Great Health Finds

I found an interesting site about myopia (nearsightedness) today while doing research for our search engine. The authors argue that nearsightedness is caused solely by staring at close-up objects, like books and computers.

Most medical sources say that nearsightedness is inherited, and begins in childhood. Myopia.org argues that this is a lie put forth by the medical establishment (eye docs, fda, etc). They state that wearing glasses makes myopia worse, and the whole thing is a big conspiracy. Here is what they have to say about who is behind the conspiracy:

The Eye Doctors of the World:
who make hundreds of millions of children into visual cripples because that’s where the money is.

The Optical Industry:
which uses its billions in profits to corrupt our government and schools of optometry and ophthalmology.

The Schools of Optometry and Opthamology:
which create the ill-educated “experts” who are turned loose on a trusting and unsuspecting public. These schools accept a steady stream of money from the optical industry in the form of “research” grants and other contributions, thus insuring that they will do nothing to upset their benefactors.

It’s interesting, because I did have 20/20 vision until I graduated from college. After that I got a job where I studied for professional certifications for 10 hours a day. That’s when my eyes went downhill, and I’ve worn glasses for nearsightedness since then. (Yeah, I didn’t have my nose in a book much in college).

However, even though I’m all for conspiracy theories, this one sounds a little far-fetched. It’s hard to keep 3 people in on a secret, let alone millions of people worldwide in a huge industry.

I think it’s more likely that getting glasses is easier than giving up computers/books. People don’t want to change their lifestyles or do eye exercises to cure their myopia. We want an instant fix. So, no big conspiracy in my opinion, but intersting information.

Also check out another site owned by the same group which is more informative, www.preventmyopia.org.

Ouch! Who knew that kidney stones could be made up of so many different materials, and vary in appearance so much?

Louis C. Herring and Company is a leading kidney stone analysis lab, and they have some amazing pictures of kidney stones that they’ve analyzed over the years:

Kidney Stone Photographs - Be sure to check out all 3 pages, crazy stuff… These are some of the more painful looking ones.  Why do they have to be so spikey?