The Internet is full of questionable wisdom about eyesight. Likewise, the local optometrist ideas vary quite widely on the subject of myopia. It’s really a matter of luck, if you find us first, or end up here after a long search and experimenting.
Your poor eyes, quite possibly, if you found us after you tried everything else already.
I write here because of all the things out there, I really believe that Alex’ course is by far the most effective way to fix your eyesight. You want the least possible distractions, you don’t want more eye strain, you don’t want to spend a bunch of money on things. Alex got it just right with the minimal amount of learning and change to get you on track.
I get many clients who went through all the experimenting and trying out questionable advice. It happens everywhere, online and offline. Take a look at a recent post, which Gunnar writes in the forum:
First of all thank you for sharing this whole eyesight advice and giving people with myopia hope to recover!
I’m a 25y/o student from germany and also a participant of the web program and started about a year ago.
But I need some advice from you because I guess I did something wrong.
Let me give you give a short overview of my myopia story first. I never wrote anything in the forum ( I thought I could handle it on my own) , so this is my first time interacting with somebody of the site to my shame and sorry for my bad english, it’s my second language.
I got my first glasses when I was about 10 or 11 years old, it was -2 dpt if I remember correct ( I hated glasses from the first time I got them), but my myopia got worse. At 15 years I had around -4 dpt without astigmatism and I ended up with
R: -5.25 cyl: -1.75 axis: 43
L: -5.5 cyl: -1.25 axis: 135
at the age of 18.
Pretty high numbers, but my lifestyle back then was going to school and in the afternoon play videogames or read comics or watch TV at home ( I really was an insane addict to videogames). Almost no outdoor activity to my shame. I stopped all of this now of course.
My myoipa was stable the next few years and I went to university.
There I had enough free time to really study this whole myopia subject and of course I found a lot of methods on the internet ( Bates included), which I tried out in hope to change something.
I mixed and matched different methods that would make sense to me ( luckily I skipped looking directly in the sun) and then something really changed, because I guess I already did some of the stuff that you advise on your site, like getting out a lot and try to read something without glasses during close up ( I remember they called it print pushing).
At that time I also got my first contacts ( because I couldn’t stand glasses anymore) and the optician who measured my eyes for the right contact lens prescription, noticed that my eyesight had improved a little bit ( I know that contacts prescription is usually lower than glasses) like 0.5 dpt.
The optician prescribed me with contacts that were:
R: -4.25 cyl: -1.75 axis: 30
L: -4.25 cyl: -1.25 axis: 140
So this reduction was very motivating for me and I continued to try to improve my eyes, I thought I had found the right method to reverse my myopia. Unfortunately I adopted a very bad habit from my mixing and matching different methods and that was wearing no glasses for a lot of time.
I refused to wear my old Glasses because they were too strong for my eyes, so I ended up wearing lowered contacts for university and no correction for a lot of my free time.
It was a hard time with all the blur, but I told myself I had to go through this to recover.
Also somewhere in that time period I found the endmyopia site because I was still seeking guidance with this whole myopia problem and it was the first site / method that really made sense to me.
All the other methods had no real explanation, why I should do this or that eye exercise and I also read other peoples stories who had trouble with these methods, it was really confusing and doubtful.
So I decided to subscribe to the frauenfeld web course and started to acquire good eyesight habits.
So let’s get to my possible mistakes, first of all I still wore no glasses for a lot of time, that’s bad I know. Then I used the contacts that I order online as my normalized prescription, but I reduced the sphere and cylinder too often and too much at a time. I started with
R: -4.00 cyl: -0.75 axis: 30
L: -4.00 cyl: -0.75 axis: 140
for my normalized prescription contacts and reduced them like 0.25 dpt every few months and I guess my eyes never really acclimated to that rapid change.
Next mistake is that my close up prescription (-1.25 dpt both eyes) is too weak for close up, even though I read in installment #2 , that it’s a suitable close up prescription for someone with -4 dpt myopia.
The last few weeks I couldn’t stand the amount of blur and stress anymore ( I already guessed that I did something wrong) and went to an ophthalmologist to get my eyes checked.
It was early in the morning, I was kind of tired and the measurement took place in a room with bad ambient lightning. The result was:
R: -4.50 cyl: -1.75 axis: 35
L: -5.00 cyl: -1.25 axis: 139
The ophthalmologist also told me to also get the result confirmed by another measurement from an optician, which I’m planning to do the next few days.
So my real questions to you are:
#1 Are my mistakes the true reason for my bad improvement ( remember I started over a year ago) ?
#2 What prescription for glasses do I need for a fresh new start? I’m really lost and confused right now and I need a new starting point from where I can get a clean and stable improvement
#3 Based on that, what close up prescription do I need?
#4 Do you have more advice for my high astigmatism? How to include it in the prescriptions and when to reduce it ? That’s also a confusing subject to me, how to get rid of astigmatism…
I did some cm measurements based on your suggestions on jakesteiner.com for a couple of days and my eyes are between 20 – 23 cm ( average 22 cm) in artificial lightning in my appartement with a 14pt font sized writing on paper.
At the moment I have no viable prescription to do a snellen test, because my normalized prescription was soft contact lenses for a long time and I want to switch to glasses permanently now.
I use a pair of -3.5 cyl -0.75 ( on both eyes) glasses now to get through the day ( But it’s too weak of course) until I get a new pair of glasses.
I’m also planning to buy a test lens kit to help me figure out the right prescriptions.
That’s it, sorry for the long text and thank you for reading it all.
I really want to get this myopia thing under control, so please offer me some guidance !
I know I sound desperate and I really am right now unfortunately, myopia is like a curse for me..
I swear I won’t mix and match anymore ( I learned my lesson) and I will stick to this program and your suggestions in hope to improve my eyes permanently!
Again thank you for everything,
Gunnar
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The good news there is that Gunnar hasn’t given up.
If you’d like to read what I suggest for Gunnar, the link to the forum thread is right here. Feel free to add your own observations and experiences, so that we can add suggestions to help with your eye goals!
Happy eyes,
– Neha Gupta
