Журнал клинической и экспериментальной офтальмологии
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Myopia and Culture

Luciano Iribarren, Rafael Iribarren

School myopia has developed along with modern Western culture. Recent research has confirmed old ideas that myopia development was related to reading habits. Both defocus and contrast issues of black letters under white background are probably related to the myopigenic effect of long periods of reading. Besides, the change from a rural life mainly outdoors, to living indoors with artificial lighting, is directly related to the industrial revolution and the continuous direction of modernization changes in urban lifestyle. Furthermore, research has shown that this lack of outdoor exposure also produces myopia in school children. Two hundred years ago myopia was not common, but now it arises as a pandemic that may pose a heavy burden of vision impairment in the next generation. The environment in which increasing number of children develop their eyes has changed dramatically, with compulsory education imposed all around the world in the late 20th century; visually unhealthy habits promoted by education in architecture conditions of windowless schools with artificial lights are probably the root of the recent myopia epidemics. This perspective reviews the main aspects of how modern Western culture has developed with an increased prevalence of myopia in Europeans and influenced changes in Inuit and Chinese in the last 60 years. After this analysis we propose possible educational changes from an intercultural point of view.