Can myopia be reduced from 800 degrees to 100 degrees? The truth is different from what you think

Author: Jin Xin, Director of the Shouyang Myopia, Strabismus and Amblyopia Prevention and Control Research Institute, Huainan City

Reviewer: Jiang Yang, deputy chief physician of ophthalmology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital

gossip

Image source: Weibo screenshot

Not long ago, a blog post titled "The process of reducing myopia from 800 degrees to 100 degrees" quickly went viral and topped the trending search list. From the tens of thousands of reposts and comments, it is not difficult to see that the public hates myopia.

This post seems to be a true personal experience and seems to give hope to people with myopia, but are the methods and principles mentioned in the article really effective? Can myopia really be reduced?

The result may disappoint you.

analyze

In fact, similar content attracts attention on different online platforms almost every year. I believe you have more or less heard rumors about reducing or even curing myopia.

For example:

A classmate of a netizen had 500 degrees of myopia. Later, he became obsessed with off-road running and was outdoors all day. When he came back a few years later, his myopia had returned.

A relative of a certain netizen became a forest ranger. He used to have myopia of over a thousand degrees. Later, he guarded the forest in the mountains every day. His eyesight got better and better, and he no longer wore glasses.

The desk mate of a certain netizen’s friend was, in my memory, nearsighted. Later he drove a truck, and when we met again he was no longer wearing glasses.

There are many examples like this, and there are even many bloggers who tell their own stories. The above content seems to be true and reliable, but is it really the case?

Can myopia really be cured?

Under current medical technology, myopia cannot be cured. Why?

Myopia is a common refractive error. When we look at distant objects, parallel light rays enter the eye and focus in front of the retina in a relaxed state, causing distant objects to be blurred.

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The root cause of this problem is basically related to the eye axis, corneal curvature, lens curvature and their combination, which are all structural changes of the eyeball. The increase in the length of the eye axis is permanent. During the development of the eyeball, the eye axis always keeps growing, so once the eyeball develops into this shape, it cannot be shortened by general means.

Tissues in the eye, such as the sclera (the outer layer of the eye), may reshape during myopia. This reshaping is also irreversible.

Therefore, the increase in myopia caused by these structural changes cannot be reduced or completely eliminated.

Can't myopia be cured by surgery?

What everyone needs to understand here is that cure means that after a certain disease has been clinically treated, all symptoms and signs disappear and the patient returns to a normal, healthy physiological state.

Although myopia surgery allows patients to see clearly without wearing glasses, the changes in the intraocular structure and fundus conditions caused by myopia are not treated or alleviated during the surgery.

If a person undergoes eye surgery for high myopia and undergoes fundus examination, the fundus is still that of high myopia and the eye axis is still that of high myopia. It does not mean that the person has returned to emmetropia. Therefore, people with high myopia should pay more attention to protecting their eyes after surgery.

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Why do some people's degrees decrease?

Although myopia cannot be cured and the eye axis is irreversible, we have actually seen many cases where the degree of myopia has been reduced. What is going on?

1. Inaccurate optometry

The most common case of reduced diopter is caused by inaccurate optometry. In the 1980s and 1990s, some places directly used computer optometry sheets as prescriptions for customers, and this situation still exists in some places today. The results of computer optometry are only objective results and are likely to be higher.

If you wear inaccurate prescription, you may feel uncomfortable at the time. The store will usually ask you to go back and "adapt to it". In the end, you may really adapt to it, and this inaccurate result will become what you think your prescription is. It may not be corrected until the next time you have a correct examination, which makes you mistakenly believe that the prescription has been reduced.

2. True myopia mixed with "false myopia"

Another common problem is the glasses fitting error caused by mixed myopia adjustment problems. To make it easier for everyone to understand, this problem can be said to be caused by true myopia mixed with "pseudomyopia".

Although myopia is basically axial myopia, if you use your eyes too much at close range, it may also cause accommodative myopia (also known as pseudomyopia). If you are not careful enough during the examination, or if you do not do mydriasis refraction for children, then the problem caused by accommodation will also be calculated into the glasses degree. Then your overall myopia degree will be higher than the actual degree, but it will not be inappropriate after wearing the glasses.

At this point, if you subsequently change the way you use your eyes, such as some people mentioned above who went to the mountains and drove a truck, and their accommodation problems were improved, then the effects of accommodation on their myopia will gradually disappear. Some people have eliminated part of it, and some have eliminated it completely. If it is all accommodative myopia (the so-called "pseudomyopia"), then to outsiders, it looks like myopia is "cured", and if it is accommodative myopia mixed with true myopia, then it looks like myopia has been "reduced".

3. Fuzzy Adaptation

There are also some myopic people who can barely see 0.5 by relying on their own adjustment and compensation when they are not wearing glasses. After wearing glasses, although the corrected vision is improved, the previous compensation is relaxed, and it seems that the naked eye vision can not return to the previous level, or even worse.

After taking off the glasses for a while, or doing some training, their naked eye vision becomes better again by adjusting to compensate. In their minds, they take it for granted that the degree of myopia has decreased, so they try to lower the degree of the glasses, and even think that as long as they repeat this process, they can completely take off the glasses and restore their naked eye vision to normal.

But this is actually a blur adaptation phenomenon. Simply put, the retina and visual center will gradually adapt to the blurred image to a certain extent, and the brain will improve its image processing capabilities, but in fact the degree does not change.

4. Others

Other cases include misplacing the wrong degree, misremembering the degree of one's left and right eyes, mixing up the degree of myopia and astigmatism, changes in the axis of astigmatism with age, and even forgetting to take off contact lenses and thinking that one's myopia has been cured the next day.

Mentioned in the article

Does the Bates Method work?

There is currently no evidence that such training is effective for improving vision.

The article says that William Bates was indeed an ophthalmologist, but in his "legendary" medical career, he made many remarks that seem ridiculous now. Even more than 100 years ago, his so-called treatment for myopia was questioned by other ophthalmologists. For example, he attributed all vision problems to the result of muscle tension, including strabismus, cataracts, glaucoma, etc. And he believed that looking directly at the sun every day could help restore vision, which seems outrageous now.

To this day, there is still no evidence to prove the effectiveness of Bates's myopia therapy. In the 1980s, Bates's therapy was defined as one of many pseudosciences in the West. An ophthalmologist offered a reward of $1,000 to collect cases of myopia cured by his therapy, but there has been no result so far. Bates's "Perfect Vision" published in the 1920s was also published at his own expense and was not recognized by the medical community. Based on the existing evidence, it can be considered that practicing the Bates training method is actually a waste of time.

Why do some people practice

Did vision improve after Bates therapy?

One of the reasons has actually been analyzed above, which is the illusion caused by fuzzy adaptation.

Another reason for the temporary improvement of vision is actually the tears on the cornea. The surface of the cornea is covered with a very thin layer of liquid, which is the tear film, and its thickness is about 6 to 10 microns. The maintenance of the tear film depends on our blinking action, and each blink is equivalent to repainting the cornea.

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The tear film is not only to keep the cornea and conjunctiva moist, it also plays another key role, which is to optimize the refractive properties of the cornea. The natural surface of the cornea is not completely smooth, and the presence of the tear film can smooth these tiny irregular areas, making the corneal surface neater and smoother.

When we stare at digital products such as computers and mobile phones for a long time and reduce blinking, the tear film will become thinner due to evaporation, which may cause blurred vision. In this case, blinking more often can help restore the tear film and make vision clear again.

One of the Bates therapies involves rubbing your palms together to warm them up and then covering your eyes. This is actually a hot compress for the eyes, which can heat up the oil in our meibomian glands and make it easier to discharge. The rich oil can make our tears more stable and avoid excessive evaporation. The blinking and rolling of the eyes that is promoted can also make the tears more evenly spread on the surface of the cornea.

However, the temporary vision clarity brought by this tear lens has no substantial effect on myopia itself. If you want eye comfort, disposable hot compress eye masks and preservative-free artificial tears are relatively more effective and hygienic.

in conclusion

Whether it is the “800-degree myopia reduced to 100-degree” advertised on the Internet or the various so-called “myopia treatments” advertised on the market, they are not credible, because true myopia cannot be cured by these methods.

There are many frauds on the Internet and in the market that claim to reduce or cure myopia. These scammers take advantage of people's reluctance to wear glasses and their desire to cure myopia, and promote so-called "miracle myopia reduction products" or treatments that do not require drugs or surgery. They often attract attention by making seemingly credible success stories, and then induce people to add WeChat, pay to join a community, or buy paid courses. The ultimate goal is nothing more than to defraud money.

Although these so-called myopia treatments may not seem to cost you a lot of money, they may waste your precious time. What's more serious is that some eye training methods have no scientific basis, not only are the effects not guaranteed, but they may also cause harm to people with high myopia.

For children and adolescents, adopting these ineffective training methods may miss the critical period of preventing and controlling the progression of myopia. Therefore, in the face of myopia problems, they should seek diagnosis and advice from professional ophthalmologists and follow scientific and effective treatment and management methods.

Planning｜He Tong

Editor-in-charge｜Liu Yantong (internship)

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