This text accompanies the YouTube video 3 on the @EthicalOptician channel I have set up to provide advice and information, to help you get better eyecare and eyewear. (Link: https://youtu.be/meo9ct3RYCw?feature=shared)

There is a myopia epidemic across the world. In late 2019, the World Health Organization released its first ever World Report on Vision, “It recognised that myopia is increasing globally at an alarming rate, with nearly five billion people or 50% of the world’s population predicted to be affected by the condition by the year 2050, including 10% with high myopia.

Increased levels of myopia are not just inconvenient for the person who is experiencing it, but also as myopia goes up your risk of a whole range of eye health issues go up. As millions of people around the world become myopic the global health burden is massively increased. The World Health Organisation are rightly very concerned about this and this has led to a boom in research into myopia control: i.e.Is there anything we can do to stop myopia going up and up? Spoiler alert there is(!) and lots of optometrists, like myself, do myopia control - which means we have children who usually have a history of myopia in the family and start becoming myopic themselves and we get them special contact lenses and glasses to try and keep the prescription down. We're having some real success with that and all the global research shows it works too.

If you are a myopic parent and your child starts to struggle to see the board and it is determined that they are short-sighted and need glasses for their myopia, then you should be told about myopia control now. There's no excuse for you not being told and if your optometrist doesn't tell you they should have told you. As well as special kinds of contact lens and glasses they can give you some advice around lifestyle for example there is some strong research evidence that shows that time spent outside is good at helping reduce the speed of development of myopia, so a couple of hours outside day is a good thing, not just for the eyes obviously.

Myopia means that your eye brings images into focus in front of the retina and therefore when the image is processed it is blurred - myopic eyes are relatively longer in length. This is particularly an issue for distance tasks, but depending on the degree of myopia/levels of astigmatism it can be an issue all distances  (like your computer), therefore making the term short-sighted rather ambiguous/unhelpful.

When people become myopic, most commonly as a child, it can be upsetting. Some children don't want to wear glasses or are worried about it and, of course it's the same for their parents too. I vividly remember being told I needed glasses at the age of 15 and being quite unhappy about it and my prescription started around minus 0.75 /  minus 1.00 and now it is over minus 4.00. My prescription is not a big inconvenience at that level, but I am, as a consequence, at risk of a whole variety of high health conditions, for example retinal detachment, due to this prescription and if anything could have been done to reduce it I would have really welcomed it.

It's an interesting side point, but if you decide to have surgery to reduce your myopia you (laser surgery or lens replacement) then this does not decrease the risk of myopia associated eye health issues. You're still a myopic person really, even though you've had your cornea reshaped (that's the clear bit of the front) to reduce the prescription, you're still at risk of the eye health conditions as if you still have the long eye that you had before the surgery. So if you do have surgery make sure you keep up with the regular examinations to keep an eye on those things.

Why is there an epidemic of myopia? Well there was always thought to be a genetic component to myopia development, but in recent times we have found there is a strong environmental component and reduced time outside and therefore time inside (doing close work) seems to have really driven up levels of myopia. 

Parents obviously worry about kids being on screens too much and the way I think about this, is that time outside is the positive thing you need to talk about to them and encourage. The reality is that it's very difficult for young people to avoid times on screens through education, but if they are outside doing something enjoyable that’s got to be a win-win situation.

So, to summarise there is a myopia epidemic and millions more people around the world are becoming short-sighted. While there's a degree of convenience about being short-sighted and there is the cost of glasses and contact lenses, the main issue is that as you become more myopic you're a greater risk of the whole variety of eye health conditions - therefore we are now trying to look to control myopia through the use of some lifestyle changes specifically two hours a day outside for young people and also the use of special myopia control spectacle lenses and contact lenses. If your optometrist has not spoken to you about these things and you have a child that is at risk or has started to wear in glasses because they're myopic. then you need to ask your optometrist or change optometrist!

Link to my attempt to explain/demo myopia https://youtu.be/JQRqlQY2_zM

Hello and welcome to the first blog post accompanying my YouTube channel -  The Ethical Optician: advice information to help you get better eyecare and eyewear. 

Today I'm going to talk about glare particularly in reference to night driving, but its obviously relevant to pedestrians out on the street or people on bikes etc. 

When people talk about glare everyone gets very obsessed about car headlights, particularly modern car headlights. People say “they're too bright” and  “they're not properly aligned” and I agree, there is an issue with modern car headlights -  the designers of cars seem to be thinking about the driver rather than the whole road environment. But, in our experience a lot of night driving glare is made a lot worse because people are not wearing the correct spectacles for driving when they drive. Now that's either because they haven't had an eye test to see if specs would help or they  do not wear that they have been advised to wear. 

We often hear the excuse among lines “oh, I don't need glasses for short journey because I know I'm going I don't need to see the signs” -  which I tend to respond, “yeah and what about spotting whether the child is going to cross the road or whether that's cyclist is going to to come around that parked car” or something like that. 

So, the advice here is that if you find yourself complaining about glare at night, the first thing you need to do is book an eye examination because we need determine whether it's a health problem with your eye particularly in the clear media of the eye. What do I mean by the clear media? I mean the cornea and the lens which are both supposed to be clear but if they're not clear then any haze will cause glare glare/dazzle - not just at night, but in low sunlight. 

The most common thing we think about in terms of disturbance to the media is cataract (a future vieo will come on those) but, for example if your eyes drying out your cornea will not be as clear too. We need to work out whether there is a health and then after that we can then look at whether there is an prescription. We find that some people say “oh, well I don't need to wear them, I pass the number plate test”. We say that’s all very well, but the legal limit is really not that stringent. 

I tend to advise that if you don't wear your specs for driving and you have an incident, then the least worse outcome is that you would feel bad that you weren't wearing them knowing that your vision was better wearing them. Worse outcomes are deaths and serious injuries. 

To summarise: if you find yourself complaining about glare, first of all take responsibility for yourself and make sure your eyes are healthy, make sure that if you there is a prescription that makes your vision at all clearer in the distance that you wear them whenever you drive. That will mean you're doing everything yourself to minimise glare. Yes you need an ranti-eflection coating on your lenses yes you need to keep your lenses and windscreen clean etc etc, but do everything you can first before putting it  all on car designers - who as I said at the beginning do have something to think about.

I have set up a YouTube Channel to provide advice and information - to help people access better eyewear and eyecare. I am going to try and do short videos on common issues that come up and try to provide tips and help.

Like many people, I feel a bit self-conscious about being on camera - when did I go grey, put on 5kg etc - but, will try not to let that put me off.

We have a lot of ideas of what to cover, but let me know if you have ideas. Each one will have an acoompnaying blog post on here.

Here is the link to the channel https://www.youtube.com/@EthicalOptician/videos