Great news! I’ve just completed my accreditation to dispense MiYoSmart lenses. Yes - I know that doesn’t mean anything to you right now so let me explain.
MiYoSmart are glasses lenses for Myopic children.
They are a new breed of lens for Myopia Control, also called Myopia Management.
Myopia, (also known as short sight), is becoming a major worldwide problem in our children. If you are short-sighted research shows that your children will most likely end up more short-sighted than you. It’s been worsened in 2020 by lockdowns and children’s school lessons moving to computers and tablets rather than in the classroom. It meant more screen time and less outdoor time, more about that later.
And why is it a problem? Well, Myopic eyes are at much greater risk of eye problems and Myopic eye disease in adulthood. I won’t go into all the problems of Myopic eye disease now but some of them are sight threatening. The problem is children do tend to grow and a short-sighted eye is a bit too long, so as a child grows so does the short-sightedness.
In the past we could only correct Myopia but new research and new technology means we can now help to treat myopia progression. We need to try to stop children's eyes from becoming more shortsighted as this has been shown to reduce the risk of myopic eye disease in adulthood.
Research has found that a 1D reduction in total myopia reduces the risk to that eye by 40%. That means if someone was going to end up as –5.00D, but Myopia control lenses help to reduce that to a final prescription of –4.00D that eye is at less risk of problems in adulthood.
The great news is that MiYoSmart lenses have shown to reduce progression on average by 60%, that is an average, so in some children the reduction will be more than 60% and in others it will be less.
There are other practical measures we can take to help. These don’t have as much effect as the Myopia Management treatments, but they are worth knowing about. Natural light helps to slow progression, so we need our children to be outdoors as much as possible. Prolonged close work, at a distance less than 30cm is a risk, so we need our children off those screens. A good rule of thumb for any screen time is the 30/30 concept - move the screen to more than 30 cm away, and after 30 minutes get off the screen and get outside!
If you want to understand a bit more about Myopia we have some more explanations here.
If you feel that your child may benefit from Myopia Management glasses then please do give us a call, it’s something that we’ll be talking more about in eye examinations with the parents of Myopic children.
