Astigmatism Studies

Nutrition:

• Scientific America reports that the soil is depleted and fruits and vegetables don’t have enough nutrients anymore:
  
  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-and-nutrition-loss/

• The same is reported by the HotScience Journal, published by American Society for Horticultural Science in February 2009:
  
  https://journals.ashs.org/hortsci/view/journals/hortsci/44/1/article-p15.xml

  How to cite:
  
  Davis, D. R. (2009). Declining Fruit and Vegetable Nutrient Composition: What Is the Evidence?, HortScience horts, 44(1), 15-19. Retrieved Mar 4, 2019, from
  
  https://journals.ashs.org/view/journals/hortsci/44/1/article-p15.xml

• GREAT REFERENCES AND WAYS TO EXPLAIN:
  
  The same discovered by the Department of Soil Science of the University of Wisconsin in their study “Are Depleted Soils Causing a Reduction in the Mineral Content Of Food Crops?”
  
  https://soils.wisc.edu/facstaff/barak/poster_gallery/minneapolis2000a/

• Politico takes the same even further and explains how changes in the climate make the situation even worse:
  
  https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrients-carbon-dioxide-000511

• The same is happening in the UK:
  
  https://www.mineralresourcesint.co.uk/pdf/Mineral_Depletion_of_Foods.pdf
  
  https://www.un.org/en/development/devagenda/sustainable.shtml
  
  David Thomas (2007) ‘The Mineral Depletion of Foods Available to Us as A Nation (1940–2002) – A Review of the 6th Edition of McCance and Widdowson’, Nutrition and Health, 2007, Vol. 19, pp. 21–55

Scarcity:

• FDA is trying to regulate supplements, so only Big Pharma can create supplements and take out natural ingredients (excipients)
  
  https://www.anh-usa.org/is-this-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-quality-supplements/

Genetics:

• Astigmatism is NOT genetic:

  A study by Teikari and O’Donnell compared the prevelance of astigmatism in twins and concluded that genetics are not the root cause, but considered environmental factors as the major factors:

  https://europepmc.org/abstract/med/2805714
  
  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2805714
  
  Teikari, J. M., O'Donnell, J. J. Astigmatism in 72 twin pairs. Cornea 8: 263-266, 1989.

• Quoted from study: "It could be argued that astigmatism and spherical equivalent refractive error share little genetic susceptibility since the genetic correlations between these respective pairs of traits were not significantly different from zero."

  The largest study about whether or not astigmatism is caused by genetics was conducted by Shah, Guggenheim, and the UK Biobank’s Eye and Vision Consortium in 2018. They didn’t find a genetic correlation.

  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6267700/

• Quoted from Study Conclusions: "suggest a greater influence of rare genetic variants, non-additive genetic effects, or environmental factors in the development of astigmatism"

  A large study of European and Asian ancestory in 2018 showed that astigmatism is only rarely connected to rare genetic variantions, and suggests a greater influence of environmental factors that cause the development of astigmatism.
  
  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5800430/

Advertising Practices:

• Why Do so many children get glasses prescribed today? Because the American Optometric Assosciation has program to designed to reach out to school nurses because they are seen as gate-keepers to millions of children. They even conducted a study about reaching out to the 45,000 school nurses to get more business and eye tests for local optometrists in 1999.
  
  Journal of the American Optometric Association [01 Nov 1999, 70(11):738-740]

Lens Nourishment:

• no blood supply to the lens directly but obtain nutrients from the surrounding fluids, mainly the aqueous humour.