April 19, 2018 - Astigmatism
Hey folks, it’s Dr. Sam and I received the question “can you improve astigmatism?”
The answer is absolutely yes. So I want to talk a little bit about astigmatism and I want to give you three ways to improve your astigmatism.
What is Astigmatism?
So in terms of describing astigmatism, think about it this way – your eyeball is normally shaped like a golf ball. But when you have astigmatism your eye is irregularly shaped like an egg. Part of this is because the muscles that attach to the eyeball are not working uniformly -some of the muscles are working more than others – this creates an irregular shape which can caused blurred vision.
Now sometimes astigmatism will occur in the cornea of the eye (that’s the front of the eye). Other times it will occur on the lens of the eye, and sometimes it will occur in the overall eyeball.
Treating Astigmatism
The standard approach to treating astigmatism is to not treat it. Once you have it, you can never reverse it. But I’ve found this to not be true. You can unwind the eye muscles and reduce the severity of the astigmatism over time.
So let’s start with this principle – that any prescription that’s measured in the eyeball is also somehow in the movement pattern in your posture in the body. So what I mean by that is the way you move and the way you hold your body is reflected in what’s happening in your eye prescription.
So in terms of astigmatism, that means that your eyeball is twisted and your body is twisted. So what can you do to reduce astigmatism?
- One of the ways to reduce astigmatism – this would be my number one piece of advice – would be to go to your doctor and get a prescription made up where you have no astigmatism whatsoever and balance the lenses so that they’re the same prescription and each eye. Now I would call this a therapeutic prescription. So this is a prescription that has no astigmatism in it. It’s it’s the same correction in each eye. When you start wearing it, yes there is going to be some blur, but you work with it and you use it in situations where you have low demand or zero demand. So you could do it while you’re walking outside if you’re taking a walk going to the park, or taking a hike. So start using them in non-demanding and non-threatening situations. You’re going to find over time, maybe a few months, that the eyeball is going to begin to return to its spherical shape and you’re not going to need the astigmatism anymore. So number one I would get a pair of non astigmatism glasses.
- The second exercise I would do is I would go to the drugstore and I would get a pair of really strong magnification glasses. Now these are a plus 4 and it’s going to make things very blurry, but it’s also going to help relax your eyes and how I would do this exercise is I would do it in your bedroom. I wouldn’t have any corrective lenses on whatsoever and I would get a baseline on how your acuity looks out there. I would put them on for a minute and your attitude needs to be I want to embrace this blur. I want to surrender into this blur. If you do that for a minute and you take the magnification glasses off you’re going to notice right away – wow! Things are a lot clearer now! You might lose that clarity momentarily, so do it three times. Put it on again for a minute of “loving your blur”, then take it off again. Do this every day 3 times. You’re going to start to notice your eyesight gets clearer. This is a way for you to begin to unwind the tension and the stress in the eye muscles.
- Number three I would recommend doing my eye movement exercise called eye scan. In this exercise, you’re working on moving your eye while following your thumb and tracing different shapes in the air. Remember, with astigmatism, it’s really important that you unify your muscles and the eye movements in order to teach your eyes to work more equally in terms of the astigmatism correction. So again to repeat you’re going to do the non-astigmatism glasses in non-threatening, non-demanding situations. You’re going to use the magnification glasses while you’re sitting in your bedroom and you’re going to be embracing the blur and then the third exercise is you’re going to be doing your eye scan.
So do these techniques every day for about 2-3 months and you’re going to notice that you are going to gain the ability to wear non-astigmatism glasses more effectively, you will see things more clearly, and eventually, the need for astigmatism glasses will disappear.
So that’s my message for today. I want to thank you again for tuning in.
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