In urban Asian areas myopia among teenagers is topping 90 percent—but foresight may be able to bring those numbers way down. 

在亚洲城市地区，青少年的近视率高达90％，但远眺可能会使这一数字下降。

撰文\播音：史蒂夫·米尔斯基（Steve Mirsky）

翻译：杨枭

审校：丁可含

“So we’re inside, we’re in fake lighting, we’re not spending as much time outside in the context in which our visual system evolved.”

“我们待在室内，我们长期置于人造光线中，我们没有尽可能地待在外面，而那里才是我们的视觉系统进化的地方。”

Amanda Melin, assistant professor of anthropology & archaeology and of medical genetics at the University of Calgary. And all that sitting inside in dim light staring at screens has led to an epidemic of myopia—nearsightedness—among young people.

阿曼达·梅林（Amanda Melin）是卡尔加里大学人类学与考古学和医学遗传学的助理教授。她告诉我们长期坐在昏暗的灯光中盯着屏幕，导致了许多年轻人近视。

“The myopia epidemic is particularly strong in Asia and in urban Asian environments, where it is increasing to be upwards of 90 percent of teenagers are myopes.”

“在亚洲和亚洲的城市地区近视尤为盛行，那里有90％的青少年都是近视。”

Melin spoke February 20th at a press briefing at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston. 

2月20日，在波士顿美国科学促进会年会的新闻发布会上梅林提出。

“So to be sure there’s a genetic component, my father had glasses I have glasses. But we’re increasingly realizing that the environments in which we’re spending our time are playing a major role.

“诚然，近视眼有一定的遗传因素，我父亲戴眼镜因而我也戴眼镜。但是我们逐渐意识到我们长期所处的环境所带来的影响。

“And so a cohort study where some school age children were given 40 minutes or more time outside, those children had a 23 to 50 percent less likely chance of developing myopia than students at schools who were not given that same amount of outdoor exposure. And it looks to be dosage dependent, so the longer time you spend outside the less chance you have of developing myopia.

“有一项支持这一结论的研究：相比没有室外活动，那些每天有超过40分钟待在室外的学生的近视率比同龄人低23~50%。而且这一结论似乎与时间长短有关，你待在外面时间越久，你患近视概率越小。

“So the exact mechanisms are not really known, so we really need a lot more research into this. But another major factor that’s being implicated is near-work activities, so spending our time looking at computers, into microscopes, these things. And then as soon as we leave our work, what are we doing, we’re on our mobile devices, that’s also a very close activity.

“其中确切的机制我们还不了解，因此我们确实需要深入研究这个问题。但是另一个主要影响因素是近距离的用眼活动，我们很多时间都在看电脑、显微镜这些东西。一旦停止工作我们则专注于移动设备，那又是一个非常近距离用眼的活动。

“When we’re engaged in near-focus tasks our eyes are actually working really hard, because the muscles have to accommodate the lens to focus that close. When we look off into a distance that’s when our eyes are relaxing, so there could be something with that as well.

“当我们从事近距离工作时我们的眼睛也在努力工作，因为我们的肌肉必须调节晶状体才能聚焦近距离视野。而当我们看远一些时，我们的眼睛就也会随之放松，因而远眺确实对缓解近视有所帮助。

“When you’re outside, the ambient light is…orders of magnitude brighter outside in outdoor lighting environments, so that probably has a very important role…we need to think about perhaps policies in place to get kids and young adults outside a bit more.”

“当你在户外时，周围的光会有更高的量级，这或许会起到一定作用……我们需要想些政策来让更多的孩子和年轻人多待在外面。”