People, and children especially, who spend more time doing physical exercise and outdoor play have lower rates of myopia, suggesting the increased magnitude and complexity of the visual stimuli encountered during these types of activities decrease myopic progression. There is preliminary evidence that the protective effect of outdoor activities on the development of myopia is due, at least in part, to the effect of long hours of exposure to daylight on the production and the release of retinal dopamine.
As of 2017, gluten-related disorders were increasing in frequency in different geographic areas. Some suggested explanations for this increase include the following: the growing westernization of diets, the increasing use of wheat-based foods included in the Mediterranean diet, the progressive replacement of rice by wheat in many countries in Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, the development in recent years of new types of wheat with a higher amount of cytotoxic gluten peptides, and the higher content of gluten in bread and bakery products due to the reduction of dough fermentation time.