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双语阅读 | 关灯玩手机可能加速视力下降

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Using Your Smartphone in the Dark Risks Speeding up Vision Loss

关灯玩手机可能加速视力下降

Using Your Smartphone in the Dark Risks Speeding up Vision Loss

王淑怡供稿

A 22-year-old woman in England thought she was going blind in one eye. She could always see fine out of her left eye. But on some nights, the right eye failed her. All she could see out of it were vague shapes in the room. At first, it happened about two or three times a week. Then it started happening every night. When she went to the doctor, her vision appeared normal. So did brain scans. But it was a disturbing trend. Around the same time, another woman noticed the same thing. On some mornings, she'd lose vision in just one eye for up to 20 minutes.

英国的一名22岁女性觉得自己的一只眼睛就要失明。她的左眼正常，但在某些晚上，右眼只能看到房间里模糊的影子。起初，这种情况大约每周发生两三次，然后开始每晚都会发生。但是，每次等到她去看医生时，视力又恢复了正常，脑部扫描结果也并无异常。几乎在同一时段，另一名女性也称自己遭遇了同样的事情。在某些清晨，她的一只眼睛会出现短暂失明，有时长达20分钟。

Vision loss in one eye can be a sign that a person is having a small stroke, which is why one of the women was put on blood thinners and the other got a brain scan. But after further investigation, researchers think the problem is much simpler. They're calling the affliction "transient smartphone 'blindness.' "

一只眼睛失明可能是中风的前兆，因此，其中一名女性在治疗时被注射了血液稀释剂，另一名则做了脑部扫描。不过，经过进一步检查后，研究人员认为问题的原因并不复杂，她们只是患上了“暂时性手机致盲症”。

"Both women typically looked at their smartphones with only one eye while resting on their side in bed in the dark — their other eye was covered by the pillow," says Gordon Plant, an ophthalmologist at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London. "So you have one eye adapted to the light because it's looking at the phone and the other eye is adapted to the dark." When they put their phone down, they couldn't see with the phone eye. That's because it's taking many minutes to catch up to the other eye that's adapted to the dark.

伦敦穆尔菲尔兹眼科医院的戈登·普兰特医生说：“这两位女士在关灯玩手机时，经常侧躺在床上，一只眼睛盯着手机，而另一只眼则埋在枕头里。这样一来，盯手机的那只眼睛要适应光亮，而埋在枕头里的另一只眼睛要适应黑暗。”当她们放下手机时，盯手机的那只眼睛需要几分钟时间才能重新适应黑暗，因此出现了暂时看不见的症状。

New research is detailing how blue light, which emits from smartphone and laptop screens, can damage your retinal cells, and possibly lead to macular degeneration, an eye disease that causes vision loss. High levels of looking at a phone or tablet is linked with around a 30 percent higher risk of short-sightedness, also known as myopia. But when it is combined with excessive computer use, that risk rose to around 80 percent.

一项新的研究表明，手机和电脑屏幕发出的蓝光会损害视网膜细胞，并可能导致黄斑变性，从而造成视力下降。长时间盯着手机或平板电脑会使患近视的风险增加约30%。但如果再加上过度使用电脑，这种风险将上升到80%左右。

So, how can we protect ourselves? Unfortunately, blue light can be hard to avoid. It can come from sunlight and from our smartphones and PCs. But the researchers say that people should be careful about using their electronics devices in the dark. Doing so can focus the blue light directly into your eyes. People can also consider wearing glasses that's designed to filter out blue light. In the meantime, researchers are exploring whether an eye drop solution can be developed to counter these effects.