Today, back to the good news parts of the blog!  :)  (and more on the headline image in a moment)  Matthew posts in the forum:

Hey endmyopiaers!

I’ve posted before that my wife has very mild myopia and wears a -1 / -1 prescription. She doesn’t wear glasses in the house and only wears them when she goes outside. While she is very excited about my progress, she is only marginally interested in working on her own vision. She’s in the camp of, “it’s not a problem right now, so I might get to it one day.” She would prefer not to wear glasses, though.

We were sitting outside a few nights ago, and she looked at me, and said, “your face just got clearer. I think I just did that active focus thing you’ve been talking about. How do you it?” We talked about blinking, relaxing, and generally just knowing that you can clear up images (particularly text).

Today, she looked at the eye chart and could see 20/40 in florescent light. Then she said, “do you just blink and try to consciously relax?” A moment later, she read off the 20/30 line. It looks like she might have figured out how to resolve what ciliary myopia she has!

I thought about this after watching the video Jake made about not pushing eyesight improvement on people. I have never once suggested to her that she “should” be doing this. I can’t however, keep my mouth shut about my excitement on my own eyesight. It’s cool to see her making this discovery, but I’m not going to lean on her about it. 

A big reason it’s exciting for me is that we have one child (age 3) and another to be born in August. We used to talk about our genetics before we had children, and how our kids would be pretty much screwed with their eyesight genes. Well, if I have my way, that won’t be so. My daughter has asked me questions about why I have an eye chart on the wall and why I take my glasses off sometimes. I tell her that they’re both helping my eyes to get better. Sometimes she’ll ask me, “are your eyes better yet, daddy?” In her mind, it will be a totally normal thing that a person could need glasses for a while, and then one day, not need them anymore.

If this all progresses the way it looks like it will, my son, to be born in August, will never remember me in glasses. Well, maybe I’ll still use them for night driving for a while. I’ll probably always keep a pair in reserve, but overall, he won’t think of me as someone who wears glasses. I find this to be profound and finding this site, as I’ve said in the past, feels like a miracle. 

Everyone reading, look into the distance and clear up some text!

October 19 2015 L: sph -1.75 cyl/axis -.025 177
R: sph -2.25

December 30 2015 L: -1.50 / R: -2.00
Differential: no glasses

March 18 2016 L: -1.25 / R -1.75

That’s awesome, right?

If you have forum access, the full thread is here.  And the post and Youtube video Matthew is referring to, about not pushing vision improvement on people, over here.

Speaking of video, I just posted a quick edit of the crazy LASIK surgeon that Monica has been dealing with (from this blog post).  If you’re sensitive to reckless behavior I recommend not watching this one.  It features yours truly riding a motorbike without helmet and three passengers, including one baby.  (tame and reasonable compared to pre-baby, single-times-Jake, in not-reassuring context)

Here, thoughts on the insanity of multiple LASIK procedures:

crazy-lasik-surgeon-ytb

As always subscribe, thumbs up, comment (comments, fun!) whatever you deem appropriate.  

Perhaps also worth adding to this post, another comment from Matthew in the same forum thread about his wife’s active focus experience.  (There really is something to be said for how well the program works to keep you from slipping back into bad myopia habits):

Thanks! 

She could easily get out of glasses before me. It just depends on if she wants to put in some effort. I’m actually just into the -1.50 / -1.25 normalized prescription, so I’m working on equalizing. I try to always give myself a full month of a new normalized before making too many observations, so it’s hard to say what my progress will be. I could get to -1.25 / -1.25 by the end of the year, but then we have to deal with the low light and winter again. 

My guess is that at this time next year, I’ll be trying to spend most of my time outdoors without glasses, and I expect it’s months of that to gain some real clarity. This is all fine because I have made great progress. I’ll post sometime in July on my experiences with my current normalized, but one exciting piece came up. I called my childhood ophthalmologist and asked for my records. I found that in November of 1992 my first pair of eyeglasses was the same pair that I’m wearing now! Granted, that was an over-prescription and only ciliary myopia, and now it’s an under-prescription and likely still remaining axial elongation, but, it’s still profoundly psychologically satisfying. All those times I was told my eyes got “worse,” and I needed “stronger” glasses are now behind me. 3 -4 months and I should be adjust to these. And who cares if it’s longer? My trend of increasing myopia is forever gone.

Thanks again for your comments, and best to you and your family as well!

Once you know better, and once you realize that it’s all simple habits that will get your eyes back on track, it’s what you are most likely to continue doing.  Unlike something like gaining muscle or losing weight, myopia reversal tends to come naturally (since it’s where your biology naturally *wants* to be).  

If you haven’t tried it, maybe this could be the little nudge to get you started.  ;)

Housekeeping:  Session updating has resumed for BackTo20/20.  To session groups left, and we’re all 100% up to date on those.  Remaining is video versions for sessions (which will take quite a while, possibly), and the 12 months bonus sessions (those will be updated fairly regularly, soon).  Planning to put various video bits learned from playing on Youtube to good use in BackTo20/20, time permitting.

Cheers, keep those eyes healthy!

-Jake