Myopia (Vision Cycle)

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Hello;

Welcome to my blog, I hope you and your families are staying safe and adhering to the necessary protocols been put in place to combat the novel coronavirus pandemic. Today I would be taking look at what happens to vision during the lifetime of a myope. I hope this finds someone myopes out there so they can embrace or better still be ready for what comes next.

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Image by Lichdin of Pixabay

Introduction

Myopia is a refractive error which is fast gaining prevalence across the globe especially in the Eastern Worlds. According to an article by Ramamurthy (2015), myopia prevalence has increased significantly in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and Singapore over the past few decades. There are many factors which may be attributed to the development of myopia including genetic factors, environmental factors, lifestyle, mature and premature birth of children etc. However, that will not be our focus today.

A myope may have the same refractive error power from childhood to adulthood or may have the power increasing as they age. In situations where the change is drastic and within shorter intervals (progressive myopia), more probing may be done since such individuals may have other underlying conditions and causes which may pose as a threat to sight. Also myopes have a higher risk of acquiring glaucoma and funny enough there is also a good chance high myopes may be misdiagnosed for glaucoma due to the appearance of their fundus (the inner look of the eye).

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The Vision Cycle of a Myope

When we are born we naturally happen to be hyperopes and have a powerful accommodation system. As we grow our eyeball grows accordingly till the eye power is equivalent to the length of the eyeball, this ensures that image is properly placed in the eye. This is the ideal situation and the process is expected to come to an end by age 10-12. When the idea does not happen we end up with a refractive error either myopia, hyperopia or astigmatism.

A myopic child is a bad news because for ages below 10 if anything we expect hyperopia, which means they have to be corrected earlier in life lest they suffer from amblyopia. The myopic eye is mostly more powerful than the idea situation so these individuals have no problem with near work when they do not have their glasses on but have difficulty seeing at far, and their distant vision can be that bad, so bad some may not see very clearly 3 meters.

But there are some other goods to being a myope aside the more powerful eye. From the age of 40 years most people suffer from presbyopia where the accommodative ability of the eye which allows us to increase our eye power to see more clearly at near starts. At this age, all a myope may need to do to enable them see better with reading and other near work is to take off their glasses.

As they get older the myope may enjoy from a reduction in power of spectacle correction in addition to having good near vision. More research is still been conducted to find more solutions to refractive errors, but until the amazing breakthrough comes I hope you enjoy the life of a myope as best as you could.

Conclusion

Once again, thanks for reading and I hope you have a great week. Always report all ocular cases and emergencies to your optometrist and seek information from the right source.

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Thanks for reading, Special thanks to my mentors and supporters @mcsamm, @tj4real, @armandosodano, @delilhavores, @gentleshaid, @agmoore. For further reading;

Pan, CW; Ramamurthy, D; Saw, SM (January 2012). "Worldwide prevalence and risk factors for myopia". Ophthalmic & Physiological Optics.
Facts About Refractive Errors". NEI. October 2010. Archived from the original on 28 July 2016. Retrieved 30 July 2016.
https://www.aao.org/eye-health/diseases/myopia-nearsightedness



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