Summer Camp Summer Camp Summer Camp

It is summertime. I am filling out lots of summer camp and other “special experience” forms for the children in my practice. The kids who live in my neighborhood are engaged in different activities (no lemonade stands yet, though) and the school behind my house is now a summer camp. It has me thinking. As a child I totally loved summer camp. I was always nervous beforehand - the new kids, the new counselors, the new place, the new activities. New, new, new and new. The unsettling, potentially traumatizing experience of the unfamiliar. I was shy, insecure, introverted, bookish and unathletic. If I only wore glasses I’d have been the archetypic nerd. I should have hated it all, but not so. The new environment shook up my life without a doubt. I had to deal with eating food I hated. The memory of Spam still makes me a more than bit queasy. There were a few kids who bullied me. Sleeping in a big room with a dozen bunk beds occupied by semi-behaved boys was often not especially relaxing. I had to do a lot of things I would never have chosen to do or even thought of. Some of that was big but even the little stuff was different. Some was great and some was not. Lanyards and hot pads just aren’t that cool. So, what was there to like? I learned new things. I learned that I really wasn’t ONLY the bookish nerd I thought I was. I became a very good swimmer. I became a sailor, writing home an impassioned letter about this new sporting love. I had counselors who treated me like I was way more interesting and worthwhile than I ever thought I was. The new experiences showed me new things about myself and put me in situations where I could learn to be different that the person I was before. It was all about growth, in other words. To take the largest view, those camp experiences opened the doors of possibility for me. Some criticize these camps today, viewing them as places for uncaring parents to dump their kids while they are off at work. I am delighted that children have these opportunities. In fact, the biggest problem I see is that we need summer camps for adults. In an ideal world we would shake ourselves up a bit as well, on a regular basis. Hey, its summertime. Try something new!...

Light on Vision

Needing to wear glasses has long been viewed as a mark of geekiness without any other real significance. “Just bad luck”, the medical experts said. “Your eyeball is just shaped wrong and there is nothing you can do about it”. Dissenting voices, especially from the fuzzier end of the alternative medical spectrum, promoted eye exercises to improve vision and health and full spectrum lights (like the ones in my office). We have learned that near-sightedness (aka myopia) makes a person more likely to develop glaucoma or retinal detachment. The risk of glaucoma is 14 times higher in those with really bad nearsightedness. Two thirds of those who develop a retinal detachment had nearsightedness before the detachment occurred. Those are pretty serious consequences Many years ago, I heard a wise young female Asian opthalmologist comment that children were spending too much time indoors and reading. She agreed with the fuzzy thinkers that continual and intense focus on nearby, unmoving objects in poor lighting, was unhealthy. She and they were right. Since 1970, the rate of nearsightedness (the most common reason for needing glasses) in the USA has risen a staggering 65%. Rates are even higher in Asian countries, inspiring researchers in Taiwan to conduct a study to learn if requiring children to spend 80 minutes out of doors, each day they were in school would have any impact on nearsightedness. It did. A Danish study discovered one possible explanation. As the shape of the eye determines focal length and, greater focal length is the cause of nearsightedness, that was the focus of their investigation. By measuring the eyes of children through the extreme seasonal changes of the Nordic year, they learned that the less daylight exposure children experienced, the longer their eyes grew. My conclusions? Simple things have hugely positive effects. Being outside is healthy for a person’s eyes and so much else. Full spectrum lighting is the healthiest artificial light....