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...)
