This article is Day 21 of a long term vision improvement experiment. To get the full value of what I am learning, be sure to check out the introductory article which also has links to all of my updates.
In my research on vision, I’ve encountered many competing hypotheses and much truth and falsehood. The modern school of thought holds that one’s vision problems are inherited and can not be corrected with exercises. A nearsighted eye is physically elongated, while a farsighted eye is shorter than it should be. Glasses don’t cause or contribute to the problem, in the modern view, but correct it. Whatever refractive error exists in your eyes you’re stuck with, wishes and pleadings aside. I have to admit that their appeal to rationality and science always struck a chord with me.
The natural vision people all say various things about vision; among them, that glasses can make vision problems worse, that relaxing the eyes can restore vision, that exercising the eyes in the right way can restore clear vision, and that vision can change for the better just as it can change for the worse. Some of them — not all — also swear that one’s psychological or emotional state affects vision. Or, that being myopic in vision means being myopic emotionally. It’s so easy to refute that kind of thinking that I won’t even bother.
There are many different programs, exercises, and theories that fall under the umbrella of natural vision correction. Some of them are even contradictory. With all of the confusion on this side, I can understand the demand for facts and science by the modern ophthalmologists.
Now that I’ve studied both sides and done some experiments on my own, I can clearly state the essence of the natural vision approach. This allows me to dispense with the weaker or just plain wrong aspects of the movement and tease out the key ideas that may have value.
What it’s really about is this: The idea that the eye, like other parts of the body, is an adaptive organ. Normally it functions as evolution “intended,” but if subject to unusual forces, it will adapt to accommodate different circumstances. Not unlike how all organisms, sentient or not, can physically adapt to their environments, sometimes over the span of generations, and sometimes over a lifetime.
Modern humans exist in a world that is dramatically different than the one experienced by their ancestors millions of years ago. We now spend a lot of time focusing our eyes on tools or objects within a few feet of us, and much, much less time scanning the horizon for prey or predators. So our eyes tend to adapt to this closeup world. People who spend a lifetime focusing close by gradually lose the ability to focus far away. It’s a simple idea that fits with some easy observations you can make about our modern world, the most significant of which is that the rate of myopia has increased dramatically in recent decades. This increase correlates with dramatic changes in our environment: books, TV, computers, and a life spent mostly indoors. While it’s only an unproven correlation, genetics alone can’t explain the recent explosion in myopia.
The natural vision camp also says that eyeglasses are more like a crutch than a cure. If you gave a crutch to a man with a broken foot, you couldn’t say that the crutch cured his deficiency in walking. The crutch enables him to walk better, but the cause of the problem has nothing to do with the crutch and must be healed through a different process. Similarly, it’s been argued that eyeglasses are just a crutch that enable myopic eyes to see clearly, but do nothing to correct the cause of the myopia. In fact, the glasses tend to make the myopia worse, through the same process of adaptation that created it in the first place.
This approach treats the myopic eye as a deficient organ that should be restored to its original state, while the modern approach treats the myopic eye as a normal casualty of life on this planet, which can only be adjusted (and then adjusted again and again over the years) back to normal with a special appliance called eyeglasses.
The downward slide starts when you focus more on an inner, often intellectual world, and less on the big world of trees and sky and Nature in which our ancestors evolved. Then you’re prescribed glasses to fix your vision. As you focus even closer in — though it seems like you can see better than ever — you gradually become dependent on the glasses. Take them off and the world is an incoherent blur. Put them back on and you can see all near and far, while your focus is really on the near even when you’re looking far. (Please note that I’m not in any way suggesting that dispensing with books and romping through nature is superior to living as a rational person, only that life is different now than in the distant past and thus has different consequences for our bodies.)
That’s the essence of it. Some of the modern ophthalmologists might even agree with the evolutionary aspect, but probably not with the idea that if eyes can adapt to a negative stimulus, then they can adapt to a positive stimulus. If the environment can make your vision worse, than it can make it better. If you create the right environment.
The more I think about it, the more likely it seems to be true at least in some form. I am committed to test it. With only 9 days until the end of my original trial of living without glasses (except driving and hockey), I am now sure that I could put up with it for the months that would be necessary to produce whatever improvements are really possible. In fact, I’m afraid to wear glasses now. I don’t want to hurt my vision any more than I already have. As always, I’m completely open to a vigorous debate — the science is far from settled, but I can’t wait around for modern doctors to give these ideas an honest trial (just as I eat an evolutionarily inspired diet, rather than wait around for scientists to prove that saturated fat and cholesterol are good and sugar and grains are evil).
Measuring my progress accurately and just doing things that are beneficial in the first place is a real challenge. It has actually taken me several weeks to wade through all the different ideas and come up with a program. More on that tomorrow.
2 Comments
I’ve been nearsighted since I was about 14 years old. It wasn’t terrible, I didn’t notice it really until I realized the fact that I couldn’t clearly see the writing on the blackboard in class from certain seats was abnormal.
I got glasses then and wore them often at first, and then as I enjoyed many sports and feared breaking them I would wear them less frequently. In high-school and college I basically wore them in class, and when driving. I did have a stint with contacts for about 5 years, but got tired of my eyes hurting most of the time and decreased usage until I stopped altogether.
Since college (11 years) I’ve worn my glasses only when driving, or very occasionally at a presentation, theatre or sporting event when I’d be too far from the action to see it well. And I’d say my vision hasn’t improved at all, but hasn’t gotten worse (both of my parents had increasingly worsening vision throughout their lives). Now in my work I tend to be inside and look only at things within 3 – 8 feet of me so I’ve not attempted to exercise by staring at distant objects, but I’m highly skeptical that there is any non-surgical chance of my vision improving. I am however interested to “see” how you fare.
It’s interesting that your vision didn’t improve and also didn’t get worse while not wearing glasses. My thinking now is that just removing the glasses and looking at the horizon probably won’t do much, but exposure to smaller amounts of far-point stress may correct the problem. I go into more detail in my latest update. Thanks for sharing!