Yes, I can hear the skepticism and the see the rolling of the eyes from most people, while those who have already converted to dealing with health issues in a natural or holistic way may lean in with curiosity.
As most people with vision problem would know, it’s a pain to always rely and wear your glasses or contacts. I started wearing glasses when I was in grade 6 when I started to develop myopia (nearsightedness – meaning you can’t see things clearly in the distance), and over the years, my vision has deteriorated—fast. It reached a peak around when I was in my mid twenties. I thought it would get worse as I spend about 12 hours a day on the computer, and maybe even more screen time now with the use of the smartphone. But, surprisingly it didn’t.
I have heard that as you get older, some people’s myopia will get slightly better as you develop presbyopia (the normal loss of near focusing ability that occurs sometime after age 40 – yes, those people that hold their phones or books further and further away), but I’m not at that age yet…
I had looked into alternatives to glasses. I wear contacts for special occasions, but my eyes are extremely dry, so I can only handle it comfortably for 3-5 hours. After that, I can’t seem to wear them again for a week or so and my eyes sometimes can feel irritated or even more dry afterwards.
I’ve gone to take the complementary laser eye surgery consultation. Although they didn’t stop me from doing the procedure, the person conducting the tests did tell me I had ‘severe’ dry eyes, and did ‘inform’ me that laser eye surgery could dry them out even more. I’ve heard of horror stories – mostly online. I know a bunch of people around me who’s gotten it without much complications. I’ve heard minor things like, dryness, halos at night, or bubbles – but nothing serious. Still, knowing how my body tend to get infections and get into complications easily, I decided the risk was too high for me and I gave up.
I also looked into orthokeratology where you wear hard contact lenses while you sleep. Apparently, because your eyes are closed while wearing them, there would be less discomfort than wearing ones during the day.
My peak prescriptions were -5.50 OS (left) and -4.50 OD (right). After some years, it went down and now it’s sitting at -5.00 OS and -4.25 OD. That’s my starting point.
My journey begin at the start of 2018, starting off with just eye exercises. I don’t know from just that, but I feel like the glasses I’m wearing are over-prescribed. Here are some things I did:
Easy Exercises or Process
- Clock exercise: this is super easy to do, and might be good to do while on bathroom breaks at the office so people don’t think you’re crazy. Just move both of your eyes to the numbers on a face clock. After a few rounds, you can do diagonal moves, like from 1 o’clock to 7 o’clock. Surprisingly, when I started these exercise, I could feel some tightness in the eye muscles.
- Circle exercise: as the name implies, roll your eyes clockwise. After doing that a couple times, go the other direction, counter-clockwise.
- Do number 1 and 2 but with your eyes closed this time.
- Depending on your prescription, take off your glasses when reading or using your smartphone.
- Take breaks (if you’re lucky to have windows that have a view, you can easily look out, away from your computer.) The popular method is the 20-20-20 rule where for every 20 minutes spent using a screen, you should try to look at something that is 20 feet away from you for 20 seconds. It can be easy to forget so you can set up a timer on your phone to remind you.
- Palming
- Focusing and de-focusing
- Lower Prescription method. This would be a challenge if it weren’t for sites like Zenni, Firmoo, Glassesshop and many others that offer $10 glasses and many promotions. Thanks to these sites, spending hundreds of dollars on a pair of glasses are a thing of the past!
- If I were to do this process all over again, I would not have ordered the lenses in the way that I have. But because this was all new to me, and not a lot of information for this process is available, I was kind of going in blind. I could have saved more time and money by just ordering the same frames and every diopter I need in one order. That way, I can swap the lenses easily, and since my eyes gets better at different speeds, the ability to change each lens for each eye was important. Also, you can save a ton if you can cut out the shipping costs every time you order.
…
The Beginning
But I didn’t know, so this is how my journey went:
I ordered my first pair of glasses with a prescription of -4.25 OS and –3.50 OD. Right away, I could tell that my right eye with -3.50 was really good. I could see around my room clearly, and buildings far away. The weaker/lazier left eye with -4.25 was too much of a difference from -5.00 and it was quite blurry.
So I ordered 2 more pairs:
- #2 pair: -4.75 OS and -3.50 OD this became my ‘driving’ pair that I could see distance very clearly – something important while driving!
- #3 pair: -4.00 OS and -3.00 OD which became my computer pair which is 1 or more diopter apart from my original prescription. When I first got it, you can probably guess, it was really blurry.
After a month, I saw that I could see a little better in the distance with #3, or at least not without feeling dizzy. It wasn’t yet good enough for going outside, although I could see the sidewalk underneath me as I walked. Then, I started to find that my dominant OD eye was seeing better. This was great news, although somewhat of a ‘darn!’ episode as I had just ordered 3 more pairs (described below). With my OD eye getting better, it would have been better to adjust the OD eye so it would be even weaker in the next 3 pairs. Oh well, that will have to be done in the future pairs.
- #4 pair: -3.75 OS and -2.75 OD
- #5 pair: -3.50 OS and -2.50 OD
- #6 pair: -3.25 OS and -2.25 OD
This was super exciting as I had not had diopters so low for pair 4 since I got my glasses in elementary. Of course I wouldn’t be able to see properly with them, but it seemed like I was going towards a reachable goal.
Cost
I know what you’re thinking, this is going to cost a fortune ordering a ton of glasses with a different prescription each. So thank goodness I started my project by ordering glasses on Zenni Optical, where you can find glasses at ridiculously cheap prices. Days are gone when you have to fork out hundreds of dollars per pair! I was skeptical at first. Maybe the prescription won’t be right? Maybe the quality would be poor? But it turns out they’re good as any pair you’d find at an optical shop. For this project to work properly thoough, you have to decide on a frame that you will be using for the next several years. That’s because as your eyes adjust, you’ll need to replace the lenses. I find that my right eye improved much faster, so replacing only one lens was crucial. If both your eyes change at the same time, then buying the same frame may not be crucial. Even if you don’t go ahead with this project, and you just want a new pair (or several pairs), head to Zenni Optical, with hundreds of selections.
TIP
Focus first on your close-up glasses. From the different sources, I thought that I needed to reduce the close-up and distance prescription glasses at the same time. However, according to endmyopia.org, you need to work on reducing the close-up first, then the distance. I was worried that wearing the eventually stronger distance glasses would become counter-intuitive to the process, but when I really thought about it, it made sense that most of the eye-strain comes from wearing too strong of a prescription with close-up work. And since I sit in front of a computer all day, that is what I needed to concentrate on. Wearing a slightly stronger prescription for distance isn’t as straining as the close-up situation. However, once you find that there’s a huge gap between the prescription and what your eye’s prescriptions are, it’s time to order new distance glasses too.
After 7 Months
After trying out all sorts of variations, I had my eye exam done by a licensed optometrist after 7 months into the process. This was the prescription she gave me: -5.00 OS and -3.50 OD
I was super happy to see that the OD had no astigmatism anymore, and it has come down from -4.25 to -3.50 since the last exam an year before. While the OS didn’t have much change, the astigmatism was much better, so I knew the process was working. The optometrist tried to ‘accept’ the process I was trying out, but she told me firmly that in her 20 years of being a professional eye doctor, near-sightedness can not be reversed. It may reverse slightly with age, but you can not be glasses free. While she cautioned me, she didn’t not lecture me to stop what I was doing and did say that if my diopters become less then -3.00, to come back into the office and show her. Game on, I say!
Over-prescribed
I really noticed the effects of wearing a ‘normal’ prescribed glasses one day when I had a coding workshop to attend and it wasn’t ideal to wear my computer glasses since I had to look at the laptop screen then follow what the instructor was doing on the projector at the front of the class. Within hours, my left shoulder started to shoot with pain as I had suffered as long as I could remember until I started this process. This proved that the pain was caused by eye strain. I so wished that I had known about this method earlier to prevent all the pain.
Also, when I drove, I used an earlier glasses that was OS -4.75 and OD 3.75. Indeed, it made everything super crystal clear. I could see everything really sharp. But it was too sharp. Although being able to see everything was great, I could feel my eyes straining within 5 minutes. I knew those glasses needed to go into the retire pile.
After another 8 months
- My current driving lenses: -4.50 OS and -3.00 OD
- My everyday walking outside lenses: -4.25 OS and -2.75 OD
- My-In-the-Apartment lenses: -3.50 OS and -2.00 OD
- My computer lenses: -2.75 OS and -1.25 OD
It’s been great that my driving lenses have come down. I can’t believe that I’m at the last leg of the 3s. I can’t wait to be in the 2s and go back to my optometrist to prove her that it can be done.
It is a hassle to have all these glasses lying around, but since my eyes have gotten better in the last year, I’m motivated to deal with a bit of hassle. I’ve continued with the eye exercises as well.
Update October 2020 (22 months)
Progress has been slow but after going for another checkup, my prescription now is as follows: -3.75 OS and -2.50 OD. The doctor told me that to have perfect sight, it is more like -4.25 OS and 3.00 OD but allowed me to continue using the lower prescription. Also, my dry eyes have gotten better, and astigmatism issues seems to be gone now.
Unfortunately, I didn’t go back to the other optometrist to show her that my eyes have indeed improved. Next time, in two years, I will go back to her and show her my progress.
Update April 2021 (2 years and 4 months)
- My current driving lenses: -3.50 OS and -2.25 OD
- My everyday walking outside lenses: -3.25 OS and -1.75 OD
- My morning computer lenses: -1.75 OS and -0.25 OD
- My evening (after work) computer lenses: -2.00 OS and -0.50 OD
For the computer lenses, you see two prescriptions. That’s because I’ve just switched to the morning lenses, and my eyes haven’t really adjusted. I find that after 8 hours of computer work on weekdays, my eyes are tired, and I need to bump it up by a quarter in the evening. Still, this is exciting that my OD (right) may not need any prescription at the computer in maybe six months or by the end of the year!
Everyone’s eyes are different, so your rate may be slower or faster. I think my process would go much faster if I weren’t on a computer all day. Again, if you’re looking for cheap glasses, Zenni Optical has great selection. Good luck and let me know how your journey goes!
