Presbyopia

Presbyopia is more commonly known as “middle-aged sight” – the deterioration of near vision as a person ages, with the need for reading glasses beginning at about age forty or fifty.

Presbyopia occurs when the lens loses enough of its plasticity and elasticity so that it can no longer adequately respond to the visual demand to focus at near. The lens has no blood supply of its own, receiving nutrients through the ciliary body. The lens’ cells will break down when they do not receive the proper supply of nutrients. Presbyopia is one symptom of this breakdown. If the breakdown of the lens continues, the stage is set for cataract formation.

Therefore, it would seem logical that the presbyopic eye would respond to the same kind of nutritional approaches that have been shown to prevent cataract formation. In fact, Dr. Gary Price Todd, one of the first nutritional ophthalmologists is finding exactly that. Patients following his nutritional treatment for cataracts are finding that their presbyopia often improves as well.

Read Part 1 of The Role of Nutrition in Maintaining Good Eyesight

An Italian study, conducted nearly 50 years ago, found that vitamin E – an anti-oxidant critical in the prevention of cataracts – helped presbyopic people regain their near point vision. Unfortunately, other than this one study, no other nutritional research has been done on presbyopia.

Cataracts

In the United States, approximately four million people have some degree of cataracts, while 40,000 are blinded due to cataracts. One in every five people over 55 are afflicted with cataracts, and as many as half of those over 75 are at risk. Worldwide, cataracts are the leading cause of blindness.

The standard treatment for cataracts is surgery. In fact, cataract surgery is the most common of all surgical procedures practiced in the United States, with more than 500,000 performed each and every year.

94% of cataract surgeries are successful, with lower vision resulting in less than 6 out of every 100 procedures. Though one of the safest operations it still has some degree of risk associated with it.

Even though the surgical treatment for cataracts is highly successful, it is an extremely costly procedure. Each cataract surgery (one eye only) done in the United States costs approximately $5,000. Every year, over 4 billion dollars are spent – just by Medicare alone! – for cataract surgery.

As people live longer and longer, the incidence of cataracts can only increase, if no preventative measures are taken. If the development of cataracts could be delayed by 10 years, the National Eye Institute estimates that half of all cataract surgery could be eliminated, saving billions of dollars every year in medical costs.

There is plenty of evidence that cataracts can be prevented, and their growth arrested, with proper nutrition. “With the right nutritional supplements, prevention could be very close to 100%,” says Dr. Todd.

Most research in the United States has focused on the prevention of cataracts. It is a generally accepted fact that cataracts are a degenerative disease caused by free radical damage and that they can be prevented with anti-oxidant vitamins C and E, beta carotene and some trace minerals, including selenium and chromium.

The eye has the highest concentration of vitamin C of any part of the body. Yet, lenses with cataracts have much lower levels of vitamin C than cataract-free lenses. The eye with a cataract has also been shown to be deficient in selenium, copper, manganese, zinc and glutathione (which the body normally produces on its own, but only if adequate levels of selenium are present). Some of the B vitamins – particularly niacin and riboflavin – have also been deficient in the eye with a cataract, though this deficiency is rare in the United States, where many processed foods are “enriched” with these vitamins. Excesses of mercury and other toxins have also been implicated.

According to a recent study conducted by John Hopkins University, people with the highest levels of vitamin E in their blood were 50% less likely to develop cataracts. A study reported in the Archives of Ophthalmology in 1988 showed that 200 IU a day of vitamin E reduces the incidence of cataracts by 56%. If 250 mgs. of vitamin C are added, their incidence is reduced by 86%.

Dr. Todd has been using nutritional supplements for years to treat patients with cataracts. He finds that if nutritional treatment is started soon enough (when vision is 20/50 or better), he is nearly 100% successful in stopping its progression or reversing the cataract.

In one study conducted by Dr. Todd over a 1-year period, 43% of the people showed improvement in their cataract and the other 57% stabilized the cataract completely and showed absolutely no further deterioration. All of these results held up in a follow-up study conducted 5 years after the original. Cataract surgery was avoided in every case.

As a result of this and earlier studies, Dr. Todd has created a complete vitamin and mineral formula different from others that are available. Known as EYEMAX-plus, Dr. Todd uses it as the basis for his nutritional treatment of cataracts.

(Another promising approach: The Chinese herb, Hachimijiogan, has been shown to increase the glutathione content of the lens. Hachimijiogan has been used for a long time in both China and Japan in the treatment of cataracts.)

Macular Degeneration

The macula is the part of the retina that is responsible for fine, detailed vision. A person with macular degeneration loses central vision and also has a poor recovery from exposure to bright lights. The loss of central vision is due either to a reduced blood supply to the central portion of the retina or to edema (a swelling and leakage of blood vessels in the retina).

Macular degeneration is the leading cause of severe vision loss in people aged 55 or older in the United States and Europe. At least 3 million Americans suffer irreversible vision loss from macular degeneration.

According to conventional medicine, there is nothing that can be done to treat macular degeneration, although laser surgery is sometimes used to seal any leaking blood vessels. This surgery is successful only between 4 and 15% of the time (over a 5 year period). More importantly, it doesn’t address the underlying conditions that might contribute to macular degeneration. (There is also a 50% possibility that a person’s vision will be worse immediately after laser surgery.)

The primary underlying conditions in macular degeneration appear to be free radical damage and disrupted blood and oxygen supply to the macular region of the retina.

This would indicate that a nutritional approach that emphasized the anti-oxidant vitamins and minerals – vitamin C and E, zinc and selenium – could be helpful.

In fact, one study did show that 200 mg of zinc helped to improve acuity in people with macular degeneration. In another, people who have had higher levels of Vitamin E also had less vision loss that those with lower levels.

However, Dr. Todd believes that the underlying cause of macular degeneration (and also glaucoma) is an under-functioning thyroid. (There is a simple home test that anyone can perform to determine if they have an under-functioning thyroid. For complete details, send $1.00 to cover the cost of shipping and handling to: Cambridge Institute for Better Vision, 65 Wenham Road, Topsfield MA 01983.)

In addition to testing and balancing the functioning of the thyroid, Dr. Todd also suggests the following nutritional supplements on a daily basis, in addition to his EYEMAX-plus formula.

Dr. Todd also recommends bioflavinoids (to reduce swelling of macular region), evening primrose (to re-establish integrity of vessel walls) and lecithin.

Although the anti-oxidant vitamins and minerals are important, the body needs zinc, copper, manganese and selenium to help control the free radicals. Yet, in his analysis of his patients, Dr. Todd has found that 60% are deficient in zinc, 15% in copper, 80 – 90% in manganese and that virtually everyone is deficient in selenium. These deficiencies greatly reduce the effectiveness of vitamins E and C and beta-carotene.

Dr. Todd will not treat anyone who won’t stop smoking cigarettes, and he also recommends drinking only spring water, eliminating margarine and other hydrogenated fats and avoiding laser surgery, if at all possible. (He has found that people don’t respond to nutritional approaches after having had laser surgery.)

When following his treatment approaches, 88% of Dr. Todd’s patients improved vision significantly over a two-year period.

The herbs bilberry (Anthocyanosides) and Ginkgo biloba have been used extensively in Europe for many years to help eye conditions, including macular degeneration. Clinical studies have shown that both can inhibit progressive vision loss. According to some studies, these two herbs appear to work directly on the eye and are more potent than nutritional anti-oxidants.

Bilberry is also used for poor day and night vision, glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy. It has been shown to support the pigmented epithelium of the retina, reinforce the collagen structures and prevent free radical damage.

Gingko biloba increases the blood flow to the brain. European studies demonstrate impressive results in the treatment of macular degeneration and this herb has also been shown to prevent free radical damage to the retina and macula.

Conclusion

The state of eye health is intimately tied to the state of your overall health. Interestingly, many of the nutrients that promote eye health also have benefits for the rest of the body, so anything you do for your eyes will also help you in other ways. Conversely, the steps you take to promote eye health will also benefit the rest of your body.

More than 25% of the nutrition your body absorbs goes to feed the visual system. The visual system consumes one third of all the oxygen that you take in. Metabolism in the eyes is faster than anywhere else in the body. The concentration of vitamin C and other important nutrients is higher in the healthy eye than almost anywhere else in the body.

It’s not surprising, then, that proper nutrition plays an extremely important role in preventing and treating all of the common eye problems — myopia, presbyopia, cataract, macular degeneration and glaucoma. Nutrition’s exact role is becoming more and more clear. Some facts are already well documented and pioneering doctors are uncovering other directions that are very promising.

Before we can discuss each eye problem in greater detail, it’s important to keep in mind some general nutritional information:

1. Proper balance is important. The body does not use each vitamin and mineral in isolation. The absence of one may affect the body’s ability to use another. For example, proper amounts of magnesium and vitamin D are needed in order to absorb calcium efficiently and completely. And, without adequate levels of zinc, the body cannot utilize all the vitamin A it receives.
2. The Recommended Daily Allowances (RDA) suggested for most vitamins and minerals are most often only the minimum levels needed to prevent deficiencies. However, visual health – and total body health – most probably requires supplement levels that are significantly higher than the RDA. Cataract prevention, for example, may require the intake of vitamin C at a level 15 times greater than the RDA.
3. In today’s society, it is probably not realistic to expect to get all of our nutrients from food alone. No matter how wholesome and pure our diet might be, there are other factors that affect the nutrient content of the food we eat. How food is grown, how it is stored and how it is cooked all affect its nutrient value. Besides, the amount of nutrients a particular food is supposed to contain is measured under ideal laboratory conditions, which probably don’t reflect the food you are actually eating. Most of us have long known that carrots and vitamin A are supposed to be good for the eyes. Even so, 68% of the population is deficient in vitamin A. Over the last 50 years, the carrot has lost 75% of its magnesium content, 48% of its calcium, 46% of its iron and 75% of its copper. Modern farming methods have depleted the soil of trace minerals vital to our health, such as selenium, manganese and vanadium. Even calcium and vitamin C are found in lower levels in fruits and vegetables now than they were 50 years ago.
4. On the other hand, “popping” vitamin pills is no substitute for a wholesome diet. The body loses a significant amount of nutrients depending on the kind of food we consume. For example, we lose the trace mineral chromium as our body tries to absorb white sugar. And caffeine, refined flour, medication and preservatives also leach trace minerals and vitamins from our system. Also, there may be as yet undiscovered vitamins and minerals in food that someday will prove to be very important to our health.
5. Age, activity level and stress affect what your body needs and how well your body can absorb and use what nutrients it does get.

Keeping these general ideas in mind, let’s look at the role that nutrition may play in myopia. In the next issue we’ll look at other eye conditions.

Myopia

Myopia (nearsightedness) is a condition that affects nearly 1 out of every 3 people in the United States. Yet, only 3 out of every 100 myopic people are born that way; for everyone else, myopia is acquired at some point during their life span.

Myopia is the result of a degeneration of some part of the visual system. It’s so common to see someone wearing glasses that we forget that it is not natural. Myopic people are also more prone to develop more serious eye conditions, such as retinal detachment, glaucoma and cataracts.

The search for nutritional answers to myopia has focused on two different parts of the visual system: the shape of the eye and the functioning of the lens.

Let’s look at each of these separately:

One possible explanation for myopia is that it occurs when the eye elongates, stretching from front to back. Distortions as small as 4/100 of an inch are enough to produce extreme degrees of myopia. Exactly what causes this stretching is not clear, though it seems to be due to either increased intraocular pressure or excessive tension in the extra-ocular muscles.

Dr. Gary Price Todd, a North Carolina ophthalmologist, has been using nutritional and metabolic healing for different eye problems for more than 20 years. He is trained to do all the standard surgeries for the eyes, but he prefers to promote the natural healing of the eyes whenever possible.

Dr. Todd believes that most myopia develops in children during growth spurts. If the child is not receiving proper nutrition, the body literally takes minerals from the eye to use in the growth of the body. The resulting mineral depletion in the eye weakens its structure, making it susceptible to the forces and stresses involved in prolonged near work, including reading, studying, watching TV or using a computer — all of which are common activities for most of today’s children.

Dr. Todd has success in arresting the progression of myopia in children that he treats; in some cases, the degree of myopia has decreased. Dr. Todd achieves these results just by recommending that children under his care supplement their diet with a total vitamin and mineral formula which is particularly rich in the minerals selenium, chromium and zinc. The formula that Dr. Todd originally developed for eye and body health is EYEMAX-plus.

Dr. Ben Lane, New Jersey optometrist and another pioneer in the role of nutrition in myopia and other eye diseases, concurs in the importance of these trace minerals in maintaining the strength of the eye. Dr. Lane has found that chromium levels in myopic children are 1/3 that of children with normal vision. (It is interesting to note that chromium is depleted in the body by white sugar, eaten all too frequently by many children today.)

Calcium levels are also lower in nearsighted children. Dr. Lane found that children increasing in the degree of myopia have diets extremely deficient in calcium. Dr. Lane thinks that in the face of this dietary deficiency, the body takes calcium from the eye to help support bone growth. This calcium lack then makes the eye susceptible to the forces playing on it during prolonged periods of near work and visual stress. Dr. Lane has also found that these children also eat too much meat protein (a poor source of calcium) and too little calcium-rich milk products and stalky vegetables. Caffeine (found in soda as well as in coffee) is known to leach calcium from the body.

Dr. Lane has also found that Vitamin C is important. He has noted that low levels of dietary intake of Vitamin C are associated with increases in pressure in the eye. This increasing pressure also is associated with the visual fatigue that can result from extended periods of near work. The focusing mechanism needs adequate levels of vitamin C and chromium for efficient functioning. Adequate levels of Vitamin C are also needed to ensure the strength and structural integrity of the eyes.

Vitamin C is leached from the body by artificial flavors and ingredients and aspirin. It is generally recommended that an adult take between 500 and 1000 mg. a day, increasing the quantity during periods of high stress (including visual stress and extended periods of near range work).

Another vitamin that Dr. Lane thinks is of critical importance is folic acid, which helps the eyes to maintain near focus for longer periods of time as well as increase the eyes’ ability to absorb nutrition from the body. He thinks that folic acid should come from food sources rather than from vitamins.

Drs. Todd and Lane have focused their studies on the nutritional factors involved in maintaining the structural integrity of the eye. Another explanation for myopia, also incorporated in Dr. Lane’s theory, is that the lens has lost some of its ability to change focus, due to the constant pressure placed on it to maintain near point focus (e.g., when reading, writing, using a computer).

According to this theory, myopia occurs when the lens becomes “stuck” for near point vision and is unable to shift its focus to distant objects. Normally, the lens has the power to change its focus more than enough to compensate for individual differences in the length of the eye.

Dr. David A. Kubicek, a California doctor of chiropractic, explored the role of the lens in a research paper he wrote in 1988. This is a synopsis of his theory and his recommendations:

The ciliary muscle (which controls the focusing of the lens) is itself stimulated by both the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nerve systems of the body. Parasympathetic stimulation increases accommodation — the lens’ ability to focus on near objects. Sympathetic stimulation decreases this ability, allowing the lens to focus on distant objects. Clear vision at all distances requires the nervous system of the body to constantly balance and re-balance these two types of stimulation.

Nearsighted people, Dr. Kubicek reasoned, would lack sufficient sympathetic stimulation to bring distant objects into focus. Farsighted people, on the other hand, would show a weakness in parasympathetic stimulation.

To test his theory, Dr. Kubicek devised a simple muscular test that would tell him which system was weak for an individual. By performing only this simple test, he was able to predict — with 100% accuracy — which subjects were nearsighted and which were farsighted. Dr. Kubicek was then able to use this procedure and his knowledge of biochemistry to devise the right combination of nutrients that could promote proper functioning of the lens and thus help to improve vision at all distances.

Certain nutrients are known to increase sympathetic activity and others are known to increase parasympathetic activity. Nutrients that might be beneficial to nearsighted people would be vitamins B-2 and B-6, folic acid, niacinamide, zinc, magnesium and phosphorus, among others. (On the other hand, Dr. Lane cautions against phosphorus intake. His research indicates that what is most important is maintaining the balance in the body between calcium and phosphorus, a balance which is upset by the intake of too much animal-derived protein.)

The answers aren’t all in yet as to the exact role that various nutrients play, but it is clear that the onset of myopia can be an early indicator of nutritional deficiencies and imbalances in the visual system – and in the entire body.

Read Part 2 of The Role of Nutrition in Maintaining Good Eyesight

One of the first things that happens when people take their glasses off is they tell themselves they can’t see, they take their glasses off and they start looking around, “Oh, I can’t read those words, I can’t tell if you’re looking at me, I can’t tell what that says over there, I can’t read that exit sign and I can’t see if you’re smiling or if you’re not smiling.”

They go around and they catalog everything that they can’t see. So what are you doing there? You’re using your mind and your thoughts to reaffirm the not seeing. It’s just like when I had that experience I described before [ed. note: in Parts 1 and 2].

I opened my eyes, I’m seeing perfectly clearly, but I won’t let myself believe it. “Oh, that’s not real, must be because I’m blinking,” or, “That’s not real because the sun is shining,” or however I talk myself out of it. So here we are reaffirming that part of ourselves that can’t see or that doesn’t want to see, and so, there’s a nearsighted Mr. Magoo personality inside of us that has the physical component, the emotional component, the mental component, the spiritual component. And it says to the world,, “I don’t want to see what’s going on around me, by seeing less, I feel safer.” It’s a good excuse—what’s the first thing we say when we drive through a red light and the cop stops us? “Sorry officer, I didn’t see it.”

For some of us, not seeing is a way to avoid responsibility, to not take on the fullness of responsibility that may be available to us. Particularly, I find this as a personality aspect to the 7 to 9 year old nearsighted boy. They’re getting the message from the world that they can’t be a kid anymore, it’s time to grow up, time to be serious, time to take on responsibility. And so there’s a transition there, they no longer see themselves—or they see the expectations that people are placing on them and they don’t want to see that.

Another way to describe all this is to say that what we have now, which is the physical manifestation that says, “I can’t see,” that really began as an emotional statement that said “I don’t want to see.” And so, when you have said in the past “I don’t want to see,” with emotion—I mean, that’s a natural response.

What happens when we’re watching a movie and something scary comes on? We cover our eyes, right? What happens though? There are a couple of things there that are very interesting, we begin to see something scary and we don’t want to see it, because not seeing is a way of protecting ourselves. Or we’re watching the movie and we can tell something scary is coming, we don’t see it yet, but we can tell it’s coming, and right before we can sense that it’s coming we cover our eyes, right? There’s that aspect to our vision that involves sensing what’s coming and if we don’t want to see what we sense is coming, we can shut down our vision.

That’s what I referred to before when I talked about Louise Hay saying in her book that nearsighted people don’t want to see into the future. They sense it, it’s not just some vague sort of future; they sense what’s coming and they don’t want to see it.

What is that sensing into the future? It’s also our intuitiveness, it’s also our perceptiveness, so when we shut down on that kind of sensing, we’re shutting down on much more than our physical sight and it’s very often the shutting down on those other levels, those other ways of sensing, that then gets locked into the physical.

So there are two aspects that are important to talk about in our eyesight right now. One is central vision, what is it that you’re directly looking at when you say, “Can you read the bottom line on the eye chart?” You look at one letter. The other is your total field of vision—as you’re looking at that one letter, at the same time there’s light and images coming in from all over, all around you, all at the same time.

There are a bazillion points of light, bazillion pieces of images that are coming into your eyes all at the same time that you’re looking at one thing directly. So what happens for nearsighted people is that they over-focus their attention on what they’re looking at directly. At a book, they’re just looking at the book, they lose awareness of the total field of vision—if they’re looking at the computer, they just see the computer, they don’t see the total thing. So what happens is that they lose the balance between he central focus and the total field of vision, so nearsightedness, in that sense, is not just that you can’t see the bottom line on the eye chart clearly, but nearsightedness is also the myopic view where you shut many things out to just focus on one thing.

So, part of reclaiming your vision is opening your eyes to everything that is coming into your eyes and not just one, small, little part of all that. What many intuitives say is that your sensitivities, your intuitiveness, come from your peripheral awareness, and your logic and your rationality are connected to your direct focus. So if you are opening up your total awareness you’re also opening yourself up to that total sensing, because even though you may not be aware of it, there’s light and images that are coming in all the time from everywhere.

So one great suggestion that I have for people is not only spend the time without glasses in the world so that you can experience the emotions and release the emotions I talked about before, but also spend time in the world without your glasses so that you can allow the total visual world to come into you. So take a walk in the woods and try to allow yourself to see everything all at once, don’t be so centrally focused, but see everything all at once.

The result is action that comes out of the compassion that exists in the seeing, in the open seeing. Let me explain what I mean. Movies and entertainment are artificial, so there are things being thrown across our eyes designed to manipulate our emotions in an artificial way, so let’s not talk about that superficial, artificial way, let’s talk instead about real life. So you have kids who are very open, usually very loving, particularly the younger you find them, very loving, very curious.

For example, a little kid could be walking down the street with their parent and the little kid could see somebody in a wheelchair, maybe for the first time, and the little kid’s initial, immediate, unfiltered response is to be curious, “What is that, why Mommy is that person in the chair?” He might even want to go up and touch the chair or something like that. And what’s the parent’s first response? “Don’t look at that.” Some version of, “Don’t look at that.” So in the child’s way, in that pure, child’s way, there is a relationship between what we see, what we feel, and what we do, but we are in our process of socialization, we are taught to separate that out. We are taught to not look at certain things, we are taught to not look at people in a certain way, we are taught to be separate and we are taught, in the process of being taught to not see, we are taught to not act.

The people we admire most in the world are the ones who have that open vision into the negativity and engage with it and do something to move it forward and to alleviate the suffering of the world. It’s when we have lost touch with our own vision and have lost touch with the power of our own vision and our own ability to act with that vision that we then ask questions about what to do when we see things that we don’t like. And so, healing your vision is healing your vision, and that brings forward the opportunity for you to act out of whatever that open eyes and that open heart call you to act out of.

What Your Glasses Reveal About You: Part 1

What Your Glasses Reveal About You: Part 2

PART II

There is a way in which our personality is an expression of who we are, and there’s a way in which our personality masks who we truly are, both to the world and perhaps even to ourselves.

Over the years, I have worked with thousands of people in my EYECLASSES Vision Seminar. The purpose of the seminar is to give people the experience of connecting to their clear-seeing self. At the first night of the seminar people were asked to fill out a questionnaire, asking them questions like “How strong are your glasses?” and “How old were you when you first started to where glasses?”

Another question was, “What are things that you’ll do without your glasses?”

At one early seminar, a person wrote, “Well, the only thing I’d do without my glasses is take a shower.” We started to get lots of answers like that, so we changed the question to, “Name three things you’d do without your glasses.” And then in parenthesis we put (Besides bathing and sleeping).” So then, that controlled those answers – for awhile – until somebody said, “The only think I’d do without my glasses is I’d look for my glasses!”

On a much deeper level, one of the questions we asked people was: “Name three major events that occurred in your life the year or year and a half before you first noticed a limitation with your vision.”

Over half the people – even before we did the seminar and helped them understand and remember more about their eyesight – remembered significant, major events that occurred in their life 12 to 18 months before they noticed a limitation with their vision. Some of those were things like “I was a kid and we moved from one school to another,” or “I got a new job,” or “My younger brother was born,” or “My grandmother died,” or “I got married for the first time,” or “I got divorced,” or “I started to notice that my body was changing as I became an adolescent.”

There were different kinds of external, major events that people described. Then, after completing the seminar and intensively spending two and a half days dealing with all the different aspects of vision, an additional bunch of people would remember events that they had not remembered when they first filled out the form. So it got to be nearly 7 out of 10 people who could remember a major event that occurred in their lives, 12 to 18 months before they noticed a problem with their vision.

Let’s assume that at birth the vast majority of us have fine eyes. That’s not just an assumption because scientists say that 97 percent of all vision problems that occur are the result of something that happens or some patterns that we develop in life—we are not born with poor vision. Three people out of 100 have innate vision problems, congenital cataracts or some other thing like that, but the vast majority of people are born without glasses.

There’s 70 million people in the United States who are nearsighted, that’s about a quarter of the population. There are other things that people wear glasses for, so in total about 55 percent of the people in this country wear glasses or contacts in order to see clearly – more than half the people cannot see without their glasses or contacts. It’s now more normal to have poor vision than it is to have the vision that you were born with.

So the mast majority of us are born with clear vision and yet now the vast majority of us have less than clear vision. There is a transition point between the clear sight, that clear time, and, for lack of a better way to describe it, the less than clear time. And so, I ask the people that question, what are the three major events that occurred in your life a year before you noticed the limitation with your vision, and three out of four people were able to identify a significant, major event, so the period in between the clear seeing and the development of the not clear seeing, I call that the “Vision Transition Period.”

What happens to people during the Vision Transition Period is that in some way or another their perception of themselves or the world around them or their relationship to other people changes significantly or becomes less clear or there’s something in their vision that they don’t want to see.

That choice of not wanting to see, or that choice of pulling away from what’s around you to protect yourself or because it’s too confusing or perhaps because it’s too overwhelming, that choice to pull yourself away from what’s around you is filled with emotion, and that emotion then and that choice filter down into the physical body so that we then develop in ourselves a sub-personality of nearsightedness, a sub-personality of not seeing clearly.

I’ve discovered that during the Vision Transition Period there are three different areas of change.

The first is self-image – a person may start to see his or her self differently. For example, an adolescent starts to grow up, there’s hormonal changes in the body, they realize that people are looking at them differently, perhaps they realize there’s expectations on them now that they weren’t aware of before, that they didn’t see before, and so their image of themselves changes. It can be a physical change, an emotional change or a perceptual change. Ultimately though, it is the self-image that changes.

The second area is that the change has to do with relationships, a significant relationship changes or the way that they see themselves in relationship to other people changes. “Nobody likes me,” nobody wants to see that, but that may be there. Other examples are, “My parents were divorced 12 months before I noticed a problem with my vision,” or “My parents started fighting”, or “My grandmother died,” or “We moved to a new neighborhood and I had to make friends with new kids.” So some aspect of relationship changes.

The third area is the situation, the environment changes, there’s a situational change. A person moves from one house to another or goes from one job to another or makes some other kind of change so the world around them looks differently.

You can’t always isolate one change from another, sometimes when a family moves from one house to another, obviously, relationships change as well, or if there’s a relationship change because, let’s just say, the parents get divorced, there may be a situational change because the child who is becoming nearsighted is moving from one place to another as well and maybe their self-image is involved in all of that.

I think you’re beginning to see that the key thing is not what the external change is, the key thing is what the myopic nearsighted personality does in response to that external change that they don’t know how to deal with, which is this: in some version or another, the nearsighted personality constricts or pulls in their world and brings their energy in, either as a protection from the outside world or some perceived threat that they see or they pull their energy in because it’s safer, or they pull their energy in because there’s too much to deal with out there, or they don’t have the strength or confidence to respond to it so they don’t know how to deal with it. Or there’s just too much stimulation, too much going on, and they pull in.

The key thing is to look at the Vision Transition Period because that’s when the aspects of personality began that are related to being nearsighted. Now, as I said, 7 out of 10, people that I’ve had these reports analyzed from remember a major event that occurred in their life a year or so before they noticed a limitation with their vision, but there are 3 out of 10 people who do not.

Now they could partly be they’ve just suppressed a particular memory and can’t remember it, or it could be that there was not necessarily any significant major event that occurred outside. It’s just that the internal pattern of pulling away from the world could have grown in little increments over time and it could have been a slow process, but eventually it became habituated and it became locked into their emotional and physical being. There wasn’t any specific trigger event, they did not necessarily have a Vision Transition Period, but instead, their process was more gradual in terms of locking in that habit structure that says, “Pull away from the world.”

How does going back to that period and releasing the emotions that are attached to that period change the way that you can see now? The key thing is not what happened then, the key thing is the habit pattern, that part of our personality that got locked into emotion and into our physicality back then. If we do have a nearsighted personality inside us, that nearsighted personality is operating right now in our life.

Do you ever have the situation where there’s a problem coming up but it’s not really a big one and you sort of pretend—you hear that squeak in the wheel in the back of the car, “Oh, it’s not really that big of a squeak and it doesn’t come all the time.” We pretend to not see and we pretend to not look and then sometimes we avoid it until there’s no room anymore to avoid it. There are many ways that our nearsighted personality exists right now, we can go through an entire day and go to the store and go to work and go to a million different places, but maybe never or maybe only once or twice actually really look in another person’s eyes.

Our eyes are sensitive, emotional receptors; when you really want to get to know somebody you don’t look up their nose; you don’t look in their ears; you look in their eyes. The eyes are an energy pathway, and the energy flows in both directions – into and out of the body.

“The eyes are the windows to the soul.” When you look into someone else’s eyes, in a sense, you’re looking into their soul, and when they look into your eyes they’re looking into your soul. If there’s a desire to hide or a desire to protect or if there’s shame, you won’t want somebody looking into your eyes, or you may not want to look into somebody else’s eyes. The nearsighted personality lives in every moment.

The Program for Better Vision Audio Course combines not just physical exercises but also specific ways to release the patterns that have existed in the nearsighted personality. There’s a guided visualization that brings you back to that period of time to release the energy because for some people, you can’t clear it now until you’ve cleared it then. For other people, you can clear it then by clearing it now, and so there are different ways to get at it that are in the Program for Better Vision. But the key thing, again, is it’s not the external event, it’s the nearsighted response to the external events, and they exist now as well as then.

There are people I know who have done a lot of work on their consciousness and releasing stored emotions and they’ve even had their eyesight improve without even wanting to even improve their eyesight because they did this work and then go back for their regular eye exam and their glasses are weaker. For others, when they release the emotional underpinnings and then start to do the physical eye techniques, vision changes more quickly because no longer are the patterns ground so hard into their consciousness.

The other factor that’s involved is that the Vision Transition Period comes at a different time in different people’s lives. Some people had their vision transition somewhere between six and seven years old, others happened when they were 10, 11, 12 years old, some people, it happened when they were 16 or 17, others it happened at points later on in life. So if you’re trying to change an aspect of your consciousness that has been with you for so long, that can be a harder task than changing one that’s not that deeply intertwined and imbedded with all the different aspects of consciousness and personality.

Some people are so dependent on their glasses that they would feel more comfortable taking all their clothes off than taking their glasses off! Here’s an interesting phenomenon: when you’re dealing with the consciousness of vision: each person who is nearsighted and highly dependent on their glasses or contacts, when they take their glasses and contacts off, feels uncomfortable, but each person feels uncomfortable in their own unique way.

Some people feel uncomfortable because they’re out of touch with what’s going on, they can’t see whether that person across the room is looking at them or having a critical look in their eyes or if they’re not paying attention. Other people, when they take their glasses off, they become afraid because they can’t tell if there’s a threat coming.

So different people feel different things when they take their glasses off. Well, when you take your glasses off not only are you feeling what you feel now in the face of that blurry world, but you’re also feeling the way that you felt during the Vision Transition Period.

So taking your glasses off and spending some time in the world with your eyes the way they are is the doorway into gaining clearer vision and gaining access to that part of yourself that can see clearly because it gives you the opportunity to see what your response is to—you think it is your response to not seeing.

“Oh, I’m nervous because I can’t tell what those people are looking at me or not,” or, “I’m afraid because I don’t know if that car is coming towards me,” or whatever the external things are that you think it’s about, but really when you take your glasses off and you allow yourself to feel how you feel about seeing or allow yourself to feel how you feel about not seeing, you then have the doorway into the very foundation of that nearsighted personality that’s inside of you and what the emotions are that have been stored in connection to that nearsighted personality.

In Part 3 of “What Your Glasses Reveal About You” we will explore how attitudes can affect how you see and what seeing means on different levels of consciousness.

The more that I have studied the eyes, and the more that I teach people to gain better vision – as I have for over three decades – the more I appreciate how deep and profound our sense of sight is.

And, eye problems and imbalances are also a reflection of deeper imbalances and patterns of perception.

One example of this that I’d like to talk about today is nearsightedness (myopia), or not being able to see clearly in the distance.

Beyond not being able to focus clearly in the distance, what does being nearsighted say about who you are and how you approach the world?

Researchers have been asking that question for more than 100 years, and what they have found both holds the key to a more holistic understanding of vision and a way to improve your sight.

Studies going back to the 1900’s demonstrate that there is a relationship between personality and vision – that people who are nearsighted tend to exhibit certain personality patterns and traits more often than people who are not nearsighted.

In the mid-1970s a Harvard researcher wrote a paper in which he summarized all the research that showed a relationship between nearsightedness and personality. The basic thrust of his paper was that people who are nearsighted, who can’t see far away, have pulled their world into them or have retreated from one part of the world in some way or another. So, in terms of these personality measurements, nearsighted people tend to be more introverted, to lack a certain amount of social confidence and are shyer.

Interestingly, we don’t need research to tell us this. We know it intuitively.

What happens in the movies when the director or writer wants to portray a character who is timid, lacks a little confidence, is shy or introverted? They put glasses on him, right? We subconsciously recognize that the need for glasses goes with that personality type.

The stereotypes we see in the movies are often just a superficial reflection of a deeper truth. Look at some of the writings of people who are involved in spiritual development and personal growth. Years ago Louise Hay wrote the groundbreaking book, You Can Heal Your Life. In her book she lists a variety of physical dysfunctions and diseases and outlines what the inner psychological or psycho-emotional aspect is that connects to that issue. She says that for nearsightedness it’s the unwillingness to see what’s ahead, to see what’s coming.

Jane Roberts, author of Seth Speaks, says that not being able to see the world clearly is a manifestation or reflection of a part of yourself that you don’t want to see.

All these examples point to what I call the “nearsighted personality”, which is much more than what’s going on in the eyes. It is reflected in the body, the mind and the emotions. Again, let’s look at the movies: the character who wears glasses and looks a little timid and shy and lacking in confidence, particularly the social type of confidence—well, there’s a whole personality that goes with that. It’s not just the glasses, it’s also the shyness, it’s also the way they carry themselves physically, its also the way they think about themselves or think about the world or think about their relationship to other people.

So the personality of nearsightedness has a physical component, a emotional component, a mental component, a perceptual component, a self image component, and it has a physical eyesight component as well.

Let’s look at Multiple Personality Disorder – here is something I think is incredibly interesting: there was one case of Multiple Personality Disorder and an optometrist measured the vision of the person while they were in their different personalities. In one personality the person was nearsighted. In another personality, the same person was farsighted, in another personality they had hypertension, in another personality their blood pressure was normal. Remember, these are completely objective scientific measurements of what happens when that person was in a different personality.

Well I’m suggesting that as a nearsighted person we have a nearsighted personality and that personality, as I said, is holistic, it covers our emotional, mental, and spiritual world views. The same is true for farsightedness and astigmatism, but the consciousness aspects that are related to those are slightly different. Even Freud weighed in on the subject when said that nearsightedness was a manifestation of a castration anxiety.

Here’s another interesting study that was done a while ago: A group of nearsighted people were exposed to a pressure situation. Specifically, they had to come up with answers really fast in a pressure situation. The researchers discovered that the nearsighted people, when exposed to the pressure, became more nearsighted. People who were not nearsighted, when they were exposed to the pressure situation, instead, their vision became more heightened.

So it’s not the external pressure that forces somebody to be nearsighted, it’s the internal response that says something like, “Oh, I’ll pull away when it’s too much out there,” or “I’ll pull in when it’s too intense.”

There’s another thing they do in the movies when they want to portray a nearsighted personality – they’ll put glasses on somebody because they want them to appear smarter, right? That’s another piece of the nearsighted personality – nearsighted people always score higher on intelligence testsr.

Now it’s easy to create nearsightedness in reverse, so they do experiments with monkeys where they have the monkeys wear blinders so that their visual field is restricted; or ifNavy personnel spend a lot of time in submarines where their visual field is restricted, they have a higher incidence of myopia. It’s easy to cause myopia from the constriction end where you just force the person’s physical world to be pulled in, and so you can make an animal or person nearsighted by putting them in an enclosed visual environment.

But it also works that from the emotional, consciousness and energetic process, you can pull in your visual world and then have it seep down into the physical.

All of this data and information points to the idea that nearsightedness and its associated personality are a particular way of responding to external stress. We’ve all heard of the fight or flight mechanism. Well you might say that the nearsighted personality is a flight response without literally running away. It’s a way to pull away from threat or stimulation or anxiety without getting up and running.

For example, if you’re in school and you don’t want to be there, you can’t walk out, but you can keep your eyes open, pretend like you’re there, but really you are a million miles away. Or we can drive down the street in our cars and do the same exact thing. So it’s easy for us to pull away from the world. Many people pull away from the world temporarily, even if they’re not nearsighted; there’s a cycle to that, a kind of cycle of energy going out and energy coming in. But people who are nearsighted, the myopic personality, they tend to have that pattern be charged with emotion and it becomes a habit.

If nearsightedness is more than just an eye issue, if in fact, there is a nearsighted personality and a nearsighted response to the world, then how can you go about changing that if you wear glasses and want to sharpen your vision.

We’ll explore some ways to do that in Part 2.

BIO:
Martin Sussman, an internationally known expert in holistic vision care, is the author of five books, audio courses and DVDs, including the #1 best-selling The Program for Better Vision and the Read Without Glasses Method (for middle age sight). He is the founder and president of the Cambridge Institute for Better Vision, which he established in 1976. He can be reached at martin@bettervision.com. Information about his approach to vision improvement that is more than eye exercises can be found at http://www.BetterVision.com.

Your visual system is very sensitive to stress, tension and fatigue of any kind, whether it’s physical, emotional or mental. The visual system is also very sensitive to any nutritional deficiencies and imbalances that might be present in the body. Don’t you notice that sometimes your vision is a little worse when you’re tired or under stress? You might even notice that you see a little better when you’re feeling energized or relaxed.

You can learn how to harness these fluctuations to your advantage as you are trying to improve your eyesight. When you understand what affects your vision you can start to make your eyesight clearer and clearer. Glasses and contacts treat the symptoms of poor vision very effectively: when you put them on you temporarily get rid of poor vision. But glasses and contacts do not address the underlying factors that produced the vision problem. They do nothing to release the underlying stress or change the underlying patterns that caused the problem in the first place.

Vision problems often appear when there is both prolonged stress in the visual system and improper visual/muscular habit patterns. Nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism are some of the symptoms that result from this underlying tension and imbalance.

In addition to direct tension, strain and inflexibility in the eyes, your eyesight is influenced by three other factors:

1. Secondary tension that is stored in other areas of the body. Also, the overall health and nutritional level of the body also affects vision. (In my book about natural eye care, The Program for Better Vision, the two chapters that address this are: Your Body and Your Eyes [Pp. 20 – 23] and The Role of Nutrition in Vision [Pp. 24 – 37]).

2. Limiting or negative thoughts about vision or about how external reality is perceived . (See the chapter Your Mind and Your Eyes in The Program for Better Vision. (Pp. 38 – 43).

3. Subconscious memories and past emotional decisions. (See Your Emotions and Your Eyes (Pp. 44 – 48). All these factors influence each person in a different way and to a different degree. But in following a holistic approach, The Program for Better Vision helps you explore what affect each may have had on your eyesight.

A holistic model of Better Vision includes these three components:

1. 1. Physical eyesight
2. 2. Inner vision
3. 3. Emotional seeing

1. Physical eyesight involves more than just 20/20 vision. In fact, there are three major visual skills: First, your mind selects what it wants to see from its total field of vision. (SKILL ONE: Peripheral Awareness and Central/Peripheral Balance) Second, your mind commands the eyes to look at or to converge on the object. (SKILL TWO: Convergence/Binocularity) Third, your eyes bring the object into focus to see it clearly. (SKILL THREE: Accommodation/Focusing) In addition, the muscles in and around the eyes must be relaxed, toned and flexible. Tension, stress and imbalance in any of the three visual skills can lead to other visual difficulties in addition to focusing problems. Some of these difficulties might include: eyestrain and fatigue, headaches, glasses and contacts never feeling right, difficulty concentrating, poor eye-hand coordination and depth perception and eyes always feeling tired.

2. Inner vision is the Mind’s Eye in all its different aspects: imagination, visualization, memory, dreams and attitudes. With Better Vision your imagination and visualization will be more alive and vivid and your memory will become clearer. Your attitudes about yourself and others will become more positive. You will replace limiting images of yourself with a clearer and more positive sense of who you are.

3. Emotional seeing speaks about our recognition of the eyes as both a way to express how we feel and a way to connect to other people. The eyes are so often called “the windows of the soul”; Better Vision is a way to heal, clarify and open these windows, allowing us to be open to a deeper connection to others and to give and receive more easily and fully. According to a holistic model, Better Vision means seeing the world in the clearest, most relaxed, easiest and most efficient way possible. Better Vision also means having a positive image of yourself, a clear sense of purpose and emotional clarity.
When you begin to understand how intimately your vision is connected to your body, mind and emotions you come to realize that the state of your eyesight is a reflection of your inner health, clarity and focus and as such can be a barometer of your total consciousness.

BIO:
Martin Sussman, an internationally known expert in holistic vision care, is the author of five books, audio courses and DVDs, including the #1 best-selling The Program for Better Vision and the Read Without Glasses Method (for middle age sight). He is the founder and president of the Cambridge Institute for Better Vision, which he established in 1976. He can be reached at marty@bettervision.com. Information about his approach to vision improvement that is more than eye exercises can be found at http://www.bettervision.com.

When it comes to your eyesight, the darkroom is your brain – the visual centers that process the visual information sent by the eyes.

After an image is registered on the retina (film) it then has to be developed into a visual image (a photograph). This is done in the occipital region of the brain (the photographer’s darkroom).

Vision – the formation of images of the physical world – does not occur until the brain receives impulses sent to it by the eyes. The darkroom of your visual system is a portion of the brain known as the visual cortex or the occipital lobe, which is located in the back of the head.

As everyone knows, the camera could take a perfect picture, but as a result of some error in processing the photograph could appear unclear or too dark or too light. Conversely, current computer-based processing techniques can greatly enhance the quality of an under-developed picture, bringing out greater clarity, detail and brightness.

But the human darkroom – the visual processing center in the brain (particularly the occipital region) – can take an image that is blurred and make it clearer in the brain. This human darkroom is much more complex and intricate than any computer.

How complex? As one example, the light that enters the eye hits the retina where the image registers upside-down. Fortunately the image is “righted” in the seeing centers of the brain, otherwise we would see the world upside-down. Vision, or the formation of images of the physical world, does not occur until the brain receives impulses sent to it by the eyes. This system is so complex that researchers still do not know exactly how the brain produces these visual images.

The photographer in each of us

What’s missing from the eye/camera analogy is the complex role of the brain in the visual process.

In the case of the camera, it is the photographer who controls the camera – deciding what to shoot at, how much light to let in, what to focus on, for how long and from what angle.

In the case of the eye, each of us is our own photographer – and the choices we make about what we see and how we see are governed by the mysterious interplay between our physiological processes and our conscious and unconscious mental and emotional decisions.

Inner vision

Inner vision consists of two distinct aspects:

1. Inner focus: The attitudes and perspectives that form your view of yourself and the world.

2. Visualization: The ability to interpret or understand what is seen (i.e., to make meaning out of symbols) and the ability to produce images with the mind’s eye. Visualization is strongly connected to memory.
   

Inner focus is best illustrated by the age-old example of two people looking at a glass of water. One sees it as half full, the other as half empty. The physical reality is the same, but the focus is different. Each person has a unique inner focus – the result of the interplay between memories, past experiences, attitudes and expectations.

Many people with vision problems tend to have a negative focus about their eyesight, which only serves to reinforce the vision problem. Conversely, working to change your focus about your eyes can have a dramatically positive effect.

“I can’t see” is probably the most common negative, or limiting, statement many people have about seeing, especially those who need glasses. Just think how many times you’ve said that to yourself throughout the years – without even really thinking about it – “I can’t see,” “I can’t see without glasses,” “I can’t see that,” “I can’t see this,” etc. etc.

On the other hand, most people who have clear vision take it for granted. They don’t necessarily think positively about their eyes. But if a person has a vision problem, they often start to develop a set of negative thoughts and attitudes about their eyes. In fact, a cluster of negativity around vision and seeing often precedes – and sustains – a vision problem.

Every time you put on glasses or contacts you are saying to yourself, “I can’t see without these.” When you say, “I can’t see,” there’s a part of you that believes it to be true. This, in turn, leads to your not even bothering to look at anything without them. The less you look, the less you see; the less you see, the less you look. The spiral continues. Downward.

Another learned bad habit is not bothering to look at the world without your glasses because you cannot see it clearly. To counter this, take the time to look into your “blur zone” – that part of your visual world that you are not yet seeing as clearly as you would like. Notice – and accept – what you are seeing. It may not be what you think you should be seeing, but relax, breathe easily and blink as you look. Notice what you can see and how you feel. The more you look, the more you see; the more you see, the more you look. The more the visual centers of the brain become re-engaged in seeing. The spiral continues. Upward.

You have the power to deliberately and consciously change your inner focus. When you consistently exercise that power over time, not only will your attitudes about your vision change, but your overall outlook and perspective will also undergo a major shift.

“My vision is always improving,” “I’m looking for my vision to change,” “My vision is becoming clearer and clearer every day” and “I want to see more” are all just as “true” in describing your current situation, but they also reinforce the possibility of change.

If you would like a list of 40 additional positive statements about your eyes, email at marty@bettervision.com.

Many scientists and medical professionals already understand and appreciate that the condition of the body is affected by the content of the thoughts and the nature of the feelings. And, when you start to change these mental and emotional patterns for yourself, the body – and the eyes – responds.

Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as saying “I want to see” once and then having your vision become perfectly clear. That is an important first step but most often the habit patterns that you want to change go deeper. It is what we hold to be true subconsciously and emotionally that has the most profound effect on how we see. Consistent efforts at releasing negative thoughts and emotional barriers and practicing positive visualization can change the deeper subconscious patterns.

And, that’s exactly what I’ll talk about in next month’s column.

Martin Sussman, an internationally known expert in holistic vision care, is the author of five books, audio courses and DVDs, including the #1 best-selling The Program for Better Vision and the Read Without Glasses Method (for middle age sight). He is the founder and president of the Cambridge Institute for Better Vision, which he established in 1976. He can be reached at marty@bettervision.com. Information about his approach to vision improvement that is more than eye exercises can be found at http://www.bettervision.com.

And you’re not alone. According to the American Optometric Association, upwards of 8 out of 10 computer users report some type of eye strain at the computer. The problem is so prevalent it’s been given a name: Computer Vision Syndrome (CVS).

The symptoms of Computer Vision Syndrome include:

• eyes hurting or over-tired
• eyes burning or itching
• dry, or watery, eyes
• double vision
• blurry eyesight (either at the computer or in the distance)
• the need for glasses for the first time
• the need for stronger prescriptions
• headaches, neck, shoulder and back tension
• increased sensitivity to light

Using a computer does place a unique set of demands on your eyes. But it’s not inevitable for your eyes to hurt at the computer, or for you to experience eye strain at the computer, once you know how to use your eyes correctly for the task, and what to do at the first sign of tension or fatigue.

Saving your eyesight at the computer can be as simple as being aware of your vision in a new way. Knowing visual ergonomics and the simple keys to healthy computing should go a long way to alleviating the symptoms of Computer Vision Syndrome.

Here are five keys to taking care of your eyes at the computer.

1. Fit you set up to you.

• Set up your computer so that you can look beyond the screen. If at all possible, don’t be in the corner, or face a wall.
• Sit directly in front of computer, not off to one side or the other.
• Sit 18-24 inches away from the screen
• Sit high enough so that your line of sight is level with or higher than the top of the screen
• Keep your wrists level with or below your elbows. Never bend your wrists up when typing
• Your knees should be below the level of your hips
• Place your feet on the floor. Use a footrest if your feet don’t reach the floor.

2. Look away from the screen regularly.

Focusing on an object far away, such as the water cooler down the hall or a tree outdoors, is a simple stretching exercise for eye muscles. Quickly shift your focus from near to far 3-4 times.

A brief look into the distance every 2 to 3 minutes prevents the build-up of visual stress and discomfort and keeps your eyes healthy and active.

These frequent micro-breaks offer much more relief to your eyes than an hourly break. A break every hour – however long it might be – does not provide all the relief and rest that your eyes need. Micro-breaks are more effective and beneficial.

Extended staring at a computer screen inevitably creates fatigue, tension and eye problems. Failing to take short vision breaks is one of the major factors leading to eye strain and eye problems for computer users.

Micro vision break tip: Look up and focus on the furthest object in the distance. Be aware of objects around you in your periphery. Take a deep breath. Relax as you exhale. Blink a couple of times. Shift your vision back to the screen and re-focus. (Three near-to-far shifts per break are recommended. This should take about 5 seconds.)

Mirror tip: If your computer is in a corner or if you work in a small space, place a small mirror on top of your monitor or on your desk. Use the mirror to give your eyes a distant view by looking through the mirror and focusing on objects that you see behind you.

3. Minimize glare on the screen.

You can detect a potential glare problem by turning on the lights in the room that you normally would use – before turning on your computer. If you see any images or reflections on the (turned-off) screen, you’ve got a glare problem.

To reduce or minimize glare, experiment by:

• Moving the screen to a better location, if possible
• Tilting the screen
• Moving objects that reflect onto the screen
• Covering windows to block sunlight
• Turning off or lowering offending lights
• Covering fluorescent lights with egg-crate baffles
• Turning your computer so the screen is perpendicular to overhead fluorescent lights.

It may be impossible to eliminate glare altogether, in which case you might consider using an anti-glare screen.

4. Use friendly lighting.

Bright fluorescent lights are a poor choice. Dimmer lights are better. Have a desk lamp for reading and doing other close work at your desk, but make sure it doesn’t reflect on the screen.

Most problems are caused by the quantity of the light (not by fluorescence itself). If possible, turn off every other fluorescent fixture and light your desk with a 100-watt bulb.

Standing lamps that direct light at the ceiling provide the best indirect light. If there is no dimmer available, a 3-way fixture is recommended so you can set the light at the most comfortable level.

You also need to light any original copy that you are working from. A desk lamp with an adjustable neck works well. Just make sure that this light doesn’t distract you or spill onto your screen.

Hard copy tip: Ideally, you want your copy on the same vertical plane as the screen. Working side to side is preferable to looking from the screen down to your copy and then back up again. Alternate moving the written material that you work from to the left and right of the screen during the day. The eye movements required to shift back and forth from left to right and from screen to copy help reduce visual stress and enhance your visual skills.

5. Blink more often.

Computer rooms are notoriously dry, and this may be one reason why your eyes hurt at the computer. Blinking is your body’s natural way of lubricating your eyes and preventing dry eyes. Normally the eye blinks 10-12 times a minute.

Most people do not blink regularly, especially when concentrating intently, or when under pressure. They keep their eyes wide open – fixed – and blinking decreases. Decreased blinking often causes redness, burning and itching of the eyes, particularly for those who use contact lenses.

Blinking lubricates and cleanses the eyes, keeping them moist for clear vision and comfort. Blinking also helps relax the facial muscles and forehead, countering the tendency to furrow one’s brow and create tension.

Hydrate by drinking enough water. If absolutely necessary, use a natural eye drop. Similasan or PrimaVu are the recommended brands.

Blinking tip: Move only your eyelids – not your forehead, face or cheeks – when you blink. Make sure you close your eyes all the way without effort and that both the upper and lower lids touch gently. Blink lightly once every 3 to 5 seconds. Or, take 10-20 blinks in this way just as your eyes start to feel dry, tired or itchy.

These five tips should be enough to keep you from feeling eye strain at the computer. It could be very simple to not let your eyes hurt at the computer.

But sometimes these tips are not enough. The causes of the blurred vision and visual stress might go deeper. Make sure you have your eyes checked at least once a year, and make sure that you are using the correct prescription for computer use – it’s not always the same as your regular prescription.

The book Total Health at the Computer goes into more depth about healthy computing tips, choosing the right kind of glasses for computer use and quick routines that will stop your eyes from hurting at the computer.

For more information, visit www.bettervision.com.

And, if you can read the bottom line, your vision is perfect. If you can’t, you need glasses. Right?

Not necessarily!

Good vision is much more than just 20/20.

Even if your glasses or contacts give you 20/20, other deficiencies may still exist in your visual system that wouldn’t be caught during an eye test that only checked visual acuity (which line on the eye chart you can read).

These other visual problems might cause some of the following symptoms: double vision, headaches, tiredness, poor depth perception, difficulty concentrating while reading, eyestrain, burning, stinging, dry eyes, and more.

When these other deficiencies aren’t dealt with, they could eventually lead to problems with acuity. So a person could end up needing glasses (or stronger glasses) when the real causes of the problem are going uncorrected.

Using glasses that were prescribed after only a test for distance or near-point acuity could very likely lead to further visual stress. If there are other undetected visual problems that remain unaddressed, this could lead to prescriptions that get stronger and stronger, deteriorating vision and a general feeling of discomfort and fatigue. All of which could set the stage for even more serious eye problems to develop.

That’s why it is so important to get a complete and thorough examination from an eye doctor who understands the interconnectedness of all aspects of vision.

Eye doctors that are trained in a holistic understanding of vision are known as behavioral optometrists.

A behavioral optometrist believes that how you see is the result of how you have learned to use your eyes. He/she also believes that visual skills — including how clearly you can see — can be enhanced through exercise, relaxation and training. He/she has received specialized training and can give you a comprehensive examination that covers all the visual skills.

Of course, a behavioral optometrist, like a regular optometrist, can prescribe glasses and contacts. In addition, a behavioral optometrist can provide a program of training that improves overall visual functioning.

Here is a list of the vision checks and tests that a behavioral optometrist will most likely perform during the first visit:

1. Measure distance vision with an eye chart.
2. Determine how your eyes function at close range.
3. Measure the teamwork between your eyes and your brain.
4. See how smoothly your eyes move from point to point.
5. See how smoothly and easily your eyes follow a moving target.
6. See how easily each eye can shift focus from near to far.
7. Screen for medical conditions like glaucoma and cataracts.

Finding A Behavioral Optometrist

The Cambridge Institute for Better Vision maintains a nationwide Select Referral List of hundreds of behavioral optometrists. For help in finding one in your area, go to: www.bettervision.com.

Also, there are two professional organizations for behavioral optometrists: The College of Optometrists in Vision Development (www.covd.org) and the Optometric Extension Program Foundation (www.oep.org)

However you find a behavioral optometrist, the most important element is to find one who not only agrees with the holistic eye practices of the Cambridge Institute for Better Vision, but also uses them in some way in his or her practice.

When you have the name of someone, it is perfectly reasonable to phone the doctor and ask whether he or she does the complete series of tests described above.

Some behavioral optometrists also offer training sessions to correct any underlying visual deficiencies that might be found during the examination.

Many behavioral optometrists believe, as does the Cambridge Institute, that the use of an under-corrected prescription is better for the eyes.

Instead of reading the bottom line on the eye chart, with an under-corrected prescription you’ll see one or two lines higher. This under-corrected prescription will give you enough clarity for most activities (including driving), but it will leave “room” for your brain and eyes to still work together in the process of seeing. An under-corrected prescription may also prevent you from needing stronger and stronger glasses year after year.

If you are using a vision improvement system like The Program for Better Vision, your eyes can see better and better. In this case, the prescription that was under-corrected when you first got it, will eventually become too strong as your natural eyesight gets better.

Then it’s time to see the behavioral optometrist again, but this time to get a weaker pair of glasses!

For the healing of vision to occur, it’s necessary to release the habitual, inner barriers to seeing that first developed during the Vision Transition Period. Notes one woman, Ruth G., after using The Program for Better Vision, “I found that I was intentionally blurring people once they came into seeing range…This observation has carried the process to new areas and probed the deeper question of why I have hidden behind blurred vision.”

One middle-aged stockbroker, Ralph P., who had been unable to see anything without his reading glasses, looked back at his Vision Transition Period — a time when he was losing money in the stock market. He recalled that he had finally reached the point where he was afraid to look at the stock tables for “fear of seeing” how much he had lost that day. The tables had become the “proof” that he was a failure and he didn’t want to see this image of himself as “being a failure.”

As he let go of that false image, he saw himself as much more than his temporary successes or failures. Very soon, his vision returned to normal and, for the first time in five years, he began to read and work without glasses.

Not seeing clearly is, at least to some degree, an expression of one or more of the following inner decisions:

1. An emotional decision that we do not want to see some aspect of our self, our life, or our relationship with others.
2. A desire to pull away or hide from the parts of the world that we find either threatening, confusing or overwhelming.
3. Negative messages and beliefs that we may have absorbed about seeing. For example, the young child who sees her mother upset and is told, “Nothing’s the matter” might learn the subconscious message “I can’t trust what I see” or “It’s not okay to see the truth of what’s going on.”
4. A shutting down of one’s intuition or perceptiveness, which also limits our ability to sense what lays ahead in our lives.

The Total Picture

Glasses and contacts only deal with the symptoms of not seeing clearly. Using them does not address any of the underlying factors that may have led to their need in the first place. They do not change the underlying patterns that caused the problem in the first place.

I have witnessed many powerful healings as people explore and release their inner barriers to seeing and being seen. As people move beyond their habitual way of seeing, something extraordinary emerges – an expanded view of who they are and of the deeper potential that lies within.

Along with this inner clarity comes the outer clarity: people improve their eyesight, reduce the strength of their prescriptions or discard their glasses and lenses altogether.

This inner healing is a crucial element. That’s why I’ve found that people who only do eye exercises can be frustrated by their lack of improvement.

Along with releasing the inner barriers to seeing, the other elements of a comprehensive approach to better vision are re-training the brain and eyes to work together properly, reducing stress in the visual system and supplying the visual system with the proper nutrients and supplements.

Better vision means seeing the world in the clearest, most relaxed, easiest and most efficient way possible. Better vision also means having a positive image of yourself, a clear sense of purpose and emotional clarity.

The first step to better vision begins with the inner desire that says, “I want to see!”

Four Ways to Release Inner Barriers to Seeing

1. RELAX INTO YOUR VISION. Take off your glasses/contacts and look around at your world. Notice what you can see. Release the limiting thoughts that say, “I can’t see” or “Everything is blurry.” Don’t just glance from one thing to another, slow your vision down and take the time to look at what you are seeing. Relax your body, breathe deeply and fully and don’t strain to make things clearer. Just let the images of the world enter your eyes and mind and accept it all. Look carefully for differences in what you see: differences in color, form, texture and clarity.

The more time you can spend relaxing into your vision, the better. It’s common for people to see their vision change – for the images to fluctuate, often becoming clearer, even if only for brief moments.

Be aware of how you feel. Your feelings are the doorway to release because how you feel not seeing now (threatened, anxious, safe in the blur) is how you were feeling during your Vision Transition Period. These feelings reflect back to you the choices that you made about not seeing at that time.

As you become more aware of these feelings, practice how to “looking openly” (below).

2. LOOK OPENLY. Remember, nothing goes away, even if we try to pretend not to see it or avoid it.

Look directly at whatever you may be avoiding – not only the superficial things like getting the car checked or your teeth cleaned – but, more importantly, the deeper issues: relationships that need healing, people who need forgiving, difficult choices that need making, self judgments that need releasing.

3. OPEN YOUR PERIPHERY. Most nearsighted people have tunnel vision – they are over-aware of what they are directly looking at, and not very aware of their periphery – and are not opening to their total field of vision.

Take a walk without your glasses/contacts and practice being aware of your total field of vision. Feel what it’s like to take in everything in all at once – everything around you and everything directly in front of you.

Many spiritual thinkers believe that we receive our intuition and inner wisdom through our peripheral awareness. Over time, the more conscious you are of your periphery, and the fuller your focus becomes, the more you’ll start to open up to these inner pathways. You’ll also gain a greater sense of space and of depth perception in your visual field.

4. USE THE RIGHT PRESCRIPTION. Most eye doctors prescribe glasses or contacts that are too strong, which often leads to stronger and stronger prescriptions.

I, along with many forward thinking eye doctors, recommend a slightly weaker, under-corrected prescription, which serves two purposes: it helps stop the decline of vision and it allows your eyesight to improve as you take steps to better your vision.

(Visit www.bettervision.com to locate an eye doctor in your area who practices this approach.)

Once you have the awareness of the relationship between inner vision and outer sight, you can begin to open your eyes to more of what’s around you. Not only will your world get sharper and you will see more comfortably, but you will also perceive your world with more clarity, openness and honesty.