Is it true that herbal therapy can treat myopia?

According to current clinical research and evidence-based medical evidence, herbal therapy cannot cure true myopia that has already occurred. It can only alleviate some pseudomyopia caused by visual fatigue, and it is far from achieving the effect of "treating myopia".

I have been in the ophthalmology clinic for almost six years. Last month, I saw a girl who was a senior in high school. My mother bought more than 2,000 herbal myopia ointments on the recommendation of an acquaintance. She applied it to the child's eyes every day and massaged it. She also stopped the low-concentration atropine prescribed by the doctor. As a result, the prescription increased by 175 degrees in three months. After dilation, it was confirmed that it was a real prescription. The girl became red-eyed on the spot and said that she originally wanted to apply for the aviation major, but now the prescription is too high and she is not even qualified to apply. In fact, the main ingredients in that myopia ointment are mint, borneol, and safflower. Applying it cools down, and after pressing it, it can really relax the muscles around the eyes. The ciliary muscles that were originally stiff due to studying for a long time are relaxed, and things can be seen more clearly for a while, so the merchant secretly changed the concept to "reducing the degree."

It’s not that herbs are useless for the eyes. When I communicated with my colleagues in the Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine before, I also heard the cases they treated: an 8-year-old boy was just diagnosed with 100 degrees of pseudomyopia. He usually complained that his eyes were dry and he squinted when looking at the blackboard. I used their fumigation recipe with chrysanthemums, prunella vulgaris, and dense flowers. I fumigated it three times a week, and combined it with reducing the time I spent using my eyes at close range. After half a month, I had a dilated eye refraction. All the false prescriptions disappeared, and my accommodative ability returned to the normal level for people of the same age. But the colleague also repeatedly emphasized that this kind of intervention is only for pseudomyopia that has not yet elongated the axial length of the eye. If the axial length of the eye has already exceeded the normal length, just like when a person grows to 1.8 meters and cannot shrink back to 1.7 meters, no matter how many Chinese medicines are drunk or how many herbal patches are applied, it is impossible to reverse the elongated axial length of the eye, let alone cure true myopia.

Many people now have misunderstandings about herbal treatment of myopia. Essentially, they equate "relieving visual fatigue" with "treating myopia". Just like if your eyes are sore after staying up late, applying a steam eye mask with chrysanthemums added will be much more comfortable, but you can't expect that wearing an eye mask for two months will cure 300-degree myopia, right? There are currently many scientific research teams doing relevant research. Some active ingredients extracted from herbs have indeed been found to improve eye microcirculation and slow down the growth of the axial length of the eye. However, most of these studies are still in the animal experiment stage, and there is still a long way to go before large-scale clinical promotion for the treatment of myopia.

If you really want to try herbal eye protection methods, it is recommended that you first go to the hospital for a dilated eye exam to find out whether you are true or false myopia, and then find a regular Chinese medicine practitioner or ophthalmologist to evaluate the plan. Don’t believe the gimmick of the merchants that “you don’t need to wear glasses and the degree will be reduced”, which wastes the golden period of myopia prevention and control.