My name is Sanjeev, I could not find a specific place to ask questions so I thought this would be the most appropriate. Sorry if this is in the wrong section.
I am a 20 year old who has amblyopia (brain sees dominantly through the best eye and ignores other blurry eye) I have 20/20 vision through my left eye which is dominant. My right amblyopic eye tracks with my left but the best I can get out of is comparable to peripheral vision (I think my prescription is +4.50/-1.50 (I don't know if those are the correct words/numbers, I don't quite understand them properly myself)).
I have been told by my optometrist that I also have a astigmatism in my cornea and have long-sightedness in my left amblopic eye.
My aim to improve my vision in my right eye and have both working perfectly together (mainly to participate in sports as best I can (with full complete vision)). How can I approach this problem and fix it?
Seems like every doctor loves to sell astigmatism lenses and strong glasses. This causes and increases astigmatism, blur, amblyopia, other eye conditions.
Do not let the doctor place astigmatism in the glasses.
Avoiding glasses will help heal the eye conditions.
Eye patching can help but must be done certain way. Left and right brain hemisphere activation, integration exercises...
I can talk on Skype if you need; mary.oliver981
E-mail to get me to sign on. I don't do much typing anymore, too much neck tension so you must have a microphone.
clarknight Wrote:Seems like every doctor loves to sell astigmatism lenses and strong glasses. This causes and increases astigmatism, blur, amblyopia, other eye conditions.
Do not let the doctor place astigmatism in the glasses.
Avoiding glasses will help heal the eye conditions.
Eye patching can help but must be done certain way. Left and right brain hemisphere activation, integration exercises...
I can talk on Skype if you need; mary.oliver981
E-mail to get me to sign on. I don't do much typing anymore, too much neck tension so you must have a microphone.
Amblyopia can be cured.
Mary
Thanks for the post Mary, very helpful (also I avoid any eye modifier (contacts/glasses)). Is that book you pasted available in PDF format? It's easier for me to read it that way. Can you please tell me how to correctly patch my eye?
Finally I thought about an approach to cure my eye conditions and this is what I came up with:
1) Getting my cornea into a perfect spherical shape (don't know how though)
2) Getting light to hit the back of my eye at the proper point
3) Sharpening the image coming out the amblyopic eye
4) Getting the brain to accept the image
Please critique on anything in my post Mary, many thanks.
ShallowMoon, rather than focus on things you may have little control over, like
Quote:Getting my cornea into a perfect spherical shape (don't know how though)
I'd focus on determining exactly what that errant right eye is doing, then see if I could nudge it more in the direction of what I want. If I patch the left eye and see with only the right, is it scared? Overwhelmed? Angry? Helpess? OK, all things to work on -- no information is bad. With both eyes together, can you lead your vision with the right eye? At close? At far? You are experimenting, exploring, learning about your vision as it is now, then once you know what you're working with you can improve it.
Nancy Wrote:ShallowMoon, rather than focus on things you may have little control over, like
Quote:Getting my cornea into a perfect spherical shape (don't know how though)
I'd focus on determining exactly what that errant right eye is doing, then see if I could nudge it more in the direction of what I want. If I patch the left eye and see with only the right, is it scared? Overwhelmed? Angry? Helpess? OK, all things to work on -- no information is bad. With both eyes together, can you lead your vision with the right eye? At close? At far? You are experimenting, exploring, learning about your vision as it is now, then once you know what you're working with you can improve it.
My right eye does track with my left eye (it is not wondering) but when consciously looking at anything with both eyes, my default vision comes out of my left eye. Unless I close/cover my left eye I can actively use my right. So I can lead my vision with my right eye but can't actively see through my right. If I had to give an emotion to my right eye it would be frustrated.
Another thing I have noticed is that when using different astigmatism charts I get different results. According to this page: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://cleareyesight.info/id40.html.When">http://cleareyesight.info/id40.html.When</a><!-- m --> looking at the 1-12 astigmatism wheel 2 and 8 seem darker than the rest, however when looking at the spiral and circles on the same page I see part of the circle/spiral darker than the rest (roughly 4-6 and 10-12 is the darker areas). Could anyone tell me why this is happening?
So sorry! I just spent 45 min. typing an entire routine here for you, it was absolutely perfect, so professional. Then when I clicked submit the page said I need to re-sign in and then it wiped out the whole lesson.
Just try the switching routine and if you want to try some way to talk with just a mic somewhere let me know and I can guide you. Does iblindness chat have a mic? It did in the past. Remember; when you practice shifting with the less clear eye; shift on objects even if they are very blurry; just shift part to part on the blur. Blink.
Healthy vision varies all the time, which is one big reason glasses are so unhealthy as they try to rigidly lock the eyes into only that prescription. This is especially true of astigmatism, which you are noticing, seeing different areas darker at different times. When I notice a variation in my vision, for good OR bad, I am grateful -- this is a lot better than having it stuck and stagnant! And of course if it can get worse momentarily, it can always get better too.
About "frustrated", sure, that makes sense. Think of a frustrated child, wanting to do more than he is able at his stage of development. You'd coax him patiently, repeatedly pointing out what he IS good at, to build a foundation of confidence so he can move forward to master other tasks. I'd take that approach with the amblyopic right eye, feeling good that it does track with the left one, praise it out loud for that if you feel comfortable doing so. This eye does want to learn how to see clearly but doesn't know how to do that yet, so build slowly on whatever foundation you already have. I'd practice doing what you can with the left eye patched, sitting and reading or looking at the chart, then maybe walking around the house or outdoors if you're comfortable doing that. Don't push it, and always notice how you feel and what's happening -- you'll learn as much from what doesn't work as from what does. You might also try looking with both eyes (when you say the left eye takes over) then covering the left eye, then uncovering it again, seeing how quickly the right eye participates and then stops. Like I said earlier, your main goal is to learn what you're doing. I've learned a lot in my own vision improvement from what I did wrong (like never using the eye chart because I had to stand so close to see anything). Keep at it, and let us know. We all learn from each other here.
Mary if you use Mozilla Firefox you can download this add-on for it called Lazarus, which allows you to recover written text on a webpage, I appreciate the effort regardless.
Nancy, I think I made a mistake when mentioning the emotion of my right eye. I was actually feeling frustrated that my right eye wasn't working and that basically I only have half my vision. If I could amend mt response I would probably change it to unappreciated. Mainly because my eye work together, but only the left eye registers, even though the right one is still doing work.
I have a question for both of you, is there a something I have to actively do when patching or should I just put it on and be passive? I know I shouldn't really mention optometrists here but I had a talk to him and he said that even the young children that he advises patching to don't improve that much from their original state.
Sanjeev, if the right eye is feeling unappreciated, I'm thinking you're focusing on all the things it CAN'T do. Focusing on what is working, even if it doesn't seem like much now, might get you some progress and would certainly feel better. You say it doesn't register, so I'd chip away at this -- does it register when the other eye is patched? (This is something to build on -- it knows how.) Maybe for a fraction of a second after the "good" eye is uncovered, then it lets that eye take over? Does it register at very close distances, but not farther away? Etc. As I said you are gathering information so you know what to work on. Remember an optimistic positive attitude is as important as what exercises you do, and focusing on the next small step is a lot less frustrating and overwhelming than focusing on the end goal. I'm not saying to forget the end goal of clear sight with both eyes, just not to keep it in the forefront of your mind to beat yourself up with because right now it may seem pretty far away.
Patching is just another way to practice seeing and to learn. It's not a magic solution, but can "wake up" an eye which hasn't been participating. I did some patched eye chart practice last night, prompted by your post. I found that my weaker eye, which for me is the left, sees much more blurry at the start of practice than the "strong" (less strained) one, but I can get pretty decent clarity from it if I give it enough time. If I had to say how it feels I'd say "rushed". So I really need to focus on patience, doing one thing fully at a time, and not end-gaining, which can be my default tendency. To answer your question, patch work is passive to the extent that seeing is passive (you should not be straining to see) but your attention should be involved, no different than when you're looking without a patch. Hope that helps.
Optometrists are only people who have had a lot of traditional education about the functioning of the eye, and some experience treating patients. They are not always right, and not always wrong, like everyone else. I respect their training and am not discounting it, but also know that I know a lot from my own experience and studying. The best "defense" is to grow your own expertise, and to know that your health (visual and otherwise) resides in your own hands. That could have been a plug for palming! Take care.
Thanks for your post Nancy, do you have amblyopia?
I see you mentioned palming, do you think it would work for helping amblyopia or helping the brain register the vision of by bad right eye.
My right eye has decent vision at close range when reading small text (on the computer) but when comparing other things like images is more blurry tan the left.
The reason I mentioned my optometrist was to mention the point of kids not improving their vision much when patching (although they could have refused to wear it, like I used to) so the results may not be accurate.
Hi, I have amblyopia too, in the right eye,I can see better at 3 inch close.I really don't know what could help me, i don't know if I have to cover the dominant eye or not, but I have noticed that with the amblyopic eye I see better where I am not looking, it's called eccentric fixation....Check out if you have it too.
What bates said about amblyopia is that amblyopia is caused by mental stress/tension, we have to check out our habits and find if we do things that could stress our eyes like blinking hard, staring, unconsciously cover the less used eye, strain and other things
So, the way to cure amblyopia for Bates is to reach perfect mental relaxation and to reach it you have to do his relaxation "exercise"/habits like: palming, central fixation, use immagination(be carefull: you have to never strain to imagine things perfect because it causes stress ), sunning, see things moving in the opposite movement of the eyes, always be natural: no glasses and other bullshits like eyedrops, contact lenses etc.
But do we have to do these exercise with the dominant eye covered or uncovered?I read somewhere that covering could be harmfull so what is the right way to cover?
I suggest you to read all better eyesight magazines(W.H. Bates) and perfect sight without glasses (W.H. Bates) you can find them here: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:William_Horatio_Bates">http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Wi ... atio_Bates</a><!-- m -->
If you never give up and be costant, never use glasses etc, you will have perfect sight...But I think that the most important thing is to really understand how to do the "exercises" and the improvements will be fast.
I am sorry for my english, it isnt my first language.
