Is it true that herbal therapy can treat myopia?

At present, there is no authoritative evidence-based medical evidence that proves that herbal therapy can cure true myopia. Herbal products on the market that promote "a few courses of treatment to cure myopia" are basically exaggerated propaganda that steals the concept.

Last month I just met a girl who was in the third grade of junior high school. Her mother listened to the recommendation of the community health center and spent more than 3,000 yuan to buy a herbal eye protection package. She drank customized herbal tea every day and applied herbal bags before going to bed.

That’s not to say that herbal ingredients are completely useless. Many people think that using herbal eye protection products makes their eyes comfortable and even “drops” their eyesight. In fact, they confuse the effect of relieving visual fatigue with the treatment of myopia. What we often call true myopia is essentially that the axial length of the eye is elongated, which is almost equivalent to the fact that when you grow to 1.7 meters tall, you cannot shrink back to 1.6 meters. Currently, there is no way to return the elongated axial length of the eye to its original length, let alone the herbal ingredients that can be eaten or applied to the skin and can penetrate into the back of the eyeball to change the length of the eyeball. As for some people who have indeed measured a low reading after using it, most of them are because the ciliary muscles have been spasmed and in a tense state due to long-term use of the eyes at close range, which is what we call pseudomyopia. Common herbal eye-protecting ingredients such as chrysanthemum, wolfberry, lutein and cassia have the effect of soothing nerves and improving blood supply to the eyes. When the ciliary muscles relax, the temporary "pseudo-degree" naturally subsides. But some people think that myopia is "cured".

I have also talked about this topic with my colleagues in the Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine. They also admit that traditional Chinese medicine does use herbs combined with moxibustion and acupoint massage to intervene in early myopia. However, the premise of all applications is to "improve the adjustment function and delay the increase in degree." They are also targeted at teenagers who have not yet developed true myopia. No formal practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine has ever said that herbs can "radically cure" true myopia that has already formed.

If you use your eyes a lot and your eyes are always dry and achy, it is perfectly fine to make some wolfberry chrysanthemum tea and apply herbal eye patches with mint to relax. You can treat your eyes as a SPA. However, if you want to use this to remove glasses and cure myopia, it is really better to spend 40 more minutes outdoors to bask in the sun every day and watch two short video episodes less.