The focusing state of an emmetropic person (one with normal sight) is set up at “infinity”; that means that he or she can see clearly at medium and long distance and his or her eyes are not subjected to accommodative stimulus. This is the physiological state of the normal eye.
Accommodative stimulus—when focusing at near distance—occurs when the observed object comes nearer or is at a “near point.” This is very important, since the mechanism of accommodation represents a stimulus for “pushing” the eye toward the myopic state. However, when resting, the eye focuses at infinity. That’s why the process of accommodation is considered as active, and “disaccommodation” is seen as a passive process of relaxing your accommodation.
Accommodation is an active stimulus that leads to shifting from the physiological state of resting, where the accommodation is completely relaxed and focusing is at infinity. Prolonged near-work stress—accommodative stress—influences the eye’s ability to get back to its physiological state of basic accommodative tone; that means resting.
Most myopia starts with excessive overaccommodative stress. Later, this stress becomes solidified because of wearing negative contact lenses. Shifting to the myopic state led by near-point stress can be observed easily, even in emmetropic people: it’s enough to subject them to an efficient and prolonged accommodative stress, making them focus at a near object for a long time. Despite being different for each person, the result will be transient myopia. Ocular convergence increasing will worsen the overaccommodative state further (since convergence is a further stimulus for accommodation). In these cases, the right solution would be to relax the accommodation gradually and periodically, simply looking at far objects, or even better, at infinity.
Whenever it is possible, the overaccommodative stress should be limited, creating the state of light “blurring” with positive lenses or wearing undercorrection (for high myopia, where it is necessary to use negative lenses to view near).
Accommodative stimulus reveals an inborn wisdom of our eyes and our body in general. Such mechanisms of physiological underaccommodation (“accommodative lag”) result in an accommodative stimulus developed whenever we focus on something. This stimulus moves from a relaxed state (basic accommodative tonus) to clear the retinal image. This clearing action of accommodation allows us to see the most important details of the observed object.
Each time we focus on a near object, the accommodation that is going on in that very moment is lower than the one needed (considering the distance of the object). Therefore, there’s always a “physiological underaccommodative” concerning the distance to the observed object.
This mechanism seems to be justified by the fact that our thrifty eyes use the accommodative stimulus wisely—to focus the observed object well—without arousing an excessive stimulus that could, with time, lead to accommodative overtone and, consequently, to myopia.
This “self-protective” stimulus is completely undermined by wearing minus contact lenses or glasses even at near distance. Wearing minus-lens glasses all the time will cause accommodative overtone. Myopes are advised to take off their minus-lens glasses when looking at near distance for this reason. The use of contact lenses is even worse because one cannot take them off whenever focusing at near distance—within the range where myopes normally can see well.
By knowing the SAID Principle, we can develop the advantages instead of disadvantages just by using it. As an alchemist once said, “So up as down.” As refractive error could worsen, it could also be improved using the same principles but in an opposite way. How? Using positive lenses for myopes and negative lenses for hyperopes: in training sessions and normal life, but never when common sense and the law requires the use of full correction.
In this case, the load—accommodation, the natural system of focusing—will be stimulated and restored with time, with consequent natural regressing of the functional visual error.
The use of corrective lenses solidifies and increases overaccommodative stress gradually. In times of hard mental and physical stress, after overaccommodative stress (for example, after studying for exams), you can notice some difficulties in focusing.
Rushing to an optician, you would be diagnosed as a low myope, which is always “corrected” by a “leisure” or a “part-time” minus lens. From this moment on, you become a “serious” myope, wearing those minus lenses, even being obliged to increase their strength every now and then, because of your ocular adaptation to the stronger and stronger minus lenses. This is a result of the SAID Principle (Specific Adaptation to the Imposed Demand).
All this is made worse by great ignorance about the rules of visual prevention: the simple rules of behavior that could prevent myopia from developing in the first place. For example, the kind of work being done—what is extremely harmful is reading at near distance wearing minus contact lens. This situation will produce strong overaccommodation. That is the reason why contact lenses bring about visual worsening. A myopic person who uses his glasses cleverly takes them off for reading and in near-distance activities—something impossible to do wearing contact lenses.
In our “all and now” society, a patient who comes to an ophthalmologist wants to see well and now, without any effort. In my ten years of looking for perfect sight, I searched, over and over again, for a solution for my myopia. If someone had offered me a choice, an honest “fighting chance,” it would have greatly shortened my struggle and efforts—and ultimately successful results.
According to the SAID Principle, every organ becomes accustomed to induced stimuli. A person who is using one substance constantly (for example, a drug) over time reacts to it less and less. The same thing happens in the case of physiological adaptation effected by external causes. The body becomes accustomed to lifting a load, generating muscular hypertrophy and neuromuscular adaptation in fiber recruitment.
The very same SAID Principle occurs in the case of wearing contact lenses (minus for myopes and plus for hyperopes). When wearing contact lenses a myopic person “freezes” his focusing system, making his eyes lazy and causing adaptation to the lenses in pejus (the negative one). It is also true that, after being diagnosed with myopia, people are given contact lenses until reaching full correction (10/tenths) with monocular vision, or even 11/tenths! It means that with binocular vision (without covering one eye) and at distances shorter than the ordinary prescribed for the ocular health examinations, a person is in a state of overcorrection!
With time, such a highly corrected state leads to negative adapting to that lens. After wearing a pair of new glasses with lens dioptric power equal to the last prescribed one, a person could be in trouble even looking at near objects like the floor, seeing it slightly deformed. When you ask an optician for an explanation, you are usually told, “Don’t worry, you must get used to the new lenses.” What a misleading statement. Your eyes “get used to that minus lens” by getting worse.
What does it mean? Being in a state of overcorrection, your eyes must even get used to the too-strong minus lenses that generate … myopia! This negative state of overaccommodation is worsened further with improper use of glasses: it develops when the myope (who is able to focus well at near distance) reads or works at near distance (near-work) wearing the glasses that would work well for viewing in distance. The result is the same: overcorrection leads to negative ocular adaptation and consequently generates myopia “spontaneously.” Gradual worsening, which is usually noticed in myopes, could be prevented or slowed down if we would respect and following simple rules of visual hygiene as well as wearing positive lenses—before we begin wearing the minus lens.
Why is it that minus-lens glasses, contact lenses, and refractive surgery are not advisable for “curing” refractive errors? A solution for the problem could be transient, using a method that does not act on the causes of the problem itself. We can have a definitive solution. This solution involves intervening and eliminating the very same cause—namely, excessive close work.
The most evident example of a transient solution and treatment for myopia is wearing minus-lens glasses. These work instantly and convince most people that they must be the right answer. Casual use of this approach does not take into account that thoughtless use of such can worsen myopia. This occurs, specifically, when a myope reads and looks within the (near) range where he is normally able to focus without optical help—when you keep your minus lens on when reading. The minus-lens solution is transient since it does not act on the causes that generate myopia in the first place—the close work. The cause is weak ocular muscles produced by the close work and, consequently, the inability to focus on distant objects. The minus lens acts mechanically on refraction.
Refractive surgery acts the very same way as minus-lens glasses and contact lenses. That is, by mechanically generating a deformation and modification of the cornea. This is done to instantly produce focus on the retina. The point is this: at what price?
We can use the working of a camera as an analogy for human focusing—it’s as if we wanted to modify the shape and bending of the objective lens so as to repair a broken focusing mechanism on an automatic focusing camera instead of working with it. The problem is that we can take off and change the camera’s objective lens easily, but at the moment we can’t do it with the human eye and its cornea and crystalline lens.
I would be pleased if I were able to instill the idea that before using drastic and, above all, irreversible minus-lens solutions, it would be better to try all the less invasive and cheaper solutions. Everlasting, excellent intellectual and physical sight for everyone!
One of the Power Vision System’s fundamentals is to relax accommodation and decrease accommodative overtone. Such results can be obtained, inducing a slight myopic state, using positive lenses for reading—the phenomenon called “fogging.” Such beneficial preventive work should be augmented with ocular stretching or working at the maximum range of the ocular muscles so as to restore correct convergence, fusing capacity, and correct focusing on the central fovea.
Continuing with your training and doing these exercises, at a certain point you will notice a sudden and completely unexpected flash of perfect vision. This is caused by the fact that your eyes, even temporarily, will start working correctly. These flashes of clear vision, at the beginning, will disappear easily, just by blinking. However, such flashes will stimulate you to continue the exercises, so that, little by little, increasing the strength and flexibility of your ocular muscles will produce “flashes” that last longer and longer, until you reaching the long-desired goal of clear sight and vision stabilization.
The improvements in focusing capacity are often sudden: it is as if the strength and flexibility of your vision increased at the same time as your muscular coordination reached a critical point and displayed themselves suddenly. You can notice this phenomenon more easily by choosing a very intense training program, because the quantity and intensity of the exercises bring about a more efficient training stimulus. And this stimulus then leads to adaptation and better focusing of your vision.
The stabilization of a much clearer refractive state is to be reached gradually, when the flashes of clear vision become so frequent and long as to be your natural, real new sight. Going down this path you could perhaps be disappointed, since there’s nothing worse than to achieve the desired result and then see it fading away. This is normal, however. Rome was not built in a day, and true vision restoration takes time and patience.
The flashes of clear vision will give you greater trust and enthusiasm, but it does take time to become stabilized. For this reason, you should check your own eyesight on the chart. Remember, 20/40 is legal for driving a car. If you exceed this level, you can continue to work toward 20/20. It does take persistence. If you vision “drops back,” just get back into the routine of “pushing print” with a plus lens.
Those who choose the Power Vision System could notice no improvement in their visual functioning after two to three weeks of correct training and then suddenly see the benefits. During the periods of apparent “stalemate,” in fact, our eyes are accumulating all the positive and beneficial stimuli that give positive results.
Until you notice the positive results of clear vision—better focusing until you experience flashes of extremely clear vision—it’s very important to keep trusting the system and its physiological mechanisms and persevere in your exercising until the next step. It is also important that you imagine each “step” in your sight improvement. You are to be completely aware of this since you can see better, by day and by night. Imagine it as making a mosaic—you can’t see the picture until you put in the last tile (which represents the “last straw”—the final stimulus that makes all the previous ones become visible). This last tile is the one that lets the training stimuli reach that “critical point.”
You are trusting and groping in the darkness until reaching a “jolt” of improvement that you see for yourself. This is what is required to renew your motivation and enthusiasm: move toward one’s own target of maintaining clear distance vision for life.
The ciliary muscle, considered the lens responsible for the process of accommodation, is a smooth muscle, not subject to voluntary contractions; therefore it can’t be trained voluntarily or consciously. On the other hand, there are extrinsic ocular muscles that are responsible for the process of focusing. Mental and physical stress and damaging habits (too much near-work) have as a consequence in pejus adaptation of these little muscles, with further sight worsening.
The same in pejus adaptation can be noticed in people: the musculature of those who do not exercise atrophies; a tennis player who strains only one hand gives a rise to a greater muscular imbalance between her right and left sides, created by the functional adaptation on the side she uses more.
The thoughtless use of minus-lens glasses can worsen already deteriorated sight. This initial slight nearsightedness is caused by habits like too much near-work compounded by reading at excessively close distances. Once prescribed and put on, even minus glasses for trivial myopia, such as –0.25 and –0.50 diopters, will lead to gradual vision worsening. The function makes the organ. The bespectacled student will be obliged “to make his own eyes walk with visual crutches” (his minus glasses) for the rest of his life.
It would be as if we wanted or were required to continue walking using crutches—even after some convalescence and we no longer needed them. How much motor functioning would we lose in walking? The choice is up to you.
Once we understand how the SAID Principle can stop the process of sight worsening, it is necessary to plan training that takes into account your specific needs. We turn to that in the next chapter.