Myopia Regression - Actually started a month ago.

So I officially had my contact trial period over and "differentials" (computer glasses) arrived 6/9.  I'm keeping my condensed log over at the community wiki.  I'm really struggling with developing the habits, when to wear the differentials, when not to, getting the contacts out of my eyes without hurting myself.  Then I do irritate my eye and have to go a few days back in regular glasses.  I am a lot more comfortable in differentials than my full prescription contacts.

Myopia Regression Basics

Just an overview of the program I'm trying.

The first premise is that you should have about a quarter diopter of blur in your glasses to promote ciliary muscle relaxation and remodeling of the eye.  If you were looking at a duochrome chart, the green would be clear and the red slightly fuzzy.  The second premise is that you need glasses appropriate to the distance you're working at, and for most people that means one pair of glasses for computers/reading, and one for outdoors.  Both of these rules are null and void when there is a legal or safety restriction like while driving, wear lenses necessary for legal driving in your jurisdiction.

The second premise is the most immediately fruitful.  Normally when I get stronger glasses I have lots of headaches and eye strain at work, where I spend 8 hours at a computer.  I'm pretty useless for a couple weeks until my eyes adjust, at which point I feel like my vision has not really improved over the prior pair of glasses.  In my new reading glasses I can comfortably compute all day long in my new contacts.  When I first got the contacts I was so grumpy about my vision that my husband made me run out and buy reading glasses even before the trial period was over and my situation stable enough to order customized reading glasses.

So the long term process is:
1. Measure eyesight.  This can be a professional measurement, based on distance to blur and math, or based on a DIY trial lens kit refraction.
2.  Get glasses +1.5 diopters from (remember myopic diopters are negative, -3+1.5 = -1.5) your measurement for computer work.  (You may have some trial and error to get glasses that put your work just beyond your blur horizon, if it's too blurry, go -0.25, no challenge, go +0.25.)
3.  Improve your vision habits, try to get away from near work as much as possible, take frequent breaks from near work, spend time looking at text just beyond your blur horizon.
4.  Get glasses that are +0.25 diopters from your measurement for distance.  (Give it a few weeks between step 2 and step 4.)
5.  Wait.  Practice #3.  If it's working, over the next 3 months or so your blur horizon should move outwards.  If it moves far enough that you have no blur challenge, go back to step 1.
6.  Astigmatism and imbalance between the eyes can cause extra complications.  the above process is fine for the first couple pairs of glasses, but at some point you will need to study more of the method and try things like changing cylinder power instead of sphere in steps 2 & 4, or changing in one eye only and practicing #3 with monocular vision in the bad eye.

The details of the method are in the EndMyopia 7 Day Email Guide, but they do make you scroll a lot to find it, I've not yet found any direct link.  There are lots of references in the community to the blog, but personally I have trouble with the indirect narrative style and the lack of relevance prioritization in the search function.  90% of what you need to know is in the 7 day e-mails if you have a uncomplicated situation.

Update - Myopia Regression - still stalled

Well, where have I gotten to...

The LASIK surgeon was not at all interested in any of my ideas.  He didn't quite kick me out of the office, but let's just say there's a reason he's a surgeon and has other people handle screening appointments.

So one of my hesitations with LASIK was that I wasn't clear what the actual benefits to my quality of vision would be.  A couple sources encouraged me to give contacts a try.  Because the lens is closer to the eye, the power is lower than in glasses, and they move with the eye, making peripheral vision issues go away entirely.

So in my mid 40s I'm starting the adventure of contacts.  So far I'm in -14.0/-13.5 lenses, in my second fitting pair, likely going for one change in the right eye.  I'm doing ok putting them in and wearing them, but getting them back out at the end of the day is a challenge.  I've already seriously irritated my left eye twice and had to take a break from the contacts for a few days.  I'm trying a new method of gripping with the side of my fingers instead of the tips.  Still hard to get the lens out, but at least my nails and my spare fingers are all out of the way so it's more gentle when I do miss.  I think at my lens strength and resulting thickness, my lenses are less flexible than the ones I see in most tutorials.

On the research end of things I've found:

• increased tear film increases negative lens power
• character recognition can improve without improving refraction
• bifocals and multifocals are protective against myopia progression.
• +1D myopic defocus is protective against myopia progression in growing children.
• myopic defocus can cause very minor changes in eye length, and cordial tissue thickness, although not enough to account for major diopter changes in anecdotal reports.
• Anecdotal reports of a change more than 4D is very rare.  Hard to say if this is a factor of community size 5 years ago, average change needed, or a limit to the process.

So my next steps are finishing the fitting period and getting my distance lenses all straightened out, and then finding appropriate reading glasses to wear over and relieve eye strain at computer work.  This should be protective against further progression.  Whether or not reduced lens therapy does anything for long term regression, we shall see, but reading glasses are a very safe tool with some potential to at least improve fluid circulation under the cornea by relaxing the ciliary muscle.

A new project - Myopia Regression

It was over a decade ago, my husband and I made a deal.  If he would look into getting his teeth fixed, I'd look into getting LASIK.  (He understandably would like to be recognized by his wife at the pool without neon swim trunks.)

So late last year he went to a seminar and I went to a seminar.  They scanned in my glasses at -16D.  The doc himself was corrected from -6D (considered High Myopia), and wanted to know if anyone was worse than him, I was the only one with my hand up.  In short, I'm not a candidate for LASIK, and I'm also too blind for the strongest implanted lens they have, but for the mere price of $13,000, they could do both procedures and between the two of them, get me fully corrected.

We do fairly well, but that's still get a loan territory...  So I had to be really sure this was the right thing for me before I dove in, and it took a couple months to schedule the next test, so I was able to get time to research.

• My level of myopia (nearsightedness) puts me at high risk for all sorts of eye diseases, and the surgery does nothing about that.
• My level of lens correction causes images to be smaller and I have to use large font everything, and surgery does very little about that.
• Everything an implanted lens can do for my vision I can get from contacts, with a much lower rate of serious complication.

So I started researching contacts, and glasses vs contacts, and stumbled across something completely different, reduced lens therapy.  

It is well established science that overprescription of minus (for nearsighted eyes) lenses induces the eye to adapt and become even more nearsighted.  This is called lens-induced myopia.  They use this technique all the time to see how different conditions affect myopia progression.  In the dozens of eye exams I've had over the years, if any of them over-prescribed my lenses, they would have accelerated my myopia progression.  Given how common headaches in the two weeks after getting new lenses were, it's a pretty good bet that I was commonly being overprescribed.  One year I got 4 new sets of lenses in one year...

If you spend a lot of time reading or in front of screens, or participating in any hobby involving staring at small things, you may also get nearwork-induced myopia.  My favorite activities are reading, computer games, and fine needlework.  Every time I sit down to do near work in lenses corrected for distance, my eyes happily comply and adapt themselves to my working distance, which over time becomes a long term change.

(I'm not at all clear that biology makes any distinction between nearwork-induced and lens-induced myopia.  Lenses bring the distant near, so it's the same thing except for one is before you get your first lenses, and the second is after.)

But, just as lens-induced myopia is a thing, so is lens-induced hyperopia (farsightedness).  What if lens-induced hyperopia is a cure for lens-induced myopia?  I'm not the inventor of this idea, there are at least two large communities experimenting with the effects that are reporting some positive results: https://endmyopia.org/ and https://gettingstronger.org/tag/myopia/.  There are lots of other books and papers on the subject suggesting methods and mechanisms of improving eyesight, to varying degrees of credibility and sensibility.

The science shows that some lens-induced myopia can be reversed, but there have not been any long term studies to see how far it goes.  A study showed after removal of lenses that created myopia, there are changes in the hormones and proteins in the eye, and that the choroidal tissue behind the retina thickened, effectively reducing the focal length of the eye, and reversing some of the myopia.

I've got 300+ studies in my reading list and I've only gone through a small handful so far, but it's a very promising line of research.  I have ordered some equipment for self-analysis that is probably illegal for me to use on anyone else without a license.  I'm hoping to find a doc interested in offering this therapy and monitoring it, but the home equipment will help monitor the monitors, make sure I'm not getting over prescribed again, and tell when I'm ready for the next step-down prescription.

The very short version of the reduced lens protocol is this: if you have a weak prescription, only wear it for the distances and situations where you need it.  If you have strong prescription, get different lenses for distance and near work.  In either case, step down the prescription to the minimum you need, even bringing the focal plane right up to your work so you can play with the edge of blur by adjusting your distance from the work.  If you have a weak prescription and want to reverse your existing myopia, you can even wear farsighted lenses for near work to bring that focal plane closer than with the naked eye.  There are disagreements between gurus about what is needed beyond reduced prescriptions and having a focus challenge, but those are common elements.

I have an appointment with the surgeon coming up, (although I canceled the tests) hopefully I can at least get a prescription for soft contacts.  He is a researcher, so if he's more interested in research then his pet therapy I might also get ongoing support from his office.  (The technician did the eye length measurements on my first office visit, no need to bother the doc directly for ongoing care...)