奇速英语

It’s time to put down your phone, especially at night.

California researchers have found that eye damage from overexposure(过度接触) to light can lead to chronic(慢性的) disease and a shorter lifespan, especially in dark places. 

Professor Pankaj Kapahi, Ph.D., and Brian Hodge, Ph.D. published their findings in the Nature Communications, telling us the severity(严重性) of eye damage. “Our study shows that this is a big problem: eye damage may actually lead to problems in other organs,” Kapahi said. He and Hodge studied the patterns of fruit flies and found that overexposure to light in the eyes can cause or worsen chronic disease. Further research found that flies that were completely in darkness lived longer than those that were not, signaling that impacts on the circadian(昼夜节律的) cycle can have negative effects on lifespan.

Too much time spent in front of a screen can harm your health. “The discovery that the eye itself, at least in the fruit fly, can directly regulate lifespan came as a surprise to us,” Hodge said. “Looking at computer and phone screens and being exposed to light pollution late into the night are very harmful to us,” Kapahi explained. “It messes up eye protection, damaging the rest of the body and the brain.” Every cell in the body operates on a circadian clock, an internal 24-hour rhythm that often lasts longer than 24 hours but resets each day according to the cycle of the sun. A person’s circadian clock sets the rhythm for many important bodily functions such as sleep cycles, body temperature rhythm, eating, and digestion. Too much light can throw a person’s clock off, causing changes in many important bodily functions.

These findings are particularly concerning because screen time has increased fast for many because of COVID-19. Parents reported that children’s screen time increased from 0.75 hours to 6.5 hours a day due to online classes.

“We always think of the eye as something that serves us, to provide vision. We don’t think of it as something that needs to be protected,” Kapahi noted.

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