INFANTS who sleep at night in their bedrooms with a light on may be at a higher risk for contracting myopia or near-sightedness later in their childhood, says a prominent study.

"Children who slept with either a room light or night bulb on until age two were more prone to later develop myopia as compared to children who slept in darkness," according to the collaborative study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Centre and the Children’s Hospital, Philadelphia.

Parents of 479 children, in the 2-16 age bracket who came for check-ups in the Ophthalmology Department of the Children’s Hospital, were surveyed by the researchers’ team. A questionnaire queried about the child’s night-time light exposure at the time of the survey and before age two.

"Only 10 per cent of children who slept in darkness before age two currently had myopia as compared to 34 per cent of those who slept with a night light, and 55 per cent of those who had a room light on," says the report recently published in Nature magazine.

Exposure to light after two years of age showed no such association with current myopia. "The results were dose-dependent. Room lights were linked with a higher likelihood of nearsightedness than 4-Watt night lights."

Prior research had shown that the eyes of chicks require a daily period of darkness to grow normally. The eye normally develops rapidly during the early years of life even though myopia is usually detected much later.

Noted Delhi-based opthalmologist Sanjay Chaudhary, who had recently presented his paper in the USA on eye diseases and lasik technology for correcting myopia, says, "Small amounts of light pass through the eyelids even when these are closed, signifying the phenomenon that lighting does have an influence during sleep also."

Further, children below two years of age are not usually afraid of the dark and babies should be encouraged to sleep without artificial lighting in the bedroom at night-time, says Dr Chaudhary, who has launched spectaclesremoval.com.

The US report says both family history and environmental factors are responsible for causing myopia and stresses that ‘the disease is largely a disorder of industrialised societies.’

Myopia is a common condition that affects nearly 30 per cent of the US population. There is evidence that the disease is hereditary and is also caused by the stress of too much close vision work. But school children are more vulnerable to it. Since the eye continues to grow during childhood, myopia generally develops after 20 years of age.

Nearly 98 per cent of patients, who undergo refractive laser surgery, obtain 20/40 or better visual acuity, which is the visual acuity required to obtain a driver’s license without wearing corrective lenses.

But they need to be at least 18 years of age or older for the treatment of mild myopia, says Dr Chaudhary.

In myopia, images focus in front of the retina instead of directly on it, largely because the eye has grown too long after birth. It raises the risk of retinal problems, glaucoma and even blindness in later life. UNI

Buying food for family? Take care
Manjit Kaur

WITH more and more women taking up jobs, the pressure of time is bound to take it toll as far as the quality of food purchased, is concerned. Many a time, in a hurry we end up buying food products which are not fresh or are on the verge of expiry. Fresh food is giving way to ready-to-eat tinned food. The influx of imported food items is also adding to the problem. It’s time, therefore, to be extra vigilant and ensure that hurry does not end up in worry.

Let us now see the basic things to be kept in view while shopping for food items:

• Make it a habit to purchase food from shops that appear busy and look clean. More customers mean more sales and less chance of getting any stale product since stocks are replenished faster.

• Check the date of manufacture and the expiry date (or Best Before...) on all tinned and packed food items. If no expiry date is mentioned, pick up one which has been manufactured recently. Bring it to the notice of the shopkeeper if you come across any expired date packet, and ensure that it is set aside (it’s a crime now to sell any food packet without the manufacturing date and the expiry date).

• Do not buy dented or rusty tinned food even within the expiry period: the dent might have caused the metal to infect the food inside.

• Wipe the top of the lid before opening and consuming, particularly the soft drink cans from which we drink straightaway. This is essential, since the top surface may have been infected with the excreta of mice, cockroaches, etc.

• Buy fruit and vegetables that look fresh, and have crisp leaves. Root vegetables should always be firm. Avoid buying damaged or pulp fruit or vegetable as it may be a breeding place for bacteria.

• Meat is the major cause of food poisoning and you need to be very careful while buying it and its subsequent storage and cooking. If you’re buying mince meat (for example, keema), choose the meat yourself and get it minced for you in your presence; Buy meat that looks fresh and firm when touched.

• Like meat, we have to be extra careful while buying fish. Select fish with clear eyes, red gills, shiny skin and scales still in place. Since fresh fish is not available locally, we have to buy only frozen one. Check that it is frozen hard with no white patches or ice crystals on the flesh.

• Buy those items last that require deep freezing. Use a plastic bag, especially for meat and dairy products, so that nothing drips. Select the fully frozen item, place it in the plastic bag and close tightly. You should try to reach home fast, preferably within an hour or even less on a sunny day, and put it in the freezer. In summers, don’t let the packet lie in the closed car. The warm weather will make the bacteria start breeding. Remember that if the frozen food has started thawing, don’t refreeze it. Instead, put it in the fridge (and not in the deep freezer) and consume it within the next couple of days.

• Cracked eggs are open to infection, hence don’t buy them. To check the quality, hold the egg towards a light source. Its contents should be clear with a small air sac.

Turn the egg slightly to see that the yolk doesn’t rotate much. At home, you can check the freshness by putting it in a bowl of water. If it stands on end, it is stale and if it floats, dispose it off immediately. When you break a fresh egg, the yolk is rounded rather than flat on top.

Gutka kha kar pareshan

IT’S like setting a thief to catch a thief!

Some victims of tobacco-based gutkas paraded their semi-naked diseased bodies during a demonstration organised by the National Human Rights Council in Delhi on June 24, 2001, to demand a ban on gutkas and pan masalas.

Suffering from diseases like lung cancer, mouth cancer and tuberculosis, these activists were wearing langots (loincloth) and carrying placards reading "Kehne ko pehlwan hain, desh ki shaan hain, ab gutka khakar pareshan hain (we are wrestlers of a kind and nation’s pride but now we are victims of gutka-chewing)."

The semi-naked protesters marched ahead of scores of council activists as they descended on Parliament Street to express their anguish against the government’s alleged apathy towards the gravity of the problem.

Council president Subhash Gupta said even as the people addicted to tobacco-mixed gutkas and pan masalas were "turning into skeletons", the BJP-led government at the Centre was acting like a silent spectator.

"Instead of issuing licences to the manufacturers of these lethal products, the government must immediately ban them," he demanded. UNI