Making Kids Play Outside May Cut Their Risk Of Nearsightedness

Future studies will include information about what type of outdoor activities are more beneficial and also by continuing this study they will be monitoring the long term effect that the 3 years of outdoor activities had on the progression of myopia.

In contrast, the kids who spent more time inside had more chances of myopia or nearsightedness. In some parts of China, 90% of high school graduates are nearsighted.

The researchers found that the cumulative incidence rate of myopia at three years was lower in the intervention group (30.4 percent) than in the control group (39.5 percent; 95 percent confidence interval [CI], -14.1 to -4.1 percent; P 0.001). “A delay in the onset of myopia in young children, who tend to have a higher rate of progression, could provide disproportionate long-term eye-health benefit”, the research claims.

Researchers examined six intervention schools with a total of 952 students and six control schools (951 students) from grades one to 12 in Guangzhou, China.

To conduct the investigation, the researchers chose children whose average age was 7 years old and asked them to attend one additional 40-minute class of outdoor activities during each school day for three years.

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The Chinese study explored the premise of indoor activities adding to the factors of acquiring myopia, especially in childhood. These schools were assigned randomly to either the control group or the intervention group. Children diagnosed with myopia at an early age are more likely to experience progressive vision loss throughout their lives.

Dr Mingguang He, of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China, said increasing time spent outdoors was linked with a 9.1 per cent reduction in the incidence rate of myopia, the number of new cases per population at risk in a given time period.

“Given the favored attraction of elevated outside actions to enhance the well being of school-aged youngsters generally, the potential advantage of slowing myopia improvement and development by those self same actions is troublesome to disregard”, Dr. Michael X. Repka, a pediatric ophthalmologist on the Johns Hopkins College Faculty of Drugs, Baltimore, who was not concerned within the research, wrote in an editorial accompanying the research within the journal. The results showed that only 30% of the children who played outdoors developed shortsightedness, whereas 40% of the group with shorter breaks and very little outdoor activities developed the eye condition.

“Further studies are needed to assess long-term follow-up of these children and whether they can be applied to other children”.

Dr. Rekpa adds that “the intervention is essentially free” and may have other health benefits, but warns against prescribing such activities specifically to improve eyesight, as “the effect is likely to be small, and the durability uncertain”.