Can myopia increase without ciliary muscle spasm?

Questions and answers
#1

Is ciliary muscle spasm needed to induce myopia? I don’t have time to do active focus in this pandemic time and I planned to start doing it next year, my plan was to manage my myopia so it doesn’t increase and to my surprise it does. I don’t have differential so what I did was trying to never enter ciliary muscle spasm at the first place, whenever I use my phone I always look at distance every few minutes or so to prevent ciliary muscle lock.

I have two hyphotesis about this, one is I enter ciliary muscle spasm without me knowing because I don’t always look away very frequently, second explanation is myopia can increase without ciliary muscle spasm first? I’m not sure

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#2

Perhaps, at least in children. The lens remains thin while the eye elongates.

Prepare that no one would give you a definite answer, so might be worth moving this to Science category.

#3

If you read Otis Brown he makes a good case for the eye continually adjusting to the average environment it’s been in at a rate of up to 1 D per year. So if you’re spending all your time indoors looking at screens or walls even without ciliary spasm you may start drifting myopic. If you wanted to try his method next time you’re locked up for a year you could try wearing +1.25 to 2.5+ D over your prescription to try to maintain a “distance” environment.

So the answer to your question is probably yes. Even if you have no ciliary spasm if you’re trapped in a small room where anything you look at is only one meter away, your healthy eye will be continually accommodating to -1 D, and that may trigger the “adjust the eyeball longer system”. Supposedly this is a common occurrence in people who work in missile silos, submarines, and other confined environments.

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#4

Do you wear full corrections close up, too? or your myopia is so low that you don’t wear corrections at all when working close up?

Bad news but your myopia hasn’t signed an agreement with you to trade off “no phone screen time” to “offsetting phone time by looking away for a few minutes”

agree

How about getting differentials (or wearing no corrections if that equals differentials for you) and setting the screen as far away as sustainable, and moving all phone time to a larger screen (no e-mails, news, sports results, FB, insta, movie, youtube, etc on the phone. Apps for chatting can also move to a larger screen). Also try to achieve that there are 2 or 3 hours every day when you are not checking your phone at all - it will ring when you are actually needed via the phone but for checking updates use a bigger screen. Also make sure you have good lights around you. These don’t require time, just a bit of effort, a bit of awareness. And should already stop myopia progression.
When you are ready to reduce, too, then you can introduce AF for distance vision, preferably outdoors.

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#5

That’s what might be going on with my daughter. A year ago I detected a hint of myopia (around 0.25), and immediately got her on readers so that her blur horizon was around 50cm or so. Despite good use of them for the vast majority of closeup, she has progressed to 0.75 to 1.0 diopters myopia according to my measurements. So despite my hopes, the readers did not stop her myopia progression.

I suspect that her eye is growing but her cornea isn’t flattening to compensate for it for some reason. I know how to reverse her myopia, but it’s hard to ask an 8 year old to spend a year doing active focus and blur management. I may have to act as an example for when she’s older and easier to motivate. Now I wonder when we’ll cross myopia paths (me on the way down, her on the way up)

Bit of a bummer, but at least I have her using readers all the time for closeup. Hopefully that will minimize her progression, then when she’s older we can work on reversing it.

#7

I think it is because blur horizon of 50 cm is too little. I think little kid’s arm range is around 30 cm. Probably why it has increased.

#8

I don’t use differential, I think the reason it increased is I overestimated how fast ciliary muscle spasm goes away, I thought that by looking away from screen once (5 seconds) every 2 minutes will prevent me entering ciliary muscle spasm, it turned out doesn’t work that way. Sucks but I guess I know it now.

#9

I’m curious what the mechanism would be to cause this. If there is no ciiary spasm and the lens can adjust the focus onto the retina appropriately, where is the stimulus to tell the eyeball to elongate?

#11

if you wear a 20/20 glasses, the edge of blur is infinite, bring that to a small room where the closest wall is 2 metre away or 200 cm, do the diopter math 100cm/200cm and you will end up -.5 myopic. ciliary spasm is not caused by screen, it is caused by prolonged period of time of close up vision, it doesnt matter if it is screen, room, or books…

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