Oh, darlings.

Getting VanderJakenbergen riled up again.  Yes.  People e-mailing me that their Bates teachers are telling them to stop wearing glasses.

Wait.

“Bates”.  “Teachers”.

There we go, fixed the grammatical bits to reflect their title more accurately.  

These things drive me just a tiny bit (more) insane.  Why?  Because I too look for health ideas online.  When I had weird thyroid issues.  TMJ teeth grinding bits.  When looking up blood test numbers.  And always, without fail, there’s the contingent of non-science, non-sense, plain idiocy online, which also and curiously often has a big following.  There’s always countless hours lost on weeding out those hypochondriacs and their superfood peddling hippie “teachers”.

I’m not going to go all out on the conspiracy theory people here, but … “Bates”. “Method”.

Like this too, in the Facebook group today:

Please just kill me.

Bates, darling kittehs, never worked on high myopia.

Didn’t.  I’ve read all his papers.  I’m familiar with all his research and work.  Bates was about prevention, Bates was dealing with what really was ciliary spasm, pseudo myopia.  Back in 1918, well before we had much of a clue about vision biology.  It’s all so backwards, it defies reason how people still cling to this Bates branding for their eye exercise ebooks and “seminars”.  

So whatever the “Bates” “teachers” are telling you about their high myopia, whatever it is – sure isn’t any Bates method.  

Nice try though, unicorn farmers.  We know what you’re doing, trying to legitimize selling eye vitamins and entirely randomly made up eye exercise regimens using a recognizable name.

Also and come on, -46 diopter glasses.  Go to a dozen optometrists and ask if they sell -46 diopter glasses.  If you spend an hour educating yourself about focal planes and optics, you know how much sense that makes (none, naturally).  

If I’m going to roll my eyes any harder, they will fall out of my head.

The problem is that today all we have is either mainstream myopia nonsense treatment, or Internet fluff pony myopia nonsense treatment.  Both non scientific, both infuriatingly devoid of sense in their own mind numbingly dumb ways.  

But what do you do?  Take on everybody?  Ridicule Dr. Glasenseller, and Dude VonUnicornFarm Bates teacher at the same time?

Aologies.  “Bates”. “Teacher”.

Here’s a quick video on blur adaptation, and why the advice of not wearing glasses is just another stupid idea lacking even four seconds of logical thought.  Take a moment to cleanse your brain with a bit of light discussion of productive use of focal planes:

Them video skills, tho.

Do what I do.

Don’t trust me or anyone else.  Use what you find as clues.  Go to Google Scholar and do your own research.  Trust only what you can make sense of.  And if what you find positively correlates with the source of the clues, then perhaps investigate that resource further.

Cheers,

-Jake