When I was growing up I hardly ever saw anyone with a lazy eye.
My theory (as I was walking through the grocery store today) is that it is caused by some environmental thing.
Like in the past there were more chemicals in the water that Taiwanese women ingested which caused their children to have lazy eyes.
But I’m not a physician and I’m sure there are tons of holes in my theory.
It’s just weird for me because I’ve never seen so many lazy eyes until I arrived in Taiwan.
I’ve never seen one except on my sweet little Anna (my cat). My brother on the other hand had a lazy eye as a child.
I think you are hanging out in the wrong circles.
High rates of nearsightedness here, too.
Maybe it’s from growing up doing pretty much nothing but studying (the buxiban culture), exacerbated by the visual complexity of Chinese characters.
Maybe it’s routine to get that corrected early in the West, like crooked teeth and large hairy moles, while here, people just leave it alone.
Why so many lazy asses then?
If you look at teenage boys and male students, in addition to the glasses, you also see a high percentage of “open mouths”. I mean guys who have their mouth open all the time while doing nothing. I always thought that only dull people do that, can’t be that all of them are dull, right?
They’re mouth breathing. It’s also pretty uncommon in Taiwan to have adenoids or tonsils removed when they start causing snoring or other resperatory difficulties. In western countries, it’s common to have them out. I had mine out as a kid and when I went to see a doc in Taiwan once he refered me to a surgical ENT because he thought I had cancer because he couldn’t find them. The ENT told me the almost no one has them removed in Taiwan. I guess there are other treatments, or they just deal with it as long as they can still breathe or swallow.
[quote=“housecat”]
It’s also pretty uncommon in Taiwan to have adenoids or tonsils removed when they start causing snoring or other resperatory difficulties. In western countries, it’s common to have them out. I had mine out as a kid and when I went to see a doc in Taiwan once he refered me to a surgical ENT because he thought I had cancer because he couldn’t find them. The ENT told me the almost no one has them removed in Taiwan.[/quote]
Wow. I never would have known that about life here. I don’t remember if I have mine but I do remember when my little sis got hers out.
When I was teaching it always seemed like some of my students were regularly sick. I think it’s a combination of many things like not enough exercise, too much unnecessary medicine weakening the immune system, doting parents, etc. I think the tonsils thing could be another reason. (How about population density? Sharing germs with neighbors while living in such close quarters.
I think you might be on to something there.
[quote=“Wikipedia”]
Amblyopia, otherwise known as lazy eye…
Amblyopia is a developmental problem in the brain, not an organic problem in the eye (although organic problems can induce amblyopia which persist after the organic problem has resolved). The part of the brain corresponding to the visual system from the affected eye is not stimulated properly, and develops abnormally. This has been confirmed via direct brain examination. David H. Hubel and Torsten Wiesel won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1981 for their work demonstrating the irreversible damage to ocular dominance columns produced in kittens by sufficient visual deprivation during the so-called “critical period”. The maximum critical period in humans is from birth to two years old.[/quote]
So maybe they should do testing for lazy eyes earlier in Taiwan.
Do you guys think it’s incorrect to say that it’s more prevalent here than in Western countries? I’m no MD but just from walking around in public, I notice it a lot more on strangers that I pass.
That explains my sweet little Anna’s lazy eye. Poor dear spent the first year of her life in a cage, and then the second year at AT’s shelter. Her eye has made some imnprovement though since she’s been with me. And she’s going trhough a kitten phase now, chasing string and leaping on things.
I think one reason is population density in that I see way more people everyday than I did in the west. Even if the ratios (for lazy eye or anything else) are the same between here and the west (which I doubt for the same reasons mentioned earlier), in numbers I am still going to see more people with that condition here.
Vancouver Island
32,134 km sq
Population: about 3/4 of a million
Taiwan
35,980 km sq
population: about 23 million
So Taiwan is about the same size as Vancouver Island, but has many, many, many more people. Everyday I see more people than lived in my entire village (on another small island off Vancouver Island). The next day I see different people; not all the same ones as the day before. In a small town it is the same people every day - no chance to see different faces.
I remember one person in my village had a lazy eye. Multiply that by, uh… you get the picture.
About the hair growing out of the moles - I think that might be considered lucky here - something about accumulating wealth. A strong reason not to zap them.
What about the beggars with that weird condition where half or more of their faces are covered with some kind of smooth skin-covered growth?
Ah yes, I’ve seen that one as well. It’s a skin condition I’ve never seen before I came to Taiwan.
I wonder if there’s some site in Mandarin for Taiwanese living in America? Like their own Forumosa or something…crazy trolls, guys that have lived in America for years, but still can’t speak English. Shoe on the other foot type of situation.
Then they’d say:
WHY ARE AMERICANS SO FAT? ha ha ha…
What about all the misshapen ears?
HG
WHAT ABOUT ALL THE FREAKS WITH BIG NOSES? oh wait, that be us…so anyway we be living in a nation of dullards who havent figured out the nose breathing thing yet…sounds about right…the wall eyed thing might be lack of a physical horizon i.e. your eyes are always hitting a physical impediment when trying to find the true horizon to space out on, oh and them pesky chinese characters dont help neither…
My sleep doctor said that it’s possible that I have sleep/breathing issues related to my asian ancestry because of smaller/congested sinuses that impede airflow, I thought it was just me but I guess a large percentage of taiwanese also have this
[quote=“rocky raccoon”]
It’s just weird for me because I’ve never seen so many lazy eyes until I arrived in Taiwan.[/quote]
I never thought about it but i agree. I always feel like I see more albinos here too.
seems a lot of cross-eyed folks here too
I’d like to get that Lazer surgery so I could shoot lazers out of my eyes.