Improve Your Eyesight Naturally

by Leo Anghart

  2. Next, very slowly begin to move the pen out horizontally in front of you. Keep looking at the pen as it moves out to arm’s length. Now, look out in the distance beyond the pen. Look around and notice what you see. It does not matter if it’s clear or not. What matters is that you send signals to your brain that you want to see further into the distance.

  Shift back to looking at the pen and begin to move it slowly back towards the tip of your nose. Continue to look at the pen until it physically touches the tip of your nose.

  3. Next, begin to move the pen up while you follow with your eyes. This is the going movement. Finally, move the pen back down and touch the tip of your nose.

  4. Continue doing these movements very slowly, keeping it fluid and easy. Do this a total of perhaps five times. Notice what happens to your eye muscles. If they get sore, then stop for a while and then take up the exercise again. The coming and going exercise is good for any kind of myopia and can be combined with other exercises as appropriate.

  After doing this exercise you will most probably feel that the muscles at the back of your eyes have been given a workout. Be careful not to over-exert the oblique muscles. If you feel sore then stop doing the exercise. You can do this exercise in most places without drawing too much attention to yourself. The higher the degree of myopia you have, the more important this exercise is.

  17. Presbyopia

  Presbyopia, the need for reading glasses, afflicts a lot of people when they reach their mid-forties. The first sign you notice may be that you start to have difficulty reading in low light – for example, reading menus in dimly lit restaurants. Then you might find that you are experiencing difficulty in reading small print. You may need to hold the text further and further away until your arms are just not long enough to hold the book in the right position. You could also find yourself squinting, but unfortunately it doesn’t help very much.

  Regrettably optometrists will often decide that you need reading glasses when you reach your forties. I know of many cases where patients were not even tested but just told that they should consider getting bifocal glasses. The automatic assumption that you lose your ability to read without glasses when you reach your mid-forties is an unfortunate mass belief that all too many people buy into.

  The decline in eyesight is so linear that tables have been made correlating vision with a person’s age. At age 10 you have about 20 diopters of focusing ability. You are expected to have lost half of your original accommodative power by age 30, and by the age of 40 to be missing about two thirds. Less than 5 diopters of accommodation or focusing ability is considered to be presbyopia. At age 60 your focusing powers are presumed to be practically non-existent. Eye-care professionals consider presbyopia to be present in virtually 100 percent of people over 50. Fortunately this does not actually reflect reality.

  There are two main theories that endeavor to explain presbyopia. The influential German scientist Helmholtz (1866) suggested that presbyopia was caused by a hardening of the lens, and Dutch ophthalmologist Donders (1864) attributed presbyopia to a weakening of the ciliary muscle fibers in which the lens is suspended. During the last 135 years there has been very little progress in this field, since these are the same explanations most eye-care professionals will offer today.

  However, not everyone agrees. Researchers Saladin et al. (1974) published a paper in which they investigated the strength of the ciliary muscle. They discovered that this muscle actually continued to contract after accommodation was achieved, suggesting that it had additional strength and could be contracted even further. Tamm et al. (1992) postulated that the ciliary muscle force should not reach zero until the age of 120.

  My experience with presbyopia leads me to believe that it is very easy to correct. One of the many success stories I have about eliminating the need for reading glasses is that of a good friend of mine whom I visited in Illinois one summer. She had been diagnosed as needing reading glasses a few months before, but as I was coming to give a Vision Training course she did not actually go out and buy them. In fact, I did not know at the time that she needed glasses. As I was working with some of her friends, she picked up what to do and to this day reads perfectly without glasses. The thing to do is to move your eyes from small details, like very small print, to large print and look at things in the medium distance as well as looking far away. This habit keeps the eyes flexible and means that you can expect to be able to read comfortably for a long time.

  Another example of how easily presbyopia can be corrected involves a friend of a professor of ophthalmology who was wearing reading glasses. As a joke, I invited him to join the professor when he visited my vision class the following day – on the condition that he learn how to read without his glasses. The next day at the workshop I introduced him to reading progressively smaller and smaller print. To the astonishment of the professor, his friend was able to read tiny print in about 10 minutes. Reading tiny print is far beyond what you would normally expect to be required to read. The following year the professor shared with a group of ophthalmologists that the presbyopia exercise he learned that day had resulted in a reduction of 50 percent in his sale of reading glasses. Interestingly enough, his patient ratio had also gone up during the year he had shared the Vision Training exercises with his patients.

  During an evening workshop in Cork, Ireland I met a boy of 14 who had been wearing plus lenses for eight years (more than half his life). I told him that the world record for learning to read without glasses was 15 minutes. If he wanted to he could break that record and I would mention him in my workshops all over the world. He accomplished this feat in 10 minutes, working with the exercise of reading progressively smaller and smaller print.

  The way I think about presbyopia is that as we grow older our muscles become less flexible. We are not as agile at 45 as we were at 15 or 25. This of course also applies to the eye muscles. So what is called for, it seems, are some tai chi type exercises for the eyes. The technique of reading progressively smaller and smaller print is extremely effective.

  William H. Bates, the grandfather of Vision Training, writes an interesting story about how he discovered the cure for presbyopia in an article in Better Eyesight in 1922.

  Bates’ road to discovering the cure for presbyopia

  Dr. Bates writes about an incident that happened in around 1912 when a friend asked him to read a letter. To his embarrassment, Bates had to spend some time searching for his reading glasses.

  Being a friend he could say things no other person would say. Among the disagreeable things he said was, and the tone was very empathetic, sarcastic, disagreeable, insulting, “You claim to cure people without glasses; why don’t you cure yourself?” I shall never forget those words. They stimulated me to do something. I tried all manner of means, by concentration, strain, effort, hard work, to enable myself to become able to read the newspaper at the near point … I consulted specialists in hypnotism, electricity experts, neurologists of all kinds and many others. One I called on, a physician who was an authority in psychoanalysis, was kind enough to listen to my problem. With as few words as possible I explained to him the simple method by which we diagnose nearsightedness with the retinoscope.

  As I looked off into the distance, he examined my eyes, and said that they were normal, but when I made an effort to see at a distance he said that my eyes were focused for the reading distance, i.e. nearsighted. Then when I looked at fine print at the reading distance and tried to read it, he said that my eyes were focused for a distance of twenty feet or farther, and the harder I tried to read, the farther away I pushed my focus. He was convinced of the facts, namely: a strain to see at the distance produced nearsightedness, while a strain to see near produced a farsighted eye …

  Stumbling on the truth

  The drifting near point

  As you grow older the eye muscles become less flexible and the near point of clear vision tends to drift out. Below is an approximate scale of the average near point of clear vision vs.
age.

  Age

  50

  Normal reading distance

  40

  30

  20

  10 Distance

  40 cm

  35 cm

  20 cm

  14 cm

  10 cm

  7 cm

  The man who finally helped me to succeed, or rather the only man who would do anything to encourage me, was an Episcopal minister living in Brooklyn. After my evening office hours I had to travel for about two hours to reach his residence. With the aid of the retinoscope, while I was making all kinds of efforts to focus my eyes at the near point, he would tell me how well I was succeeding. After some weeks or months I had made no progress.

  But one night I was looking at a picture on the wall, which had black spots in different parts of it. They were conspicuously black. While observing them my mind imagined they were dark caves and that there were people moving around in them. My friend told me my eyes were now focused at the near point. When I tried to read my eyes were now focused for the distance.

  Lying on the table in front of me was a magazine with an illustrated advertisement with black spots which were intensely black. I imagined they were openings of caves with people moving around in them. My friend told me that my eyes were focused for the near point; and when I glanced at some reading matter, I was able to read it. Then I looked at a newspaper and while doing so remembered the perfect black of my imaginary caves and was gratified to find that I was able to read perfectly.

  We discussed the matter to find what brought about the benefit. Was it strain, or what was it? I tried again to remember the black caves while looking at the newspaper and my memory failed. I could not read the newspaper at all. He asked, “Do you remember the black caves?” I answered, “No, I don’t seem to be able to remember the black caves. “Well,” he said, “close your eyes and remember the black caves.” And when I opened my eyes I was able to read – for a few moments. When I tried to remember the black caves again I failed.

  The harder I tried, the less I succeeded and we were puzzled. We discussed the matter and talked of a number of things, and all of a sudden without an effort on my part I remembered the black caves, and sure enough, it helped me to read. We talked some more. Why did I fail to remember the black caves when I tried so hard? Why did I remember the black caves when I did not try or while I was thinking of other things? Here was a problem. We were both very interested and finally it dawned on me that I could only remember these black caves when I did not strain or make an effort.

  I had discovered the truth: a perfect memory is obtained without effort and in no other way. Also, when the memory or imagination is perfect, sight is perfect. (Bates, 1922; emphasis in original)

  Presbyopia is due to stress not age. Consequently, if the stress and strain are relieved, the ability to read and see at the near point comes back.

  Vision Training principles for presbyopia

  • Bring the near point of clear focus in to about 15 cm from the eyes.

  • Develop relaxation in the eye muscles so they can stretch and contract to their full ability. This is done with a simple exercise involving reading progressively smaller and smaller print.

  • Train your eyes to function in a variety of light sources.

  • Encourage your eyes’ ability to converge on the paper of the book or magazine you are reading.

  From a Vision Training point of view, we think of presbyopia as a result of an overall loss of flexibility in muscle tone. When you were 18 you could go out dancing all night and still go to work or school the next day without too much trouble. By the age of 45 you have lost some of that flexibility and your muscles are just not that supple. The same thing is happening with your eyes. In order to regain your reading ability, therefore, you need to stretch and soften your eye muscles so they can regain the range of accommodation you need for good reading.

  In order to restore comfortable reading ability you need to do some simple exercises. These are designed to get your eyes to relax and allow the eye muscles to gradually stretch and thereby increase your ability to read. Generally you will want to practice until you can comfortably read really small print. This way you will have spare capacity so you will be able to read labels in the supermarket, even when you are tired, or read the phone book in moonlight, should you ever need that ability.

  Nowadays we have access to adequate lighting 24 hours a day, so we tend not to use our low light vision as much as we would if there was no electric lighting at night. Your eyes use a different set of light sensitive cells for detecting low light (rod cells) than for bright light and color images (cone cells). So, to train your ability to read under different light sources, I recommend that you experiment with all sorts of light levels until you can read really small print with just one candle. In this way you will regain your ability to see well in any light conditions.

  Good reading light

  A study was carried out comparing the visual effects of different lights on the printed page. Sunshine reflected from a white printed page at noon on a clear day registers at 1,300 foot candles (1 foot candle is the light from one candle at the distance of 1 foot). In an outdoor shadow the reflection is reduced to 130 foot candles.

  Indoors, a 150-watt reflector spot bulb registers at 130 foot candles, the same reading as in shadow outdoors on a sunny day. A 60-watt bulb at the same distance registers only 2 foot candles, reflected from the same page. Indirect light by a 300-watt bulb thrown off the ceiling measures only half a foot candle. Fluorescent light registered about a quarter of a foot candle.

  No wonder fluorescent light is so tiring.

  The worst light source you can use for work or reading is fluorescent light tubes, which typically produce a rather distorted spectrum of light. For example, cool-white fluorescent light, the most frequently used, is deficient in red and blue-violet colors, the area where natural sunlight is strongest. Also, fluorescent light casts very few shadows. These are important for the eye in order to determine shape. In uniform light your brain has to work harder to detect the shape of objects. In addition, fluorescent tubes contain only half of the colors compared to daylight and they also tend to flicker, thus leading to eyestrain. This is especially prevalent in areas where the level of power supply fluctuates.

  If you are working in an environment where there is nothing but fluorescent light, I suggest that you add a table lamp with an incandescent or halogen light. This will blend with the colors emitted from the fluorescent tubes and produce a better environment for your eyes. You will feel the difference very quickly. Often I have to conduct seminars in rooms where there is only fluorescent light. People begin to develop eyestrain after just a few hours in this environment. Consequently, I always specify seminar rooms with good daylight. There is nothing better, and it’s free.

  Another problem is convergence (the ability to focus both eyes on the same point). Often one eye will be focusing on the paper while the other actually focuses a few centimeters in front and behind the page causing you to get tired easily. In some cases people have what is known as mono-vision, where you use one eye for reading and one eye for seeing at a distance. To correct for convergence at the reading distance we use convergence charts that train your eyes to fuse the images from both eyes into one three-dimensional image.

  Do you have presbyopia?

  If you have 20/20 vision for reading then you should be able to read these lines in good daylight using the normal reading distance:

  20/50 A b C d E f G h I j K 1 3 5 7 9 2 4 6 8

  20/40 A b C d E f G h I j K 1 3 5 7 9 2 4 6 8

  20/30 A b C d E f G h I j K 1 3 5 7 9 2 4 6 8

  Your reading vision may be OK for most situations; however, you may have difficulty in low light situations.

  20/25 A b C d E f G h I j K 1 3 5 7 9 2 4 6 8

  Your reading vision is pretty good. Just a fraction below the optimum.

  20/20 Judgment is the summation, the end result, the inte
rpretation or evaluation of what the eye sees.

  20/16 A b C d E f G h I j K 1 3 5 7 9 2 4 6 8

  Congratulations you have perfect near-point reading vision.

  The numbers in the left column are the Snellen indicators. Note that the quality of light has a great influence on your reading ability. Indoors in the evening your visual acuity for reading will drift up a line or two. Ideally you should be able to see the 20/20 line, crystal clearly, at about 15–20 cm in front of your eyes. This is normal visual acuity for activities at the near point. Children can see this print at about 10 cm in front of their eyes.

  Small print exercise

  Dr. William Bates maintained that it was impossible to read fine print without relaxing the visual system. Therefore the reading of such print, contrary to what is generally believed, is of great benefit to the eyes.

  Simply bring the fine print so near to the eyes that it cannot be read. Of course you realize that you can’t read this close and your eyes do not even try to see, and then relax. Alternately open and close your eyes for a few seconds while looking at the fine print and notice what happens.

  People whose sight is beginning to fail at the near point or who are approaching the so-called presbyopic age, should imitate the example of a remarkable old gentleman I met. Get a sample of really small print and read it a few times every day. Start in good daylight then in different kinds of artificial light, bringing it closer and closer to the eye until it can be read at about 15 centimetres or less. Or get a sample of type reduced by photography until it is much smaller, and do the same. You will thus escape, not only the necessity of wearing glasses for reading and near work, but all those eye troubles which now so often afflict people. Nature intended that you should have natural clear eyesight.