Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles Myopia Correction to Improve Vision -- Dream or Reality? It's not a dream, not for thousands of years. No surgery or glasses are needed either. Myopia correction has been around for a long time, it just doesn't pay as well as your prescriptions. Let's check out the history. Myopia Correction History Imagine this: one of our ancestors is browsing through the fields, hunting weapon in hand. The grass is moving 100 meters away, but he is short-sighted. He can't make out what it is in the grass. Is it his hunting buddy? Is it prey? Or maybe it's a predator trying to hunt him down? He doesn't have a clue because he can't make it out. As he gets more and more scared, still being unable to make out what is in the grass; the movement increases and comes closer. He launches his weapon, and boom! He breaks his knife on a turtle's back. Seriously, it could have been his brother or his dog, or some other buddy of his. Ancient Myopia Correction Techniques Our ancestors knew the importance of their distance vision and they had great motivation to maintain and fix it. Now, they didn't have glasses, let alone contacts or eye surgery. Glasses only have been around since 1855, and eye surgery for about 50-odd years. Today's myopia correction method, LASIK eye surgery, only exists since 1998 and never has been tested properly. That aside, what did our ancestors do to maintain their vision and combat short-sightedness? They used something totally "New Age," some voodoo techniques that only strange people on the Internet discuss: eye exercises. That's correct; this "new fad" on the Net has been around for millennia as a myopia correction method. Around the world, many cultures used the same techniques. So why don't we? Why do we wear annoying glasses? Myopia Correction & Glasses It all started in 1855 when German physicist Herman Helmholtz studied optics and tried understanding our eyes. When he did so, research tools were rather primitive. He concluded people get short-sighted when the eye's lens is shaped too steep. Being a physicist into optics he came up with the idea that you just put another lens in front of the eye to offset the distortion. That does work, but it doesn't correct myopia. Does a crutch help you walk when you have a twisted ankle? Of course it does, but crutches don't fix the ankle. The same thing applies to glasses. With eye surgery as a myopia correction method, the ophthalmic industry came up with the idea that you make the change in the lens permanent and scrape something off. Today a laser burns it off, but conceptually it's the same. Does it work? For a while, but the root cause is still there. So the surgery's effects don't last very long, maybe 2 - 5 years and then the same conditions return. That's why eye surgery has been under scrutiny since 2008. Continue reading about the supposed "New Age" myopia correction techniques... Correction for Myopia -- Not So "New Age" After All Fast forward 46 years from Helmholtz's discovery, and the ophthalmic industry was thriving. They were selling a hoax correction for myopia and making a bunch of money with it. They were selling glasses and making a nice profit. It was the old paradigm of the West -- just sell a patch, but don't treat it. "New Age" Correction for Myopia Came Along Then along came an ophthalmologist, an eye doctor, William Bates. He observed what the Native Americans did to improve their eyesight. He studied it and did a ton of research with a lot of people. Dr Bates discovered the wrong shape of the lens comes from tension in the eye muscles that are attached to the eyeball. He had more sophisticated tools than Helmholtz. He actually understood the eye; he had studied it all his life. Then he applied these myopia correction techniques to his patients and recorded the results. He presented them to his peers and got lobbied out of his profession! The ophthalmic industry did not want to know how correction for myopia really worked because glasses were making too much money for them. Healing doesn't pay in recurring fashion... Why Eye Exercises Fall Short Today The reason eye exercises come across as a "New Age" thingy is lots of people copied and republished Dr Bates eye exercises as an e-book on the Internet. Many people claim they don't work and in today's society they are partially right. Eye exercises work today as a correction for myopia, if you perform them regularly. If you stop, the effects easily can diminish because the root cause of your myopia is not addressed. Life was different when our ancestors lived, and even when Bates did his research at the beginning of the 20th century. Food was different. Stress was different. People used their bodies and their eyes differently. People worked and travelled differently. All of that affects myopia as well. What Has Changed Correction For Myopia? For example, back when Dr Bates was doing his research, food was grown organically and without chemicals. Water was still clean, and there was no environment pollution from two world wars, many other wars, nuclear energy production, and many other factors. Also, our lifestyle has changed dramatically in the last 40 years. That's the exact reason why myopia has skyrocketed in that same period. We have to deal with lifestyle changes and environmental factors Dr Bates and our ancestors did not face. Correction for myopia today has to address the health of your liver, your colon, your physical body, your joints, your blood flow and many other factors. Life has changed. So we have to adapt, too. What's Next? One thing that remains constant is you can improve your vision naturally and that glasses, contacts, and eye surgery are NOT the correction for myopia they are made out to be. They are crutches. They don't work long-term because otherwise you'd get weaker and weaker glasses with every eye test. But do you. In the next few articles, we'll get to the details of how correction for myopia really works. For immediate correction for myopia tips you can start using today, Click Here and download your Free Vision Improvement Toolkit. Then join the discussion and leave a comment below.
B1 US myopia correction eye bates surgery lens Myopia Correction - How To Correct Myopia 43 8 Burt Forster posted on 2017/08/24 More Share Save Report Video vocabulary