You found this site, and the promise of improving your eyesight.
You start to read. There is a whole lot of science and third party insights explaining myopia causes. There is the forum, with years of accumulated stories of improvement. It sounds great!
But then … you either have to read a whole lot more, or spend money on a course. And who wants to do that?!
There must be an even easier way. Take out 90% of all the words and talk and activities. Just the real key parts, distilled down to pure essence. That’s what you need! If Alex says that you need less close-up strain, and lower prescriptions, and close-up and distance focus stimulus, and peripheral vision, and good light … which of those things does actually make the most difference?
Maybe just taking one single thing, perhaps the close-up focus work, will do it. Right?
This is what modern life is teaching us. Reductionism. Mostly because there is always some ad telling you that some pill will fix you in your sleep, that you can get what you want without actually having to work or pay for it.
It’s not your fault for looking for a shortcut. It is part of modern Western culture.
You know what, though? There is always a price for everything. For eyesight, glasses are the quick fix. Abuse your eyes for years with endless close-up, and then pop on some glasses and everything will appear just fine. Of course the price there is progressive myopia (and spending money with the optometrist).
We have to recognize the difference between wasting time, and impossible shortcuts.
Let’s see what Gerdt has to say, in the forum:
Hi Jake,
can I ask you a personal question, you stated you were myopic -4 each eye last prescription. What prescription you are wearing now and how long did it take you to go down? I am a little bit sceptical since some people say for them it worked and some say the have zero net improvements (from gettingstronger.org).
I do not know what is the reason for that, can you refer to this?
Some people are very enthusiastic in the beginning but later on they seemed to give up since they do not leave a comment any more in the forum?
Thank you very much for your reply.”
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I get so frustrated when I read things like this. Not at Gerdt, but all the people who peddle shortcuts.
Here is what I responded with:
I’m not wearing glasses anymore. It took something like five years. Consider that quite a bit of time was wasted experimenting, taking various optometrist and specialist advice. One could get rid of a -4 in about three years, if diligent.
I can’t comment on gettingstronger since I’m not part of the discussion there.
The eye is a dynamic system. By design it adjusts to correct focus based on environmental stimulus. That much is quite clearly established in medical science – https://endmyopia.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/myopia-pdf-gold.pdf
You need to get rid of the close-up strain that causes ciliary muscle spasm, to treat pseudo myopia (most diagnosed myopia below -1.50). For lens-induced myopia (progressive myopia that happens once an individual is wearing minus lenses), you need a combination of prescription adjustment and focal stimulus.
These things work very reliably, for most people.
However … you can’t necessarily just take a core concept, and apply it without understanding all the pieces. Just doing a close-up focus activity alone isn’t necessarily going to provide ongoing improvement. Alex’ site and the course wouldn’t be necessary if we could be reductionist to the point of skipping everything else, and just working on some close-up focus. It would be great, of course, an answer to myopia that can be fully explained in one short paragraph.
I am glad you asked the question. The reductionist type of approach irks me personally sometimes, since it’s mostly just lazy (in my opinion). It’s looking for a quick(er) fix, and in the end it doesn’t work, and then people vilify the whole underlying premise (which they didn’t bother to fully understand and apply).
Take a look at the years of collected feedback from the forum, of ongoing improvement: https://endmyopia.org/improve-eyesight-experiences/
Obviously all these individuals found myopia rehab to work for them. They were all doing the course though, step by step, and then getting the expected results.
On a side note, most improvement after the first 4-6 months is usually somewhere around one diopter per year. If someone isn’t keeping a log (as Alex often suggests), they may well miss what can otherwise be a difficult to ascertain change in their vision.”
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You can find Gerdt’s thread here. Do feel free to comment.
See what I mean, when I say I get frustrated? It’s bad enough that we have doctors who won’t look at prevention or rehab as a possibility. We have to deal with them, and all the various scams and lack of understanding, and things like Bates method. But to add to all that, now we have to deal with people taking legitimate rehab methods, removing most of the process, and then complaining that they aren’t getting results.
Imagine a guy looking at your car. Four wheels, he says. You can’t possibly need all four! Bikes work with two wheels! Hey, let’s try your car with three wheels. Save on buying tires, save on weight, one less thing to keep air in, too. That’s your reductionist, looking for unrealistic shortcuts.
I know Todd over at gettingstronger has the right idea. I’m not sure about the rest of all of it, since I don’t follow the discussion there. Regardless though, don’t get tempted by anything that promises to be even simpler than strain reduction and prescription management and focal stimulus. It just doesn’t get any easier than that. One diopter a year is great progress, and Alex’ habit based approach is really very sleep and elegant, as rehab goes.
Cheers!
– Jake
