrients -- which can besides be constitute in egg yolk -- can protect the macula, and may play a part in preventing macular degeneration, a condition in older adults where they lose vision in the center of the heart.
"It's probably important to encourage people to eat those sorts of foods," he said.
Fact or Myth? Eye exercises tin improve your vision.
Respond: Sort of
Unless you are an unusually precocious child who has started reading the health department of our site, chances are that there's picayune that eye exercises can do for your vision.
Eye exercises are often used in the preteen and teenage years to help children with convergence -- bringing their eyes together for objects that are closer in. They're much less effective for adults.
"Typically in adults the system is pretty rigid," said Moscot.
"Focusing difficulties and convergence issues can be improved with heart exercises," he said, only noted that "information technology does take a commitment and it does take time. In some adults those exercises are helpful, but non all and those are variable."
However, eye exercises that are promoted as helping people get rid of glasses -- known as Bates exercises -- accept not been shown to assistance.
"It's not a scientifically supported method," said Moscot.
Rosen said that while vision does deteriorate -- and exercises volition non reverse that -- the exercises may accept an effect on utility.
"A lot of it is learning how to use the vision that you accept," he said.
An case, Rosen said, is that someone who had a defect in the heart of the lens may be aided if they learn to look through other parts.
Rosen said he had some patients who are able to office with twenty/400 vision (twenty/20 is optimal, 20/200 is legally bullheaded).
"A lot of it is how you're able to apply that sensory input that you get from the eyes," he said. "It may assistance them to utilize the vision they do accept, especially if they've lost some vision."
Fact or Myth? Using glasses for a long period of time will cause your vision to deteriorate, leading to dependence on cosmetic lenses.
Answer: Myth
"Using the correct pair of glasses for you does not brand your vision worse. You lot don't abound more than dependent on them," said Chang. The myth, he said, is based on the misperception that "if you were to vesture spectacles or contact lenses, that somehow changes the physiology of your eye, and that does non happen."
Natural aging and its effects on the optics may have played a role in spreading this myth.
With historic period, peoples' eyes deteriorate, and then, someone who needed reading glasses at 40 is likely to need a stronger prescription for them at 50 -- whether they've actually been using glasses or not.
"Everybody does need stronger and stronger reading glasses -- information technology'south inescapable," said Rosen.
In this case, the out-of-focus world that develops over fourth dimension is due to the growing of the lens of the middle -- the only role of the eye that continues to grow significantly, and a process that prevents the centre from all-around as easily as information technology did when one was younger.
Fact or Myth? If you wear spectacles, not wearing them volition cause your vision to deteriorate faster.
Respond: Myth
The firsthand side effect of not wearing glasses if you need them is the equivalent of an art gallery bout without bothering to become a ticket.
"Everything will be out of focus -- you'll accept an Impressionistic view of the world," said Rosen.
But while trying to focus without spectacles may strain your eyes, information technology will not cause lasting damage. While a person may squint in an attempt to run across better, the centre itself will not be affected.
In the end, the principal side effect of not wearing glasses is likely to exist the temporary one that accompanies accommodation -- excessive squinting is probable to requite someone who typically wears spectacles a headache.
"Eyeglasses help you run across better," explained Chang. "Past wearing spectacles your vision doesn't get worse faster, and past non wearing them, you lot're doing your vision a disservice."
Fact or Myth? Children will outgrow a lazy or crossed eye without intervention.
Answer: Myth
Children with lazy or crossed optics require intervention, and assertive this myth could create permanent damage.
"If the parent or caretaker feels that the child has a crossed center…or the kid seems to be rubbing his optics a lot, it is absolutely essential that he meet an ophthalmologist," said Chang. "If they don't address a vision trouble in a certain corporeality of time, it's likewise tardily."
When a child's vision develops, problems with crossed or lazy eyes tin become permanent.
The reason, said Rosen, is some cells responsible for fusing the images you see with each center are responsible for a iii-dimensional image, and "If, early on in life, those cells aren't stimulated, they never develop," he said.
"The before you recognize these things, you lot raise the person's chances for stereo vision and for depth perception," said Rosen. "If you recognize there's a weakness in one centre early…then they will showtime patching the good eye [in guild to strengthen the weak heart]."
Fact or Myth? It'south O.K. to skip my child's first center exam as long as they don't seem to have whatsoever problems with their sight.
Answer: Myth
There was a lack of consensus over when, exactly, a child should have his or her outset eye exam, but a child should be seen relatively early in life.
"By age iii, it'south a good idea to accept a general eye exam," said Chang, citing the benefits of catching a number of vision issues -- such equally amblyopia and strabismus -- early.
Many nursery schools have routine screenings of children, but some say those are inadequate.
"School screenings tin be very deceptive," said Moscot, noting that some schoolhouse nurses are not properly trained to perform a full eye exam and some children volition cheat by peering at the charts beforehand.
"When they come to an office, there's objective tests nosotros can do better than reading an eye chart." A lot of things are missed in these screenings," he said. "But they're better than naught."
Moscot also said that family medical history tin can have an touch on on when the first eye exam should be done.
"Typically, when there'south a family history of an eye problem or a strong prescription, we like them to be checked before a twelvemonth erstwhile," he said, but noted that for some, "that'south a state of thinking at present -- that whatever child should be examined in the first year of life."
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/EyeHealthNews/11-eye-myths-debunked/story?id=8919023
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