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Luke had been a windfall treasure trove of blog article inspiration, with his e-mails:

P.S. I wish I could say I still had the money I saved for LASEK and I want to put it towards a one-on-one with you, but I spent it on a Honda CRF250L dual sport motorcycle a couple months ago…and I don’t regret it!   =] 

—

 

Here is what I responded, and what I would indeed tell anyone weighing the benefits of paying for one-on-one with me, or the dual sport motorbike:

 

The dual sport is what I would have prescribed anyway, rather than a one-on-one with me.  

 

More reason to get outside, and lots of pulling focus and distance vision, along with some natural UV lighting.  It’s the perfect accessory for myopia rehab!

 

—-

 

There we have it.  I’ll be your enabler for all sorts of purchases for outdoor entertainment.  Do enjoy some healthy eyesight today!

 

× Myopia is a combination of NITM and lens-induced causes.  In many cases, eyesight can be rehabilitated.  
Read more here ..

 

The post Myopia Rehab Prescription Options: CRF250L appeared first on The Frauenfeld Clinic Archive: To Improve Your Eyesight.

The post Want 360 Hours Less Close-Up? Two Great Activities To Lower Dangerous Eye Strain appeared first on The Frauenfeld Clinic Archive: To Improve Your Eyesight.

The post How To Choose A Reduced Glasses Prescription (Differential / Close-Up Friendly Glasses) appeared first on The Frauenfeld Clinic Archive: To Improve Your Eyesight.

If you have been reading the blog for some time, you have likely seen this coming.  Yes, it is time for me to retire, post my real life retirement, now from the online world as well.  An old man needs some time to relax!

It has been a fascinating journey, building this site, and learning all about online interactions.  Building the Web courses.  Meeting so many of you via the forum and e-mail.  As much as it was frustrating at times, with the site breaking and communication occasional overwhelming, I am very grateful to have had the experience.

The Web and humanity’s exponentially increasing ability for collective learning has shown me that it is possible to make a difference in people’s eyesight health, even when they are half a world away.  It’s something I would never have imagined to witness in my lifetime.

Truth be told, I have been planning my exit since the day I started the site.  First it was going to be six months, then a year, then two.  Now it has been much longer than that, and I feel that things have become stable enough for me to take my hand off the wheel.  I’m hoping to take the bit of time I have left pursuing other ambitions.  Travel a bit.  Spend more time not thinking about eyes.  For the past year or so I have been wanting to really do this, but a good exit remained elusive.  There just wasn’t a good opportunity for a hand-off, I didn’t know who might become the new steward of this project.

“The site is changing to present a community model of support.”

In the end I realized that there are a number of excellent practitioners for you to draw insights from.  Rather than trying to find one person to take over my responsibilities, the site is changing to present a community model of support.  You may be getting perspectives from Ayurveda and traditional eastern medicine, as well as strong Western recent science based insights.   All of it will continue to be in line with the exact method I have advocated here since the start, with the same basic principles and the same courses.  The improvement will be on the front of more diverse insights, and more practitioners lending their time to this project.  Everyone is and will be carefully vetted, and all the forum and course support will come only from a few esteemed colleagues in the field of myopia rehabilitation.  

Things have been in unofficial transition for a while now.  For the time being I will continue to be available for existing one-on-one participants, and occasional forum posts.  In case something needs attention, I will be available.

In reality all that is going to change for you is that you continue to receive the same level of support and content, with a bit more current context.  Like the recent article discussing podcasts, you will get even more lifestyle relevant advice.  I’m a bit of a relic, I don’t even use a smartphone, and never listened to a podcast.  In that sense, this project is going to receive a needed boost to future proof its contents for you.  

I know that all change can first feel unsettling.  You may wonder and worry.  Please do trust me, when I say that everything that you enjoyed will continue on, and some of the things you may have been missing, might finally start to come to fruition.  Everything will stay good and continue to get better.  

Lastly, please know that the transition will be slow and gradual.  To help preserve continuity and to make sure you keep getting great support, nothing will be different overnight.  Anything new will be tested first, get feedback, and be changed only as long as it works well for everyone.

Please do welcome and support our new guides.  They are lending their rather valuable time here entirely uncompensated (aside from expenses for the Web and some administrative expenses for those providing actual support).  We are all fortunate to be able to continue to draw from this growing resource.

Considering that it is Christmas, that I’m retiring, and that we have all this change happening, I also created a one time promotion for new course participants.  The course is meant to provide an outlet for you to give financial support to this project, so there never have been discounts in the past.  This, my Christmas present and introduction of the new contributors.

Enjoy about 40% off the basic course, and if you are already in the course at the regular fee, I will gladly upgrade you to the +Therapist option (even if I have provided a lot of prescription suggestions regardless of course status in the past).

This might make for a good Christmas present, or get you started on a worthwhile New Year’s resolution.  Here are the options:

Web (Adult)

$79
one month

• 50+ Lessons (Updated Weekly)
• Unlimited Forum Support
• –
• –
• 21 Day Free Trial 

+Therapist (Adult)

$159
one month

• 50+ Lessons (Updated Weekly)
• Unlimited Forum Support
• Individual Prescription Tailoring
• –
• 21 Day Free Trial 

+Therapist (Child)

$189
one month

• 50+ Lessons (Updated Weekly)
• Unlimited Forum Support
• Individual Prescription Tailoring
•  Includes Adult & Child Course
• 21 Day Free Trial 

This offer is only available till Christmas, that’s basically today, tomorrow, the next few days. After that pricing is going to increase (it won’t be cheap!) – if you have been on the fence about eyesight improvement and prefer to spend less supporting this site, now is the time.  There is also a 21 day free trial, and a 365 day refund guarantee (for the core course or the first month of any course).  

For more details on the course you might visit the Vision Improvement page.  

More details will be coming here to the blog in the coming days and weeks, including introductions from practitioners, and of course all the eyesight health content you have come to expect to see here.

Embrace the new, and keep enjoying healthy eyesight!

 

× Myopia is a combination of NITM and lens-induced causes.  In many cases, eyesight can be rehabilitated.  
Read more here ..

 

The post Retirement Announcement & A Christmas Present appeared first on Integrative Myopia Therapy.

Rebecca writes:

So far I’ve found integrating the program into my daily life has not been much of a problem at all. I’m not following it to the letter but revising as necessary to do what I can.

I wake up in the mornings and go through my routine without my lenses and even as a high myope (-6.5/-7.0), I don’t have any trouble with this. In fact, I find the more time I spend without my lenses, the more I am surprised by what I can see/interpret. Not clearly, obviously, but I’m functional.

Wearing the plus lenses while I’m on the computer at work 8 hours a day has made all the difference in the world for me. I wear +2.50 when I want to do my edge of blur practice, usually first thing in the morning and right after lunch. The rest of the time I wear +2.0 and while it doesn’t really look any different to me than my full prescription I can absolutely feel the strain reduction this provides. No more tension headaches!

I also have a timer that goes off every 15 minutes to remind me to look away from the screen. The most distant thing I have to look at from my desk is a wall 25 feet away but it’s better than nothing. And every two hours or so, I go outside and spend 5 or 10 minutes scanning the horizon, watching birds fly around or just trying to look as far away as I can. This has helped my mood a lot since I have no windows in my office.

The weekends I usually try to do all my reading outside with no lenses on. I can’t see very far but I spend this time doing edge of blur practice and I can push it a few cm further as I go along.

One thing I wasn’t able to clearly tell from the lesson was how much carrot juice to drink. Is it one cup a day? 

I’m excited to keep progressing and I’m happy to be able to actively improve my own eyes. Too bad I didn’t know all this 30+ years ago.

—

This is exactly what you want to have happen.  What is making the experience for Rebecca?

It’s the way of not passively relying on glasses, not being a spectator, not being just a passenger in the experience.  The 20 minute morning activity of no glasses is like an exploration of what’s possible.  Can you see, and what can you see?  And from there you take a reduced prescription for your close-up work, which helps greatly to reduce all that eye strain you are otherwise experiencing (and are used to, hence don’t notice how much it negatively affects your focusing muscle).  

Vision improvement and myopia rehab is a bit of an adventure and an exploration.  How much less correction do you actually need, to see?  What can active focus do for your clarity of sight?

Once you combine the initial discovery process with building good habits, experiences like Rebecca’s turn into the ones you read later on, from participants who have used these strategies for a number of months.  You get tangible improvement in centimeter, and reductions in prescription.

Enjoy some healthy eyesight today!

P.S.:  Thank you for all the well wishes and kind e-mails.  It was a bit overwhelming and I feel very grateful to have all of you as wonderful participants and contributors to this project.  

I’m still continuing working with existing clients for the time being.  Additional practitioners will start posting here in the blog and offering some guidance in the forum in the coming days and weeks.  There is of course a bit of a learning curve for them (not all are Web savvy), but it should be an exiting time to finally get some additional perspectives and voices here on the site.

I’ll continue to occasionally contribute, as their participation level grows, and be one of the writers you’ll find here.  Many of the day-to-day aspects of running the site are handed off, which is giving me back so many hours for my days.

You probably already noticed some positive things, like speed improvements of the site.  Lots going on behind the scenes, untangling some of my bandaid solutions.  The site is in great hands!

Neha, Eye Health Practitioner: Who I Am, How I Ended Up Writing Here

Hello, dear readers of this great site!  My name is Neha Gupta, I am a holistic health practitioner with a focus on eyesight related illness, here in India.  This is my 14th year in the practice.  I work mostly with prevention as we have less myopia here in childhood, and less aggressive prescription therapy locally.  I am most frequently sought for sleep disorders, and health problems that relate to eyesight.

I was first introduced to this site by the very brilliant Jake Steiner who had come to visit me a few years ago.  We spoke a great deal about vision health, in particular about the effects of light on eyesight.  Jake had been much more focused on newer Western medical discoveries, and rehabilitating his high myopia.  In discovering the importance of the quality of the light in his daily life with me, he experienced notable improvements in his vision.  Jake later insisted that I meet Alex and mutually exchange ideas and discuss vision health together.  His work on myopia therapy is amazing and quite effective and I feel honored to be invited to contribute some writing here for you on his blog.

In this first article I will take you on a small walk around the subject of light and eyesight health.  We will cover some science here, bear with me – it will be well worth the read (I do hope), and include tangible suggestions to improve your vision health.

—

How The Quality Of Light Affects Your Eyesight

I think it is important to understand that myopia can have many roots.  It can be primarily one thing for many readers here especially in the West, where prescription sales are very high, and most people spend all day in front of computer screens.

In my local area we have similar problems, but not quite to the same degree.  So when I see myopia, it is often just a low degree, and often combined with other symptoms of early myopia.  There is usually discomfort like headaches and emotional unhappiness, and often physical symptoms including lazy or drifting eyes.  If you think about what is happening before reaching for a prescription, none of this is too surprising.  Our vision relates us to our environment.  When our vision begins to be compromised, our connection to the world becomes uncertain.  Our minds struggle with this, especially if we are not suitably distracted by work, or treated with prescription glasses.  We are quick to look for a fix, and not so interested in looking at causes.  We want to get back to our lives, and our eyes are just an inconvenience we want to get out of the way.

Because of this, especially when I had first started, many people laughed at my therapy methods.  Light, people would say, is all the same.  They would not take me seriously when I would suggest that there is high quality light, and garbage quality light, even if the brightness (lumens) is measurably the same.  And I wouldn’t resent those people.  It does sound non-scientific and like wishful thinking.  I appreciate all of that resistance since it lead me to methods to help people substantiate my methods.

What do I mean by substantiate?  Much like the way Alex encourages you to measure, I also suggest that you quantify how the quality of light affects your eyesight.  I want to bring you as much scientific evidence as possible, and ways to measure what I say, so that you can put aside doubts, and begin to appreciate light for the important role it plays in your vision.

Let’s look at what I mean when talking about the quality of light:

Spectrum Of Light

There is the visible spectrum of light.  This is the part of the spectrum that you can perceive with your eyes.  Your eyes are highly adapted to see the smallest nuances of color in this spectrum, with three different types of cells each sensitive to one of three different wavelengths (see Young-Helmholtz).  

Your Eye:  Three types of receptors react to spectrums of light.

You probably didn’t come here for an advanced human biology lesson.  It is difficult to fully appreciate the complexity of the eyes however, without at least a small glimpse into how sophisticated the system truly is.  It is important to realize how finely tuned your eye is to perceive the environment around you.  It is designed to function in an environment that we are rapidly changing today.  

And this is where the problems happen.  We are replacing natural light, with a much wider spectrum, with artificial light.  We purposely and accidentally filter important parts of the spectrum, in particular natural UV light.  Here again, we want to avoid sounding unscientific.  You may say, why should I care about UV?  Isn’t UV bad?  My sunglasses proudly proclaim that they filter UV light!

Take into consideration what would happen if we had no UV light.  We couldn’t produce vitamin D, as the most obvious example.   And yet today UV has become vilified, for reasons that would take a whole separate post to even discuss to a small extent.  What is important to note here that UV isn’t a bad thing.  And we don’t get much UV anymore:

Every sort of glass filters just about all UV light.  This means your car windshield, office window, and of course your glasses even if they are made from polycarbonate, have added layers to filter UV.  

Part of the story of why UV is bad is it’s link to caract development especially later in life.  And while that link can not be ignored, there is more to that story.  Sugar intake, nutrient deficiencies, and other factors are all part of what is causing cataracts, and as always it isn’t as simple as just eliminating everything outside of the visible spectrum to protect your eyes.  There is a lot of research on the subject, probably most important the discussion of crotenoids and their role to protect the eye.  Alex briefly suggests carrots and Omega 3 in your diet.  As I notice about many things that Alex just recommends without much discussion, his method is to give you the fastest and easiest way to get healthy eyesight, with a very large amount of science and research that stays out of your view.  His suggestions should all be taken very seriously, as they cover a very wide range of medical insight (even though he makes it all look very simple to the casual observer).

This is meant to be just a brief article on eyesight and light.  I am bringing up some of these points just to give you some perspective on how much this is a complex topic, full of arguments and research and studies.  Science that never fully connects to the reality of your day-to-day life.  All of these insights never make it into a therapy or preventative health approach.  Other than the pill sales ads it is quite difficult for the average lay person to really understand all the discoveries medical science is making.

When researching the topic of light, there is a dizzying amount of research available.  One of my favorites is spectral sensitivity of various creatures and their eyes, where you can discover all about findings for all sorts of eyes.  

When we look at a field like mine, which on the surface sounds like what Alex calls “the hippies of medicine”, there is a lot more than one would first think.  Light affects your eyesight.  Light is your eyesight.  There are invisible parts of the light, which affect the production of key vitamins.  There are parts of light that can lead to poor vision and even blindness.  Light is vision.  

And this brings me to the main point of this very small introduction to the subject of light:

We take light for granted, to the detriment of our eyesight.

We had the first part here, with a quick introduction of the eye as a complex system designed to distinguish various parts of the light spectrum.  We then went on to realize that light isn’t just seeing things, but also a system that produces biological necessities for our body to function.  We also know that light can negatively affect our eyes (cataract development).  All this, and now you may start to think about how little we care or consider the quality of the light in our lives.

Which leads me to another small side point.  What do I mean, when I say “quality”?

It is difficult to strike a balance in a single blog article, between background information, and brevity.  Let’s look at the chart above, in reference to light quality:

First, day light.  This is what your eye is designed for.  Remember, we have three different types of cells to distinguish parts of the visible spectrum.  Look at the “daylight” graph.  You notice a very linear intensity for each wavelength, from 400 to 700nm.  This is what your eye expects and your brain expects to interpret.  Your eyes have billions of receptor sites, all finely tuned for this spectrum.  Now compare this, what is the reference quality of light, to the most common artificial lighting alternatives.  The biggest offender, fluorescent, which is also incidentally what is most commonly found in offices and public spaces.  High intensities in small parts of the green and red spectrum, and very low intensity in the rest of the spectrum.  Your eye is deprived of a large part of the expected spectrum.

You are likely wondering how this matters, in actual life.  I will get to that in a moment, in a way that you can actually measure (and probably be rather concerned by).

The rest of the chart shows other lighting sources, all of which to varying extents sacrifice parts of the visible spectrum, or significantly vary the intensity for various wavelengths.  This has two effects:

1)  You can’t see nearly as well if the spectrum intensity is not uniform.

This is where we get back to the science.  Great quality all the way to garbage quality.  And here again you get all the tools (every so casually) mentioned by Alex.  You have the eye chart, and centimeter.  What you want to do here is to reduce your prescription (again, Alex has incredibly already put this at your disposal already) to where you are not experiencing over sharpened vision.  You want to see clearly, mainly in natural light.  Take your eye chart outside, in the shade, measure your sight (if you can see better than 20/40 in a fluorescent environment, you are over corrected and will experience lens induced progressive myopia).  Do the same with centimeter, especially if you are myopic already.

Now compare results with the same distances and the same measuring tools, in each of the other lighting options referenced in the graphic above (or the ones you usually are exposed to).  Experience first hand, with actual numbers, how much incorrect intensity throughout the spectrum affects the overall quality of your eyesight.

For reference, the acceptable variance, for the same lumens (brightness), is exactly zero.  Loosing even half a line on the Snellen, or a centimeter, in the same brightness, same measurement tools, same circumstance, is an indicator of eye strain.  And eye strain will create headaches and discomfort in the short term, and can cause difficult to pinpoint chronic symptoms in the long term.  One of these of course is myopia, but common is also depression, appetite variance, and many other symptoms that can be corrected by nothing more than balancing intensity through the visual spectrum of light.  When I consult with patients, we always test vision for various intensity deficiencies.  You would be surprised to find how many unidentified ailments can be corrected by just fixing the light quality.

2)  Light affects your sleep, and your health at large.

Again note here how much this is just a small introductory article.  We could go further and look at light-induced melatonin supression.  If you are interested in these things, just click the links.  A small excerpt:  

In humans, a single photopigment may be primarily responsible for melatonin suppression, and its peak absorbance appears to be distinct from that of rod and cone cell photopigments for vision.  These findings suggest that there is a novel opsin photopigment in the human eye that mediates circadian photoreception.

Melatonin is an important story, and directly connects to light quality.  We can treat sleep disorders very effectively, by affecting the quality of the light you experience throughout your day.  You would be shocked to see the volume of patients I see and how many seriously debilitating disorders trace back to nothing more than – light.

3)  Over or under emphasis of any part of the light spectrum has shown to affect mental health (sometimes significantly).

There are vast ranges of studies and discussions to cover on this front.  Some therapies emphasizing a range of the blue spectrum have shown to help with seasonal affective disorders (with caveats, the point here being that light spectrum is more than “just” light).  The light you see is connecting to your emotional well being.

As our lives more and more become independent of natural light, removed from natural light, and replaced by artificial sources, our health suffers.  This is an increasingly well studied part of medical science.  For the people who believe that light quality doesn’t matter, this is all rather shocking.

Here is what you should do, if you want to go do something for your eyes today:

Download a lumens app for Android or iPhone.  This way you have a standard reference for your ambient brightness.  Now compare your sight in natural full spectrum light, for the same brightness, to artificial light.  An easy way to do this is to go from outdoors to an indoor office or mall / shop.  Be sure not be over corrected on prescription.  Note the change.  If you vision decreases even a small degree, realize that this difference is the very small tip of a very large eyesight risk iceberg.  Heed Alex advice, even if he makes things sound simple and less long worded than I do here:  

Get full spectrum light bulbs.  When possible, get outside.  Get shaded natural light exposure.

If possible, get up at sunrise, and reduce your exposure to artificial light after sunset.  Granted, this is only limited in possibility for many people.  Even if you can just follow the advice that Alex gives, do invest in balanced intensity spectrum lighting for your ambient environment.  Your eyes and your general health will be well worth it!

—

For more questions on this subject, if you are interested in more articles of how your eyes connect to your health at large, feel free to post in the forum.  In this time in particular, there is much to talk about for SAD (seasonal affective disorder), and how quality light can help reduce it’s effects.  This and many other topics relating to light and health could be well covered here on the site.  Selective spectral damage is another subject that is largely undiagnosed and can cause cognitive and psychological disorders.

Unfortunately I only have limited time to contribute here, but I do want to avail myself to Alex larger vision for a meaningful resource for long term eyesight health.  While myopia is the primary symptom and expression of our modern lifestyle and lack of available education eyesight health, it is just one of the expressions of a neglected body.

Be kind to your eyes, get away from garbage light!  

I hope you enjoyed this article, I am a bit nervous about the responsibility of writing here (and writing is not my strong suit).

- Neha

We focus here primarily on myopia, as the most common ailment of the eye.  

In that process we may sound less than idealistic about the mainstream treatment options and many of the practitioners advocating surgery or glasses.  It's easy to loose track of just how much medical science is advancing, especially in terms of acute symptom treatment of eye related injuries.  An example of this that is most promising to those with corneal scarring, corneal burns, or other corneal damage.  Corneal infectious diseases alone affect more than 250.000.000 people worldwide (source:  National Eye Institute), blinding as many as 6.000.000 people.  Currently the only real treatment option is corneal transplants.  

Especially as we get older, corneal damage becomes an increasingly common cause of clouded vision.  Not to be confused with cataracts which happen on the lens (behind the cornea), the cornea tends to be most susceptible to external damage.

Published last month in Science Translational Medicine, a study using stem cells to treat scar tissue on the cornea (by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine), is the future we can look forward to:

Study lead author Sayan Basu, MBBS, MS, a corneal surgeon working at the L.V. Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad, India, joined Dr. Funderburgh's lab in Pittsburgh. Dr. Basu had previously developed a technique to obtain ocular stem cells from tiny biopsies at the surface of the eye and a region between the cornea and sclera known as the limbus. Removal of tissue from this region heals rapidly with little discomfort and no disruption of vision. After collecting biopsies from banked human donor eyes, the team expanded the numbers of cells in a culture plate using human serum to nourish them. They conducted several tests to verify that they these cells were, in fact, corneal stem cells.

"Using the patient's own cells from the uninjured eye for this process could let us bypass rejection concerns," Dr. Basu noted. "That could be very helpful, particularly in places that don't have corneal tissue banks for transplant."

The team then tested the human stem cells in a mouse model of corneal injury. They used a gel of fibrin, a protein found in blood clots that is commonly used as a surgical adhesive, to glue the cells to the injury site. They found the scarred corneas of mice healed and became clear again within four weeks of treatment, while those of untreated mice remained clouded.

"Even at the microscopic level, we couldn't tell the difference between the tissues that were treated with stem cells and undamaged cornea," Dr. Funderburgh said. 

"We were also excited to see that the stem cells appeared to induce healing beyond the immediate vicinity of where they were placed. That suggests the cells are producing factors that promote regeneration, not just replacing lost tissue."

His team's work is the inspiration behind a small pilot study underway in Hyderabad in which a handful of patients will receive their own corneal stem cells as a treatment."

---

Exciting in particular is that human trials are already underway in Hyderabad (India FTW), making this more than just another one of the far flung experiments that don't make it past the mouse for a decade.  (Full article here.)

Thanks to Neha for passing on this bit of eye-news.

Cheers and as Alex always says, do take a moment to enjoy your healthy eyesight today!

- Jake Steiner

The post Stem Cell Treatments: The Future Cure Of Corneal Scarring appeared first on Myopia Therapy Clinic.

The forum, ever the goldmine of participant insights, most recently with Cadence posting about her unfortunate experience at the optometrist:

 I went down to the optometrist today where it was a really bad experience. The first shop that I went to is the one that prescribe me my glasses 1 year ago. When I went in, the regular optometrist is no longer there and was replaced by an unfriendly lady. For measurements of my eye she did not offer to do the chart testing for me and direct me to the autorefractor machine. These are my results from that, 

L – 12.5, R- -9
For my glasses, she did an analysis on the prescription
L – -10 -0.50 x 1 , R – -7.00 -0.50 x1

[...]

I think the trip to the optometrists make me feel anxious and depressed as I get a heavy feeling that it will be hard to reverse my severe myopia as both of them did not give any advice and just want to get things over with."

---

There is no money in checkups, especially with the large optic shop chains giving them away in order to drive frame and lens sales business.  How much time are you willing to spend on something in your business, that doesn't make any money?

It's too bad we are talking about Cadence' future eye health here, and not some car brake job.

What is a bit shocking here is that two optometrists would do autorefractor only, and not even bother with a proper test lens and Snellen chart.  That's taking even the standard optic shop attitude a bit far.  Best not to patronize those kinds of establishments!  

Though then Steve was incredibly kind to take the time to post a response to Cadence's thread, with some meaningful and encouraging numbers:

Hi Cadence,

Sorry to hear about your negative experiences at the optometrist! I can personally relate to how you feel as I also get very anxious when I visit my optometrist. After years or increasing prescriptions, a subconscious fear of another increase just weighs on our shoulders.

The ironic thing about it is, that when we’re anxious, acuity tends to be a bit less overall. This, in turn, leads to a slightly higher prescription than if you are relaxed. This has to do with the fight-or-flight mechanism that is activated during times of stress. I’m sure Alex or someone else could explain it more scientifically though.

Honestly, if you feel like you can see “good enough” (20/25 to 20/40) and don’t wear your full prescription for up-close, you don’t really need to dwell on those numbers too much.

Reduce the close up strain, take breaks and do as much distance active focus/focus pulling as you can. Build the habits, track your CM and snellen results fairly regularly to start off. At the very least, you will stop progression and (hopefully) you will begin to slowly regain some of the acuity that *most* optometrists claim is impossible.

Here is a break down of my normalized glasses I have used in the ~10 months I have been working to improve my vision.

Start 

(Late February 2014)

(OS) -7.50D, -1c | (OD) -6D, -1.25c 

March 

(~20/40)

 to July 

(20/20)

(OS) -6.75D, -.5c | (OD) -5.50D, -.75c

July (20/40) to December (20/25)

(OS) -6.25D, -.25c | (OD) -5D, -.5c

December 

(20/40)

 to present 

(20/30)

(OS) -5.75D | (OD) -4.50D <–Spherical

I’ll wear the previous normalized in non-ideal lighting (night, cloudy, artificial lighting). If I try to wear the previous normalized outside during the day, I get headaches within 1 hour due to strain/overprescription.

I go to an optometrist every 3-6 months or so and the results don’t show the progress my eyes are (quite obviously) making. Poor lighting and my anxiety cause the results to vary a bit.

Learning to trust your eyes and push them a bit is key. You’ll find that certain amounts of blur isn’t necessarily a bad thing once your eyes become used to active focus. You will start having clear flashes here and there, then becoming more frequent. This builds confidence to keep you on the right path.

-Steve F

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That's dramatically impactful, as a real-life example goes of what is possible, outside of the optic shops tyranny of prescription dogma.  

Late February, (OS) -7.50D, -1c | (OD) -6D, -1.25c.  That's -7.50 diopters, and a whole diopter of astigmatism correction on top.  Fast forward ten months, and Steve has 20/30 with (OS) -5.75D | (OD) -4.50D <–Spherical.  

That's a -1.75 diopter reduction in ten months, and a full diopter of astigmatism, entirely eliminated.

And he can see 20/30.  Ten months later.  I wish I could put billboards and full page ads everywhere, with experiences like Steve's.  Of course many people will still take the quick fix, but just being given a choice in the matter would be reasonable.

Unfortunately that isn't the case.  This site exists in a tiny gap between the billion dollar muscle of the lens industry, and the online scams for all sorts of health schemes.  Most people are unlikely to ever discover this small niche of myopia prevention and rehab.

Thanks though to Steve for taking the time to post, and to Cadence for bringing her experiences here for many others not to feel alone in their troubles with the optic shops.

Find the full forum thread here.

---

In other news, behind the scenes and retirement related:

Things are off to a promising start, without me running things behind the scenes.  I'm very excited about this!  Let's see what we have so far:

Jake talks about stem cell treatments for damaged corneas, and Neha tantalizes us with a glimpse into light therapy, teasing the possibility of discussing cataract prevention methods, and how to get better sleep.  She all by herself could fill the site with new articles for years, all of which you would quite enjoy reading.  And there are other insightful contributors about to post soon, to add a whole lot more to the site than I ever could by myself.

The site also received some major performance improvements which you may have noticed in the past weeks.  Load speeds are down to 2-3 seconds rather than previously where some pages took 10 seconds or more to fully load.  Thanks to Todd and his guys for fixing a whole lot on that front.  

Then Jake provided a sizable donation to keep the site afloat, which has sadly always been loosing money.  Money talks as they say, and putting quite a bit of money on the table added a lot of assurance that this resource is going to be around for the long haul.

There have been requests for a donation button for the site, but I hadn't been able to make that work.  Possibly in the future - meanwhile there are the paid courses, which should also offer you a good return on your contribution.

We are still working out who is providing forum support and when, that one may take a while to get on a good schedule.  Meanwhile both myself and Jake will keep an eye on things there for you.

That's all for today!  I will continue to be online and check in as things are in transition, and I'll also continue to be doing all the existing one-on-one work.  Thank you for all your kind e-mails and encouragement!  I do hope you will keep in touch as you progress.

Enjoy!

The post Should You Fear The Optometrist? (Or: How To Drop 2 Diopters In 10 Months) appeared first on Myopia Therapy Clinic.

This, an important question, that comes up every so often and likely will be relevant to you:

Should I reduce the prescription strength for my weak eye, to force it to work harder and catch up?

You likely noticed this with your centimeter measurements - one of your eyes is stronger / can see further, than the other.  This is entirely normal.  It relates to a phenomenon often referred to as ocular dominance, in vision sciences:

The role which the dominant eye plays in ocular functions is as yet not fully determined. Although it has been recognized as being present, ophthalmologists have been indifferent as to its importance and the part it plays in maintaining normally coordinating eyes. The dominant eye may be defined as that eye which performs the major function of seeing, being assisted by the less dominant fellow eye. To state it differently, the two eyes do not affect the visual consciousness with equal force. One eye leads the other, and this leading eye is called the dominant eye. Just as the two hands are unequal in response, both from a motor and from a sensory standpoint, so are the eyes. Just as a person may be right handed or left handed, so he may be right eyed or left eyed. (source)"

---

We could talk extensively about this subject, and there are all sorts of interesting tests related to ocular dominance, and determinations that can be made.  It's a bit much for this article, which is intended to simply relate to your prescription glasses.

Here is the problem:  You might have too much difference in prescription between your left and right eye.

This as with everything else on the myopia subject, isn't genetic.  Rather, it's what above quote notes, rather ironically:  "Although it has been recognized as being present, ophthalmologists have been indifferent as to its importance [...]"  

The optometrist's *indifference* (often those two go together just a bit too well) is what can increase your natural variance.  Say you initially started with with a -1.00 and a -1.25 prescription.  With early myopia (NITM), the 0.25 increments are a rather large increment of correction.  Your real focusing error might be something like -1.00 and -1.15, for example.  Since there isn't a diopter increment for 0.15, you instead end up with a -0.25 step.

And there you have it, the "weaker" eye is overprescribed.  What happens next?  Lens-induced myopia happens more, on that eye.  Your next prescription, if again done aggressively, may again push more prescription on the weaker eye.

Lens-induced myopia studies in chicks.  It's a thing!

If you spend a lot of time in close-up with that prescription, and you are genetically predisposed to respond strongly to lens induced stimulus, you might end up with a prescription that significantly emphasizes the gap to the dominant eye. 

In a recent forum post, Cadence mentions:

I understand that my left eye is much more overpowered by my right eye by around -3 diopters. L- -10.0, R- -7.0. Current normalised glasses prescription is around L- -9.75, R-7.0, astigmatism on both eyes is not much of a concern as they are around -0.50. I was thinking if its possible to get a differential prescription glasses around L- -8.75 and R- -6.50. In this way, I hope to make my right eye work harder as it already became lazy over the years. I need advice if I am actually on the right track."

---

And there you have exactly what happened, with Cadence.  Optometrist indifference, or rather lack of understanding of the realities of lens-induced myopia.  

The problem you have with this is two-fold:

1)  Prescription Complexity:  When You Take Off Your Glasses, Your Visual Cortex Gets More Confused Since Left And Right Eye Signals Are Changed.

With glasses you get a different set of focal planes than without.  In addition to the blur, you get a *different* blur for left and right eye.  This makes you even more dependent on glasses than you would be with an equalized prescription.  Unfortunately, you can't just jump to equalized.

2)  You Can Loose Depth Perception Entirely.

This means, no more depth perception, and increasingly rapid loss of vision participation in the "weaker" eye.  It's not necessarily what happens, but it's a risk.  The higher the variance in left vs. right eye, the stronger the risk.  

Depth perception test.  Do the circles appear to be moving?

That's the issue with prescription.  What you'll be tempted to do is what Cadence is thinking about trying, in the forum - altering the prescription strength for the weaker eye.

Alex makes the following observation on this topic:

It’s a good idea to compare your left and right eye distance either with (or both) Snellen / centimeter, to make sure.  You do want a correction that gives you the same distance for both eyes. Here is why:

For the first month or two at least, you want to ease into things, not making more than the most necessary changes at one time. By maintaining the same distance in both eyes you are making sure that you are not compromising bifocal vision, and getting the best distance for both eyes. Why?

1. It’s quite difficult to find active focus, when one eye sees more clearly than the other!

2. Combining a prescription reduction with an unequal prescription creates a whole lot of confusion in your brain, where the image signal is processed. We want to avoid this.

3. You want bifocal improvement first and foremost, to introduce the biology to this whole new premise of less strain and more positive stimulus.

Yes, we want to concern ourselves with equalizing both eyes, and the course does discuss this later on, when it becomes appropriate (once all the basics are properly covered). At that point we will look at some strategies that are effective, primarily involving patching the strong eye for brief periods of time. That activity builds on what you learned previously, and just leverages active focus with one eye.

The main thing you want is a reducing prescription. As long as both eyes improve at the same rate, it’s perfect. When we add a bit of extra stimulus for the higher prescription eye, we help introduce just a bit more challenge to slowly add to an equalizing prescription.

---

The full thread is here.

And that's the crux of how to deal with this issue.  As long as both eyes perform (do active focus), you want to strongly favor bifocal activity and habits, and not worry at all about the difference in prescription strength.  As long as both eyes reduce at the same rate, you are in good shape.

Once you are well into that process, at least 1-2 prescription reductions in, you can start doing patching and activities Alex outlines in the course.  It only makes sense to do so when your eyes and habits are already well used to the process of getting stimulus with bifocal vision.  Otherwise it just doesn't work well and adds unnecessary strain (and demands on your time).

Patching.  Who says it can't be done in style?

It's a different story if you already are loosing depth perception because of a significantly unequal prescription.  That's something that the course doesn't cover and requires some one-on-one time (though you having this problem is statistically unlikely).

As always, the forum proves to be an important part of the site and process.  Hopefully you are benefitting from these shared insights!

Cheers,

- Jake

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P.S.:  As I look at the incoming new visitor traffic, I notice that all the text heavy focus of the site is not conducive for people's attention span.  In other words, too much writing, not enough incentive to start reading.

To that end, I'd like to tell some of the basic myopia story with some animation (and still images thereof).  A quick little visual story to explain eye strain, NITM, the first optometrist visit, and then lens-induced progressive myopia.  It might help a lot to educate first time visitors!

If you have animation skills or otherwise may be able to lend a hand, please do post here in the forum.

The post The Dominant Eye: Don’t Get The Wrong Prescription! appeared first on Myopia Therapy Clinic.

Myopia is the tip of the iceberg of a number of eye illnesses commonly viewed as "degenerative".  I recently received a client question about lattice degeneration.  Lattice degeneration is a weakening of the peripheral retina that can result in retinal tears, holes, and detachment.

The causes are unknown.  What is known is that you find very few of these cases in individuals with no myopia.  Coincidence?

If you happen to find this article while searching about lattice degeneration:  No, in most cases the sales pitch for preventative treatment doesn't make sense:

Retinal degenerations are common lesions involving the peripheral retina, and most of them are clinically insignificant. Lattice degeneration, degenerative retinoschisis, cystic retinal tufts, and, rarely, zonular traction tufts, can result in a rhegmatogenous retinal detachment. Therefore, these lesions have been considered for prophylactic therapy; however, adequate studies have not been performed to date.

Conclusions

Well-designed, prospective, randomized clinical studies are necessary to determine the benefit-risk ratio of prophylactic treatment. In the meantime, the evidence available suggests that most of the peripheral retinal degenerations should not be treated except in rare, high-risk situations."

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Source:  American Journal of Ophthalmology 

Business as usual, your ophthalmologist may correctly diagnose lattice degeneration.  He may remember a visit or brochure from a treatment plan, and his training will kick in, and you'll hear about there being some treatment to help prevent retinal detachment.  The same way you are immediately sold lenses when you have a bit of NITM, muscle spasm myopia, here too it's gather symptoms, diagnose, sell treatment.

But as proper clinical evaluations like the one above correctly suggest, there is no meaningful base of studies to suggest that they are effective.

In fact, I can point you to several studies suggesting that preventative treatment isn't considered a great idea:

An initial series of patients with lattice degeneration was reported to the Academy in 1964 and a follow-up report given in 1973. A continuing prospective study of 276 consecutive untreated patients (423 eyes) is now reported with follow-up from 1 to 25 years (average, 10.8 years). Clinical retinal detachments (RDs) occurred in 3 (1.08%) of 276 patients and 0.7% of eyes. Tractional retinal tears were seen in eight (2.9%) patients and 1.9% of eyes; one of these led to a clinical RD. Clinical or progressive subclinical RD occurred in 3 (2%) of 150 eyes with atrophic holes. Subclinical RD was seen in 10 (6.7%) of 150 eyes with atrophic holes, involving 9 (7.5%) of 120 patients, and had a much less serious prognosis than clinical detachment. Prophylactic treatment of lattice with or without holes in phakic, nonfellow eyes should be discontinued. "

---

Source:  Ophthalmology Journal

The risk of retinal detachment is lower than the odds of complications or side effects from any preventative treatment.  End of the story.

We talk a lot here about vision health, about integrative and holistic approaches to dealing with myopia.  The integrative part is what is so often lost on the medical establishment, where any given acute symptom (like lattice degeneration), is treated as though it doesn't relate to any bigger picture of eyesight health.

But you might just look at these things with some common sense.  Peripheral vision atrophy, after years of wearing this:

Why wouldn't your peripheral vision atrophy, when you wear
this type of object that entirely obscures peripheral vision?

In fact ... :

That about says it all.

Why do I bring this up, even though you are less than likely to ever experience something like peripheral vision degeneration?  

It's because you can simply avoid a whole host of obscure and less obscure eye problems, by looking at your eyesight health from a holistic perspective.  "Use as intended", a label should read.  We simply can't just spend 10 hours a day in close-up, in artificial lighting, eat packaged food, increase lens prescriptions, and expect the system not to star failing somewhere.  It's simply not a reasonable expectation.

If you apply the very simple suggestions that are summarized in the Frauenfeld Method, and reduce your myopia to -2 diopters and less, you are highly unlikely to ever be faced with any of these problems.  That's something I can tell you with high confidence.

Lower myopia means less axial elongation.  Less axial elongation means less distortion of the retinal surface.  Add peripheral vision awareness activity, low strain environment, and a lack of influence of high diopter lenses (which eliminate the use of peripheral vision, which easily can add to atrophy symptoms).  

Look at the altered shape of the retina in the elongated eye.

I wouldn't claim that any of these things conclusively prevent lattice degeneration, but certainly I don't see the problem ever surface among clients who follow above strategies.

Treat your eyes well, and they will give you a lifetime of beautiful eyesight!

Enjoy,

The post Lattice Degeneration & Retinal Detachment Risk – Preventative Treatment? appeared first on Myopia Therapy Clinic.

Hello, dear Frauenfeld readers!  It's me, Neha, again for you today.  
I was putting together an article for a blogger friend, and would
like to share some highlights with you.

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1.  126.000.000 Rod & Cone Cells

The light from the world around you, focused onto the retina of your eye, is received by 126 million rod and cone cells.  A hundred million cells, alive and waiting to share the beautiful world with your mind.

Not just beautiful.  Complex, sophisticated, and your window to the world.

2.  30% Of Your Brain's Cortex:  Used For Eyesight

The retina is actually an outgrowth of the brain. Neurons devoted to visual processing number in the hundreds of millions and take up about 30 percent of the cortex (just 8 percent for touch, and only 3 percent for hearing). 

Your brain is dedicating serious resources so you can see.

Each of the two optic nerves, which carry signals from the retina to the brain, consists of a million fibers; each auditory nerve carries a mere 30,000.  

Maybe all of this incredible biology is just a tiny bit wasted, looking at Facebook every day?

3.  Myopia Occurrence Has Doubled Since 1970, Affecting As Much As 90% Of Some Populations Today.

Myopia, the most common illness affecting eyesight, has doubled in the U.S., between 1970 and 2000, to now affect close to 50% of the country's population (source).  Chances are about 50/50 that you reading this, are yourself myopic (ie. need glasses, are nearsighted).

It is even worse on this side of the world in Asia, where as much as 90% of school children are myopic (source).

That's our future.  If you own stock in lens manufacturers, maybe this is good news.

4.  The Optometrist Office (How We Deal With The Biggest Vision Epidemic In Human History)

I love Google search.  It gives you a window to how the world perceives just about anything.  Telling then maybe, if you search Google for optometrist office, this is what you get:

Does those images look like a) a doctors office or b) a retail shop?

There is no need for me to repeat what is already discussed on this site quite a lot.  What should bother you is how these people monopolize access to health information.  You can easily be silenced by the establishment, if you choose not to partake in their format of "education", or "treatment".  I call them the eyesight mafia, under my breath.

Are future generations even going to remember what natural, healthy eyesight was like?

I find little else out there, online, bringing a bit of hope back to our children's eyesight future.  Share, link, support this site.  

Om Shanti,

- Neha

The post Millions Of Parts: Appreciate Your Beautiful Eyes appeared first on Myopia Therapy Clinic.

Alex sends me a link to a forum post today, from a German client looking for the best way to buy glasses and save money.

I'm somewhat notorious on this subject, since I've bought hundreds of pairs of glasses over the years, everywhere from Moscow and Berlin to Kathmandu and Saigon (and of course, online).  There's a lot to be said for quality of frames and lenses, and staff that knows their way around frame adjustments, and also to find you great frames.  

That last bit, not something you are quite likely to experience in the U.S., where frame fashion seems to perpetually be a decade (or three) behind the times.

And just what might you be implying *by that*, young man?!

Nevermind.  Take no offense, if you happen to live in the U.S.

For great fashion frames, and staff actually professionally educated in matching your face to frames, Germany is no doubt the place to be.  You'll shrug this off, till you have the experience yourself.  And if you do, it'll be really hard to go back to the Specsavers in the mall!

The problem, especially in Germany (though in the U.S. too), is price.

What I Wanted To Buy

I went to a few boutique shops for a particular combination I was looking for, late last year.  I was consistently quoted prices in excess of 500 Euros, for this:

1)  Metal / plastic combination Armani frame.  Not for the brand, but the style that actually fits my unfortunately odd face shape (not easy to make the mug look passable).

2)   Transitions VII photochromic lens coating.  VII (a notable improvement) had just then come out late 2014 and still fiendishly expensive in most shops.  They are the greatest thing ever though, for coatings that darken with UV exposure.

Darken awesomly.

I just wanted a -1.00 prescription, for times that I needed some correction (driving, unfamiliar environments, and to keep my brain trained to expect perfect clarity while pulling focus without glasses).  As you might now from the blog, with a -1.00 you actually don't want to use high index lenses!  The much more inexpensive CR-39 lens has better optical quality and is perfectly adequate for a full frame and a -1.00 prescription.

Or so you'd think.

The lowest boutique quote I received was for 540 Euros.  That's 640 USD.

And you might say, until you read the rest of this article, that sounds about right.  Expensive brand name pair of frames (you're a sucker, Jake, you might say).  The latest in Transitions photochromic coatings.  

I spent less than 200 USD though, on that very setup, all told.

And I did it while in Berlin, and buying locally, getting professional advice (which again, truly is rather great), fitting, and service.  That's less than 170 Euro, for some of the best you can buy.

How I Saved $400 On My Wishlist Purchase

The big one is the lenses.  Here's how it went:

First of all, I immediately walked away from any boutique that was trying to push me on polycarbonate lenses.  If that's news to you, take a look at this article on CR39 vs. poly.  Way more expensive, lower optical quality, and no redeeming qualities for a -1.00 prescription.  

But still, even the shops that (rather begrudgingly) would let me get CR39, had lots of excuses on hand.  We don't have Transitions VII on CR.  Imagine for a moment some very German subtle yet scathing looking-down-their-nose attitudes.  Like, you poor, poor man, can't afford anything of quality.

VII on CR39.  Transitions Unicorn, if you believe the boutique shop.

There was just no use.  Transitions VII was still brand new, and way better than VI.  Faster, darker tint, and much better tint in indirect sunlight (and now that I have used them for a while, they really are great).  But hardly anybody carried them.

So first step to my budget-friendly high end glasses, I went online, looking for somebody to sell me a pair of raw lenses (the round ones, before they are cut into frames, usually only sold directly to optic shops).

Here is what I found:

You know the optic shop guy is fuming about this.

Transitions VII.  The -1.50 here refers to index of the lens, not diopter correction.  Whenever you see -1.50 rather than a higher number, it usually means that you are getting a CR39 lens.  No good for high myopia or frameless mounting, but great for what we are looking at here.  Here's the linkey link to those guys.

Behold, 66 Euro, including standard shipping.  They're in Berlin, I was in Berlin, I had them the next day (though they do ship worldwide).

Second step, the frames.

Fielmann had a deal on the Armani frames I wanted.  89 Euro.  Less than half of the snotty boutique shop three blocks further down the street.  If you have ever been to one of the Fielmann shops, their frame choices would take you days to sort through.  Their staff is brilliant in finding shapes that work even for the weirdest faces, like for yours truly.

Third step, getting the lenses cut for the frames.

Fielmann does this for free.  Yes.  I am sad for the demise of individuality and mom and pop local commerce.  I'm willing to pay more to support local business.  But am I willing to support bad attitudes, and paying a 300% premium?  Perhaps less so.  Last time I had bought a similar setup in Germany, back when I was clueless consumer Jake, I paid well over 500 Euro for a pair of plastic frames and CR lenses in a -4.00 (or so) lens.  Not to mention the wrong lens for the diopter degree, but also a total ripoff.

Speaking of ripoff, lens cutting is another side scam. You know how it's done?  Each frame comes with a template (or you can just use the lens already in them).  You put the template into a lens cutting machine on one side, and the raw lens on the other side.  Then the machine automatically cuts the lens down to the same size as the template.  Sure I'm oversimplifying a tad (you do have to plug it in first).

You can buy an automatic lens cutter on ebay for about 150 bucks.  Looks like this:

Snobby boutique shop wouldn't flip that switch to cut your lenses.

Fielmann staff smiled and said yes of course sir, we will cut your lenses into the frames.  Next day, glasses are done, and perfect.  Grand total for this experience, and truly getting some of the best service, design, and lens tech you can buy anywhere?

155 Euro, all included.  Less than 200 dollars.

With some modifications, you can accomplish similar savings in most countries.  Go forth and enjoy better eyesight, while saving yourself some money!

Cheers,

- Jake

The post How To Get A $600 Pair Of Glasses For $200 appeared first on Myopia Therapy Clinic.

Ocular stretching.  Can it possibly improve your eyesight?  Let's investigate.  

It's going to be about this:

A group of muscles that rotate your eye.

 Versus this:

A single, circular muscle inside your eye.

How do those two images explain the merit, or lack thereof, of "ocular stretching"?  Let's take a look, and with it debunk a lot of the "eye yoga" and "eye exercise" misinformation that is out there on the Web.

Inspiration for this topic, from a question in the forum from Cadence:

I read about ocular stretching claiming to improve the vision acuity on a power vision website. It seems a bit dubious as they talk about how stretching the ocular muscles around the eye can tense and relax the critical muscles, hence, leading to improved vision. Anyone has any information or ideas about this method?"

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That's what the forum is for - getting answers for eyesight questions, so you don't have to try everything yourself.  So ... is it real?

The Claim:  Eyesight Improving Ocular Stretch

Here is what our power vision ocular stretching folks say is the basis of their exercise:

"Compared to the eye of someone with perfect vision, the muscles in a myopic eye are atrophied and have a more limited field of vision. These rotation exercises serve to reinvigorate deteriorated eye muscles and improve coordination at the extreme edges of one's field of vision."

---

That sounds reasonable, at least until you read it.  Does a muscle have a field of vision?  Even if we forgive that bit of a nonsensical statement, the core of their premise doesn't get much better.  Why?

The Facts:  You Can't Roll It To Improved Eyesight

Let's look at this ocular stretching pitch, with the illustrations we looked at, a moment ago:

These are not the eye muscles you are looking for.

Above, the extra ocular muscles.  The ocular stretching guys say that rolling your eyes will help improve your eyesight.  Because, atrophy, something, field of vision, I can't be bothered to remember their logic.  And neither should you.

There are six of these extra ocular muscles and they move the eyeball around in your eye socket.  They have nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of your eyesight.  

While the extra ocular muscles, as the word describes, outside of the eye do nothing for focus, the ciliary, a circular muscle inside the eye, does:

That's the one!

Totally different muscle, different location, different task.  You can roll your eyes till the end of time and your vision isn't going to improve.  It's exactly like suggesting that shaking your head would improve your memory!

So obviously, not only does rolling your eyes not do any sort of "ocular stretching".  And even if there was such an activity, it wouldn't do any good.

What You Should Do Instead

Here's what you might consider, when looking at something like ocular stretching for your eyesight (per my response to the question in the forum):

If you think of improving your eyesight as a tiered approach:

1) Lower close-up strain, since that’s what caused initial myopia.
2) Reduce prescription use to have blur horizon, since misuse of prescription cause progressive, lens-induced myopia.

Those are the two causes. NITM and lens-induced. What will reverse it, and the only thing that will do it properly, is addressing the causes."

---

Here is the full thread of the originating forum topic.

Don't fall for any eye rolling, eye stretching, eye yoga scheme.  They don't work.  The promises sound tempting, they may have nice illustrations and lengthy explanations. Remember that curing any ailment means addressing the cause, which quite simply is close-up strain and lens-induced myopia.

Do enjoy some healthy eyesight today!

P.S.:  (The cat picture, of course not really the result of ocular stretching gone wrong.  It seemed apropos, considering the nature of the subject.  No actual animals were harmed in the making of this article.)

The post Does Ocular Stretching Improve Your Eyesight? appeared first on Myopia Therapy Clinic.

Hi everybody, Neha here.  Today is my first day officially keeping an eye on your questions in the forum.  There is a bit of a theme I noticed, so here is a quick tip if you too are having trouble with your first active focus experiences.

---

First, as Alex mentions often, it can take time to find active focus.  Don't rush it, it will come to you as long as you make the effort with a good blur distance.

That said, you can make it easier to have that experience the first time.  How?

Don't use a computer screen as your primary tool for working on active focus.  At least don't make that the only close-up object, especially not when you first try to have the experience.  Why?

Computer Screens Might Be Messing With Your Eyes.

1)  A low resolution display may not have the clear lines that will help induce the experience.  You might not think it matters, but wait till you try my alternate method (in a moment).

Left, not sharp enough for good blur horizon.

2)  Color reproduction might not be making things any easier.  Color reproduction can be funky on screens.  Your brain can react unpredictably.  I often use color combinations other than black and white with vision challenged patients, and it often makes a noticeable difference.

Not all screen color ranges are created equal.

3)  Backlight vs. ambient light.  You want to have an equal amount of light in the room and on your screen.  The more the balance is off, the more difficult it can be to first find active focus.  

Not for happy eyes.  Notice also all those reflections on the lens. 

Does it all matter?

It may, it may not, for you.  But if you are struggling to find active focus, just get away from that screen for a while.  Eliminate all those potential problems, but going back to the old school ways:

Outdoors, in the shade.  Perfect!

Finding active focus on a book is often a whole lot easier than a screen.  It's perfectly crisp, the page reflects just ambient light, there is no flicker, there are no questions about color ranges.  

You will definitely find active focus faster, the first few times, by going the book route.  Do try it out!

- Neha

The post Trouble Finding Active Focus? It Could Be Your Screen. appeared first on Myopia Therapy Clinic.

Neha here, keeping an eye on support questions for you.  

I have a list of articles to write that I think you will enjoy.  There's how video games can help improve lazy eye and replace boring patching exercises, and how short term fasting improves the plasticity of your visual cortex (that one, a subject also much explored by Jake).  It seems I can't quite find the time to finish them, so instead here for you today is something else.

Johnny writes in the forum, volunteering time to update us about his challenges with double vision, too much prescription reduction, and his astigmatism correction.

If you have astigmatism, or double vision experiences, this is well worth the read:

Hi everyone

Time for an update! There’s been a lot going on so this might be a long post…

Its been an interesting (and tough!) couple of months. I have again learnt a lot and I hope in sharing my experiences with you here it might inform you in improving your own eyesight.

where to start. Firstly it’s probably worth saying that I think I took too much correction off my prescription last time. This wasn’t particularly intentional as I just didn’t have the lenses to hand I needed as I didn’t anticipate the astigmatism overcorrection that I would get and the resultant eye strain from my initial SPH reductions. I think when discussing astigmatism reductions the advice here is very prescient http://frauenfeldclinic.com/test-need-astigmatism-correction-normalized-prescriptions. A big focal plane change is a lot for your brain to process. Having said that I did wear the -2.50 for about 3 months and I did make noticeable improvement, albeit slowly. There was a lot going on especially with the double vision and it took my brain a while to sort it all out. I had some days when I could see close to 20/20 with little double vision but others I was left 20/40 or worse and a lot of double vision. It did leave me, at times, VERY fatigued – a bit too much stress on my brain I think. But throughout the 3 months the snellen results did get noticeably better. It is worth mentioning here that double vision has been very challenging. It has taken me a while to learn how to adapt and eliminate the double vision. It is totally different to active focus. 

Due to personal reasons (travelling etc….) I needed to see 20/20 consistently so I stepped my prescription back up to -3.00 (again no CYL) about a 2 months ago and could see 20/15 with it fairly easily with a much reduced double vision that was noticeably easier to reconcile. Also my night vision was very good which was a pleasant surprise. All that focus pulling with the -2.50 must have made a difference. After 2 weeks I stepped down to -2.75 as I was getting eye strain and not that much double vision anymore. With the -2.75 the double vision was worse but not as bad as with the -2.50. I worked on reconciling the double vision along with a bit of focus pulling (cm results indicated I was about -2.85ish) and I finally started seeing some real improvements with the -2.75.

It has taken a lot of work over the past few months, changing prescriptions, experimenting with how to get rid of the 2 images but it seems that my brain is finally starting to consistently do it. Less effort is required now to combine the images and everything is generally clearer. Alex’s advice that the images must combine in your brain, and that you have to stare at the images for this to happen is in practice a bit trickier to consistently do. It can be very frustrating, especially when I first started. I just couldn’t get the images to line up. Over time however after a lot of practice and work this has gotten easier. Stepping my prescription back up undoubtedly helped as well. The process I generally use is this: go outside, find something with high contrast. lampposts are good for this against the sky. Pull focus. blink. wait till the two images are sharp then stare and try not to blink. keep staring. after staring for a while things go a little hazy. blink a few times and the images should be aligned. This might not last for long but consistently doing it over time will result in less and less effort being required and the images combining for longer and longer periods. Also one of the 2 images gradually gets stronger over time and the other more faint.

I am not completely there yet, but I am close. It is very exciting to notice your vision improving week by week. I have ordered another 6 weeks of -2.75 lenses and I think I should be ready for a step down at the end (fingers crossed, progress has been good recently). It will be interesting to see if I will have to go through this process again at -2.50 and subsequent reductions. I hope not, but guess I will find out.

So to summarise…did I take off a bit too much correction…yes. I didn’t plan it that way though, and if anything I think this shows the benefit of buying a few prescription options ahead. (FYI I have been buying my contact lenses from a place in Portugal. They ship internationally without prescription and will supply bulk purchases (multiple powers). I also remember looking at a few sites in the UK that would ship without prescriptions too.) Like I have said I am learning as I go, and hopefully this will better inform your own choices. While I admit to have been getting a bit frustrated with the double vision I have to keep in mind I have pretty much halved my prescription strength in the space of a year. It has been very exciting for me to start getting clear 20/20 with the -2.75. I am very excited and motivated for 2015…My aim is to get below -2.00. Hopefully that is on the conservative side but it will be a huge milestone.

I hope everyone is making progress and sets some good goals for 2015. Lots of ideas to take up new hobbies outdoors, extended holidays in sunny places….

cheers

Johnny

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I think it is so important to get this kind of feedback, for many of you.  Thanks to Johnny for taking the time to share!  And if you want to have a look at some other unsettling experiences Johnny had at the ophthalmologist, head over to the forum thread, here.

Keep in mind how much prescription adjustment is a core subject in rehabilitation.  

There is a very wide gap between the conceptual idea of focal stimulus, and the reality of how you want to address stimulus with prescription adjustment.  The more accurate the first set of prescription changes are for you, the more smooth and positive your initial experience will be.

That wasn't so much the case for Johnny, though clearly he did work through it and reconciled his experiences to a working strategy.

What can we take away from Johnny's experience?

1)  Avoid making corrections on multiple axis at one time, especially at first.

If you are reducing your prescription, reduce it the same in both eyes (unless there is a problem with your current prescription).  Don't change spherical and astigmatism correction all at once, except if it is an equal correction (for normalized).

2)  Resist the temptation of reducing too much.

Alex sometimes advocates a pretty big first reduction.  It makes sense since prescriptions all cost money, and you'll "grow into" the first reduction fairly quickly.  You are probably overprescribed anyway, and don't use your prescription for distance all that much during the day.  So a relative large reduction will seem very motivating, and have little negative effect on your perceived vision.

Still, if you have the option, I would go with small steps downward.  You'll be doing that for a while anyway (for most people who start with multiple diopters), and it's the price for better eyesight - a whole collection of diopter ranges, by 0.25 decrements.  

3)  Sometimes you have to go up.

Sharpness perception happens in your brain.  You might have to go up sometimes to get back to a place where you get the desired clarity that you can then strive to reproduce with active focus.  Of course you want to stay vigilant about having plenty of challenge opportunity for your vision.  But there is a point where a bit more correction, at least for some activities, can give you better perspective.

4)  Share what you learn.

If you benefit from these subjects, remember about it when you have your own experiences.  Others will be thankful for having your voice to help guide them.  Remember, it can seem overwhelming for those just starting out!

I'm so glad that all of you are having these experiences, and that we all get to work together.  Thank you, Alex!

Talk again soon,

- Neha

The post Johnny: Working Out Double Vision & Astigmatism Reduction appeared first on Myopia Therapy Clinic.

Here, a quick visit into my journey of breaking through vision improvement plateaus.  If you get stuck and aren't getting the improvements you are looking for lately, this is the article for you.

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If you spent most of your life behind glasses and contact lenses, discovering the vision improvement methods on this site can be a revelation.  You end up learning a lot, and rediscovering healthy eyesight in the process.

In fact, myopia rehab can be quite pleasant with the right guide.

This short article is most suited for those of you who already went through all the basics. The prescription reductions and active focus, working with blur, discovering double vision, all the core pieces of rehabilitating your eyes.  Until you do that, there is really no need to get into the topics like this one.  Why?

Almost all of your initial improvements (first year for most 2 diopter myopes, two+ years for higher myopes) come from reduced strain and focus work.  

What defines your early success is how well you manage prescriptions, and how effectively you adapt habits and reduce your close-up time.  A few other things matter, like having quality lighting and being aware of your peripheral vision.

Past that though, piling on more things, or experimenting excessively will just slow you down.  

When Intermittent Fasting Can Improve Your Eyesight

Once you have reduced your myopia to either the last diopter (or for high myopes by about half in many cases), things can slow down a bit.  That's where you want to start experimenting with some of the advanced topics.  Peak prescription, intermittent prescription use, dietary adjustments, any one of these things can help you get past a plateau.

A big one for me, after much trial and error, turned out to be intermittent fasting.

I only noticed this accidentally, at first.  Once a week, I would not eat for a period of about 16-24 hours.  Basically I would eat dinner one evening, and then not eat again the next day until dinner time.  

Something curious happened, when I started doing this.  My eyesight, which was entirely stagnant at about -1.75, was suddenly noticeably better.  I had an eye chart set up that I could see about 20/60 with.  One the days after my intermittent fasts, I would get clear flashes to 20/40, where before I would only get double vision on that line.

I didn't put the fasting and the clear flashes together, for the better part of six months.  It wasn't till winter came, and I quit the fasting, that the progress stopped.

At first I blamed winter.  But then one day a blizzard snowed everything in, and I was forced to do a day of fasting, lest I wanted to brave deep snow and hope to find an errant open store.  The next day, I had the clear flashes again, which had been absent for several months.

That's when I started experimenting specifically with the fasting, and found that I could create clear flashes by doing the fast.

How Much Fasting Is Most Effective?

There was a limit to this, for me.  More than once or twice a week created no additional results, and had other negative effects (moodiness, and lack of concentration).  Once I managed to dial in the quantity, I was back on track to progress and fairly quickly got to a -1.50 prescription (a solid 15% improvement).  

Later on when I started to help friends with their eyesight, I had them try many of my previous experiments, including the intermittent fasts.  I found that out of 12 participants, 4 reported better Snellen results.  Three of them had been working on their eyesight for more than six months.  From that point I started refining the model, always looking for feedback from new participants.

The truth is that simply not eating from dinner one day, to dinner the next day, once a week, is all you actually need to fully benefit from this strategy.

What I found was what I mentioned previously:  There is no real need to consider fasting early on in therapy.  It's not till a few reductions, and especially when improvements slow, that adding this into the habits can be helpful.  It also makes sense to keep a detailed log to ensure that there is actual benefit to the fasts. 

I also tried longer fasts, juice fasts, and various permutations.  None of them proved particularly effective for me, nor any of the participants that tried variations in subsequent years.

As usual, it is the simple things that are most effective.  It makes for a nice sales pitch or "guru status" to create some complicated regimen (think Jake's special, super secret Malaysian spice fast for better neural plasticity and great eyesight).  The truth is that simply not eating from dinner one day, to dinner the next day, once a week, is all you actually need to fully benefit from this strategy.

Science, Or Wishful Thinking?

A lot of "alternative medicine" falls squarely into pseudo science, and what one might call the hippie crack of health topics.   Things that sound good but actually do nothing.  We have to be careful to avoid that genre here, as myopia rehab is already a rather fringe subject. Fortunately in this case, science substantiates our findings.  

Take a look at this neuroscience study abstract:

Neural circuits display a heightened sensitivity to external stimuli during well-established windows in early postnatal life. After the end of these critical periods, brain plasticity dramatically wanes. The visual system is one of the paradigmatic models for studying experience-dependent plasticity.

Here we show that food restriction can be used as a strategy to restore plasticity in the adult visual cortex of rats. A short period of food restriction in adulthood is able both to reinstate ocular dominance plasticity and promote recovery from amblyopia. These effects are accompanied by a reduction of intracortical inhibition without modulation of brain-derived neurotrophic factor expression or extracellular matrix structure.

Our results suggest that food restriction could be investigated as a potential way of modulating plasticity."

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For the full article, click over to "food restriction enhances visual cortex plasticity in adulthood".  The complete study costs $32 to buy (which I did).  There isn't much in there that adds to usable knowledge for your own vision improvement goals (the key point you already got for free in this article).  But if you are interested in these topics, it's a worthwhile read.

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For more data points, grab the PDF of the study (I can't share the full contents here, since the authors hope to be paid for their work).

It's easy to get upset at retail optometry.  When you look at the abundance of science available to fix your eyesight though, it's hard to stay mad.  It just takes a bit of digging!

A quick aside, on lazy eye:  I have only been involved in a dozen or so cases, since it isn't really my area of interest.  In the times that lazy eye was part of the myopia project, we found that the intermittent diet was indeed effective.  Though you should not expect magical and immediate results, when you combine fasts with the usual recommended activities, you are likely to see improved results.

Should You Be Fasting?

As always, just keep it simple.  

Resist the urge to throw the kitchen sink at your own vision improvement project from the beginning.  Save the fasting for when you have run out of the initial benefits of the focus work and prescription reductions.  

And if you have questions, drop us a line in the forums.  Neha is also well versed on this topic, and can help guide you further.

Cheers,

- Jake

The post Intermittent Fasting: A Tool To Fix Amblyopia (Lazy Eye) and Improve Eyesight? appeared first on Myopia Therapy Clinic.

Eli writes:

I’m happy to report that I went to the eye doctor 2 days ago and had a complete eye exam (dilation and all). I was able to read 20/15 (both eyes, slightly straining with left) with my -7.50 contacts (which is a whole .50 less than my previous eye doctor insisted I needed). I proceeded to tell him about the vision rehab that I am working on and to my shock he has said that he seen people be able to drop there strengths over time!! He actually agreed and understood everything I said I was doing with the up close blur distance and horizon etc. He basically said that reading with the lowered prescription lowers the stress on the eyes. "

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For Eli's whole account, including questions about single eye reductions, visit his thread in the forum.

If you find an enlightened man (or woman) ophthalmologist or optometrist who will tell you that reading with a lower prescription lowers the stress on your eyes, you are a lucky one.  Bring him/her Christmas gifts, refer clients, make sure he/she stays happy and in business!

Two for one today as for the wise practitioners, as we have another story in the forum.

Matthew writes:

I didn’t go to the optometrist until late November because of insurance issues, but when I did, he gave me a reduced prescription. He remarked that if my vision kept changing and improving like that, I wouldn’t need glasses for much longer. The reduced prescription is:

OD -3.25 -.50 177
OS -2.50 -.75 177

He said that the reduction was 1 diopter per eye. At that point, I wasn’t really paying attention to my cm measurements. I was just trying to reduce strain and get outside more often. I got the new glasses on December 10, and could read the 20/20 line on the snellen on the first day I got them."

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There is more worthwhile reading in Matthew's forum thread as well, which you can find here.

Find those practitioners who are willing to give you less than maximum prescriptions.  It may not be easy, but once you have one, you are supporting the type of business that actually allows you to protect and recover your healthy eyesight.  

This site needs some sort of directory, though Alex keeps saying that it will have about ten entries.  If you'd like to help jump start a resource, please post your favorite local rehab friendly doc in the forum.  I created a special new thread for it, here.

And a big thank you to Matthew and Eli for taking the time to post progress!

- Neha

The post Eye Doctors Who Endorse & Support Vision Rehabilitation appeared first on Myopia Therapy Clinic.

Presbyopia is another way our bodies like to rub it in that we don't stay young forever:

Presbyopia is the irreversible loss of the accommodative ability of the eye that occurs due to aging. Accommodation refers to the ability of the eye to increase its refractive power of the crystalline lens in order to focus near objects on the retina.[1] The most significant decrease in accommodative power occurs in between the ages of 20 and 50. In the first two decades of life accommodative amplitude has been shown to be relatively stable in the range of 7-10 diopters. By the age of 50, accommodative amplitude has typically decreased to about 0.50 diopters.[2] This decline occurs as a natural result of aging and will ultimately affect any person reaching advanced enough age. Despite its ubiquity, the exact mechanism behind presbyopia remains unknown."

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You can head over to the whole page discussing presbyopia on eyewiki.

There are a number of contributing causes that have been identified for the condition.  Accommodative amplitude, mentioned above, is a big subject, and is covered in exhaustive detail in a number of studies, like this one:

Although the progressive reduction in accommodative amplitude with increased age is well documented, little is known about several other aspects of static or steady-state accommodation to provide a comprehensive assessment of changes related to age and presbyopia. Static components of accommodation (tonic accommodation, depth-of-focus, slope of the stimulus/response function, and accommodative controller gain) were assessed objectively using an infrared (IR) optometer in 30 human subjects aged 21–50 years; depth-of-focus was also determined psychophysically as was accommodative amplitude.

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You can click over to sciencedirect for whole article discussing all the details of accommodation.

There are other factors, such as the the lens that is moved by your focusing muscle to move the focal point in your eye, becoming less flexible with age.  

Why am I telling you all this?  Mostly just to bore you to tears.  While you are staring at your screen, forgetting to blink, your tear fluid rate is reduced significantly.  Bored to tears, at least we fixed that problem, which should concern you more today than the causes of presbyopia.

But you can prevent at least some of the age related causes of presbyopia.  So let's get to that part:

Can You Treat Presbyopia?

By the time you ask that question, it's already a bit late.  These age related conditions are best dealt with preventatively.  If you don't want to be all hunched and skin and bones, you need to start with the gym 20 years before that even becomes an issue.  There is that curve-of-everything, you know the one of decline.  Muscle mass, bone density, you name it, you're loosing a bit of it every day.

The best we can do is be aware of this, and slow down that curve as much as possible.

There aren't a whole lot of conclusive long terms studies about presbyopia prevention and treatment, at least not in Western medicine.  I can give you anecdotal evidence, from my own practice.  I haven't seen much presbyopia at all in clients, even those in their 60's and older (for those who started myopia prevention and rehab in their 40's and younger).  It is quite rare that any of my past clients ended up needing reading glasses.

But I'm just one person, and my recollection is by now means good scientific basis.  The fact remains that we do loose accommodative range.  We do tend to loose less, if we practice active focus, challenge our vision, get a good amount of distance time, and apply all the other aspects of eye health.

And since we are in fringe territory, let me show you some of the things that visit scientific principles of study - even though they don't fall into our Western mindset of medicine.  Behold the China Journal of Traditional Medicine and Pharmacy (thanks to Jake for having pointed that one out):

Research on the presbyopia prevention with TCM technique of physiotherapy

The aim of this research is to explore an effective way to treatment the presbyopia by applying Traditional Chinese medical technique of physiotherapy.Methods: This research lasts for almost one year and takes 200 patients with presbyopia aged from 45 to 55 as the research participants.In detail,these patients would be evenly composed of men and women and divided into two groups: one is the experimental group while the other one is the control group.Under the guidance of traditional Chinese medical theories,the participants' acupuncture points in experimental group could be stimulated by some therapies such as traditional Chinese medicine fumigation,acupoint massage,filiform needle therapy,ear-acupuncture therapy,external application and so on.Meanwhile,the vision condition of each patient is also tested and recorded in every three months.Results: According to the results of one-year observation,the total efficiency rate of experimental group is 91%,raised by 67%,which is obviously higher than the rate of control group.Conclusion: In this study,the researchers employed traditional Chinese medical technique of physiotherapy to stimulate patient's acupuncture points,and the fact proved that the therapy is effective,safe and operational.

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Visit CNKI for more on presbyopia prevention and treatment, from a different perspective.

Now, I am not specifically advocating having needles stuck in your face, or anywhere else.  What you do want to consider is that there is more out there than just the status quo of "too bad, you are old, here are some glasses".  

How To Prevent Presbyopia

You want to be familiar with this site and concepts, even though they are meant to deal with an entirely different symptom basis.  The reason it is still valid for presbyopia is because so much of what we talk about goes back to a) eyesight health and b) stimulus activity.

Your accommodation range decreases with age.  Most studies I read take into zero account the eye health practices of the participants.  If you were to do a heart disease risk study, wouldn't you want to account for the participant's exercise, diet, and general health?  This hasn't made it much into vision sciences yet, where any and all participants appear to be treated as the same baseline.  

I speculate that a great deal can be done by challenging your accommodation on a daily basis.  You already get plenty of close-up time, and distance time (hopefully), so it isn't much of a leap to get into active focus, create a blur horizon, and keep full spectrum UV ambient lighting in most of your day.  

If you are new here and those topics are unfamiliar to you, take a look in the top menu, under "guides", for much more on those subjects.

Enjoy healthy eyesight today!

The post Can You Prevent Or Treat Presbyopia? appeared first on Myopia Therapy Clinic.