I’ve just got a long overdue new pair of glasses today (and I’m having trouble seeing with them, because everything is too clear - I have trouble reading a book because the texture of the paper, which I wouldn’t usually notice, is distracting me from the printed text etc, I’m distracted by the pixel grid on my TFT monitor, etc…). Anyway, I got to wondering…
I have been told different things by different opticians on different occasions;
Some have told me that, as long sight can be caused not only by your eyes being too large or lenses too weak, but also by ciliary muscles being underdeveloped or lazy, it is possible to improve your sight a little by giving the muscles a workout; these opticians have suggested underprescribing.
Other opticians have said no; this is bunk, you should just get the right prescription and be done with it; you’ll be able to see properly with ease and your eyesight won’t change as a result.
So… is it possible for an individual’s eyesight to get worse as a result of being pampered (I’m not suggesting this is what has happened in my case - I’ve just become accustomed to missing a lot of fine detail).
I am unsure on this, but I have heard it said that the velocipede can lead to the Ague, the gramophone can incite deafness, and exposure to the wireless causes moral corruption and onanism in women and the lower classes.
Some people have been extolling the benefits of eye exercises to improve vision. This does not mean having glasses underprescribed, but sets of eye exercises. Eye exercises have not been shown to improve vision. Visual acuity is dependent upon the curvature of your cornea and the length of your eyeball (distance from the lens to the retina). The few ciliary muscles control your lens and enable you to adjust to near vision, so you can read. As you age, these muscles and the lens with its attaching ligaments become less flexible, requiring reading glasses.
This is pure anecdote, one-woman’s experience, so file it under FWIW, but, …
After 2 years of grad school (hours and hours per day reading or at the computer and not much else, i.e. most of my time with my eyes focussed on a really short distance), I was wearing my glasses whenever I had to see something far away (driving, blackboard, etc.).
Then I spent 2 months traveling through Asia, looking at the sights, focussing on the mid-long distance, no computer time and very little reading (maps, guide books menus - that’s about it).
After a while I noticed that I could see much better at a distance than I could when the trip started.
So, perhaps, IFF the problem with one’s eyes is a result of weak focussing muscles atrophied due to lack of use, and then one spends significant time using them again, one’s eyesight might improve? It seemed to be the case with me.
Well, there is the theory that the more you use a crutch and depend on it, the more you HAVE to use it. In other words, the eye (or other body part) isn’t used as it should be used, and becomes dependent on the “crutch,” and therefore just gets weaker. I think there’s something to that, but being the lazy person I am, I’ve taken the easy way out and got the LASKIK procedure (laser correction). Was near-sighted most of my life, used contact lenses for years but never got used to them (also, contacts are easily lost, pain-in-the-ass to put in, etc.). Finally got the laser fix and I am one happy camper. No fumbling with contacts, no contacts or glasses at the beach – one of the best things I’ve ever done. I recommend it. I use reading glasses (medium strength) for most reading, but depends on the size of type – sometimes I can read without the glasses.
Correction: that’s LASIK - acronym for: laser assisted in situ keratomileusis, a procedure that creates a flap in the cornea with a microkeratome and uses a laser to reshape the underlying cornea.
I heard a doctor talking about this one time, in connection with the hucksters out there hawking exercise plans to fix your eyesight. According to him, there is a very very very small percentage of nearsighted people whose problems are due to weak eye muscles. Those very few people can work on building up those muscles, which would help their vision. However the other 99 point mumble percent of us are stuck with glasses, contacts, or laser surgery.
It used to be common, I read, to underprescribe for myopic children, but recent research shows that in fact, this should not be done. By causing increased straining in their eye muscles to compensate, their myopia may actually worsen. Moral of the story: get your glasses prescribed exactly to correct your vision. No amount of muscle straining will ever improve your vision, but it might make it worse.
And to the wireless’s anecdote–I supsect it was the decreased straining of your eye muscles that improved your distance vision in Asia. Looking at things far away relaxes the eye muscles. Your eye muscles certainly wouldn’t atrophy in grad school, as they are constantly being overworked.
There was an article in Discover magazine a while back, where a study had been done and the conclusion was that the more a person reads or looks up close, the more likely they are to develop myopia. So if that’s true then straining to see up close, or seeing through overprescribed lenses, would worsen the condition.
In the case of underprescribing, an eye looking into the distance would be relaxed (at its maximum focal length) whether its focus is corrected for infinity or less than infinity. If it were possible to improve vision this way, then simply going without any correction would fix the problem.