![]() | Aparna’s Myopia ReductionA Year’s worth of vision improvement, with scanned prescriptions |
Hi,
Just to introduce myself, I’m a final year medical student, who started wearing glasses (-2.00) aged 8 years. I expected my myopia to stabilise when I entered my 20s (I’m now 26) but that did not happen! In fact my vision worsened faster after I entered medical school and started doing much more reading and computer work than ever before—it reached -5.00/5.25 at its worst.
A while ago I read in the paper about a pilot who’d improved his myopia enough to get into aviation school through vision training. I was sceptical but was ready to try anything to prevent my vision worsening and thought I had nothing to lose by giving it a go!
I started out initially with Bates techniques (palming etc). These days I mainly practice the ‘retinal defocus’ program described by Mr David De Angelis in his book (The Secret of Perfect Vision), as this has rapidly improved my vision—by about 1 dioptre since I started three months ago—and I’m hoping for more!
All the best to those of you who’re trying to improve your vision—it can be done!
Just a brief explanation of what happened around the time of each eye test, so you have a better idea of what was going on in terms of the prescriptions.
DECEMBER 2, 2007: -5.00 (right eye), -5.25 (left eye).
SEPTEMBER 14, 2008: -4.75 (right eye), -4.50 (left eye)
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I read The Secret of Perfect Vision by David De Angelis at the
start of September, and had been doing the exercises for about a week when I had this eye test. This was the first time that my prescription had significantly reduced and I was very pleased.
I decided to intensify my program, and start doing 1-2 hours of print pushing six days a week. I carried on doing this for the next couple of months before my December eye test. |
DECEMBER 11, 2008: -3.75 (right eye), -4.00 (left eye)
(Sorry I haven’t bothered mentioning the astigmatism, but overall that’s improved too!)
Needless to say, I am over the moon at the reduction in my myopia! I am definitely going to keep at it to see if I can improve further as it’s been working for me so far!
The key lessons for me from the whole process have been to:
I usually sit near a window as I do print pushing, and look up sharply at the sky as a CRB movement. Aside from the stretching benefit, I think looking to a distance helps to reduce any strain that might occur from looking repeatedly at a book during a 20-30 min print pushing session.
For the last year, I’ve worn glasses that are one dioptre less than my current prescription. Last year my prescription was -5.00/-5.25 and I wore -4.0, but only at work and never at home.
As my prescription is now around -4.0, I wear -3.0 to work. Again I never wear glasses at home, but have a pair of -2.0 that I use very rarely in 'safe places' like home. I keep my -4.0 specs for 'emergencies' like when I'm lost somewhere and need to read signs at a distance!
I avoid wearing contacts as much as possible—have worn them (-3.25) for one day in the last three months.
I do have a home Snellen chart (3 m / 10 ft chart) and test my vision every day. With my -2.0 specs, I can now make out the letters on the 20/125 line decently well. I couldn’t do that three months ago, when I could not read below the 20/200 line with -2.0 specs.
Without glasses, I can only see the topmost 20/400 line, but not the next line below (20/200).