The Cycling of Wrecking Eyes

Ever feel like everything is connected and run by a higher power. I’m not talking about religion, I’m talking about where you have the illusion of control but are a slave to a system. You think it’s just circumstances that pulled you in, but in reality the system runs you... Yeah me too. Sounds kind of like the illuminati, but I’m really talking about myopia.

Everything about people having to wear lens, nearsightedness and optometry all seems to fit together. It is a system, that has captured everybody. It's a cycle, and the cycle keeps on going and it keeps trapping new people. Everyone thinks that it was just their personal choices that lead them to glasses, but the discussion is a-lot bigger than you think. Some of the different aspects of society that we have accepted today are also to blame for the staggering rise of myopia You might as well call myopia a well-oiled machine.

Like every cycle though, it has to start somewhere. The start is in the causes of myopia.

Hopeful you already understand that the actual cause of myopia is a lot of nearwork. If not you might want to check out the four day crash course we offer. But, looking at it from a different angle. Technically, you wouldn’t do all that nearwork if you didn’t have to… What the heck am I talking about? As a society, we’re all just brainwashed. We just want to follow along to do what everybody else is doing. Everyone is using smartphones today, staring at their glowing screens wherever they go, so we just want to tag along. Living in society is a double-edged sword (I know it sounds cliche). Living in a society of humans you get benefits that you wouldn’t get by going solo. But, that also means you are exposed to the same problems together.

By no means, am I telling you to f**k society, and go chill by yourself in the middle of the amazon. Humans tend to follow other humans, it's a survival instinct. It helped our ancestors stay alive; By following each other, you were less likely to die than if you were solo. Although things aren’t as harsh today, we don't have to worry about dying as often, the instinct still stays. We like to create systems for the way things work, and stay on the same page.

But it's these systems that end up creating common problems. Namely the tendency for nearwork, Society is filled with impulses to do near work that causes myopia. This goes from having jobs that require a lot of screen time, to smartphones that everyone uses until their phone or their eyes die to school. It helps when the general population is educated, but when the general population is also nearsighted because they all were forced to read, and work until their eyes screamed sleep, that's a problem.

1) Schools

One end of the cycle starts at schools, where nearsightedness is churned out like butter. Out of all age groups, school children are the most susceptible to developing myopia. Who would have guessed nearsightedness could be correlated with education and the stacks of books, and homework forced upon kids today. {emoji} Just a simple internet search for “myopia and education,” gives an astounding number of studies. As a matter of fact, myopia for younger school children develops in a different physiological way from adult myopia. I won’t go into the complicated science, but if you’re interested check out this article here:

2) Society

Another end of the cycle is in the society outside schools. When kids go home after school today, chances are they are going to hop on their tablets, phones, or TVs. Society gives us impulses for nearwork, and technology is only growing and growing. Go back a handful of years and everyone didn’t have smartphone. The first iPhone was launched in 2007, which was much after the explosion in popularity of the internet. But since then we have all been glued to our screens, and social media makes it worse. As innovations progress, so does out myopia. Yea, its a good thing to stay connected with the rest of the world. But you know what else comes out of it? Hours and hours of screen time and more eyes delivered to the optometrists.

3) Optometrists

The next piece of the puzzle are the optometrists. The same guys that charge a boatload for eye exams and then charge for glasses from a separate department. The optometrists don’t really cause myopia, but they fester it and keep the cycle moving along.

The western culture for them has been to solve the disease not the person. In other words, give out glasses like crazy. Society and the schools deliver myopic people to eye doctors, and they deliver you to the glasses companies. The problem is Myopia is reversible. By prescribing you glasses, they aren’t solving the problem, and kind of only making it worse. Glasses are only a temporary solution.

The only alternative option given to glasses is lasik or similar eye surgery. These surgeries permanently reshape the eye, which is a permanent artificial solution. You can’t reverse a lasik surgery, and if you develop myopia again after surgery your option to do it all over again.

Optometry has become a money-making scheme. It makes for a killer business plan. Optometry just fits perfectly within society and just keeps making money as society and schools keep doing what they are doing. The number of nearsighted people are only going to increase, and the vast majority of them are going to pay a visit to the local optometrists to not get their problem solves. The eye center just have to sit back and prescribe glasses.

4) Industry

The last part of the cycle are lens and glasses companies. Believe it or not, they likely profit more than the eye centers, The companies are the last element needed that make this cycle strong; they give myopia and glasses a strong foot in society economically, and socially through ads and social acceptance. The glasses industry feeds the eye doctors, and keeps the mentality of solving the disease, not the person alive.