Q: My 10-year-old daughter has been diagnosed with myopia (- 4) in both her eyes. Recently, I noticed that when she removes her glasses, she gets squint in one of her eyes. She likes having oily/fatty food, but suffers from indigestion soon after. I suspect that the squint in her eye is a result of fats not getting digested. Am I right in thinking that or is there some other reason? Are her eyeball muscles not strong enough to hold the eyeball firmly?

A:Your daughter is born with myopia, but this has increased with her age and physical growth, and has nothing to do with her food or indigestion. Moreover, as she is studying she tends to put more stress on her eyes. Muscle weakness and squint without glasses are due to the fact that when she is not wearing her glasses, she does not see as well and only one eye is used by the brain and other eye becomes lazy or unused. In other words, both her eyes do not get used simultaneously without glasses. This myopic power is going to increase with her age until she is about 20 years of age due to physical growth. You should not worry about it. Myopia is not a disease, but just that the size of eyeballs is bigger than normal, and rays of light cannot be focussed on the back of the eyes. That is why it increases in growing stage of life. She should not read in poor light, especially small prints, and you should encourage her to wear glasses most of the time. She can wear contact lenses later if she does not like to wear glasses.