Kids Sight Improved Outdoors

SPENDING time out of the house may be enough to protect a kids eyesight, according to new research.

A review of a previous research has discovered that children who are short-sighted spend an average of 3.7 fewer hours a week outside compared with those who have normal vision or are long sighted.

"Theres no definitive evidence as to what causes short sightedness but people who do suffer tend to read a lot more and have higher academic achievement."

Myopia, which is the name given to people who see distinctly at short distance only, is hereditary and has also been linked to a host of factors including the amount of time spent focusing on near objects, for example when reading, and levels of physical activity.

The positive effect from being outdoors appeared to be independent from the amount of time kids spent reading or playing computer games, or to an increased amount of exercise, researchers said.

There's between 15 and 20 per cent of people who are short-sighted in Britain but the problem is extremley bad in parts of east Asia where as many as 80 per cent of the population is myopic.

One study comparing Chinese children living in different countries found that those in Australia had better vision on average than their peers in China and Singapore.The Australian group were found to have read as much and achieved the same results academically as those in other countries, but tended to spend more time outdoors.

The review of eight studies by Dr Justin Sherwin and Dr Anthony Khawaja, which was presented to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, covered 10,400 participants in total.

Dr Sherwin said "It could be caused by not enough UV radiation, but it could also be spending less time looking into the distance or not enough physical activity."

Prof Paul Foster, who supervised the project, said: "Theres no definitive evidence as to what causes short sightedness but people who do suffer tend to read a lot more and have higher academic achievement. We tend to assume it is because they are reading all the time. It might be something to do with relaxing the focusing mechanism in the eye and returning it to normal distance vision, and the wavelengths of light we are exposed to outside could also have an impact."