The Myopia Myth E-Book

Donald S. Rehm

• Herausgeber: David De Angelis
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

The Truth about Nearsightedness And How to Prevent myopia with excercis and good health. 

Das E-Book wird angeboten von und wurde mit folgenden Begriffen kategorisiert:

Leseprobe

THE MYOPIA MYTH

The Truth about NearsightednessAnd How to Prevent It

By: Donald S. Rehm

Published by:

International Myopia Prevention Assn.

Ligonier, PA 15658

Copyright 1981, 2001, Donald S. Rehm

Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 83-80453

ISBN 0-9608476-0-X

eBook edition by David De Angelis 2015

Selling this book, modifying it, or uploading it to the Internetare violations of copyright law and are considered illegal activities.

You will find more information at www.myopia.org.

All of the products offered for sale by IMPA will also be found on this website

ebook by ePubMATIC.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

POETIC WISDOM

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1 WHAT IS MYOPIA?

Chapter 2 HOW MYOPIA DEVELOPS

Chapter 3 WHY THE USUAL TREATMENT FOR MYOPIA IS HARMFUL

Chapter 4 REFRACTIVE ERROR AND LENSES

Chapter 5 A SHORT HISTORY OF MYOPIA RESEARCH

Chapter 6 THE TRUTH ABOUT MYOPIA AND HEREDITY

Chapter 7 HOW TO PREVENT MYOPIA

Chapter 8 THE MYOPTER: RATIONALE

Chapter 9 THE MYOPTER: DEVELOPMENT

Chapter 10 THE MYOPTER: APPLICATION

Chapter 11 MYOPTER CASE HISTORIES AND MYOPIA REVERSAL

Chapter 12 THOSE MIRACULOUS PINHOLE GLASSES

Chapter 13 CONTACT LENSES AND ORTHOKERATOLOCY

Chapter 14 ARE EYE “EXERCISES” OF ANY VALUE?

Chapter 15 EYE DOCTORS AND HOW TO DEAL WITH THEM

Chapter 16 HOW THEY HIDE THE TRUTH FROM THE PUBLIC

Chapter 17 THE FOUNDING OF THE INTERNATIONAL MYOPIA PREVENTION ASSOCIATION

Chapter 18 HOW CAN WE END THIS TRAGEDY?

Chapter 19 SAVE YOUR CHILD FROM A LIFETIME OF CRUTCHES

Appendix 1 PUBLISHED MYOPTER PAPER

Appendix 2 REFERENCES

Appendix 3 GLOSSARY

Appendix 4 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

POETIC WISDOM

The Ambulance Down In The Valley

Author: Unknown

“Was a dangerous cliff, as they freely confessed,

Though to walk near its crest was so pleasant;

But over its terrible edge there had slipped

A duke, and full many a peasant.

The people said something would have to be done,

But their projects did not at all tally.

Some said, “Put a fence ’round the edge of the cliff,”

Some, “An ambulance down in the valley.”

The lament of the crowd was profound and was loud,

As their hearts overflowed with their pity;

But the cry for the ambulance carried the day

As it spread through the neighboring city.

A collection was made, to accumulate aid,

And the dwellers in highway and alley

Gave dollars or cents - not to furnish a fence -

But an ambulance down in the valley.

“For the cliff is all right if you’re careful,” they said;

“And if folks ever slip and are dropping,

It isn’t the slipping that hurts them so much

As the shock down below - when they’re stopping.”

So for years (we have heard), as these mishaps occurred,

Quick forth would the rescuers sally,

To pick up the victims who fell from the cliff,

With the ambulance down in the valley.

Said one, to his peers, “It’s a marvel to me

That you’d give so much greater attention

To repairing results than to curing the cause;

You had much better aim at prevention.

For the mischief, of course, should be stopped at its source,

Come, neighbors and friends, let us rally.

It is far better sense to rely on a fence

Than an ambulance down in the valley.”

“He is wrong in his head,” the majority said;

“He would end all our earnest endeavor.

He’s a man who would shirk his responsible work,

But we will support it forever.

Aren’t we picking up all, just as fast as they fall,

And giving them care liberally?

A superfluous fence is of no consequence,

If the ambulance works in the valley.”

The story looks queer as we’ve written it here,

But things oft occur that are stranger;

More humane, we assert, than to succor the hurt

Is the plan of removing the danger.

The best possible course is to safeguard the source;

Attend to things rationally.

Yes, build up the fence and let us dispense

With the ambulance down in the valley.

PREFACE

One of the most persistent and harmful myths passed on from generation to generation by those who make their living caring for our health pertains to myopia. This myth declares that myopia or nearsightedness is inherited from one’s parents, and that there is nothing to be done about it but to wear glasses or submit to corneal surgery. We are told by the optometrists and ophthalmologists to whom we go for help with our vision problems, as well as by state and federal public health services, to expect that the myopia will get steadily worse, requiring stronger lenses, until we reach adulthood when the myopia will stabilize.

The fact is that myopia is not inherited. It develops because of the unnatural way we use our eyes, and in nearly every case it can be prevented. This acquired myopia is caused by the excessive amount of reading and other close work that our modern society demands.

The myopia myth has its roots in and is kept alive by the greed, ignorance, callousness, and apathy that prevail in the eye care business. This book will present factual information about the real cause of myopia - information that until now has been kept from those who suffer from its handicap. It is important to educate the public about these prevention methods, for when the public demands better treatment for myopia the vision specialists will have to respond if they want to stay in business.

It is estimated that approximately one-third of the United States population suffers from myopia and needs glasses for clear distance vision. It is significant that in the fifth or sixth grades, only about five percent of the children are myopic, but that the percentage increases steadily through the school years until at the graduate level over fifty percent are myopic. Moreover, fully two-thirds of the graduate honor students are myopic. How can this possibly be considered normal?

Is it not strange that more parents do not ask for a logical reason why their children, normal in every other way, should suddenly suffer from failing vision at such an early age? Unfortunately, they have come to accept the abnormal as normal. Yet we do not find young children in such numbers suffering from deterioration of their senses of hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Why just vision? The obvious reason is that our vision is being used in a manner drastically different from the use for which nature has prepared it.

Compare this high incidence of myopia with illiterate, primitive societies where almost no one is nearsighted. It is not inaccurate to speak of the situation as an epidemic of myopia, and it will continue to increase until the proper action is taken. It used to be common to see myopia develop around age nine, but it is now becoming common in youngsters five or six years old, because children are learning to read at an earlier age. Many children, while still under ten years of age, have myopia that has progressed to the point where they would be classified as legally blind if they did not have eyeglasses to correct their vision.

Although research on methods of preventing myopia has been ignored by the organizations that should be doing it, considerable progress in this field has been made in recent years by independent researchers, so that the cause of myopia and ways to prevent it are now known.

It is a sad fact that the treatment received by most myopic children from their doctors is the exact opposite of what they should be receiving. The glasses and the advice they are given actually make their vision get worse, not better. In addition to the millions of people who are already myopic, outmoded treatment methods are creating hundreds of thousands of new myopias every year. It is a tragedy of gigantic proportions and it is taking place in all of the literate societies of the world. It is truly The Biggest Consumer Fraud Of All Time!

This book is written especially for the parents of young children. Those parents who want to prevent myopia in their children (or to keep myopia that has already developed from getting worse) must take the initiative in learning about the problem and taking steps to prevent it. Until now, no one has given the public the facts about the development of myopia - not the eye care professions, not the schools, not the government, and not the various organizations active in the vision field. It is necessary to strip away the facade of the corrupt eye care business and to lay bare what until now has been kept carefully hidden.

Since many readers will want a complete understanding of myopia, it has been necessary to include in this book a certain amount of technical material and diagrams. However, an effort has been made to present it in as simple and clear a manner as possible and to keep the book to a reasonable length. This detail is necessary if you are to understand the myopia problem and not be at the mercy of your eye doctor, whose grasp of myopia may be fifty years behind the times.

When disseminating information about health topics, it is customary to include a disclaimer such as “This information is for educational purposes only. It is not intended as a replacement for consultation, diagnosis or treatment by a duly licensed practitioner.”

You will find no such statement here. Instead, the following advice is offered:

Your doctor cannot be trusted to tell you the truth. The amount of pain, injury and death inflicted by doctors on their paying customers is almost beyond comprehension. The information you get is more likely to be erroneous than correct. Your doctor’s main interest is usually maximum income, not your health. Educate yourself by reading everything you can find about your health problem and don’t overlook books written by people outside the medical establishment. In fact, those are precisely the books you should start with. You are more likely to find the truth there. Look for material that deals with cause and prevention, rather than “cure.” To doctors, the word “prevention” means “early detection” which translates to “more money.” Doctors should be considered your adversaries. Always get several opinions before allowing anyone to “treat” you. Protect yourself from the monsters that are created by our present profit-driven “sickness-care” system.

Some of these doctors are pure evil. They know the truth but, like tobacco company executives, don’t care how many horrors they inflict on people, even their trusting customers. It serves their purpose to conspire with the National Eye Institute, public “education” organizations, the media and others to hide the truth and prevent any research that might discredit the inherited myopia theory. Others just have the common human failing of believing what pleases them most, and then finding reasons, however illogical, to support that belief. Amazingly, this rationalization is so effective that they even destroy the vision of their own children, fully convinced that they are doing the right thing. And still others are just stupid. If you do not educate yourself, you will be their victim.

If you find these words too harsh, you may change your mind after you have read this book. Yet what you read here is just the tip of the medical malpractice iceberg.

There fortunately exists a relatively small group of researchers, vision specialists and activists who over the years have been trying to get the facts and do what is right for the public. Many of these people have persevered in spite of attacks, criticism and even ridicule from the more backward and reactionary members of the eye care business.

It is to these progressive and courageous men and women that this book is dedicated.

INTRODUCTION

My first contact with myopia came at age 17 when I noticed that I was having trouble seeing clearly in the distance. Until then, I had had no problems with my vision. In fact, about one year earlier I had successfully taken the vision test to obtain a driver’s license and did not need to wear glasses to drive. It was fortunate that my vision did not begin to deteriorate at the usual age of six to ten, because then I would have been too young to raise questions, and would undoubtedly have been saddled with glasses.

As it was, I decided not to wear the glasses that were prescribed for me. I could not accept the explanation that my eyes were suddenly becoming too long because of something I inherited, and I had a vague feeling that glasses just might make my vision get worse. I knew of other people who wore glasses and who had to get stronger lenses every year or two. Some of them seemed to be nearly blind without their glasses.

If myopia was inherited, I reasoned, why would the vision continue to get worse even in adulthood? Were we to believe that the eyes continued to grow longer even after the rest of the body had stopped growing? Surely there was something fundamentally wrong in this explanation.

At that time I was studying electrical engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. In the university library, the only books I found that did not explain myopia as an inherited defect were several books on the Bates system. If these books were to be believed, myopia could be corrected by somehow relaxing the eyes. I even went so far as to visit a practitioner of the Bates theory in New York City, but came away realizing that I had just had an encounter with a con man who had taken my money and gotten rid of me quickly but who had not given me any advice of real value. I did, however, resolve never to wear glasses unless it became absolutely necessary.

The information available to me about myopia thus consisted of two opposing theories. The ordinary practitioners claimed that myopia was inherited and that glasses were the only answer. The Bates practitioners claimed that glasses could be discarded and the myopia eliminated with eye exercises. I was convinced that both these theories were completely wrong, and I became determined to find the correct answer. This led ultimately to the development of the Myopter* viewer, the founding of the International Myopia Prevention Association, the publication of this book, and the creation of the www.myopia.org Web site. Within the covers of this book you will find a shocking exposé as well as practical knowledge, self-help information and, perhaps, inspiration.

*Registered trademark of Apparatus For Treating Acquired Myopia And Similar Or Related Eye Conditions, patent serial number 3,883,225, granted on May 13, 1975.

Chapter 1

WHAT IS MYOPIA?

The word myopia comes from a Greek word meaning closed eyes, and apparently referred to the squinting that nearsighted people resort to in order to see more clearly. Simply stated, myopia is a refractive error in which images come to a focus in front of the retina rather than on the retina, resulting in the inability to see distant objects clearly. To have a full understanding of what this means, one must first learn about the various parts of the normal eye and how they function. Figure 1 shows the principal parts of the eye.

Fig. 1

Parts of the eye. The light rays entering this eye are shown parallel to each other, as they would be if coming from a distant object. As the rays of light pass through the cornea or front surface of the eye, they are refracted or bent so that they begin to converge or approach each other.

The iris is the part of the eye that gives it its color, and the opening in the iris through which the light rays pass is called the pupil. If the iris contracts (as in bright light), the pupil gets smaller and reduces the amount of light that can continue further into the eye.

The light rays next pass through the lens where they are again bent and made to converge even more. If the rays have been bent just right, they will all come together (or focus) on the retina. The small central spot on the retina where we get the sharpest vision is called the fovea. Only in the fovea are the receptor cells packed close enough and appropriately organized to make a high degree of visual acuity possible.

This diagram shows what happens in the normal eye when it is in its relaxed condition, looking into the distance. This normal eye, in which distant rays come to a focus on the retina (at E), is said to be EMMETROPIC (pronounced em-e-trah’-pic). If, under the same set of conditions, the parallel rays would not come to a focus unless they were projected behind the retina (at H), the eye is said to be farsighted or HYPEROPIC (pronounced hy-per-ah’-pic). The words HYPEROPIC and HYPERMETROPIC are both in use but mean the same thing. If, under the same set of conditions, the parallel rays come to a focus in front of the retina (at M), the eye is said to be nearsighted or MYOPIC (pronounced my-ah’-pic). It is easy to see from this why the myopic eye is considered to be too long in relation to the parts of the eye that bend the light - the cornea and the lens. The words “myopia”, “nearsightedness” and “shortsightedness” mean the same thing.

The anterior chamber contains a clear liquid called aqueous fluid or merely aqueous. The vitreous chamber contains a clear jelly-like substance called the vitreous or vitreous body.

The retina is only the innermost layer at the rear of the eye. The middle layer is called the choroid and the outermost layer is called the sclera. The choroid supplies the retina with blood and forms a dark lining inside the eye. These three layers are called the coats or tunics of the eye. The sclera becomes the cornea where it extends around the front of the eye.

The light that reaches the retina causes nerve impulses to be transmitted to the brain via the optic nerve.

The lens is made of flexible material and its shape can be changed by the ciliary muscle that surrounds it. This is what happens when the eye changes its focus. The ciliary muscle and lens are supported by the suspensory ligament.

Focusing.Figure 1 represents the normal eye in its relaxed condition looking at a distant object with the rays converging on the retina. We will next examine the changes which take place when that same eye looks at a near object.

Take a pencil in each hand and hold your arms straight out in front of you so that the pencils are the same distance from your eyes but are some distance apart. Now look at the top of the pencil in your right hand and focus on it so that it is seen clearly. The top of this pencil is now being projected onto the fovea of each eye. If you continue to focus your eyes on the right pencil, you will notice that the left pencil is not seen clearly. The reason for this is that the left-hand image is being projected onto a part of the retina that is much less sensitive than the fovea. It is not that the left pencil is out of focus. It is actually in focus, since it is the same distance from the eyes as the right pencil.

For the second part of this experiment, lay down the left pencil but continue to focus on the right pencil with only one eye. Close the other eye. You will notice that although the pencil is clear, objects closer or farther away than the pencil are not clear, even though they are directly in your line of sight and are consequently being projected toward the fovea of your eye. These objects are blurred because they are out of focus. Individual points on these objects are reaching the fovea not as individual points but as a whole circle of points, giving a blurred image.

If you open both eyes when doing this, you will notice that you can actually see two images of all objects closer or father away than the pencil. Since these objects are out of focus, they can easily be suppressed by the brain and the double images are not disturbing.

Now let us go on to another aspect of the focusing process. We can only see an object if it is giving off light. This can be light that is generated by the object itself, or it can be light that originates elsewhere but is reflected from the object. The sun is a good example of an object that can be seen by the light that it itself generates. The moon is a good example of an object that can be seen only by the light that it reflects (light which originally came from the sun).

Suppose we are looking at a small point on an object that is giving off light. As shown in figure 2, light rays are going off in all directions from this point source, but the only rays we see are the ones that pass through the lens.

Fig. 2

Naturally, light does not really travel in individual rays like this, but it is more comprehensible to represent light in this manner.

In figure 2, the point source is shown quite close to the eye, and as the rays enter the eye they are bent properly so that they come to a point focus on the retina at the fovea. For simplicity, the bending of the light rays at the cornea is not shown in these diagrams. Such a bundle of light rays is sometimes called a pencil of light. All other points on the viewed object are giving off pencils of light that enter the pupil at different angles and come to a focus on different parts of the retina. In this manner, we see the entire object at one time. Since the eyes are capable of making very rapid movements, they can look at many different points on the object in rapid succession, giving us the impression that we see all points on the object with equal clarity.

Notice that the rays that enter the eye in figure 2 are getting farther away from each other as they approach the eye. Such rays are called diverging rays. In fact, all of the light given off by the point source consists of diverging rays. As the rays pass through the cornea and lens of the eye, they are bent so that they begin to come together again. In other words, they have become converging rays and will come together again at one point.

Fig. 3

In figure 3, the point source has been moved farther away from the eye. The rays that can enter the lens are less diverging than the corresponding rays in figure 2. In other words, the angle formed by the rays AB and AC has become smaller. As the point A is moved farther and farther away from the eye, the angle between these rays becomes smaller and smaller until, for all practical purposes, the rays entering the eye can be considered parallel. Therefore, figure 4 is a representation of the parallel light rays coming from a distant object.

Fig. 4

Actually, since the pupil is so small, any object that is more than about two meters (six feet) from the eyes can be considered a distant object, at least from the standpoint of focusing the eyes. It is for this reason that distance vision can be tested by merely reading a chart on the opposite wall of the room. It is not necessary to look at something far in the distance.

The point to be remembered from the above is that the eye receives parallel rays from points on distant objects and diverging rays from points on near objects. This means that the eye has to adapt its focus to the distance of the viewed object.

Before explaining how the eye focuses, we can review something that is perhaps more familiar - the focusing of a camera.

If you have ever taken a picture, you know that the camera must be focused for whatever distance is being used. If the object is far away, the camera is focused for infinity; if the object is close, the camera must be focused for something less than infinity.

Fig. 5

Figure 5 shows a camera focused for infinity, with the solid lines indicating the parallel rays of light coming from a distant object and meeting on the film.

To take a picture of a near object at A, the distance between lens and film must be increased so that the rays of light can still meet on the film, as illustrated by the dotted lines.

Focusing of the human eye is done differently. The distance between the lens and retina is not changed. Instead, it is the lens itself that changes shape. The normal eye is at rest when looking into the distance and the light rays come to a focus as was shown in figure 4. Suppose that the eye now shifts its attention to a close object. If the eye were not able to change its focus, figure 6 shows what would occur. The cornea and lens of the eye do not bend the rays enough to focus them on the retina and the eye would see a blur. The eye solves this problem by a rapid focusing process that involves a change in the shape of the lens. Although the cornea bends the rays more than the lens, its shape remains fixed and it is not involved in this focusing process.

Fig. 6

The scientific term for this method of focusing on near objects is accommodation. By changing the shape of the lens an appropriate amount, the rays are made to bend more so that they again focus on the retina. Figure 7 shows the eye after it has accommodated for close vision.