NPR Podcast
TED RADIO HOUR
The story behind soaring myopia among kids
*myopia 근시
Let’s get you a line to read.
*nearsighted 근시의
So Harmony has myopia. That means she’s nearsighted.
She can’t quite remember exactly when she first got diagnosed.
*onset 개시, 착수, 시작
*early-onset 조기 발견
As they learned, especially early-onset myopia can cause dangerous vision problems later in life.
*chalk up ~의 탓으로 하다
Bad eyesight used to just be chalked up to genetics.
What, though? 도대체 뭘까요?
*be at odds with ~에 상응하다, 반대하다
Our habits are at odds with what it takes to maintain healthy vision.
*elongating 길게 하다, 연장하다
Why our eyeballs are elongating, causing so many of us to go nearsighted.
spherical 천체의, 구면의
By gently reshaping her eyeballs back to the spherical shape they should be, these special lenses are correcting her eyesight.
How many hours would you say you had them in?
Do you ever forget to put your contacts in?
So I think my vision went from pretty blurry – couldn’t see distant objects – to really sharp.
They have a woman named Maria Liu to thank.
They help slow down the progression of myopia.
*scoff at 조롱하다, 비웃다
Maria’s colleagues at UC Berkeley originally scoffed at her plan to offer them.
They didn’t even believe that myopia control is a thing.
The World Health Organization warns that by 2030, 40% of the world’s population will be nearsighted. In the U.S. alone, myopia rates have soared over the past 50 years, from 25% in 1971 to nearly 42% in 2017. Many of these myopia cases are in children – who are going nearsighted at increasingly younger ages. In China, where they specifically track early onset myopia, over 80% of teens and young adults are now nearsighted.
There’s been a longstanding debate over why so many kids are going nearsighted – because bad eyesight used to be attributed solely to genetics. Now, experts agree that something else is going on, resulting from a shift in how children spend the majority of their time. Too little time outside. Too much time indoors, often staring at screens.
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The story behind soaring myopia among kids
In part three: host Manoush Zomorodi explores how our tech habits are causing our eyes to change shape—to elongate—which causes nearsightedness. She investigates why rates of myopia among kids are soaring. She speaks with Maria Liu, an optometrist with
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