Hey [s2Get user_field=”first_name” /]! Ready for the ‘lock in’?
Let me explain the concept …
Most physical improvement begins as a temporary condition. You can go on a diet, loose weight – but it will probably come back. A few weeks of running will improve your cardiovascular condition. Sit on the couch for a month, and all those gains are gone.
What can we do about this, especially considering that the same thing will happen to your eyesight improvements? Let’s consider a basic truth of human physiology: Your body will make fairly rapid adjustments to handle physical requirements. It will also just as quickly undo these adjustments if the related stimulus goes away.
We talk about how glasses contributed to your current myopia degree. As you continue to progress with vision improvement, you will likely experience some challenging times. Your vision will appear to just not want to improve. Your myopia is ‘locked in’ from the use of ever increasing prescription lenses. When you encounter these challenges, consider the significant upside:
Just as glasses made your myopia highly persistent, we use the same exact premise to make vision improvements equally persistent.
You are just beginning to get into the initial stage of real improvement work. You have a flow established of taking measurements, you understand strain, you regularly push focus while working up close. You take walks, you have a normalized prescription, you pull focus outdoors. You are in a cycle of improvements.
The further you get along though, the deeper we get into the myopia that happened longer ago, the more the challenge becomes evident of maintaining the pace.
In other words, more recent myopia, more recent prescription changes will be faster and easier to reverse. They have not been ‘locked in’ as long ago, and they have not been made persistent by additional later prescription increases. If you are currently at a -3D, and started at a -4.5D, the most recent prescription increase (before the program) was the easiest to undo. Equally, once you get to -1D, that last diopter will take the most effort to neutralize.
The persistence happened by ‘stacking’ prescriptions, over time. This is an important concept to fully understand:
You received a prescription increase when your vision had slightly deteriorated. Let’s say you had a real decrease of -0.5 diopters. You go to the eye doctor, you get the exam in a darkened room, he puts on the extra -0.5D, you see clearly. Then he puts on an extra quarter diopter, to -0.75D, Wow, you see even sharper, now! Then, -1D, does not really make things better, but you feel dizzy. So, you get a -0.75D prescription increase.
Do you see what is happening there?
You are overprescribed by the highest degree possible, that your eyes will tolerate. Of course the darkened room added to the initial measurement, you were probably really just -0.25D, if they would have measured in a realistic environment.
The overprescription locks in in your -0.25D vision deterioration, and now adds to the regression of your eyesight by the -0.5D overprescription. If you haven’t read the blog post I linked at the beginning of this installment, take a look at it after you finished reading this. It discusses the eye strain, and lenses not allowing for improvements in your eyesight to take place. Like a vise being progressively pulled tighter, this continually increases your myopia.
Now as we continue to decrease, we must put in the same effort. Unfortunately overprescription was fun, because you got an extra boost in vision. With rehab we need to continue going in the opposite direction, underprescribing exactly enough to where you can almost see clearly. Instead of ‘over sharp’, we now have to work with ‘barely sharp’.
And of course, where before eye strain caused the base deterioration, we now need to keep working on stimulus to get the base improvements. As we continue to get those (centimeter improvements), we need to remain vigilant to use normalized and differential prescription to lock in each range of centimeter improvement.
The short version of this whole explanation?
Action Items
It’s time to go check on your differential prescription. Are you still comfortably reaching edge of focus? Is it time to add a bit to it? Depending on the numbers in your log, we may consider taking down the astigmatism portion of your prescription, and focus on equalization.
Once you have reached a new centimeter distance reliably, it’s time to lock in the improvement by lowering the prescription.
Since I tend to loose track of things occasionally, I task you to take initiative. If you feel ready to talk about equalization (right eye vs. left eye vision strength), or have more than -1D astigmatism, get in touch in the forum.
And do check your distance, and order a new differential prescription if it is that time.
Next session, we’ll look at focal point tricks, and how to reset by prescription.
Cheers,
-Jake
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