My eyesight is pretty bad. Since 4th grade, I had been wearing prescription glasses every single waking moment of my life. My prescription is about -4.00 diopters with .50 astigmatism in both eyes. But for the past week, I got by just fine without wearing them once out of my own free will.
Why? Am I insane? There are many ways that I could start this story. I could start with how I became nearsighted in the first place. I could get into the science behind the anatomy of the eye. I could talk about my previous failed attempts at fixing my eyesight naturally. I could talk about how my eyesight worsened over the years yet somehow went back down to -4.00 from -4.50 after a few months of lifting. But I decided that I will start my story from last weekend.
A free months back, I picked up a free Bloomberg pinhole glasses at a hackthon. I paid no attention to it and never even tried it once, as I assumed that it was just a normal cheap pair of sunglasses given out at hackthons by companies for advertising. I had received a similar pair from Google and they were just regular sunglasses. But last week, I found the pinhole glasses just laying around my room and I decided to put them on.
Holy shit. I was speechless. I was expecting regular sunglasses, but got something completely different. Although everything looked weird compounded, things also looked clearer in a strange way. The "lenses" were just a piece of black plastic with tiny holes punched in them. I shouldn't be seeing more clearly. But I was seeing more clearly. It's as if I was wearing -1.00 diopter prescription glasses. I still couldn't see all that clearly, but If I turned the brightness up on my computer monitor and increased font size to 150%, I could function without my normal glasses. But I wasn't satisfied with the magic of the pinhole effect; I decided to go down the rabbit hole completely.
I remembered that several years ago, I bookmarked a page describing how to cure nearsightedness. I was busy with lots of classes back then, so I completely ignored it. But now is a good time for me to attempt curing my nearsightedness completely naturally. http://gettingstronger.org/2010/07/improve-eyesight-and-throw-away-your-glasses/ Some of the claims sounded pseudoscientific, but the anecdotes were very compelling. I've also always believed in mind over matter and harnessing the power of the placebo effect. If Wim Hof was able to guide arthritis and cancer patients up Mt.Kilimanjaro in just shorts after only a few weeks of training, anything is possible. New research is showing that the scientific establishment had been underestimating the power of meditation and mental resilience. The concept of progressive overload also made a lot of sense from my powerlifting days.
From there, I also found the Bates method and read the whole book in 2 days. I also bought and read this book the next day. I am absolutely shocked by the Bates method. It was knowledge way ahead of its times. It was proposed back in 1891 by Dr. William Bates, but reading it, you would have assumed that it definitely came after the 1960s hippie movement. It described various meditation, mental relaxation, and visualization methods in detail and got very philosophical about the nature of stress and how to handle stress stoically. It read like a Buddhist meditation guide on how to activate your 3rd eye chakra. I would have immediately dismissed it outright a few years ago for lack of scientific proof, but I know better now. I've seen countless powerlifters with injuries that doctors claimed that they would never be able to lift or even walk again come back to beat records a year after their injury. I've personally experienced the power of tummo meditation for overcoming cold shower and speeding up recovery from workouts and sicknesses. I've also seen crazy shit in ayahuasca visions that have led me to believe that all this is possible. I still consider myself to be very much a scientific skeptic, but now I trust my intuition more than the words of so-called experts, especially ones who have economic incentives to make money off you by spreading lies.
In a world where Elon Musk believes that the universe is a simulation, Scott Adams predicted the success of Trump using hypnosis, and Nassim Taleb mocks the most respected intellectual authorities as idiots who don't understand statistics, anything is possible. Perhaps it's time to take a closer look at ridiculous sounding ideas and scrutinize them using the scientific method myself rather than blindly trusting the intellectual authorities. None of the establishment economists I talked to believed in Bitcoin and when I explained Steemit, they thought it was even more ridiculous, yet somehow both are doing far better than expected. It's time to crowdsource scientific research and get skeptical of popular science.
So following this line of logic, I threw away my prescription glasses last week and started tinkering with various methods for naturally improving eyesight and I can confirm that my vision has definitely significantly improved over the course of just one week. I am now typing out this article without glasses on, not even the pinhole glasses. According the eye chart I ordered, my sight went from 20/200 to 20/100 and sometimes when out in bright sunlight and I really focus on taking deep breathes and relaxing my face, I can even get to 20/70. The key is to focus on relaxation and not squint at all. Squinting temporarily sharpens the vision, but it is harmful in the long run. This is also my hypothesis why science cannot confirm if the Bates method works. When most people take off their glasses, they strain their eyes, so of course their vision will get worse. But if you have been practicing meditation for a long time and know how to be conscious and aware of your body while inducing deep relaxation, then the method can work for you. But it's very difficult to test this in a controlled environment. Most people are probably just impatiently rolling their eyes around to "exercise" them without ever learning to properly relax or meditation. Of course they wouldn't get results. Yet there are people who have learned to deal with stress and diligently practice mindfulness for years who have significantly improved their eyesight. I have noticed this past week that when I took walks outside while breathing very slowly and deeply, I could see much clearer. I have also noticed my vision going in and out of focus corresponding to my perceived level of mental stress.
Currently, this is what I do:
- I follow the morning routine outlined in this video:
- I do my morning lifting workout.
- I do some yoga stretching and more of the exercises from the video.
- I take my cold shower.
- I take a walk outside while playing Pokemon Go and consciously breathing very slowly and deeply.
- When I do work on the computer, I wear either no glasses or the pinhole glasses. Every few minutes, I would pay attention to see if I feel strain in my eyes. Then I would look for a few seconds out in the distance, massage my eye frame for a few minutes, and also palm my eyes for a minute.
- Try out a few eye focusing exercises involved eye charts or distance objects. This step is highly experimental and subject to change over the next few weeks/months. I would like to report more on the specifics and modifications in detail in future posts.
- Use f.lux if you weren't using it already.
- When reading, focus more on the white spaces between the letters rather than the black letters themselves.
- Highly experimental: Nootropics supplementation
- Spirulina and chorella for protein, vitamins, and micronutrients
- CDP-choline and noopept. Noopept is typically paired with a choline, and apparently the CDP form as some visual benefits. https://examine.com/supplements/cdp-choline/
- CBD oil. What's a better way to relax than smoking weed? Currently I don't have time to waste getting high, I'm in a state where it's not legal, and I would like to keep dosages consistent and easily measurable for experimentation purposes, so I went with CBD oil. Looking online, I've seen anecdotes of people noticing improvments in vision after smoking a lot of weed, but it's all anecdotal and unintentional. As far as I know, nobody is rigorously testing this hypothesis, but I think it's plausible. Get high -> do yoga -> relax face -> improved eyesight.
Future research
- Beef liver. Liver contains real, readily available vitamin A, unlike the beta carotene you get from plant sources. In fact, people can die from eating bear livers due to vitamin A poisoning. Many old school powerlifters and bodybuilders swear by a diet with lots of liver. I had previously also noticed an improvment in strength-endurance and recovery when I was on a high liver diet.
- A pair of -1.50 diopter prescription glasses is coming in the mail. While I can type this article out without glasses, the letters still look fairly blurry. It probably wouldn't be good for my eyes if I strain them while doing more mentally intensive work like coding. Vision is highly related to mental stress, and debugging code that looks blurry probably induces more mental stress than any other activity in the world. Hopefully I can adapt to the weaker prescription glasses within in the next few months, then wean off glasses eventually in 2 years.
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Thanks for reading!