difference between those with myopia and those without is the
number of hours they spend outside. Sunlight stimulates the release of
dopamine from the retina, which in turn appears to prevent the
eyeball from growing too oblong. Indoor and outdoor light are totally
different beasts. Even on overcast days, outdoor light is ten times
brighter and covers vastly more of the light spectrum. Educators are
scrambling to come up with solutions, including installing full-
spectrum indoor lights and glass ceilings over classrooms.
There’s a better solution: go outside.
I find the intellectual compulsion to break apart the pieces of
nature and examine them one by one both interesting and troubling. I
understand it’s the way science typically works: to understand a
system, you have to understand the parts, find the mechanism, put
your flag on a piece of new ground. The poets would find this is
nonsense. It’s not just the smell of a cypress, or the sound of the
birds, or the color green that unlocks the pathway to health in our
brains. We’re full sensory beings, or at least we were once built to be.
Isn’t it possible that it’s only when you open all the doors—literally
and figuratively—that the real magic happens?
For that, you need more than a few moments on a screen or in
nature. You need, to be exact, five hours a month.