Eyesight is not hereditary? Medical professionals do you agree?

[senseandsensibility]

I just got back from an optometry appointment at Kaiser, a huge HMO here in California. In the waiting room, they play "Healthwatch" tapes about various topics, and one quiz really stumped me. The question was, "Is eyesight hereditary?" The answer? No. Eyesight is not hereditary and is affected by environmental factors.

I don't get it. I've worn glasses since I was five, contacts since I was fifteen, and have always been very nearsighted. I always assumed I had inherited this condition from my father, since our prescriptions for corrective lenses are virtually the same.

Now I don't know what to think.:shrug:

[Der Blaue Engel]

1. That can't be right

Everyone in my family wears glasses. We are all extremely nearsighted, except for my father, who is farsighted. We all have mild to major astigmatism. I've worn glasses since I was 6. There's just no way that can be right.

[Tesha]

23. Early readers require glasses.

Some science has been done that suggests that your eyeballs
keep growing in size until they achieve good focus consistently.
If you spend your time looking at close-in objects (such as
books), your eyes will stop growing at a different point
than if you spend all of your time staring off into the
distance and you will end up with your eyes biased towards
near-sightedness.

And early reading tends to run in families, but isn't
genetic per se.

Tesha

[Der Blaue Engel]

26. My eyes wouldn't have 6.5 diopter myopia if I hadn't read early?

If that's true, I'm really pissed off that someone didn't tell me this sooner. I would have taken up sports.

[Tesha]

28. There's some evidence that suggests this, yes. (NT)

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

2. It's a pretty dumb question.

Is eyesight hereditary? Yes. I inherited eyeballs from my mother and my father.

But as for your tape, it sounds like some sort of PSA about how environmental factors can influence eyesight. In other words, it's trying to get patients to take better care of their eyes.

[senseandsensibility]

5. Iagree the wording is strange, but I

paid close attention to it, and that's what it said. As far as the anwer goes, it was brief, and did not offer any hints on ways to take care of the eyes. It simply stated that eyesight is not hereditary, but caused by the environment.

[Sadie5]

8. Almost everyone in my family wore glasses

except for me. Mother father and three sisters. They were all farsighted and one sister had really poor vision. I didn't wear glasses until I was past 40 and those were for reading. Neither my husband nor I wear glasses except for reading, yet one daughter has the same poor vision as my sister. Dunno.

[MadHound]

3. I'm with you, I find that hard to believe

Especially since I'm following my uncle's path of nearsightedness, ie it grew worse as I grew taller, and now that I'm older and getting farsighted, my nearsightedness is actually lessening, my eyesight is correcting itself and becoming milder. If this continues to follow course, I will only need a very light prescription by the time I'm sixty five or so, again, much like my uncle.

I think that it is both heridity and enviromental factors.

[SmokingJacket]

4. Huh!

ALL environment? So all those mothers screeching "Turn on a light, you'll go blind!" were telling the truth?

I always figured that my medium/bad eyesight came from reading too much, but how to explain my 8 yr old niece's bad eyes? Why can't eye/lens shape be inherited?

[pitohui]

13. at 8 yr old she has prob. been reading for several years

i was diagnosed w. severe near-sightedness at 8, i started reading at age 3

the chinese have tried to train people to relax their eyes every 20 minutes while reading and look off into the distance but i don't think they have had noticeable success in reducing the huge amount of near sightedness in their educated classes

it is the cost of literacy

the way you use your eyes as a child does change them, which is why college graduates have so much higher nearsidedness rates than high school drop-outs

[SmokingJacket]

25. Obviously there is some effect, but is it in the only cause?

It would make most sense if there was a genetic tendency (shape of eye and lens, strength and placement of muscles, etc.) in some people, coupled with environmental factors.

[Kutjara]

6. Eyesight is hereditary.

If your parents have eyesight, the chances are good you will too.

Seriously, though. I would imagine that a tendency to certain eye ailments is inherited, but these can be exacerbated by environmental factors (eyestrain, disease, pollution). So I'd agree with the statement that the quality of one's eyesight is not EXCLUSIVELY hereditary, but to say that it has nothing to do with genes seems a bit of an overstatement.

[calico1]

7. Who puts out these tapes?

The HMO? LOL.

On my Dad's side almost everyone is nearsighted and wears glasses. I am also very nearsighted and wear glasses or contacts. Coincidence? I think not.

[pitohui]

9. the question is badly phrased

however i thought it quite well established that near-sightedness was caused by environment

the difference in near-sightedness rates between college graduates and high school drop outs is huge, altho i no longer have the numbers at my fingertips

as animals we didn't evolve to do very much at close range and certainly not to read for hours on end

it is almost inevitable that we bookworms will develop near sightedness and have to wear glasses/contacts unless we get LASIK when our vision stabilizes after college


you almost certainly have similar reading habits as your father, just as my mother was a reader and so i became a reader, that is not really classic inheritance, it is something learned, my parents read to me as a baby and i learned to read for hours to keep myself entertained

[senseandsensibility]

12. I needed glasses by age five

and I was just learning to read then. I certainly wasn't buried in books for hours on end, although my parents certainly thought I was a genius.:) My father had the same experience, and was never much of a reader. He only reads fiction at gunpoint, and very little other reading as well.

[pitohui]

16. that was an example, there are other things you may view upclose

if you ever watch parent and child together, you will notice that quite often that the parent and child have similar mannerisms, including how often they do or do not look off into the distance

we do a lot of things up close that we didn't do in a state of nature, where scanning the distance at regular intervals was required to watch for predators

in a relaxed, happy home, you might never have developed any need to "scan" at all, freezing your focus more near to you than if you've been born a caveman

i mean, debate away, but the evidence is pretty irrefutable -- it's something like 60 percent of college graduates have near-sightedness pre-Lasik, you can prob. google it easily enough

i won't argue that the question was badly phrased and if you were graded on the answer, it was a cheat

[kurth]

10. Identical twin studies

have shown that "bad" vision is not hereditary. Some eye diseases (cataracts, retinitis pigmentosa, macular degeneration, albinism, etc.) are known to have hereditary factors - like many diseases.

[Kutjara]

11. UC Irvine thinks so.

This is from their eye health website at http://www.ucihealth.com/News/UCI%20Health/eyecare.htm



8. Poor eyesight is hereditary.

True. For example, some experts suggest that heredity is the most important contributing factor to nearsightedness. Glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy also tend to run in families. If your relatives have vision problems, make sure to see an ophthalmologist on a regular basis. Heredity, however, is only one of many factors that can affect your vision.

[senseandsensibility]

14. This sounds very logical, and I agree.

What's with this weird Kaiser tape? I don't understand how they can make such a blanket statement, or what they would hope to gain by it.

[azurnoir]

15. I have read that astigmatism

is hereditary, that would make sense since it involves a "misshapen eyeball (not sphereical, more oblong} and it certainly seems so in my family- my dad, me all 4 of my siblings and all 4 of my children, and various neices and nephews.

[goclark]

17. In our family something is mighty strange

My mother's grandmother was totally blind.

One of her children died at 83 and she was blind in her LEFT eye.

My Mom is going blind in her LEFT eye.

One day I was talking to an elderly cousin and we started talking about the family eye problems.

He said, "our family sure has problems with those LEFT eyes!" Then he started telling me his LEFT eye problem and LEFT eyesight problems with others in that family line.

By the way, I have always worn contacts since age 15 and the last time I was examined the doctor said, " That LEFT eye is not as good as your right one."

My eye Dr. is well aware of my LEFT EYE family history and I go every six months for my check ups.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

18. Well, risk for glaucoma goes up

if you've had anyone in your family go blind from it. My great great grandmother and my uncle both did. The latter didn't believe in going to the opthamologist for regular checkups.

Environmental factors do have an effect on eye health, and there are exercises and practices you can do to strengthen eyes.

[Arkansas Granny]

19. Nearly everyone in my family wears glasses, some from

a very early age, except for me and my children. I've always had excellent eyesight and just recently started using reading glasses for very small print or low light conditions and I'm nearly 60. I have always been an avid reader and do a lot of needlework and other crafts that require working with small objects so apparently that hasn't had a negative effect on my eyes.

So, I don't know what to think either. I had always thought that vision problems were hereditary.
:shrug:

[porphyrian]

20. Nature vs. Nurture is a false construct.

Both genetic AND environmental factors apply to every aspect of our existence, including our eyesight. Anything else is disingenuous.

[seabeyond]

21. my family had no eye perscriptions. my husband family all near sighted

both my boys are near sighted. my nephews and nieces are not. their mothers arent either

just what i have experienced in life experience tells me this is wrong

[Cleita]

22. Just from personal experience, I too have worn

glasses since I was in the third grade. I had extreme astigmatism and nearsightedness. My dad had normal vision and my mother must have had eagle genes in her because she could read the Bausch & Lomb trademark on the bottom of the eye chart. Every time I had to go for a refraction the optometrist used to ask her to read the chart because he delighted in the fact she could read the whole thing. He said he had never seen anything like it.

Also, I developed cataracts, something no one in my family ever had. The good news is that cataract surgery replaced my old lens with brand new plastic ones inside my eyeballs. For the first time in my life I don't have to wear glasses thanks to the miracle of modern science.

So I dunno. Maybe they are right, but I always thought my problems could have been due to recessive genes.

[politicat]

24. They're over-simplyifing.

Some eye conditions are hereditary; others are environmental, and some are a combination.

However, if the HMO is trying to get people to come in for eye exams.... then it makes sense they'd try to get people to think it wasn't hereditary.

[Warren DeMontague]

27. Not hereditary my foot.

I mean, my foot if I could see it without glasses or contacts.

It totally runs in my family. My dad, his dad- pretty much legally blind without some kind of correction. My grandfather was 4F for one of the World Wars b/c they were afraid he would "shoot his own men by mistake"

I don't think Kaiser has any clue what they're talking about.

[Odin2005]

29. The HMO is lying.

Eyesight is DEFINITELY hereditary. I am extremely nearsighted (i'd be legally blind without glasses and even with glasses my eyesight isn't good enough to get a driver's license) and it seems to run in my mom's side of the family.

The HMO is trying to scam people into getting more eye exams then they need under the pre-text of "making sure you keep your eyes healthy."

[kath]

30. Well, it appears that, along with their substandard healthcare, Kaiser

also provides medical misinformation.
Just Google myopia hereditary to see how wrong they are...

Granted, there are environmental influences as well, but there certainly seems to be a strong hereditary component.

[senseandsensibility]

35. I don't know about substandard care

I am generally happy with Kaiser, but I didn't understand this "quiz." It just doesn't make sense to me. Maybe there's a logical explanation. I don't think the question was worded very well, for one thing. Or maybe it really is mostly environmental. I am anything but an expert on healthcare.

[Ino]

31. Neither of my parents are nearsighted...

but my sister and I are. My 2 brothers are not. Maybe it's a recessive gene sort of thing?

[fishnfla]

32. Interesting

Blame the HMO for trying to convince people to get regular eye exams, and accuse them of providing substandard care, all in the same thread.

I'd be willing to bet the question was: are ALL eye problems hereditary or something to mislead the watcher...I have seen similar tapes in my Dr's office. The answer is not always the obvious one, and they are not made by the HMO BTW but usually drug makers ( this is a 'ask your doctor about the latest pill or drop' culture we live in).

The fact of the matter is: some components are hereditary and some are environmental. Some things, like cataracts and presbyopia and floaters run in everyone's family....

[senseandsensibility]

34. Read the OP

In no way did I accuse them of providing substandard care. You are inventing things. I was confused by the info on the tape, and I still am. Most responders have tried to shed some light on the situation, for which I am grateful. For all I know, the information was correct, but it doesn't jibe with what I know about eyesight. If you disagree, fine. Kaiser has been my healthcare provider by my own choice and for which I pay a significant amount each month. If I wasn't happy, I would go elsewhere. But thanks for the judgemental little assumption anyway.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

33. I'm Pretty Sure The Intent May Have Been Misinterpreted.

Maybe they didn't phrase it right or explain it clearly? I'm sure it was harmless though.

This is a common statement by eyecare professionals to educate people on the social risks that can be damaging to eyesight.

Many people believe a myth that eyesight in general is due to hereditary causes and that there isn't much they can do to avoid it. These types of true false questions are there to inform that though hereditary, there are other significant environmental factors that can damage eyesight and that they should not be taken for granted.

I doubt highly that this program was intended to state strongly that bad eyesight being hereditary is pure myth, but instead was trying to elaborate on the point by also providing the facts that there are many things we can do to protect and help our eyes.

I'm quite certain this program was providing a good message and attempting to help people take care of themselves.

[napi21]

36. I don't know exactly what they said on that tape, but SOME

eye ailments are definately heridatary. My mother had gotten macular degeneration around age 65, which as I understand is fairly young. I have spoken to each opthomologist during every eye exam I've had in the last 10 years bout checking for any signs of it, and EVERY Dr. has said "YES it is heriditary, but so far I don't see any signs."

Other things like needing glasses at an early age simply has to have a heriditary link. Just think of all the people you know and their children!