科学美国人60秒 SSS 眼睛也要休息

“So we’re inside, we’re in fake lighting 1, we’re not spending as much time outside in the context in which our visual system evolved.”

在室内，处在人造光中，由于我们的视觉系统在发育，所以我们不能在光下呆太长的时间。

Amanda Melin, assistant professor of anthropology 2 & archaeology 3 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 5 of myopia—nearsightedness—among young people.

Amanda Melin是卡尔加里大学人类学&考古学和医学遗传学的助理教授。年轻人长时间坐在昏暗的灯光下，盯着屏幕，会导致近视。

“The myopia epidemic is particularly strong in Asia and in urban Asian environments, where it is increasing to be upwards 6 of 90 percent of teenagers are myopes.”

在亚洲以及亚洲城市地区，近视现象特别严重，年青人近视率上升到了约90%。

Melin spoke 7 February 20th at a press briefing at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement 8 of Science in Boston.

在2月20日的波士顿举行的美国科学促进协会的新闻发布会年度会议上，Melin发表了上述言论。

“So to be sure there’s a genetic 4 component 9, 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.

毫无疑问，其中有遗传因素，我的父亲近视，我也近视。但是，我们越来越意识到，自己在长时间所处的环境，起着重要的作用。

“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.

在一项同期群研究中，一部分的学龄儿童每天有40分钟甚至更多的时间在户外，与未有户外时间的儿童相比，这些孩子患近视的几率要小23%-50%. 这就像剂量依赖，所以，你在户外的时间越长，那么，患近视的几率就越小。

“So the exact mechanisms 10 are not really known, so we really need a lot more research into this. But another major factor that’s being implicated 11 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.

确切的原理尚不知晓，所以，我们需要对此进行更多的研究。但是，与之相关的一个主要因素就是近距离工作，例如，花时间看电脑、看显微镜等等。即使我们离开自己的工作、离开所做的事情，也就会看手机，这也是近距离的活动。

“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.

当我们从事一些近距离的工作时，眼睛工作的负荷就会加大，因为，眼睛周围的肌肉就会调节瞳孔近距离对焦。但是当远望的时候，我们的眼睛则在放松，所以，可能这是部分原因。

“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.”

“当你在外面的时候，户外的自然光比户外的人造光的亮度级别要高，这可能也是一个重要的因素…..那么我们现在则需要想想办法让孩子们和年轻人多去户外活动了。”