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The audience member is correct. Myopia is caused by light entering the eye being focused in front of the retina by our natural lens and cornea, this is usually

The audience member is correct. Myopia is caused by light entering the eye being focused in front of the retina by our natural lens and cornea, this is usually as the result of increased axial length i.e. elongation of the eye. The dangerous thing about this talk is that the first 2/3rds are true. Reading, looking at screens and working up close as a child and young adult do cause progressively worse myopia by way of progressive elongation. This isn't controversial at all. There's no evidence that spectacle use influences progression. The latter 3rd is all bullshit. While our eyes continue to grow and elongate until around our mid 20's, there's no mechanism I'm aware of that can shorten the eye which is what you would have to do to "reverse" myopia. This is more or less common sense. There are studies that show that low doses of atropine given to children who are myopic with reduce the progression, but not reverse pathological myopia. At this point we're just waiting on FDA approval of a low-concentration atropine drop. I suspect that in the near future the prevalence of high and pathological myopia is going to decrease dramatically.

kkoncevicius 5y ago
Thanks a lot for your reply. Yup I got this feeling after the presenter dodged that question. However I also got the impression that it is currently unknown wether the axis of the eye shortens after these exercises, is that true? I read more about the topic and some people call the improvement in visual acuity "blur adaptation" - can "blur adaptation" really produce such drastic effects, and if so - are there potential side-effects? For example in my case I have medium myopia (< -3). The prospect of not wearing glasses anymore is very appealing to me and I don't really care about the length of the eye if all the symptoms disappear with this "blur adaptation. What am I missing?
- l8arrival 5y ago
  There is _zero_ doubt that these types exercises can work. I play tennis with a guy that used to wear glasses, with a decent level of myopia (slightly worse than -3), and over the course of several years reduced his myopia to the point he can easily play without glasses (it's something like -0.5 now). The only time I ever see him wearing glasses is at night. He worked off the methods in Bates' "Better Eyesight Without Glasses". I wear glasses myself, and am myopic. I would go through the effort myself, but on top of normal myopia I also have something called Nystagmus (shaking of the eye) of which the net result is additional blurring, so it's pretty hard for me to function without glasses at all (my vision without glasses would be about 20/400, with glasses it's 20/40).

kkoncevicius 5y ago

Thanks a lot for your reply. Yup I got this feeling after the presenter dodged that question. However I also got the impression that it is currently unknown wether the axis of the eye shortens after these exercises, is that true? I read more about the topic and some people call the improvement in visual acuity "blur adaptation" - can "blur adaptation" really produce such drastic effects, and if so - are there potential side-effects? For example in my case I have medium myopia (< -3). The prospect of not wearing glasses anymore is very appealing to me and I don't really care about the length of the eye if all the symptoms disappear with this "blur adaptation. What am I missing?

l8arrival 5y ago
There is _zero_ doubt that these types exercises can work. I play tennis with a guy that used to wear glasses, with a decent level of myopia (slightly worse than -3), and over the course of several years reduced his myopia to the point he can easily play without glasses (it's something like -0.5 now). The only time I ever see him wearing glasses is at night. He worked off the methods in Bates' "Better Eyesight Without Glasses". I wear glasses myself, and am myopic. I would go through the effort myself, but on top of normal myopia I also have something called Nystagmus (shaking of the eye) of which the net result is additional blurring, so it's pretty hard for me to function without glasses at all (my vision without glasses would be about 20/400, with glasses it's 20/40).