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Comment by krapht | Hacker News Reader

Afaik research shows this is the result of increasingly less time spent outdoors in the presence of intense light.

Going forward I think more intense indoor lighting is probably the solution, since the burden of study and education is only going to increase going forward.

Or, biomedical engineers make a major breakthrough in the performance of synthetic eyeballs, which I actually think is probably pretty likely by 2050. I'm totally ready for eagle-vision and being able to see more colors of light.

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If the synthetic eyeballs don't arrive, I wonder if by 2050 we'll have more options for correcting myopia. Right now we basically have 4 options, and they're all imperfect:

1. Suspend a lens in front of the eye (glasses). Drawbacks: condensation, not good in rain / water sports / contact sports, aesthetics

2. Stick a lens to the cornea (contacts). Drawbacks: risk of infection, not comfortable for everyone, hassle of daily removal / cleaning. Deprives the cornea of oxygen slightly

3. Remove some of the cornea with a laser (LASIK/PRK). Drawbacks: Can be inexact, not everyone gets perfect vision. Risk of side effects like haloes at night or chronic dry eyes. Risk of flap dislocation injuries in the future. The cornea may be permanently weakened.

4. Put a lens implant inside the eye. This one seems to be less common, but it's used for people with high myopia whose corneas are too thin for LASIK. Drawbacks: risky operation, risk of infection and complications.

(5.) There's also Ortho-K, where you wear a set of hard contact lenses at night which temporarily reshape your cornea, and give you temporarily improved vision. However it doesn't seem very popular these days, and I think it only works for low prescriptions.

I wonder if some new ways of attacking the problem will emerge. Like a semi-permanent contact lens glued to your eyeball?

The other issue with lenses implants is that it's hard to give them adaptive focus; you both need a nice flexible material and attachment points for eye muscles. It's doable, just currently quite expensive and not quite at the performance levels of the original product.

I could be wrong, but I think the implants used to correct myopia are normally fixed-focus, and sit in front of the eye's natural lens rather then replacing it, so you don't lose the natural ability to focus close up (accommodation).

However you're right, there are now accommodating lens implants which could correct myopia and presbyopia simultaneously, or be used for people who've had their lens removed due to cataracts. It will be pretty exciting to see how they develop.

http://www.londoneyehospital.com/treatments-services/synchro...

You're correct about the ones that correct myopia, but there are eye problems that make the lens a total loss - most prominently, cataracts. In these cases the current approach is a lens replacement: the old lens is completely burned out by laser and a new one implanted in its place. It's actually a really cool laproscopic procedure - the lens is flexible and is inserted rolled up, unfurls on its own, and then has its position adjusted by the surgeon.

In my dad's case, because an accommodating implant was still impractical, he ended up with one eye permanently focused at infinity and one focused about about 4-5 feet. Which works surprisingly well, because the brain is really good at image processing, but still.

There is this guy: https://youtube.com/watch?v=x5Efg42-Qn0

I've started practicing the blury print reading technique a week ago.

This has my bullshit detector ringing loud and clear, sorry.

No need to apologize, what specifically is triggering the detector?

As for myself, I'm spending a lot of time in front of a monitor, and I don't see a downside of trying out the technique.

When I was a kid I HATED being short-sighted, and I got into reading about the Bates method and other "natural vision improvement" techniques. I tried all the exercises, read all the books. I just eventually realised that these people are full of crap. At best they're deluded, at worst they are genuinely evil.

Why don't these people submit their techniques to a proper trial? Take a cohort of myopic people, have their prescriptions verified by an optometrist, then re-measure their vision at monthly intervals while you teach them your exercises. Why wouldn't you do this? If you could prove it you'd be made for life, you could travel the world teaching your technique. You'd be the person who cured myopia!

Yet, like most 'alternative medicine' advocates, they always find a way to dodge any kind of rigorous test.

No downside? Well maybe not, apart from the wasted time.

The author of the talk cites this study in support of his method of defocusing or 'print pushing' : http://iovs.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2126435 Small sample (N=28), but highly significant (p<0.0001) change in optical axial length.

It also seems he is not selling anything to cure myopia (books, glasses, courses..). The technique is just 'read from a position in which the letters are a bit blurry'.

Though, his site does look alternativish.

6. modify the shape of the eyeball so that the image is formed on the retina. You can already do this if you squeeze your eyes...

I've noticed an improvement in my vision if I pull outwards on the skin next to my eyes, which I think is the effect you're talking about. I don't know how you could make it permanent though.

you can also push. You could put a band around your eyeballs just like they do on the stomach, to help patient loose weight.

It would be an inconvenience to see radio waves, but boy would it be an interesting experience.

I'm not sure how inconvenient it would be. Cell towers would look like street light posts, people would be carrying around little flashlights in their pockets all the time.

Except you can close the blinds and keep the street lights out of your bedroom, well, to some extent at least. Though I suppose with synthetic eyes you'd be able to select which wavelengths you saw.

Except too many things would be transparent to that wavelength to use it as a nightlight. The light cell towers use would make floors and walls pretty close to transparent, for example.

Similar: there are lots of stories of implanting magnets under the fingertips, to 'feel' magnetic fields.

I have one. Ring finger of the left hand. It's mostly useful for rapidly-changing magnetic fields and strong static fields, so I can feel things like:

- the transformer in my laptop charger

- the electric motors in laptop fans and my hair clippers

- the closure magnets on my laptop

- the magnet in Arc mice that holds the dongle on

- the cyclotron in microwave ovens

Why'd you get it? Do you enjoy it? Is it interesting to you still? Are there any risks?

I got it because it seemed like it'd be an interesting experience, and it has been. It's still interesting, but not as much as it was, and I've been beginning to think about removing it; if it ever becomes a problem for any reason, I wouldn't hesitate to do so.

It's not a hugely risky thing. My biggest concern is/was the bioproofing on the magnet becoming damaged.

What do they say at airport security with magnetic metal under your fingertips?

I haven't been through airport security yet, haha.

And lots of horror stories about trying to get them back out when they shatter or start dissolving.

I'd (unseriously) love to do that but it must wipe every credit card, usb key and hard drive you touch...

I actually have one of those (ring finger of my left hand), and I have had zero problems with magstripe cards and hard drives. Also, USB keys aren't really sensitive to magnets.

What happens if you need an MRI?

It quickly comes out and sticks to the MRI machine.

It might come out, but then go back in and out a few times before sticking. Survival would be path-dependent.

Worst case, you tell a doctor beforehand, and they remove it with a swipe or two of a scalpel. These things are usually put in by a professional body piercer with a scalpel and no anesthetic; it's not like they're deep in the flesh or anchored to anything.

Some FLASH technologies- the ones that use tunneling diodes - are sensitive to magnetic fields when operating.

Obviously to larger ones if they are used in USB key format, since the key can go through all kind of magnetic fields while in your desktop, pockets or handbag.

I think this mainly affects writing.

True story - I was working on an embedded project. I measured the temperature of the device using a pocket IR thermometer. I noted that it was a bit warm, so a small electric desk fan ( the kind with the square flat pancake induction motor ) was pointed at it - fairly closely.

I ran a FLASH write test and it stopped working altogether. We unplugged that fan to set up an oscilloscope and presto! it worked again.

Have you ever taken a hard drive apart? The have a big, strong, magnet very close to the platters.

It's unlikely the magnet in a finger would do anything to a hard drive.

USB keys have never been sensitive to magnets, and platter drives are heavily shielded to keep the magnet inside from screwing with stuff on the outside. Credit cards are vulnerable in theory, but I've accidentally carried a wad of Buckyball neodymium magnets in my pocket next to my wallet for several hours with no ill effects; briefly touching the card with a tiny finger magnet is unlikely to do much.

Faraday gloves, to mask your superpowers?

Wouldn't they get very hot in the presence of a strong, rapidly varying magnetic field?

Would they? And even if so -- what does it matter? How many incredibly strong rapidly varying magnetic fields do you come across in your daily life?

Or maybe, you know, spend more time outdoors in the presence of intense light?

Which also has other benefits like getting more Vitamin D and lowering stress, anger, anxiety, depression, etc. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_bathing

Quite hard in northern countries. Canada, Norway, etc. have huge numbers of SAD-sufferers, because there just isn't enough light, even outdoors.

Seasonal Affective Disorder might be a myth: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2016/02/09/seasonal-a...

The crux of that article's argument is that they fail to find any correlation between latitude/light-exposure and depression. But Seasonal Affective Disorder—although frequently defined in terms of feeling "depressed"—is not defined as a kind of clinical depression: its symptoms do not heavily overlap with the clinical-depression symptoms they were looking for.

I Am Not A Neurologist, but my understanding from reading various journal articles is that the photosensitive ganglion cells in the retina (the ones that detect mostly blue light and are known to calibrate circadian rhythm) do what they do by stimulating dopamine release when their activation potential is reached.

Presuming that this production of dopamine due to direct-light stimulation is relied upon by developmental processes, then this can explain nearsightedness; without direct light, children produce too little dopamine, and so their eye muscles are left slightly more "slack", allowing the eye to grow in a deformed shape.

Presuming also that this conditional production of dopamine continues to be relied upon to hold to some average level even after development, then "SAD" would be, effectively, an environmentally-induced Attention-Deficit Disorder, and not any kind of "depression" at all. (Note that people with undiagnosed ADHD almost always first assume that what they have is depression. "My life is crappy and it makes me want to disengage from it" is very easy to confuse with "I lack the motivation to improve things, so I let them turn to crap instead.")

I would bet that if they looked for a correlation between those—light-exposure and ADHD symptoms—they'd find something much more interesting.

If that's the reason, it wouldn't be a new problem. I live in Minnesota: sure, days are shorter in winter, but it's not like it's 3 hours of daylight year round.

By European standards, Minnesota is rather south. The southmost parts are on the same level as Tuscany, Italy. The northmost parts of Minnesota are on the level of Paris. When you live in Nordics, days during winter or late autumn (without snow!) can feel really dark.

Have they defined intense light? Most of winter it might be hard to come by.

I believe it is ~10,000 lux, or direct sunlight.

>synthetic eyeballs, which I actually think is probably pretty likely by 2050:

How about 2019? http://www.phuturama.de/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Artificia... http://s120.photobucket.com/user/cinquevolte/media/Blade%20R...

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