Life Experiment #32 – No Contacts Or Glasses For A Month
The Navy has offered to give me free Lasik surgery at the end of this year. While restoring my vision has always been a dream of my, I’m not totally sold on surgery as the answer. I’ve heard from friends that Lasik can impair your night vision. It’s also expensive making it unable to most people. To me, Lasik is like treating obesity with liposuction. The surgery may help you lose weight, but you’re not addressing the cause. The cause of poor vision is how you use your eyes.
I’ve worn glasses since I was about 12 and contacts since age 15. This will be the longest time I’ve ever gone without either in the entire 16 years I’ve been dependent on corrective lenses. A lot of people say that poor vision is genetic. That if you’re parents have it, then you’re destined to have it. I’ve come to realize that vision is something that can be changed naturally. We can all learn to see with our own eyes if we choose to. All it takes is making that decision, so for the next 30 days, I’ll be squinting, straining and stretching my eyeballs as I attempt 30 days of not wearing corrective lenses.
The Cause of Poor Vision
Most poor vision is caused by extensive near point stress. Most of our time is spent sitting and staring at text and video on monitors, televisions and books. Almost all of the information we gather about our world comes to us in by reading and viewing data a few feet from our face. This causes our eyes to adapt at view close for extended periods of time and eventually deteriorate our ability to see far.
In a study of Eskmo tribes in Alaska, if was almost no cases of vision problems among the older generations. But studies of the children of those tribes who move to more populated areas and attended formal education show an increase in vision problems proving that the cause of this disease is not genetic, but environmental. Most children develop vision problems shortly after attending school and learning how to read.
Seeing With Your Own Eyes
The first time you take try to see without contacts or glasses can be an entirely new experience. I’ve been doing it for the last week and it’s really made me realize much I depend on my vision to get through my day. At the same time, it’s really rewarding to be able to use my own eyes to see the world. It reminds me of that one scene in Return of The Jedi when Darth Vader takes off his helmet and tells Luke that he wants to see his son with his own eyes.
Not wearing your contacts is like a person who is dependent on prescription medication who decides to stop taking it. At first it’s going to take some getting used to, but after a while you begin to recover and eventually learn live without it. For me, reducing the time I wear corrective lenses is the first step in regaining my natural vision.
Lessons Learned From My Last Trial
Back in 2009 I attempted to improve my vision naturally before going to boot camp. My main tactic was a series of exercises every morning. The exercises did help, but I ended up putting on my contacts several hours later and wearing the rest of the day. This time I going all out and only wearing contacts useless I absolutely need them for a specific task. Leaving them off will allow me more time to practice seeing without them. I plan on starting a few more trials of progressive eye exercises, hydrotherapy, massage and vitamin therapy to study the effects of improvement on my eyesight.
Facebook comments: