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The digital world has transformed our lives, but the effects of tech aren’t always positive for kids. By limiting your child’s screen time, you help your child to experience the many benefits. As a parent, you should be mindful of how much time your child spends on devices. You might be wondering, how can a parent help in preventing eye diseases in their children? Well, it all starts with limiting screen time. Here are several ways for you to do just that. 

Set Expectations

The first step to limiting your child’s screen time is to let them know what you expect. Set clear expectations early on, explaining why you are limiting their screen time and why it’s important for them to spend more time playing outside or reading books. If they have concerns or questions about limiting their screen time, listen and address them before setting the limit so that they understand why it is important to follow these rules. You can even make a deal with your child: if they spend 30 minutes doing something other than using screens, then they can watch TV or play video games for 30 minutes afterward (or whatever works best). However, don’t give in to demands—be consistent!

Set a Timer

Setting a timer is an effective way to limit your child’s screen time. Not only will it remind them when their allotted time is up, but it can also help them keep track of how much time they’ve spent on various activities as well. You can choose from several apps that are available for download onto your smartphone; or if you prefer, there are physical timers out there as well (like ones with bells). If using an app, simply select the length of time that you want your child to spend looking at screens and set the alarm accordingly. Once this is done, you can set up notifications to alert you every hour so that if anything goes wrong—or if any inappropriate material is being viewed—you’ll know about it right away.

Create a “Tech-Free” Zone in Your Home

You can create a “tech-free” zone in your home by choosing a room or space that is free of all screens and then putting them there. This could be your child’s bedroom, or it could be a quiet spot in the house where you can enjoy each other’s company without distractions. This will allow everyone to relax and disconnect from technology while they’re at home, which may help prevent screen time overload and overstimulation when using technology later on.

Lead by Example

The most effective way to control your child’s screen time is by monitoring your own usage as well. While it is important to set limits for your child, you need to be aware of how much time you are spending in front of a screen as well. Children will often mimic their parents, so if you want them to cut back on their own screen time, then it’s best for parents to do the same thing first.

Choose Treehouse Eyes For Better Vision

It’s important for your child to develop social skills and human interaction. You can’t do this if they’re glued to their screens. It also helps them learn how to manage their distractions, which is an important life skill that will help them get through things like school and work. For more information on non-invasive myopia treatments for children, contact us today. 

Given the rapid increase in childhood myopia being seen in the U.S., the American Academy of Ophthalmology and American Academy of Pediatrics recently updated their guidance on managing myopia in children. Both organizations now recommend children play outdoors more to delay the onset of myopia and support proactive treatment of myopic children to reduce the progression and eye disease risk associated with higher myopia later in life.

What is Myopia?

Myopia is a disease where the eye grows too long, resulting in blurry distance vision and increased risks of serious, sight-threatening eye diseases, such as glaucoma¹, cataract², or retinal eye diseases³. An estimated 1 in 3 children in the U.S. have myopia and the prevalence has grown dramatically over the last 30 years⁴. Research has shown lack of outdoor time for kids and more near work, like reading and time on screens, drive the massive increase we are seeing in myopia^5-7.

Myopia Progresses As Your Child Grows

Myopia generally begins in childhood and progresses throughout the school-age years, usually stabilizing into the late teens.

Because the eye grows in tandem with the body, it’s only natural that it stops elongating once the rest of the body stops growing in early adulthood. This also means there may be times in a child’s development where they experience growth spurts and suddenly require a higher prescription. There are ways to effectively treat myopia in order to prevent it from progressing as the child grows. Slowing myopia early on can make all the difference to your child’s eye health as they age.

Natural Sunlight Can Help

Myopia incidence is rising in kids. Less time spent outdoors and more time on near work such as reading and device use has led to higher instances of myopia. This is a global phenomenon that is most acute in developed countries, and current estimates state half the world’s population will be myopic by 2050. 

In fact, a recent study found that increased exposure to outdoor light reduces myopia development.

There Are Now Treatments for Myopia

There is hope for parents is there are several treatments now available that can slow or even stop the progression of myopia in children. These treatments, usually involving a customized contact lens or prescription eye drops, are proven to slow down the elongation of the eye so a child’s vision does not deteriorate as quickly. Parents should talk to their eye doctor about their child’s risk for myopia and if their child is a good candidate for treatment. 

Myopia (most often referred to as nearsightedness) affects about one in every three children in the United States and has become increasingly prevalent over the last 30 years.

Myopia is an eye disease that occurs when the eye grows too long—like the shape of a football.  This causes distant objects to appear blurry and increases the risk of serious, sight-threatening eye diseases in adulthood.

As a parent, you want what’s best for your child. By learning these 5 important facts, you may feel encouraged to do more for your child’s eye health and long-term vision—such as ensuring that they get their eyes checked on a regular basis and turning to myopia management to prevent the rapid progression of this disease.

The COVID-19 Pandemic Has Increased Myopia Prevalence In Children

The significant reduction in outdoor time during the pandemic combined with the surge in screen time has increased the incidence of myopia cases. According to a systematic review and meta-analysis published in Ophthalmic Research (2020), outdoor time helps slow down the change of axial length and reduce the risk of myopia.

Similar results were found in a previous study in Ophthalmology (2013) that investigated the association between myopia in children and adolescents, and the amount of time spent outdoors. The study analyzed over 10,000 children and adolescents aged 20 and under and concluded a substantial correlation between increased time spent outside and the prevalence of myopia. Each additional hour spent outside per week was linked to a 2% reduction in the risk of myopia.

Myopia Increases the Risk of Eye Disease

Those with high myopia and rapidly progressing myopia in childhood are more prone to developing ocular comorbidities or serious sight-threatening eye diseases later in life, such as:

• Glaucoma
• Macular degeneration
• Myopic Maculopathy
• Retinal detachment

Myopia is a Progressive Eye Disease

Myopia usually starts in childhood and progresses throughout a child’s school years, eventually stabilizing around ages 18-22.

Since the eye grows in sync with the rest of the body, it’s only natural that it ceases elongating in early adulthood when the rest of the body stops growing. This also means that a child’s growth spurts often coincide with a higher prescription. 

Fortunately, myopia can be efficiently treated in order to prevent it from worsening as the child grows. Slowing myopia early in life can make a significant difference in your child’s eye health in their present and future. 

Myopia Is An Epidemic 

Myopia is a global epidemic that continues to worsen, affecting close to 2 billion individuals worldwide.

If current trends hold, roughly half of the world’s population will be myopic by the year 2050, partly due to genetics and increasingly as a result of our society’s preference for staying indoors and spending more time on digital screens.

Myopia Can Be Treated

Myopia cannot be cured; however, its progression can be slowed or even halted.

The goal of myopia treatment, also known as myopia management or myopia control, is to reduce or halt the eye’s rapid growth. Effective myopia treatment entails more than simply correcting a child’s blurry vision with glasses; it’s meant to prevent a child’s vision from deteriorating and, thus lowering their risk of developing severe myopia-related eye diseases later in life. 

Give your child the tools they need to succeed! To schedule your child’s back-to-school eye exam, visit {PLEASE INSERT PRACTICE SCHEDULER HERE} or to see a list of all providers near you visit Treehouse Eyes today.

You’ve probably heard the term myopia before. But what exactly does myopia mean? Is it a disease? How should I cure or treat myopia? If I wear glasses, will it make my myopia even worse? This article covers everything you need to know about what it means to have myopia.

The Classic Definition of Myopia

Classically defined myopia is a vision condition where you will see objects up close much more clearly than objects you see far away. Another word to describe myopia is nearsightedness and these words are used interchangeably at times. Myopia happens when the eyeball is too long or if the front part of the eye called the cornea is too steep. The majority of the time, however, myopia occurs because the eyeball size, or the axial length, is too large. When this happens, a clear image doesn’t land far enough back onto the back of the eye called the retina.

Recent research shows that myopia affects more than 42% of the United States population. This number has been increasing every year at epidemic levels worldwide as we expect half of the world to have myopia by 2050. While many scientists initially believed that genetics were the primary cause for developing myopia, we now know that the environment in which we grow up can tremendously impact the level of myopia we have as adults. Increased digital device usage, lack of outdoor activity, and too much near work have been associated with developing high levels of myopia.

The Dangers of Having Myopia

There are different types of myopia as well. If a child develops myopia at a young age, we know that they are at higher risk to develop high myopia and even pathological levels of myopia. High levels of myopia can lead to an increased risk for diseases of the eye such as retinal detachments, glaucoma, and myopic maculopathy. Unfortunately, those diseases can all lead to permanent vision loss. These life-altering diseases are another layer of danger besides the obvious need for optical correction in glasses or contact lenses in order to see clearly.

When you have pathological or degenerative myopia, other signs can form on your eyes that your eye doctor needs to monitor over time. Lattice degeneration and lacquer cracks of the retina all show signs that the retina is under duress because the eyeball has grown excessively long. Ask your doctor about these signs and other ones such as a tilted optic nerve head disc and choroidal neovascularization that happen exponentially higher in cases of extremely high levels of myopia.

What are the Best Ways to Treat Myopia?

The best treatment is to first prevent myopia if possible. More research is being conducted in this area, but as a general rule, eye doctors are encouraging at least two hours of outdoor activity per day. More outdoor activities under natural sunlight have been associated with a lower risk of developing myopia in the first place. If your children have to do intense studying or reading, it is recommended to do as much reading as possible when the sun has set versus reading during the day. 

Regular checkups with your eye doctor to diagnose myopia as early as possible is also critical. By catching myopia at an early age, there can be many different types of interventions to prevent myopia from worsening. Myopia typically begins in school-aged children and can worsen until the leveling out usually in your mid-twenties.

As far as the visual component is concerned, usually, a pair of glasses or contact lenses are sufficient. Once the eyes have stopped growing, refractive surgery procedures can be employed as well. But keep in mind that simply correcting your vision will not stop your eyes from getting worse. The root cause of myopia, an eyeball that continues to grow excessively long during our youth, needs to be addressed.

Special pharmaceutical agents such as atropine have been shown to slow down the progression of myopia considerably. Special contacts such as orthokeratology lenses worn at night are effective as well. Even soft contact lenses and glasses designed with special optics different from the traditional pair of glasses can be effective to slow down the rate of myopic progression. 

Myopia Roundup

Regardless of your age or background, it is important to get educated about myopia because it is a widespread disease of the eye. Seeing your eye doctor or chart a proper course of action to prevent or treat myopia is incumbent on every parent in this new digital age. It is not just the digital age as well, results coming from studies of children after the COVID year of 2020 give strong evidence that the environment that COVID induced with social distancing may be causing the largest spike in myopia amongst children we’ve ever seen. Myopia is now viewed as a disease worth treating

Treehouse Eyes Can Help Prevent Myopia Progression

The good news is we help prevent or slow down myopia progression in kids—just like yours—so they can have their best shot at academic and social success! Above are four of the best ways we treat myopic progression once your child has been diagnosed with myopia. Orthokeratology involves reshaping the eye gently with a contact lens while sleeping. Atropine involves an eye drop that can signal the eye to grow a little slower. Custom soft multifocal lenses are worn during the day. And even specially designed glasses are on the horizon to improve the progression of myopia.

The Treehouse Eyes eye doctors use state-of-the-art equipment to develop a personalized treatment plan for your child. Our non-invasive treatments include customized contact lenses and special prescription eye drops. Moreover, data shows that our patent-pending Treehouse Vision System® treatment plan can decrease myopia progression by 78%. 

If you or your children have myopia and it is getting worse each year, this article is for you. We will be discussing the four best ways to treat your myopia so it no longer gets worse. Everything we discuss is based on solid science and research, double-masked clinical trials, and recommendations based on mountains of peer-reviewed data. Certainly, we’ve heard and researched other more holistic approaches, if they turn out to be effective, know that this is surely a growing field however and as things change you’ll certainly hear it from us first!

What is Myopia?

Before you can defeat your enemy, you need to know exactly what it is. Myopia is a disease of the eye that is usually the result of an eyeball that has grown too long. We call how long the eyeball is the ‘axial length’. When the axial length grows excessively long, your vision will suffer in direct correlation. So any treatment we discuss has to show efficacy in its ability to reduce axial length elongation compared to a control group. Other times, the cornea may be too steep which can also cause myopia. However, for the sake of this article, we will address the major cause of myopia which is the excessive axial length of the eye. As when we talk about managing myopia, we will be talking about ways that have shown clinical evidence in slowing down axial length growth.

Custom Orthokeratology or Overnight Contact Lenses

Orthokeratology involves using a specially designed contact lens to gently reshape the cornea. The lenses are worn only while sleeping and are removed upon awakening in the morning. There are other names for orthokeratology such as corneal reshaping treatment, gentle vision shaping system, and custom retainers. The technology works by gently flattening the curvature of the cornea to redirect light directly onto the retina. 

While initially created to help improve vision so that children and adults can see more clearly, studies have shown that the technology is extremely effective in reducing the rate of myopia progression. The theory is that light is focused in front of the retina in your peripheral vision. This effect changes the optical signals the eye receives to stimulate eye growth. Like all contact lenses, patients need to be diligent in handwashing and cleaning, and disinfecting the lenses for safe use. However, studies show that with proper hygiene this is an incredibly safe and effective treatment for treating children of almost any age.

Atropine

Atropine is a pharmaceutical agent that can be made into an eye drop. This eye drop has been used for many years to treat children with amblyopia, or sometimes called a ‘lazy eye’. It can be used to dilate the pupils of the eye and also used to treat uveitis as well. What we’ve learned as well is that the use of a diluted concentration of atropine can also slow down the speed of myopia progression. The mechanism of action is still little known, but we believe that it blocks certain signals of the eye to reduce the signal to grow longer. By slowing down the speed at which the axial length increases, this can directly impact the rate of myopic progression.

Custom Soft Multifocal Contact Lenses

More contact lenses are being designed and FDA approved to slow down myopic progression. The MiSight contact lens is an example that has been shown to slow down the rate of myopia by almost 60% compared to control groups. These lenses have different powers throughout the lens that optically focuses light in front of the peripheral retina. By designing these special powers, a patient can wear a simple contact lens during the day to treat both the vision problems associated with myopia as well as prevent the eye from growing too long.

Special Myopia Treating Eyeglasses

More glasses are coming out that can also redirect light in a similar fashion to orthokeratology and soft multifocal contact lenses. This is a particularly exciting alternative for patients who cannot tolerate contact lenses and are wary of putting pharmaceutical drugs into their children’s bodies. From large bifocal eyeglasses to lenses with specialized rings of power in them, lenses are becoming more and more advanced to prevent axial length elongation.

Treehouse Eyes Can Help Prevent Myopia Progression

The good news is we help prevent or slow down myopia progression in kids—just like yours—so they can have their best shot at academic and social success! Above are four of the best ways we treat myopic progression once your child has been diagnosed with myopia. Orthokeratology involves reshaping the eye gently with a contact lens while sleeping. Atropine involves an eye drop that can signal the eye to grow a little slower. Custom soft multifocal lenses are worn during the day. And even specially designed glasses are on the horizon to improve the progression of myopia.

The Treehouse Eyes eye doctors use state-of-the-art equipment to develop a personalized treatment plan for your child. Our non-invasive treatments include customized contact lenses and special prescription eye drops. Moreover, data shows that our patent-pending Treehouse Vision System® treatment plan can decrease myopia progression by 78%. 

Parents who are nearsighted often wonder what can be done to prevent their children from developing the same or similar conditions. 

While scientists haven’t yet found a way to guarantee that your child won’t develop myopia (often referred to as nearsightedness), there are things you can do to delay its onset and even prevent its progression. 

What is Myopia? 

Myopia is a progressive eye disease that causes the eye to grow longer than normal, altering its ability to correctly focus light onto the retina. 

This results in blurred distance vision that can make it difficult for children to learn efficiently in the classroom or take part in extracurricular activities. 

Myopia is often corrected with prescription glasses or contact lenses, but these methods simply correct the child’s vision while allowing the condition to worsen. 

Why is it Important to Delay or Slow Myopia Progression?

The worse your child’s myopia gets, the higher their chance of developing sight-threatening diseases like glaucoma, macular degeneration and retinal detachment later in life.

That’s why it’s important to try and keep your child’s lens prescription low and controlled using the methods listed below. If your child doesn’t yet have myopia, following the same protocol will help prevent myopia onset for as long as possible. 

Is it Possible To Prevent Myopia or Myopia Progression? 

While many children inherit myopia from their parents, there are also several environmental factors that can lead to the onset and progression of nearsightedness. By making some lifestyle changes, it may be possible to delay the onset of myopia and prevent its progression. 

Boost Daily Outdoor Time 

Research shows that children of myopic parents who spend a lot of time outdoors have lower rates of myopia than children who stay mostly indoors. 

A recent study published in Review of Optometry (2021) concluded that children should spend at least 2-3 hours per day engaged in outdoor activities to delay the onset of myopia, especially if a child has one myopic parent. 

Another study published in Ophthalmic Research (2020) confirms the protective effect of “sun time” against myopia onset. When observing the myopia rates of 6-12-year-olds, there were fewer new myopia cases in the group of children who spent between 11-15 hours outdoors per week, compared with children who didn’t. The researchers also found that the myopia progression rate was slower in the group of children who spent more time in the daylight. 

If you do add some extra outdoor time to your child’s daily routine, be sure to provide them with UV blocking sunglasses, sunscreen, a water bottle and other sun-safe gear. 

Limit Screen Time 

Screen time is thought to have a greater impact on a child’s vision than other near work like reading a book, for a few reasons. 

Children are exposed to digital screens at a younger age than other forms of near work, and they tend to use screens for longer intervals of time. Additionally, the working distance between a child’s eyes and a digital screen tends to be shorter than the distance between their eyes and a book or other object, to compensate for the small print size and images. 

An article published in Review of Myopia Management (2021) examines the results of several scientific studies that analyze the relationship between screen time and myopia. Two of these studies found that the risk of developing myopia was 8 times greater for children aged 5-15 who used a smartphone or video game for more than 2 hours a day, compared to children who have 0-2 hours of daily screen time. 

And while we don’t expect parents to ban all digital devices from their homes, it is advisable to set daily limits on digital device usage. 

Try to cap your child’s daily screen time at 2 hours. Children under the age of 2 should have as little screen time as possible. 

Encourage Frequent Breaks From Near Work

Any sort of near work, like reading and writing, puts a strain on your child’s eyes and can contribute to myopia onset and progression. 

One way to prevent myopia development in your child is to teach them to take breaks from visually demanding activities.

A 2008 study published in the journal of Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science found that the intensity of near work plays an important role in myopia development in schoolchildren. According to the study, the duration of uninterrupted near work seems to be more significant than the overall time spent engaged in close-distance activities. 

Regular Myopia Eye Exams 

Whether or not your young child or teen has myopia, yearly eye exams with your optometrist are crucial to keeping their vision healthy and clear. 

It’s important to note that vision screenings in school are not enough to detect most visual problems, and certainly not for preventing myopia. 

Tracking your child’s eyesight yearly will help determine the best treatment for preventing myopia onset and slowing or halting its progression. 

Treehouse Eyes Can Help Prevent Myopia Progression

The good news is we help prevent or slow down myopia progression in kids—just like yours—so they can have their best shot at academic and social success!

The Treehouse Eyes eye doctors use state-of-the-art equipment to develop a personalized treatment plan for your child. Our non-invasive treatments include customized contact lenses and special prescription eye drops. Moreover, data shows that our patent-pending Treehouse Vision System® treatment plan can decrease myopia progression by 78%.