What is more clear still is that you have nothing to do with anything
that is 'brainy'. You should not have the honour of calling yourself
'Ms.Brainy', because more approriately it should be' Ms.dumbo' that is
more fitting to you nature that you has shown.

Dear Ms. Brainy,

Yes we know you do not like the second-opinion concept
of prevention.

But please do not call second-opinion Dr. Brainy a "wacko"
because you do not like him or his concept of plus-prevention.

He has the right to his preventive second-opinion the way
we all do.

Otis

+++++++++++++

The Myopia about Nearsightedness

Merrill D. Bowan, O.D.

I. The Cure for Myopia.

II. What is Myopia?

III. What Can be Done?

IV. The Future.

*********************

I. THE CURE FOR MYOPIA (Nearsightedness).

Q. Can myopia be reversed?

A.  Unfortunately, no.

Q. Can myopia be prevented?

A.  Fortunately, yes, most of the time. That's the cure for myopia:
PREVENTION.

Q.  But what about surgery?  I see many ads.

A.  Radial corneal surgery and lasers only address symptoms of the
problem.  Studies have never shown close associations of myopia with
the corneal shape.  Just as you learned in school, in myopia the eye
is optically too long. The great majority of refractive surgery
patients will need glasses or contact lenses over the weeks, months or
years following the surgery.

Q. But what are the best things that can be done for myopia?

A. Work to prevent progression of nearsightedness, once it's started.
The only real cure for myopia is to prevent it.  You have to
understand what myopia is.

II.  WHAT IS MYOPIA?

Myopia is one of three adaptive optical errors that occur as
responses of the visual system  to sustained, repeated stress -- they
are stress diseases.  The others are astigmatism and progressive
hyperopia -- farsightedness.  In nearsightedness, the eye is optically
too long.   Astigmatism distorts the image on the back of the eye and
farsightedness causes the individual to pay too much attention to
focusing on near work, causing eyestrain and reduced performance.

The idea that myopia is genetic is not borne out by the available
data.  Family histories, at best, have only a modest predictive value
for eye problems.  Genetics may predispose certain families toward
specific eye problems, but the trigger to the distortion of the optics
of the eye is stress and reading, in the great majority of cases.
Since the human eye is almost full size by age four and certainly
adult size by age eight, the concept of an eye that "grows" too long
is not a valid concept. Most myopia begins after age eight.  Most
beginning myopes get their first glasses at ages 9 to 10, but there is
a new group of beginning myopes who have begun to emerge over the past
20 years: adults who use computers.

A British ophthalmologist has described myopia as "juvenile expansile
glaucoma", caused by reading.  Technically, he's probably correct,
although it's a benign condition, and not the adult, damaging form of
glaucoma.  Myopia has affected mankind since the beginning of time
whenever the visual system is stressed and the individual can't or
won't escape the stressing environment. The combination of events that
causes the nearsightedness include extended nearwork, depletion of
Vitamin C, stress-induced calcium losses, muscular weakening of the
rear chamber of the eye, and increased pressure in the eye relative to
the softened sclera, the white superstructure of the eye.  The
combination results in a gradual ballooning of the eye -- incredibly,
adding only 1/2 mm. of extra length to the eye reduces vision to
20/200 or poorer!  The increased length of eye is all in the posterior
chamber.

III. WHAT CAN BE DONE?

The main factors in preventing nearsightedness are proper nutrition,
preventive lenses to protect normal farsightedness, proper visual
hygiene, and stress reduction techniques.  To elaborate:

1) Nutrition - supplementing the diet with several hundred milligrams
of vitamin C each day is reasonable.  (Experts have estimated that
cavemen received 1100mg. or more per day in their diets.) Adequate
dietary levels of calcium, magnesium, and zinc are in order, as well.
Children given calcium in one British study showed stabilization and
reversal of their myopia.  A diet adequate in fresh fruits and
vegetables should be preventative, but not many children have the
taste or opportunity to do so.  B-complex vitamins help to reduce the
effects of stress of any sort.

2) Proper visual hygiene :

A) Posture: sitting upright for reading or writing is very
important.  The visual system works best in a slightly downcast
position.

B) Lighting: lighting engineers recommend a 200 W. glare-free study
lamp.  The benefit is to increase figure-ground contrast and also to
constrict the pupil, which increases the depth of field and thus
reduces the need for critical focusing, which is the primary distress
on the visual system.

C) Time:  the eyes appear to be designed for up to 20 or 30 minutes of
sustained work without sustaining ill adaptive effects.  Therefore,
eye breaks every half hour - looking away and stretching hard or
walking away for a moment, plus a walk-away for 10 minutes every 90
minutes when reading, writing, or computing, will minimize the stress
effects on most people's eyes.

3) Preventive lenses  -  "Plus 50" or "Plus 75" reading lenses are
powerful tools against myopia for most students, beginning as early as
second grade for most, though some students are showing signs of this
developmental nearsightedness by the middle of first grade.
Personality style analysis can help to detect earlier need for these
"brain glasses", as they're sometimes called: children prone to myopia
seem to be the sort who are intelligent, analytical, withdrawn, stress-
absorptive, underactive children, who are driven to please their
superiors.  Bifocals with clear top portions are sometimes a more
practical way to provide the reading lenses without the bother of
taking them off to see distance objects.

Rigid, gas permeable contact lenses have been shown to slow or stop
progression, but just why isn't exactly clear. Soft contact lenses are
well-known to permit progression: it's called "myopia creep".

      Base-in prisms ground into the lenses have had preventive value
since the mid-1800's when ophthalmologists in Germany used them on
students becoming progressively more myopic.  They are still sometimes
used for this purpose. [There are no guarantees that preventive lenses
will work for any particular individual, but research shows that they
do work 60-70% of the time.  Our only other option is to do nothing
and watch the 60-70% of at-risk people get worse and worse vision.]

4) Stress reduction techniques - action is a useful antidote to
stress. The body under stress gives all the appearance of being
readied for fight or flight, even when either of those responses would
not be appropriate.  So a walking program, or low-impact aerobics, a
sports hobby or other energy-burning activity will tend to help.

Relaxation, meditation, and/or prayer are scientifically proven ways
of reducing stress.  Progressive relaxation techniques were used for
fighter pilots in WWII and Korea to not only reduce stress, but also
improved flying combat skills.  They reduce stress effects and can
improve thinking skills in students, as well - it would be interesting
to study formally.  Teaching children how to take a "5-minute
vacation" as Dr. Herbert Benson talks about in his book "Beyond the
Relaxation Response", would be beneficial at many levels.

"Children need more baseball, less T.V.", said Dr. Francis Young, a
primate researcher from Oregon.  He was responding to questions about
his conclusions of what made animals nearsighted in his experiments.
Children need more outdoor activity and preferably interacting with
other children.

Performance anxiety needs to be dealt with constructively, as well as
control issues, so that a pattern of prolonged distress response(s)
doesn't become a habit.

IV. THE FUTURE

Will there ever be a remedy for nearsightedness?  It's hard to see
how that can be, especially since our society is moving toward MORE
nearwork with the advent of the microcomputer and the Internet Age.
Hopefully, more and more vision care providers will finally
acknowledge that functional nearsightedness (the nearwork theory) is
responsible for most garden-variety nearsightedness - up to 75% it
would appear. Then we can get on with the real cure for myopia,
PREVENTION.

For Additional Reading:

Bowan, MD: The Control of Myopia;  Journal of Optometric Vision
Development; Volume 12, Number 2, June, 1981.

Bowan, MD: Stress and Eye: New Speculations on Refractive Error;
Journal of Behavioral Optometry; Volume 7, Number 5, 1996.

Forrest, E: Stress and Vision; Optometric Extension Program , Santa
Ana, CA, 1988.

[2005 Note: SEE ALSO: www.myopia-manual.de]

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