<p>Does Performing the Chinese Eye Exercises Help Protect Children’s Vision? – New Evidence from Primary Schools in Rural Northwestern China</p>

Abstract

Background: The high prevalence of myopia among school-age children in China has raised serious concerns about protecting Chinese students' vision. While the regular performance of the Chinese eye exercises has been adopted as a preventive approach in China since the mid-1960s, these exercises' effectiveness at protecting students' vision has remained largely unknown. This study attempts to provide new evidence of the impact of regularly performing the exercises on Chinese students' visual outcomes, based on a large-scale dataset. Methods: A school-based survey was conducted among 9842 randomly selected students (fourth graders) from 252 primary schools in rural Northwestern China in 2012. To address potential estimation bias, we adopted both an instrumental variable (IV) approach and a bivariate-probit model to estimate the impacts on students' visual acuity and the incidences of visual impairment and myopia. Results: Both IV and bivariate-probit estimates reveal a detrimental impact of regularly performing the Chinese eye exercises on students' vision. Compared with students who did not regularly perform the exercises, those who did were 6.2 percentage points more likely to have impaired vision and 7.6 percentage points more likely to be myopic. The estimates are robust to different estimation strategies, various specifications, and the majority of subsamples. Conclusion: Under the assumption that the correct performance of the Chinese eye exercises would not undermine students' vision, our findings suggest that the commonly-observed incorrect performance of these exercises among Chinese students imposes non-trivial threats to their vision health.

The association between Chinese eye exercises and myopia in children and adolescents: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Studies have shown that, compared with people who do not perform eye exercises regularly, people who perform eye exercises regularly have a 6.2% increase in the probability of vision damage and a 7.6% increase in the probability of myopia. Assuming that Chinese eye exercises are effective in protecting children's vision when used correctly (or at least do not pose a significant threat to children's visual health), we found that adverse effects may be caused by students performing eye exercises incorrectly (19). In addition, existing studies have proved that careful practice of correct eye exercises can make students take the initiative to rest the tired muscles with regular acupuncture points around their eyes (18,37).…”

“…The use of an instrumental variable method and bivariate probability method revealed the adverse effects of regular Chinese eye exercises on students' vision. Students who exercised regularly were 6.2 percentage points more likely to have vision impairment and 7.6% points more likely to be nearsighted than students who did not exercise regularly (19). The two cohort studies were followed at 9 months, 21 months, and 3 years.…”

“…Recent studies show that Chinese eye exercises have a certain effect on relieving myopia symptoms in Chinese children (15)(16)(17). Some cross-sectional studies have found that there is a different correlation between the prevalence of myopia and eye exercises (18,19). It has also been reported that performing eye exercises can seriously improve eyesight (20) and performing eye exercises incorrectly poses a non-trivial threat to vision health (19).…”

Does multidimensional daily information predict the onset of myopia? A 1-year prospective cohort study

“…However, whether these exercises could make a difference remains unclear. A cross-sectional survey by Huang et al did not indicate the link between Chinese eye exercises and myopia [ 40 ]. Furthermore, the relationship between education and myopia has always been a hot topic.…”

Myopia and Depression among Middle School Students in China—Is There a Mediating Role for Wearing Eyeglasses?

“…Together with these related findings, our finding of a robust association between myopia and depression also highlights the importance of formulating policies and measures to help reduce myopia prevalence among school-age children. The studies by Li et al (2022) [ 7 ] and Huang et al (2020) [ 46 ] provide recent examples.…”