Is it true that herbal therapy can treat myopia?

It can be clearly stated that there is currently no authoritative medical research or clinical evidence that proves that herbal therapy can cure true myopia. Those online propaganda claiming that drinking a few medicines and applying some herbal medicine can completely restore hundreds of degrees of myopia are basically charging IQ taxes.

When I was a volunteer at an optometry center two years ago, I met a 10-year-old boy. His mother came across a promotion of a certain herbal eye patch through a short video, which said that it could eliminate 150 degrees of myopia in 30 days. She gritted her teeth and spent 1,800 yuan to buy three courses of treatment. She couldn’t help but apply the patch to the child twice a day. After three weeks, the unaided eye acuity did indeed rise from 0.4 to 0.8. The mother also specially took a video at the time. I wanted to use it as a promotional material for a business, but I took him to the hospital for a dilated eye examination, only to find out that the 100-degree myopia that my child had before was originally false. It was caused by spending time in front of a tablet every day during online classes, which caused ciliary muscle spasm. The doctor said that even if you don’t use eye patches, you can recover in two weeks if you ensure 2 hours of outdoor activities a day and watch less electronic screens. This is equivalent to spending nearly 2,000 yuan on psychological comfort.

Of course, this does not mean that herbs are completely worthless for eye health. Many practitioners and users of traditional medicine believe that herbs such as chrysanthemums, wolfberries, cassia seeds, and mulberry leaves have the effect of clearing the liver and improving eyesight. Whether they are brewed orally or boiled and smoked, they can indeed alleviate visual fatigue to a certain extent, intervene in pseudomyopia, and delay the increase in the degree of true myopia. I am also a deep computer user myself. I used to have eyes that were too dry to open and weak to see when I got off work. Later, I followed the prescription of an old Chinese medicine doctor and boiled water with chrysanthemums and mulberry leaves to smoke my eyes for 10 minutes every day. After persisting for less than half a month, most of the uncomfortable symptoms were relieved. My myopia degree did not increase much after two consecutive years of review. This is indeed due to the contribution of herbs.

But we have to make a clear distinction between "relieving visual fatigue" and "treating myopia". The essence of true myopia is that the axial length of the eye becomes longer, just like when a person grows to 1.8 meters and cannot retract to 1.6 meters. The elongated axial length of the eye cannot be returned to normal length by drinking medicine or applying herbal medicine. The currently recognized method for controlling myopia worldwide is low concentration. Atropine, orthokeratology lenses, and outdoor activities for more than 2 hours a day. If you want to remove your lenses as an adult, you can only correct them through refractive surgery. Do not believe in any herbal gimmicks that cure myopia. If it really delays the control of myopia in teenagers and the degree increases to high myopia, it will bring more risks of fundus diseases, which is not worth the loss.