The cause of nearsightedness is excessive accomodation of the eye muscles due to reading. The eyeballs adjust and elongate with time due to how much the lens muscle has to work to focus. Myopia results from a continuous level of accommodation, and if one prevents this continuous level of accommodation from occurring, very little myopia, if any, should occur. The real harm to the eyes is in the use of concave lenses. How do concave glasses damage vision? They necessitate prescribing progressively stronger concave lenses which ratchet up the myopia making it worse and worse until serious problems such as detatched retina develop. The importance of myopia prevention is recognized by some practitioners, but most ignore prevention. They reason that there is more money to be made in letting myopia develop and then trying to "cure" it by concave lenses. The entire medical business is built on such a foundation.

We have a right to expect government officials to do what is best for the public, not what is financially best for doctors and other vested interests. However, the officials of the National Eye Institute do not want to "rock the boat." They do not want to be criticized by their colleagues who are happy with the present situation. So we can expect them to do what is best for the health of the medical profession and to neglect the health of the public. The main source of funds for such research in this country comes from the taxpayer's pocket and is controlled by the National Eye Institute. The Institute's lack of interest in myopia prevention is thus a misuse of the hard-earned money of our people. The situation is all the more tragic since the mistreatment of myopes would quickly end if the National Eye Institute were to call for the federal government to pass the proper laws to render such behavior illegal.

As with cigarettes, a warning should accompany the sale of DISTANCE GLASSES saying the following: "WARNING: These glasses will permanently damage your vision by the prescription of stronger and stronger concave lenses. They will force your eyeballs to elongate progressively as your dependence on this "crutch" on your nose deepens through life. DISTANCE GLASSES will become a necessity in order to function with any semblance of visual efficiency. Many jobs and professions will be closed to you as a result. Methods of preventing myopia involve using READING GLASSES with convex lenses whenever doing close work. Numerous scientists engaged in myopia research have supporting evidence of these claims. Papers published in many professional journals likewise support these claims. Scientific studies prove conclusively that myopia can be prevented and is being prevented. Myopia is not inherited. Myopic parents tend to have myopic children only when a similar environment of the parent and child exists. In those situations where the visual environment is different, as when the parents are illiterate and the children are literate (e.g. Eskimos), there is no such relationship."

Ask yourself who has a vested interest in preventing myopia. The doctors? The big optical manufacturing companies? The schools? The government? The fact of the matter is that no one has a financial interest in preventing myopia except the unfortunate person who suffers from it. It is steadily deteriorating vision that makes necessary the frequent visits to the eye doctor and the frequent purchases of eyeglasses.

Optometrists prescribe DISTANCE GLASSES (concave lenses) for correcting blurred distance vision. Unfortunately DISTANCE GLASSES actually make nearsightedness (myopia) worse and irreversible because the eye permanently increases in length from excessive accommodation. This is because DISTANCE GLASSES force the focusing muscles to stay locked up. This in turn forces the eyes to further elongate, resulting in the need for stronger DISTANCE GLASSES as time goes by. The child is thus doomed to a lifetime of total reliance on DISTANCE GLASSES to see distant objects clearly. In patients not yet appreciably myopic, it is more an issue of increasing the hyperopia (farsightedness) than of decreasing the myopia (nearsightedness). In other words, READING GLASSES are the required prescription to correct myopia even though the child has no problem reading a book without glasses. Once that is done, myopia should diminish. As the lens muscle relaxes, the patient becomes slightly more farsighted and is less likely to move over the zero point into myopia. This is the type of preventive treatment that all children should receive. Even later in life. Children should never read with their negative DISTANCE GLASSES on.

If a child wears READING GLASSES for prolonged periods of study, the focusing muscles will relax and cannot lock up. READING GLASSES relax the eyes. There should be no elongation of the eye. Distant objects can be seen without the need for any glasses. It is important to note that the child will not be reliant on READING GLASSES. They are simply a protective tool that should be used during long periods of close work. It is important that the READING GLASSES be strong enough to completely eliminate all focusing effort (accommodation) when reading. For a child who is on the verge of becoming nearsighted, "plus three" (+3) READING GLASSES should usually be prescribed. Plus lenses (convex) will not harm the child's eyes. Only minus lenses (concave) ruin the eyes. The following chart should tell you which power of reading glasses to buy:

Whenever close work is done without the protection of READING GLASSES, it is important to: 1.) Hold the work as far away as possible 2.) Use as much light as possible in order to reduce the size of the pupil and consequently the accommodation and 3.) Look into the distance frequently to relax the accommodation.

As things now stand, nearsighted children are given minus lenses (DISTANCE GLASSES) and farsighted children are given plus lenses (READING GLASSES). Both practices are wrong and are worse than giving no lenses at all. Minus lenses accelerate the harmful elongation of the nearsighted eye, and plus lenses hinder the proper elongation of the farsighted eye. Minus lenses are stimulants to eyes that are in need of accomodative relaxation. Plus lenses are relaxants to eyes that are in need of accomodative stimulation.

But then someone will ask, "How will the myopic child see distant objects if we don't prescribe concave DISTANCE GLASSES?" One answer is better lighting and PIN-HOLE GLASSES. Minus glasses destroy myopic eyes. The emphasis should be on prescribing READING GLASSES whenever close work is done to stop the progression of myopia -- not prescribing DISTANCE GLASSES at all. Another answer is nutrition including mega-doses of vitamin C and lots of beta-carotene.

If myopia is fully corrected with minus lenses, this tends to lock the defect on the eye, so that the vision can only get worse. Similarly, if astigmatism is fully corrected with a cylindrical lense, it may tend to lock the astigmatic defect onto the eye and prevent its improvement. As a general rule, all corrective lenses tend to preserve the defect they are correcting.

How can two children both do a similar amount of reading and yet one develops myopia and the other doesn't? 1.) Diet 2.) Distance of book 3.) Amount of light 4.) How often the child looks up from reading to look into the distance 5.) Heredity or how large a cushion of farsightedness the child is born with and 6.) Whether the child uses READING GLASSES to shield his vision from further accommodation.

LASIK and Orthokeratology are actually used to produce an abnormally shaped cornea to compensate for the abnormally long eye which has been produced by an abnormal amount of close work. This is going about things in an abnormal way. The best of Bates' theories was his belief that eyeglasses can be harmful - that they are merely a crutch and tend to perpetuate the very refractive error that they are intended to correct. This was the basis of his recommendation to "throw away your glasses." When it comes to putting concave glasses on young myopes, he was entirely correct - such glasses are harmful. It was in his longing to find a better answer that Bates developed theories that were erroneous. Perhaps his chief error was his belief that accommodation is accomplished by the external muscles of the eyes, and not by the ciliary muscle. He believed that the external muscles caused the eyeball to lengthen or shorten to change its focus. It is now known beyond any doubt that it is the action of the ciliary muscle on the lens that causes the eye to focus. This change in the shape of the lens has been photographed and measured very accurately. The purpose of the external muscles is to turn the eyes. Eyes are becoming myopic because this is nature's sensible way to enable excessive close work to be done without requiring a continuous accommodative effort. The only way to prevent this is to abandon the close work, or, using preventive aids, to do it without accommodation.

The optometrist should tell every parent, "If I prescribe concave lenses, I'm going to ruin your child's vision and increase the risk of detached retina in later years. Is this what you want me to do?" Here are some other things that prevention-minded doctors can do: Take every opportunity to inform the public that myopia can be prevented. Go on TV and radio and talk to parent-teacher associations and other local groups. Use such words as "myopia prevention specialist" on letterheads, on business cards, and other suitable places. Criticize backward colleagues and convince them to change their ways. Make myopia prevention literature and The Myopia Myth by Donald S. Rehm available to patients. The doctor who does these things will soon earn the gratitude of his or her patients. We also need new laws which would prohibit any doctor from prescribing minus lenses for a beginning myope, except under special circumstances. The eye care professions will not police themselves and it is up to the people to protect their own health. Our health is too important to place the responsibility for its preservation solely in the hands of the medical establishment.

Children are born with a considerable amount of farsightedness which is intended to automatically diminish with time and finely adjust the eye's refraction as they learn to focus on the world around them. It diminishes because the constant focusing effort for all distances causes the eye to lengthen. Excessive close work causes the eye to continue lengthening through the point of normal vision and into myopia. When your child's refraction has diminished to +0.5 diopters, it is time to take action, because the ideal refractive status is between +0.5 and 0 diopters. A minus refraction, indicating myopia, is abnormal. To determine this refractive status, get an eye examination.

There is no ideal preventive treatment that applies to everyone. One child may read a lot in school but not at home. Another child might do just the opposite. So here is a plan that you can use as a starting point and modify according to your own situation. Reading glasses are the first choice in preventing myopia. They should be used as soon as the child has used up the infantile farsightedness and is moving into myopia. For such a child, this usually means +3 lenses. They should be used for all close work. Ideally, the book should be held far enough away so that the print is slightly blurred. Lower power "plus powers" (e.g. +2 or +1) are suitable for those who are already myopic.

While reading glasses can be purchased off-the-rack in stores for a low price, those are suitable for adult-size heads. The distance between the lens centers conforms to the usual distance between the pupils of adult eyes, around 64mm when looking into the distance and 60mm when reading. If such glasses are used by young children, who have a smaller interpupillary distance, the Prismatic Effect of the lenses causes increased convergence. This can cause problems such as double vision and should be avoided.

Progressive researchers have known for many decades that most tooth decay and most birth defects result from faulty living. One of the best books on this subject was "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration", written by Weston Price, a dentist. Price traveled to many parts of the world and noted that as primitive societies began to get the food products of the more advanced societies (sugar, white flour, canned goods, etc.), tooth decay, birth defects and other health probIems increased rapidly, where they had been nearly unknown previously. Included in these problems was a poorly developed dental arch with insufficient room for the teeth to come in. Books like this should be required in every dental and medical school, but they are not. The public is told nothing about how to prevent their miseries because there is more money to be made in trying to cure them.

Billions of dollars are also being spent on such degenerative eye problems as cataract and glaucoma, which are due in most cases to a faulty diet - primarily our refined, high fat diet. To really attack these problems at their source would disturb too many business interests, so we can expect to see our research money spent only on investigating little pieces of these problems, seeking that magical, ever-elusive "cure." Go to www.preventmyopia.org for more information.

Use PINHOLE GLASSES or a hand-held MAGNIFIER.

Disclaimer: The information in this article is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any eye problems. Consult with a health care professional before taking any action to treat or cure any eye problem. The author disclaims responsibility for any adverse effects resulting directly or indirectly from the material presented, suggested procedures, undetected errors, or reader misunderstanding. It is your responsibility, as the reader, to research how to see better and how to correct sight and eye problems prior to deciding on which actions to take.