Blurred vision is referred to as myopia. 

Myopia is often called nearsightedness.  Blurred distance vision.  It is a condition which is caused by light not focusing directly on the retina, in the back of your eye, but rather before it reaches it.  By the time the light reaches the retina it has already scattered again – appearing out of focus.

Axial myopia accounts for 90% of myopia cases.

There are a few other variations, including refractive myopia (caused by error in the refractive elements of the eye), curvature myopia (excess curvature of one of the refractive surfaces), and index myopia (variation of the refractive index).

Most basic medical literature bases 95% of common myopia cases on axial length myopia.  Most of it ignores the very important pre-cursor inherent to this condition, as well as its cause.

Myopia is an epidemic, affecting 2.3 billion people.

Myopia is considered to be an epidemic. Wikipedia hosts a collection of interesting statistics, including such alarming facts that in some Asian countries myopia rates are as high as 90%, a staggering 400 million people in China are myopic, and worldwide as much as 2.3 billion people are affected

Despite this, most public education and summary-style medical information is highly limited.  The cause is commonly described as axial length growth of the eyeball.  Corrective lenses are prescribed.  Shockingly, there is no widespread effort to understand and contain this epidemic.

While there are a number of studies cataloged in government repositories such as clinicaltrials.gov, little of these findings reach the consumer.

90% of myopia cases are preventable.

Dissecting clinical research data shows that there is more to myopia than simply an axial elongation of the eyeball.  There is an all-important precursor, which sheds light on the cause, progression, and ultimately the opportunity for prevention and rehabilitation of the condition.  The data is available, but recognizing the message is unpopular:  it indites our lifestyle as cause, and requires commitment to reverse.

It is not a spontaneous event, the axial elongation.  It originates as something else – ciliary myopia.  In some cases referred to as ‘pseudo myopia’, since early on when your vision is blurry, nothing in your physiology has changed.  Your eyeball has not elongated.

Axial myopia always begins as ciliary myopia.  If the symptom was taken seriously at this stage, myopia could easily be reversed.

Myopia starts as temporary, reversible symptom.

Ciliary myopia is caused by a spasm of the eye’s focusing muscle – the ciliary muscle.

The eye is not designed for the degree of close-up focus to a single point, to the degree we require today.  We have substituted spending our days looking primarily at distant objects, to looking at a single, fixed object in front of us – books and computer screen.

Up-close focus causes high ciliary muscle strain.

In this position the flexible lens in front of your eye is at its roundest.  This allows focus for objects close to your eye.  Full contraction of this muscle is intended for short periods of times.  Instead, we now keep this muscle at its highest tension.  This muscle is designed to provide very fine motor control, and abusing it with sustained up close focus causes it to spasm.

This spasm is ciliary myopia.  If properly treated by reducing close up focus stress, the symptom would pass.  Normal vision would return.

Myopia is a lifestyle disease.  It can be prevented, it can be cured. 

Early myopia is ciliary myopia.

Distant images are blurred, as the focusing muscle refuses to properly relax after many hours of high tension strain.  At this stage, preventative measures can help reduce strain and return healthy vision. 

Ciliary myopia becomes axial myopia.

This is a critical stage in myopia development.  A temporary symptom is now becoming a physiological change as the eye begins to grow longer.  It is much more difficult (many claim that it is impossible) to reverse myopic growth.

Here is the all important explanation of axial growth:  A longer eyeball accomplishes the same focal plane that a tensioned ciliary muscle does:  it focuses close up images properly.  This is the key to understanding myopia.  You can tension your ciliary muscle, and up-close objects will be in focus.  Or your eyeball can grow longer, and accomplish the same close up focus.  Doing so, reduces ciliary strain – focus by default is closer.  But now distant objects are blurred permanently.

Glasses create an artifical focal plane.

Glasses allow you to ignore the strain symptom.  They create an artifical focal plane, changing where the light focuses in your eye – moving the focal plane backwards, compensating for axial growth.  What does that mean, the glasses compensating for what your eye did, to reduce strain?  Of course your eye will have to continue to grow longer.  It becomes a vicious cycle.

Eventually progressive myopia will find a balance, depending on individual physiology and levels of close-up strain.

Prevention and rehabilitation is not a popular subject.

It is far more predictable, straightforward, and profitable to prescribe a pair of glasses or contact lenses.  LASIK surgery is no different, in that it creates a focal plane change (which again will be compensated for by the eye).  It is a challenge to change lifestyle.  Instead of looking at computer screen for eight hours, then watching TV for another two or three hours, we need to consider incorporating distance vision into our day.

Most practitioners avoid the pitfalls of rehabilitation.  It is challenging and unprofitable.

Rehabilitation can reverse myopia symptoms.

Rehabilitation is the conscious choice to actively manage eye strain, the cause of myopia.  It is possible to reverse course through targeted strain reduction, positive stimulus, and prescription adjustments.

Myopia rehabilitation is a viable vision improvement choice.

We provide outlines of the various treatment options and underlying concepts explaining myopia rehabilitation.

It is a difficult subject as there are a range of therapies that provide less than promised results.  Some of these are due to outmoded concepts from a century ago, when most myopia was ciliary, not axial.  Some of them are simply not viable – especially online, the discourse tends to be negative. The medical establishment, invariably connected to the corporate profit motive, has limited resources and education to pursue this topic.  Prescriptions make money, rehabilitation does not.

Our goal is to provide you with research material, concepts, and logical premises to enable you to reach your own conclusions.  We also offer tools to allow you to try rehabilitation, and assess its effects and viability yourself.

Click here to learn about rehabilitation. 

Or, find out more about the clinic here, see our forum, and check out available programs.