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[-] bobbytables@feddit.de 88 points 5 months ago

20 years ago I was injured in one eye. Without an operation it would have left me going slowly blind. The operation was invented maybe 20 years earlier.

Both my eyes had a cataract at a quite early age. Artificial lenses where invented AFAIK 50 years ago. The new lenses even correct my shortsightedness and astigmatism!

So if I had lived only 50 years earlier I would be blind on one eye and quite possibly without a lense or at least seeing really foggy on the other. Now I am sitting here with - 0.5/-1 and otherwise great eye sight.

There are no words how grateful I am for the wonders of modern eye medicine.

[-] BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago

I'm so glad you have your vision!

[-] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago

The first successful organ transplant was in 1954.

Transplants weren't often super successful until the development of Cyclosporine in 1982.

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[-] Dasnap@lemmy.world 64 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I think similarly whenever my airways casually close up.

[-] GrymEdm@lemmy.world 60 points 5 months ago

Waking up when the weather changes:

[-] psud@lemmy.world 18 points 5 months ago

You're nostrils do that as you sleep to keep the one closest to the bed/ground closed. Since people roll from side to side over the course of a night your nostrils swap which one's closed

[-] joelfromaus@aussie.zone 27 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Everyone’s talking blocked sinuses but I took your comment to mean asthma.

While every other cave person is running down a mammoth my asthmatic ass would be dying because of pollen or dust.

[-] Dasnap@lemmy.world 13 points 5 months ago

Mine is also triggered by animal dander so the mammoth could probably kill me by literally just standing next to me.

[-] atomicorange@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago

I assumed sleep apnea. CPAP users of today are the past’s “dang he died mysteriously in his sleep, oh well!”

[-] joelfromaus@aussie.zone 8 points 5 months ago

As a CPAP user; when I don’t use it I relate to ‘dying in my sleep’ way too much.

[-] umbrella@lemmy.ml 14 points 5 months ago

imagine being an absolute beta and not mouthbreathing

[-] EldritchFeminity 15 points 5 months ago

Personally, I tend to use my mouth to inhale other things.

spoilerIt's - it's dick. This is a sex joke.

[-] pressanykeynow@iusearchlinux.fyi 14 points 5 months ago

Just use one of your nostrils for that.

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[-] Alto@kbin.social 51 points 5 months ago

I apparently threw my glasses across the room in my sleep last night. Spent a solid 5 minutes going full on Velma mode looking for them.

[-] Wilzax@lemmy.world 21 points 5 months ago

Do you wear your glasses in bed??

[-] Alto@kbin.social 37 points 5 months ago

No, I frankly don't have the slightest clue how I did it.

[-] Wilzax@lemmy.world 15 points 5 months ago

That makes this so much funnier

[-] Slovene@feddit.nl 8 points 5 months ago

How else are you gonna see in your dream?

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[-] SpeedLimit55@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago

Ha, thats why I keep an old pair in the nightstand.

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[-] SparrowRanjitScaur@lemmy.world 48 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Natural selection hasn't really applied to humans for thousands of years. We beat nature when we created civilizations. Which is partly why some of these less than ideal genetic traits go unchecked now in the population.

[-] Dogyote@slrpnk.net 53 points 5 months ago

Evolution and natural selection never stops, we've only changed what the selective pressures are.

[-] SparrowRanjitScaur@lemmy.world 11 points 5 months ago

True. I was thinking of the selective pressures of nature, but there are absolutely still self imposed selective forces acting on our species.

[-] Instigate@aussie.zone 8 points 5 months ago

And even those self-imposed selective forces are ever-changing and vary quite wildly from context to context across the globe and across the socioeconomic spectrum. Modern human evolution is really fascinating.

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[-] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 36 points 5 months ago

I can't imagine having to live with my natural sight 24/7.

I definitely would not be driving. Probably not walking much either, might not see the bus coming.

[-] umbrella@lemmy.ml 12 points 5 months ago

its not like they had cars to drive before glasses were a thing

[-] pressanykeynow@iusearchlinux.fyi 12 points 5 months ago

Just a lot of dangerous animals. And dangerous humans. No cars though.

[-] kamenlady@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago

Imagine being in a jungle. Just a blur of greens.

[-] xpinchx@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago

It's that a snake or grass? ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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[-] Kalkaline@leminal.space 29 points 5 months ago

Remember, your only job as far as natural selection is concerned is to have offspring and have them survive long enough to repeat the cycle. Old people with bad eyesight just have to be able to keep the kids and grandkids alive.

[-] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 17 points 5 months ago

Bad eyesight could have a positive effect on generating offspring because you can't tell how ugly your partner is. Or that about 30% of the time you aren't having sex with your partner but someone else with poor eyesight instead.

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[-] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 27 points 5 months ago

you know whats even weirder? Some dude somewhere realized that lenses were a thing, and realized that your eyes were also just a glorified lense. And that theoretically you could just put a lense over a lense to fix the bad lensing of the lense. And it fucking worked.

Natural selection my ass.

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[-] mojo_raisin@lemmy.world 25 points 5 months ago

Some species members care for each other. Humans obviously (some anyways), even lions I think have been known to provide food when another has broken teeth or something.

[-] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 18 points 5 months ago

I remember maybe a decade or more ago some enterprising gent made a glasses design with some kind of resin in the lens, so the wearer could adjust the lens thickness to fit their needs. Nobody would back his invention so he created a non-profit to fund these glasses for the developing world. I'd love to know what happened to it because its still something I care about supporting.

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[-] knittedmushroom@beehaw.org 16 points 5 months ago

I like to tell my Republican father we'd both be classified legally blind and on the welfare he hates so much if optometry wasn't around. Helps put it in perspective for him how some people just "lose" the life lotto and need help to live in the same world as able-bodied folks.

[-] spoon00@midwest.social 12 points 5 months ago

That and a bunch of reasons

[-] SternburgExport@feddit.de 8 points 5 months ago

but mostly the bunch of reasons

[-] Gerudo@lemm.ee 10 points 5 months ago

Yeah, I always get a warning message from zenni when I order glasses. It thinks my script is wrong cause it's such a weird one.

I know I'm half blind! Don't make me feel bad about it too!

[-] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 10 points 5 months ago

Pretty funny! But the reason so many people need glasses is because we spend all our time indoors, reading. People in the past were outside working all the time and they didn’t need glasses as a result.

[-] pumpkinseedoil@feddit.de 13 points 5 months ago

I was born with bad eyes. People back then also were born with bad eyes but couldn't do anything about it.

Obviously you can also get bad eyes (shortsighted) when always only focusing on short distances but it's not the only way. Most people also become far sighted when they get older (the pressure inside your eye lowers and therefore your eye becomes shorter)

[-] SadSadSatellite@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 5 months ago

Focusing close regularly doesn't make you short sighted, not getting enough tourquoise light on your retina from staying inside makes your eye keep getting longer instead of stopping when the focal point is correct. Well, that and genetics.

And losing the ability to see near as you age has nothong to do with pressure. Your lens is constantly adding new layers to itself to stay clear, and after 40 it's become so thick the muscles that pull it to accommodate near vision can't stretch it enough. By 58 it doesn't stretch at all any more. That's why everyone eventually needs bifocals/progressives.

Don't state things as fact if your not sure of them.

Source: ABOA, NCLE, OD, I own two optical practices.

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[-] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 6 points 5 months ago

Is that true? I feel like it simply wasn't an option, so people didn't get them.

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[-] TokenBoomer@lemmy.world 10 points 5 months ago

God made you that way, and she doesn’t make mistakes. Think about it.

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 9 points 5 months ago
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[-] lath@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago

As someone with bad sight, all my other senses are tingling. So, while blind people might've been unable to hunt, they would have made great night guards, which is a boon for social groups wary of nocturnal predators.

[-] lugal@lemmy.ml 7 points 5 months ago

Not that this would be the only thing I would be selected out for...

[-] cheesymoonshadow@lemmings.world 7 points 5 months ago

My eyesight went to shit from sitting at a desk and staring at a monitor all day. I wonder if my eyesight would've remained perfect well into adulthood without computers.

[-] dustyData@lemmy.world 10 points 5 months ago

It wouldn't have, apparently. An optometrist friend says that sort of thing only makes slightly worse the things that were already going to happen to your eyes. Like, if you are nearsighted and didn't exercise your eyes looking at far away stuff enough, your eyesight will be slightly more myopic. But you were going to be nearsighted anyway. Like, people were awfully nearsighted way before the invention of the television and sedentary indoor lifestyles. We just hadn't invented optometry yet to note it.

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this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2024
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