Recently, the news about "civil aviation recruitment pilots relaxed vision requirements" has become the focus of public opinion. However, behind this news reflects the reality of China as a "myopic country".

Why is the rate of Chinese teenagers wearing cheap eyeglasses near me so high? What factors induce myopia? How to prevent myopia effectively?

Children are becoming short-sighted as young as three years old

Recently, some media quoted a World Health Organization research report that the number of myopia patients in China is as high as 600 million, almost half of the total population of China.

Among them, the myopia rate of high school and college students in China has exceeded 70% and is increasing year by year, the myopia rate of teenagers ranks first in the world, and the myopia rate of primary school students is close to 40%. By comparison, only 10 percent of elementary and middle school students in the United States are nearsighted.

According to the "National Health Vision Report" released by Peking University in 2015, if there is no effective intervention, by 2020, the prevalence of myopia in China's population over the age of 5 will increase to about 51%, the number of sick people will reach 700 million, and the number of people with high myopia will reach about 40-51.5 million.

For the high incidence of myopia, eye experts in recent years also have personal experience.

Fu Jing, director of the ophthalmology department of Beijing Tongren Hospital Affiliated to Capital Medical University, told reporters that from the experience of receiving treatment in recent years, the incidence of myopia is getting higher and higher, the age of onset of children is getting younger and younger, and many children have a high degree when they first come to the hospital for examination, and some children have myopia at the age of three or four.

Wu Xi, chief ophthalmologist at Peking University People's Hospital, feels the same way. She told reporters that patients received 20 years ago were amblyopia and strabismus, myopia accounted for a relatively small proportion, and the age of onset of myopia is generally above the fourth grade. However, with the change of The Times, the popularity of electronic products, the incidence of myopia is getting higher and higher, and now 70% of the summer clinic is children with refractive errors, most of which are myopia problems, and some children are found in the kindergarten inspection.

"In the past, we thought the incidence of myopia among rural children was lower than that of urban children, but now with the popularization of electronic devices, the incidence of myopia among rural children is also on the rise." What is more worrying is that it was previously thought that the genetic factors of myopia are not mainstream, but if more and more children become nearsighted, genetic factors and genes may change in the future, and the quality of the whole nation may be affected, Wu said.