It's making a mountain out of a molehill. Yes, there's some evidence that very rigorous, regular eye exercises can help delay or even slightly reverse myopia. Slightly. If you give yourself a headache for like an hour a day, every day. And the effect goes away when you stop exercising.
This is something that has been studied pretty extensively. If it was actually a cure, it'd have been well-proven by now, and we'd all be doing it.
You really should exercise your eyes once in a while if you're staring at a screen all day, though.
> This is something that has been studied pretty extensively. If it was actually a cure, it'd have been well-proven by now, and we'd all be doing it.
Untrue and faulty reasoning. It may have been studied extensively on biased populations, or the research may not have been funded adequately. Anyways, this is part of the "myopia is purely genetic" zeitgeist which is shoved down all of our throats in the west. Meanwhile, studies from Taiwan, Japan, and Korea show that myopia truly has an environmental component to it, e.g. childhood eyestrain and video games.
One may argue that could be because East Asian genetics are different from those of Europeans. I can't say exactly why, but I will say that the mainstream "myopia can't be cured/prevented" rhetoric has been extremely harmful for approximately 2 billion people on this planet.
Urban schools in China and Taiwan used to mandate daily eye exercises in classrooms. There was no effect. It wasn't until Taiwan started requiring more outside time for children that they were able to reverse the myopia trend.
Agreed. I surveyed the existing medical literature on the topic in about 2018 (or was it 2017?) and conclusion was that it is still a very active area of research with a lot of controversy.
Anecdotally, I have a low-grade myopia which gets observably worse after a lot of near work or sitting the whole day in front of a computer. I can pretty consistently reverse through the use of print pushing and use of anti-corrective lenses (basically forcing myself to look at a slightly out-of-focus image each day). It also consistently worsens when I stop doing it, especially when I stop spending time outside.
A good way is to search for articles with "TOPIC" and "review" in the name on e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ or using a tool like https://inciteful.xyz/ (which was featured on HN some days ago). NCBI has an option for filtering by type of article, which includes reviews and systematic reviews.
These kinds of articles will then list relevant results, citing other relevant papers so you can continue going deeper from there.
In addition, wasn't there a study that found Australia children of Asian descent don't follow the same trend of myopia? IIRC, the researchers found that Australian children tend to spend a lot more time outside and get more natural sunlight. I wish I could find the original article.
I think the argument is that this isn't some unknown new untested discovery but instead something well known and constantly studied with disappointing results.
> The traditional eye exercises of acupoints appeared to have a modest protective effect on myopia among these Chinese rural students aged 6–17 years. However, no association between the eye exercises and near vision symptoms was found.
Anecdote:
I used to get new glasses/prescriptions every year. Every year my prescriptions would get stronger.
Last couple of years I stopped renewing my glasses and whenever I absolutely need to get new glasses, I have the store use my old prescription.
For whatever reason, my eye sight stopped getting worse. I think by wearing stronger prescriptions, your eyes adapt to it and you get more and more myopic.
Warning to anyone taking the above as medical advice: perhaps it might work for you, but do discuss with your doctor and check that you are not driving vehicles with worsening sight while believing it's fine. By all means try it, but get it checked so at least you have the data to know whether it works for you.
Start by finding an eye doctor that doesn't have a glasses shop attached, imo. Or one that isn't "attached" to such a shop in a way they would profit from it, I guess. Without insulting any doctor in specific, my thought is that making a profit from glasses being sold is likely to impact how likely the doctor is to prescribe new glasses.
> Or one that isn't "attached" to such a shop in a way they would profit from it, I guess.
Costco is set up this way: their optometrists are contractors who get a flat fee per eye exam, and they don't know or care about what else you buy while you're there.
> making a profit from glasses being sold is likely to impact how likely the doctor is to prescribe new glasses.
And beyond that, following the logic from the recent surgery thread: they see their patients see better. They see all the good cases, where someone walks out more confident and with better sight. Their product helps people. But then so do homeopathic placebos (to a certain (measurable) extent), and that's the hard part to figure out.
Of course, in this case everyone truly does see better when they walk out and what GP is wondering about are the long-term effects. This stuff is complicated, though I frankly have a hard time believing this claim of "just stop wearing glasses and you'll see better". Surely someone would have noticed that? But without doing a deep dive into the research here, it's all just speculation on both their part and mine.
I meant that you can discuss it with your doctor to get their factual knowledge or pointers, and then draw your own conclusions. I didn't say, and didn't mean to say (sorry if it came across like that), that you should follow their advice to any degree. I trust the overwhelming majority of people (doctor or patient) to use their own reasonable judgement, and the rest won't be helped by this advice anyway.
And for what it's worth, you may have had a string of bad doctors. I never had that feeling with any of mine (though I've only ever seen doctors in the Netherlands and Germany).
Your experience is similar to mine. I got glasses at the age of 13, but didn't like wearing the glasses, so never did. Both my late father and my sister (since she was about 12 years old) have to wear thick glasses. My sister started out about the same eye power as I did, but she wears her glasses everyday. My sister's glasses got thicker year over year, and finally she got LASIK a couple of years ago. My sister doesn't work with computers whereas I spend ~10-12 hours a day with computers/TV screens (when I use computer, I don't wear glasses and my eye doctor told me that's okay). For me, my eye power stayed about the same and never got stronger glass prescription over the last 25 years or so.
Having said that, I started wearing glasses about a year ago when watching the TV between 10pm-12am (thanks to my wife who likes watching movies and I joined in). Turns out, my eyesight (near-sight) got a bit worse in a year and now I have a slightly thicker glasses. Again, this is all anecdotal and maybe age comes into play here with my eye sight (but the common knowledge--not sure how true that is--is that the nearsightedness gets better as people age, so what I'm experiencing is the opposite).
Studies of deliberate undercorrection show a slight acceleration in myopia progression. Myopia progression slows and stops naturally after adolescence, whether you wear the correct prescription lenses or not.
The same thing happened to me where I got continually stronger prescriptions, but I stabilized anyways at around 18. My optometrist told me that's very common after adolescence.
I really wouldn't recommend using an incorrect prescription. In the US anyways shops won't let you use a prescription older than 1 year.
Your eyesight might have stopped getting worse on its own. As is the case for most people (myopia doesn't run away to infinity after all!). Which is why corrective surgery is only indicated after your prescription has been stable for some time.
You're probably just getting old. Normal people get farsighted as they age. Myopic people stop getting worse, or even improve a little, and start developing astigmatism.
And to everyone saying "its just age"... well, it doesn't seem that way.
I noticed this pattern and stopped going to the Optometrist for five years. When I finally went again, my myopia was -0.25 worse, so I got new glasses. Then I went again the next year and its -0.25 worse again.
My myopia didn't worsen over a period of five years. Then suddenly worsened over a period of one year.
so I have 2 pairs of glasses, one for clarity at infinity for driving, and another one that's clarity at arms length when I work in the office and staring at monitor all day. I do that because I want my eyes to relax, give it a try!
I asked the optometrist. He was a little offended that I wasn't going to use the new measurements but I pleaded with him enough that he relented.
One very interesting thing that convinced me to start doing this: if you get measurements taken at night (vs early in the day), your prescriptions will be stronger as your eyes are already tired. So your new glasses may be too strong for you but your eyes will adapt to it and become worse.
An optometrist in Germany told me the same regarding measuring eyes in the morning, for what it's worth. I came in after work and they basically turned me away because they didn't think I'd get a good measurement at that time.
Was this in the US? I’ve tried and everyone told me filling an expired prescription is illegal. Even places that don’t do exams. I have an old prescription and don’t want to get an exam because of the pandemic.
I'd recommend getting glasses online from Zenni [0]. They just ask for the measurements of the prescription. There's nothing about expiration dates. And they're super inexpensive! Glasses are a racket.
I can't speak for the quality/durability of their frames, as I only used them to get some prescription lenses for my Valve Index so I can play in VR without wearing my glasses.
For a while I could order from the UK, but I think (at least for the shop I used) they changed this to be more restrictive like the US.
It really is annoying due to the difficulty finding a good optometrist who does more than the basics. The entire process is still a matter of closest estimate when you consider that our eyes don't work in exact "steps" along a range. On top of that, the center point of the lens varies a lot based on exactly how a set of frames sits on your particular face. I've had plenty of glasses that were headache city because the IPD was right, but the lens center didn't line up properly with my pupil (vertically, when worn).
Then don't even get me started on the whole Luxottica thing where it can be another pain in the ass to find nice looking frames at many optometrist-attached stores. There are a few others with both optometrists and glasses sales (Warby Parker, if you have one of the brick and mortars nearby, for example).
For someone like me, even the "cheap" stores usually involve an extra $150-200 per set of glasses due to my cruddy eyesight and the need for the highest index lens material. I usually end up bouncing back and forth between somewhere like Warby when I really am due for another exam and will stomach the $200 cost for $20 worth of plastic. If I break or lose my specs too soon after, I tend to just suck it up and roll the dice with one of the cheapie online vendors.
>The study analyzed 200 pairs of glasses that had been ordered from 10 different websites. The lenses were analyzed based on a number of criteria, including measurement of sphere power, cylinder power and axis, add power (if specified), separation of distance of optical centers and center thickness. The AOA reports that in some cases, single vision lenses were delivered instead of the bifocals that had been ordered. In other cases, specific lens treatments were either added to an or were left off.
>>almost half of the eyeglasses tested in the study (the AOA reports the number at 44.8 percent) didn't have the correct prescription strength or presented problems with safety.
I use firmoo, and I haven't had any issues with the lenses. The only tricky thing is that you need to basically estimate the fit based on the dimensions of glasses frames that you already own.
get the best eye test you can, with a prescription.
buy cheapo online chinese.
zenni optical works fine for me, but with prices from 10 bucks, try several vendors and see which one you personally like.
It works (obviously anecdotal so YMMV). I follow a variant as on endmyopia.org and so far shaved off a couple of diopters from my last good prescription. However, it is a slow and multi year process but you do see a diopter reduction each year consistently. What's more worrying though is if the hypothesis as presented on any of these websites is true, then modern myopia epidemic is exacerbated by using myopia glasses themselves which is quite worrying.
I have bad nearsightedness, and anecdotally if I go without my glasses for awhile, such as when swimming at the beach, my eyesight has improved somewhat by the end of the day. I think it is a combination between using my eye muscles more effectively and learning to better infer what the blobs are.
I was forced to try the referenced Bates method for several years as a child, spending about a half hour a day on it. The experience was not good and the effort would have been much better spent on academics or even sports. After several years my parents changed eye docs, and I got one who would give me real glasses. I remember how awful my mother felt as I tried on the new glasses and exclaimed how amazing it was to be able to see anything at all. Trees have individual leaves, cars have license plates and brands, stores have sales prices posted. It may be possible these exercises work for others, but not for me.
The idea is a lovely one. There is some anecdotal evidence that more time spent outside as a youth reduces the rate of myopia. I don't recall whether the funding was published in science letters or elsewhere but it was an unexpected result of a survey. I see no downside in trying this for my own children, as opposed to my experiment of underpowered glasses and eye exercises. The kids like being out there.
I have been reading about myopia fixes through exercise for years. I see no significant evidence that its possible. I can't find an example of a SINGLE person in history that fixed the issue. E.g. Aldous Huxley never really did, despite writing the book that all current methods are based on.
On the other hand, doing a single-arm chin up seems impossible and takes a decade. Enough funds have not been put into research.
I went pretty deep down this rabbit hole for a while.
I've always been suspicious of eye doctors since every visit they find an excuse to bump you up a notch or two.
Anecdotally, me and my brother had the same prescription in high school. I started refusing to go to the eye doctor. He kept going. I happened to see his contacts prescription maybe six years later. His prescription was now over a diopter stronger than mine. I needed new contacts, so went to an exam about that time. My prescription was still the same, "Well we'd like to bump you up a notch, but you can stay at this level if you want."
Further, I noticed growing up that the kids with the worst eyesight were the ones whose parents had the best insurance and could afford twice per year exams.
Anyway, I think glasses do irreparable harm to vision (particularly during adolescence). I think that will be borne out by research if anyone ever looks into it.
The myopia correction exercises do seem to help, but it's a fickle process. If it was easy it wouldn't be controversial.
I would describe my experience as your baseline vision stays roughly the same, but you can learn to focus for short periods
of time and improve your acuity by maybe 1 - 2 diopters.
You know what else does irreparable harm? Failing classes because you can't see!
Most people don't just decide that "hey, today is a good day for me to start wearing glasses, wouldn't it be cool!?"
For young kids, it's usually when they start doing badly in classes or people notice they are squinting. For adults, it's having trouble with things like the DMV exam, caught by routine checkups, or when they notice their peers can see much better than they can.
I could also give you endless anecdotes "proving" the opposite point, that wearing glasses can slow down or stop the progress, but why bother. That's all they are, they are not facts.
And that's why I said, "I think that will be borne out by research if anyone ever looks into it."
> You know what else does irreparable harm? Failing classes because you can't see!
And I am implying that I believe we are treating that problem sub-optimally and that I believe a better solution could be found for the majority of cases where myopia is an issue.
I read back through what I wrote and I believe I had a fairly measured tone with it. You disagree, that's fine. The whole point of "science" is that people are allowed to have contrary hypotheses and the data should be the final arbiter or who is correct.
I was recommended this as a child - any improvement was temporary, and at best this will slow down the progression of myopia very slightly, in childhood.
Nothing beats sunlight and outdoor activity in childhood for reducing myopia, but if you already have it as an adult - you're stuck with it.
Doesn't this article suggest there's some truth to strengthening the eye to improve Myopia, though?
While the "new glasses" could of course be snake oil - assuming they're not for discussion would suggest that the muscles can be strengthened/corrected and all we're discussing is an implementation detail.
That's assuming these glasses actually work in this fashion, though. .. and that they work, of course.
If it actually worked long-term, it would be a published paper on PubMed and ophthalmologists would be readily prescribing it to their patients.
I'm not ruling out a temporary improvement in myopia from exercises. Sort of like squinting or putting eye drops in your eyes can temporarily make you less nearsighted.
But if there are positive, long-term effects from simple, harmless exercise (spoiler alert - you can't change the shape of your eye permanently with exercise like you can with a muscle), it would be part of eye doctor's treatment plans everywhere.
I've been doing the method in your second link (tl;dr: buy every pair of glasses between your prescription and 0 in 0.25 diopter increments, and slowly work your way down to 0).
I started at the beginning of quarantine, and it's actually been a wonderful time to try this since I rarely /need/ to look at anything farther away than my laptop screen. I started at a -2.25 diopter prescription in each eye. So for about $120 I got every pair of glasses down to 0.25 diopters, and a Snellen chart to track progress. Today, I'm down to a -1.25 prescription, although I plan on seeing an optometrist to confirm this once it's safe in the world to do so again.
The things I noticed during this experiment:
> It takes about a month minimum to drop down a prescription (I measure it as once I can reliably read to the 20/30 line on the Snellen chart).
> Given the above, I wear `current prescription + 0.5 diopters` whenever driving to make sure I'm well above the legal limits for driving (which is 20/40 vision)
> Going outside and just looking at stuff that's far away has the biggest positive effect on improving vision.
> Given 30 seconds of actively focusing, I can see temporary gains to my vision for the next 30 minutes or so
> My vision is waaay better in the morning
> I can now work on my laptop without needing glasses (still difficult to watch tv, though)
> Given the focus on what is and isn't blurry, I've started noticing the insane effect the brightness of a room has on how blurry things are
> I'm terrible at tracking data, given that I only have about 10 entries in my very basic excel sheet
> This has made me go on walks more often, which is just a net good all around. It feels "productive" to go for a walk rather than boring.
> It's very possible that this has only a limited return it can provide, since I've been plateaued at -1.25 for the last 3 months.
https://gettingstronger.org/2014/08/myopia-a-modern-yet-reve...
It claims that myopia can be cured, just like muscles can be made stronger in a gym.