I'm 16 years old and I've been wearing glasses for around three and a half years now. I recently started this Bates method (around a week ago) and I've been doing the different exercises I should do (mainly palming, the Snellen card test, and not wearing my glasses for anything) ever since. I feel relaxed after some of the exercises but I do not notice any improvment in vision (not that I'm constntly thinking about it. I stopped watching TV and using my PC a lot or even straining, but how long is it going to be before I notice any form of improvement (flashes, less myopia, or anything).
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Then click on "Display", step back 20 feet
and read the letters.
If you do not have 20 feet, then change
the distance to 10 feet.
But confirm your naked eye vision with this Snellen.
And post it here and we can help you
clear your vision with Dave's methods.
Once you establish you can read the 20/80 line,
(i.e., guess 1/2 the letters correctly) you can then
judge your Snellen improvment. Using palming
and other methods, you should see "clear flashes"
were the 20/50 line will clear.
Also, what is your current prescription? About
-2 diopters?
If you were to have a session with a Bates teacher, any good teacher should be able to get you to experience some kind of clear flash within the first hour. When you do it on your own, results vary, because it's harder to teach yourself something like this. When you first start out, devote a substantial amount of time to each method you try, to make sure there is nothing you are able to get out of it. It might take an hour of doing something to break yourself in, and then from then on it won't take as long to get a temporary result. If you spend a combined hour at the exercises every day and don't get a clear flash within a couple weeks, you should definitely re-evaluate your approach.
Dave
Site Administrator
"Half of our funny, heathen lives, we are bent double to gather things we have tossed away." - George Meredith
You can expect improvements when your cornea changes it's shape to allow you to see distant objects. From what I've understand adapting to a certain environment would take quite a long time. But with effort, anything is possible.
Actually, in total, the eye changes its refractive STATE
in a positive direction (Snellen clears) when you
"do Bates".
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This is shown as a length change in the blue-tinted eye.
Bates helped children clear their vision by using the
Snellen, from "poor" to 20/40 or better.
If he and "children" can do it -- you should be
able to do it.
otis Wrote:Actually, in total, the eye changes its refractive STATE
in a positive direction (Snellen clears) when you
"do Bates".
Not necessarily. From what I hear, a large portion of Bates teachers' clientele is people with presbyopia, the condition older people often get where they are unable to focus for the nearpoint. In those cases, you might say that their vision moves in a negative direction to improve, but then you've got astigmatism and other problems that also can be improved.
Dave
Site Administrator
"Half of our funny, heathen lives, we are bent double to gather things we have tossed away." - George Meredith
Quote:You can expect improvements when your cornea changes it's shape to allow you to see distant objects.
Actually, AFAIK, not cornea is that changes its shape, but the eyeball, due to relaxation of the extraocular muscles. It doesn't seem possible to me that the cornea (the transparent corneous shell over the iris) can change its shape.
Interesting enough, I recently realized that the eyeball is pretty hard. If your try to push it with your finger, it will move inside of your head, but not actually deform. The extraocular muscles must be pretty strong to do the job of eyeball deformation. The latter is though not very extensive (appr. 1 mm for -3 diopters) but rather precise. Also I wonder if there's a deformation hysteresis, i.e. how fast the deformed shape of the eye restores after the tension is released. In my experience, it happens in few seconds, but not momentarily. I wonder what others can tell.
Quote:how long is it going to be before I notice any form of improvement
Just a remark. I like how Dave said about asking "how long it takes to improve eyesight with Bates" is the same as asking "how long it takes for me to quit smoking" or "how long it takes to stop beating my wife"
The muscles around the eyes, I believe are there for motion, EX:moving eyeball around, looking up down left right. The Iris is the part you should be more concerned with, that controls how much light sent into your pupil. And yes the cornea does changes it's shape, that is why the quick solutions are to add another lens to accomodate for your loss of correct light being refracted into your pupil. Your cornea are your lens, if light goes in your cornea the incorrect way, your sight is going to result in problems.
Indeed, the extraocular muscles serve for motion, but also for accomodation. Out of 6 extraocular muscles (each eye), there are two "oblique" muscles around the eye, which are able to squeeze the eye ball when you need to see closer objects. Unfortunately, if you abuse the eyes, an involuntary persistent strain builds in that muscles, that causes myopia. The whole Bates method is built on this fact, looking for ways to release that strain.
Quote:And yes the cornea does changes it's shape, that is why the quick solutions are to add another lens to accomodate for your loss of correct light being refracted into your pupil.
Where did you hear that, can you provide a reference? I used to learn an (incorrect) theory that accomodation is provided by the muscle that curves the crystalline inside the pupil, but it's something new for me to hear about the cornea. There is even no muscle that could change the cornea shape. Do you imply that that the cornea degenerates in some way so that it changes its shape? How it could be renewed in that case, using Bates or whatever, in your opinion? The quick solution, yes, is to evaporate part of the cornea with lasik, but it's equal to placing a build-in minus lense on your eye, while the strain still remains in there.
Quote:Your cornea are your lens, if light goes in your cornea the incorrect way, your sight is going to result in problems.
Every part of the eye is a lens, in optical sense. It's cornea, the crystalline lense, the inner body of the eye ball filled with the liquid. If you deform any of this elements, it will affect the sight. However, only some of the elements are naturally designed for accomodation, namely the eyeball changing its shape using the extraocular muscles.
BTW, Bates proved it by cutting the obliques in animals eyes, then they lost the ability to accomodate, then he tied them back together (he was a kind doctor ), and the accomodation ability restored as well.
Sorry for the misunderstanding. The original poster is slightly nearsighed.
While I did not make it clear, the remarks pertain to the YOUNG EYE,
that is slightly negative.
The issue of lost of accommodation over the age of 45 is a
separate issue in my judgement.
Thus if your Snellen is 20/70 (at 20 feet) you should then
use a "distance" Snellen and not a "near" snellen.
But thanks for clearing up this issue for this
16 year-old.
Best,
Otis
Not necessarily. From what I hear, a large portion of Bates teachers' clientele is people with presbyopia, the condition older people often get where they are unable to focus for the nearpoint. In those cases, you might say that their vision moves in a negative direction to improve, but then you've got astigmatism and other problems that also can be improved.
Your eyes are like a telescope, microscope, or a camera. A camera is a good example. If you have the wrong type of lens, you're going to have a messed up image. Otis linked us to a site where they had flash animations of what could have happen if you lost perfect vision. Your eyeball can be elongated or too short that the focal point which is where the image is formed can't reach the retina perfectly. The cornea can be thicker or thinner, how it shapes itself I have no idea, but it does. I'm guessing adaptation to the environment, light entering the eye and your eyeball adapting to it.
Otis, good find with that website leading to Berkeley's research. Bear in mind that what I'm going to show you all is something I posted elsewhere. When I say progressing in the direction of Bates' findings, I don't mean in reference to glasses but in reference to the ongoing debate and what findings may follow as a result.
What I posted elsewhere:
Here is a study done by Berkeley researchers that is progressing in the direction of Bates' findings.
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Watch the animations, of how plus/minus glasses elongate or shorten the eyeball. If one has myopia (near-sightedness), minus prescribed glasses only worsen the problem.
If one has hyperopia (far-sightedness), he/she needs minus glasses instead. The cheap reading glasses purchased from stores are plus glasses. The eye doctors are now finding out through scientific studies such as the one done at Berkeley that opposite-sign glasses to what you normally use should be used instead.
Quoted from this article:
"There also is on-going debate as to whether compensation is truly bi-directional; an alternative uni-directional model has been proposed based on the assumption that blur alone is sufficient to drive these response patterns, specifically, that ocular growth directly reflects the amount of blur experienced. This is a hot area in this field of research."
"The modern version of this technique is known as corneal refractive therapy (CRT). This technique is more closely related to the refractive surgery procedures (PRK, Lasik), that also modify the optical power of the cornea. Neither qualify as treatments as neither are known to slow ocular growth."
Ocular growth refers to eyeball changes in shape. They are readily admitting that refractive surgery does not fix the real underlying problem and the disease is still there by causing the eyeball to change shape.
Bates exhibited that eyeball changes in shape and refractive errors were caused by the extrinsic eyeball muscles and did experiments (with graphic pictures provided) to demonstrate this.
The article also states, "In human infants, cataracts and ptosis impose equivalent conditions and have also been linked to excessive eye growth."
"Some years ago, I performed an experiment on a rabbit which had just been killed by chloroform. By dragging upon the muscles on the outside of the eyeball, it was possible to obtain pressure on the lens and produce a temporary cataract. When pressure on the eyeball was released, the cataract disappeared. By advancing the muscles and fastening them permanently to the back part of the eyeball with the aid of sutures, the cataract which appeared in the pupil was permanent so long as the pres-sure was maintained by the advancement of the muscles. The facts demonstrated very conclusively that cataract in the rabbit's eye can be produced by pressure on the eyeball with the aid of the muscles on the outside of the globe."
This draws a clear correlation between cataracts and the extrinsic eye muscles, and the Berkeley researchers are pointing to how cataracts are linked to excessive eye growth. Do you see the relationship here between cataracts, ocular growth, and the extrinsic eye muscles? The researchers have not yet made this important link between cataracts and the extrinsic eye muscles.
Bates also did an experiment on carps (a type of fish) with graphic pictures shown and found that the superior oblique muscle is essential to accommodation. So the extrinsic eye muscles could be mainly responsible for accommodation, rather than the interior ciliary muscles of the lens as LASIK following Helmholtz's theory on accommodation would suggest.
This is proof on why LASIK and Helmholtz's theory on accommodation taught to our optometrists is inconclusive, so think twice before getting refractive surgery.
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Sorry to go off topic in relation to what the poster wants to know.
The problem is not to "little" information, but
rather TOO MUCH information.
The result is total confusion on the part
of everyone -- with due respect.
The majority-opinion OD has a tendency to
obfuscate, confuse and misdirect the questions
you may ask.
So I can only suggest the following:
Some pioneers have been able to POINT
to a solution. They include Dr. Bates, but
should also include a Dr. Prentice. Although
old, these two men STRONGLY objected
to that minus lens -- as I do.
But "objecting" does not solve problems
or resolve issues.
I personally think Prentice was right about
plus-prevention, but I NEVER put-down Bates -- NEVER.
So started asking questions, and specifically, what
would happen (in pure science) if you placed a
-3 diopter lens on a population of fundamental eyes.
That question "clears the air" for me.
I truly do not care what the eye does "internally", only
what I measure OBJECTIVELY, i.e., with Snellen
or Retinoscope/Cycloplegic.
What Wildsoet's "animation" shows conclusively
(for me) is that the minus is a grave risk as
a "solution". And that other than an instant
solution in 5 minutes -- it is worthless, or
worse than worthless, is it truly an exacerbating
lens.
And that I why I support Bates statement that
if you are at 20/70, and begin wearing a
over-prescribe minus lens, you naked eye
will go rapidly to 20/200. (Bates said
a week, but the data I have seen suggests
from 6 to 9 months.)
I simply do not care whether the extrinsic muscles
do this, or the internal muscles do it -- or
anything like this.
Only that fact that the eye's refractive STATE will
ALWAYS change from that -3 diopter lens.
This tells me that if you are at 20/70, the
Bates had BETTER work for you, or
for that matter, if you choose the plus, the
you should be able to clear your 20/70
to 20/40 or better in about 4 to 6 months.
In any event, I think that ALL ODs and MDs
should always talk about this -- at
that 20/70 level.
That would send the person to Dave, at
a point where Bates could be most effective.
And I think that Wildsoet "image" should encourage
more people to think in terms of prevention.
otis Wrote:And that I why I support Bates statement that
if you are at 20/70, and begin wearing a
over-prescribe minus lens, you naked eye
will go rapidly to 20/200. (Bates said
a week, but the data I have seen suggests
from 6 to 9 months.)
We should be clear about what Bates's stance on glasses actually was, and what he actually said, because you've stated the above many times and you misrepresent his views every time you do it, and anyone like me who has adopted Bates's views gets annoyed at it. Here is the piece you're referring to:
"A person with myopia of 20/70 who puts on glasses giving him a vision of 20/20 may find that in a week's time his unaided vision has declined to 20/200 ..."
source: http://www.iblindness.org/books/bates/ch8.html
He never suggested that the above was an average, or that the effect of glasses was so quantitative as that. This is important, because as it isn't very predictable how quickly a person's vision will deteriorate, it also isn't very predictable how long it will take to improve. Because it isn't a physical process that can be tracked - it's a learning process. People will see when they use their eyes right and continue to do so.
I do think that anyone who is at least sort of on the right track should notice signs of improvement within a few weeks of diligent daily practice, if not sooner. That's just my opinion, but I can't imagine that someone is on the right track if he doesn't get anything by that time.
Dave
Site Administrator
"Half of our funny, heathen lives, we are bent double to gather things we have tossed away." - George Meredith
I profoundly appreciate your work, on imagination blindness.
Exactly WHAT Bates meant by his statement about the
effect of the minus on the eye's refractive STATE
can be evaluated by the reader.
Remember, I argue WITH you, not against you. That
is why I consider "objection" to that minus lens to
be the second opinion.
I do think that vision-clearing must be "tracked" by
the person himself, by monitoring his Snellen. I
believe that Bates would support that concept also.
After all how do you know if you are successful
unless you do that?
You are building a support base for true prevention -- and
have the imagination to do the work wisely.
