Quote: (09-16-2012 11:10 PM)tarquin Wrote:
I asked my optometrist about the Bates method a while back. He said it was a pile of B.S. Of course, he has an interest in hating on it.
Wikipedia has an article on the subject. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bates_method
Yea, it is BS. There's a reason it got famous, though: It does work, for very low myopia cases. Which back in Bates days, a lot of people were. His little song and dance reduces ciliary strain, and low grade myopia is usually just that. Voila, you're cured.
Today most people aren't the -1.00 prescriptions. -4.00 is a closer average. That can't be fixed with Bates thing, but it sounds so good to that whole miracle cure crowd, so scam monkeys sell ebooks to the suckahs.
I can say for sure that being down to -2.25 from a -4.00 is a world of difference. It took the optometrists a long time to gradually build up my eyes to that much focal adjustment. I put those glasses on today, I get dizzy as hell.
Bottom line, it's all just axial growth of the eyeball (myopic growth) to compensate for focusing (ciliary) muscle strain. Induce hyperopic growth (shortening the axial length of the eye), myopia goes down. Then there's the peanut gallery screaming that hyperopic growth isn't possible ... but those guys don't know the power of the Interwebz ... look around the clinical trials site:
http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00950924
Nearsightedness isn't 'broken eyes'. It's just a physiological adaption to strain. Eliminate strain, change the stimulus, and plenty of clinical trials affirm that your eye shortens the same way it lengthened. Not so weird, really.