Is it now known that light is the primary mechanism?
It's crazy that we still don't know for certain. Being outdoors also often means just looking at things that are further away as well as more eye movement.
Yeah, IIRC, it was in Taiwan or maybe Singapore that they started to see a reverse in the myopia trend in nothing less than one year after having mandated full days outside in school.
I spent the majority of my life outdoors until my mid 20’s and have quite bad myopia. So perhaps helpful at a population level, but not a magic fix for everyone.
That’s effectively what the documentary I saw concluded (it was a French documentary).
There is a big part of genetics to start with but the impact of the environment is so big that it can make the difference between no correction needed at all up until unmanageable myopia.
Of course you can have a genetic baseline that makes you even more at risk and sensitive but it seems that’s pretty rare overall.
Also I’m curious of what you call quite bad myopia. As an example, my myopia is currently around -7 or -8 and to my surprise, I’m the only one being myopic in my whole family tree. Even my son have a perfect vision.
And it’s true that when I was young, I wasn’t frequently outside and even more rarely in wide open areas.
quite bad might be an exaggeration. Im now at -7.00 in both. I more meant bad in that it’s not something that’s going to be corrected or reversed to any meaningful extent beyond corrective lenses.
In my case though I have glasses, as does my mum, grandmother and both aunts. Clearly a genetic lottery winning family.