After studying this forum and others (PVS, Fraunfeld), I am excited to chronicle my rehabilitation and I have made progress already since Jan. 7, 2014. This should be an interesting process, given that I have significant myopia and astigmatism.
My history is that I started wearing glasses when I was about 11 years old and I am now 55. As an engineer, I have done a lot of close eye work many hours a day over decades. The results are sizeable myopia and astigmatism.
I started the push focusing using reading glasses in front of my full correction glasses. After a couple weeks, I ordered my first zennioptical set of glasses. For distance, I am undercorrecting by .50 diopter(sph), and for reading 1.50 diopter undercorrection.
For the cylinder component, I undercorrected only by .50 diopter(to keep from being too blurry when focus pushing training). I am also sporatically doing PVS exercises.
Per Otis’s recommendations in this forum, I also purchased various test lenses to help do self optical measurements. I have just ordered my second set of Zennioptical glasses with similar undercorrections as first set, but only .25 cylindrical further change.
Please feel free to post comments/suggestions to help with this myopia and astigmatism combination. I am hoping to get to 20/40 status by the end of this year, based on some of the testimonials in this forum. Thanks to Todd and other contributors here for sharing this amazing knowledge to change one's eyesight contrary to " conventional" protocol.
As an engineer, I studied an optometrist who call the minus, POISON for children. I check this - and found he was correct as engineering and science. For this reason I explained this problem to my sister's children, who wore the plus and kept their distant vision (self-checked Snellen) through the school years. I truly know how difficult, "just prevention" is, and try to restrict my statements to helping the highly motivated "commit" to the plus, while they can still read the 20/40 to 20/50 line.
But - I encourage you to work on this process of discovery. If you have children, you will be better prepared to help them to avoid getting into this mess.
b. Left, -2.75 diopters (approximately), and Right: -2.0 diopters.
The advantage to you is this: 1) We always see with the better eye. 2) You MIGHT be able to read the 20/60 line with both eyes open (and bright light on the Snellen) I strongly urge you to check this yourself - as an objective engineer.
Decide on a "success standard" that is reasonable, and I mean reading the 20/40 line. If you are successful, you MIGHT be able to do that in about one year.
I know I have a 'strong will" on this issue - but I do accept that "recovery" to 20/40 is a very difficult thing to accomplish.
Thank you for your quick input. I have tried looking at a chart with no glasses, and I can get letter recognition with some squinting at 20/80 or 20/100. This is the problem with using equivalent spherical number with alot of astigmatism. The astigmatism creates a general blur, which I thinks requires me to "wean" myself slowly off of the cylinder correction.
As far as children, I have three kids, all adults now. My oldest has had perfect vision his whole life, but is now beginning to get some eye strain (slight blur) at the end of a day after staring at computer screens. He was thinking he was going to have to start with glasses. But thanks to people like you and others in this forum, I was able to share this "new" knowledge about plus lens protection with him. He has trying out reading glasses when computer viewing and he says it has stopped the clarity degradation at the end of day. He buys into this technique and I feel now this vision has been protected for the rest of his life (I wish I had this info when I was his age). My youngest (19 yrs old) does have glasses (-1.50 D, and -.50 D). I am working on her to start with plus lenses. My third kid does not wear glasses (yet) but has had a unique optical history. When he was very young he had strabismus (crossed eyes). He went through two surgeries where they reattached muscles around eyes so that would point in the same direction. The end result of this is that he cannot see in 3D. His brain does not fuse two images. Despite this, this brain has adapted to this and it uses both eyes somehow back and forth when it comes to spatial perception like hand/eye coordination. I do not know if there is any therapy that can be done to re-teach his brain to join the two images. Before finding this forum, I did not have any hope or expectation that this would be possible. Now that my eyes have been "opened" up regarding Myopia, maybe there is way to help post-surgery strabismus.
Regarding the plus astigmatism, as you know this sign convention is arbritrary. I like the plus cyl. value as it shows the spherical value as its worst or maximum value. I have kept most of my old glasses, but did not have all the prescriptions. So I came up with a homemade measurement setup that uses sunlight and aperatures(circular holes cut into paper) to project an oval shaped image. The long direction of the oval is the maximum spherical divergence plane represented by the spherical correction component (with plus astigmatism notation).
Most of my work came from my question, "did I do (myopia) to myself" (meaning my "habits") did it to me. The medical mind, wishing to "not offend me", claimed that my "habits" did not create negative status, for my totally normal eyes. I consider this now a proven lie.
The ophthalmologists love to do "plus astigmatism". The optometrists love to do "minus astigmatism". They are not equivalent. If you said -4 with -2 diopters astigmatism, your sphere equivalent would have been -5 diopters. That is a big difference.
Yes, for distant visual acuity, you probably do need some astigmatism at this time. But our "near vision" simply does not have to be that sharp. Since I calculate your "refraction" at -2 diopters, that means you can probably work at 20 inches with no lens on your face. (You can experiment with that concept.) But if you can, that would be a great help and a step forward. (You obviously will need your self-selected minus (probably about -2.75 for distant objects.
I realized when I talked to the honest OD who called the minus, (poison) that he was telling the truth about all natural eyes. I realized that my vision had been totally screwed up with that minus (always increased). But I simply did not "blame" him, or anyone.
That means that plus-prevention must be self-taught. That means teaching yourself how to "prescribe for yourself". This is part of your "learning process". Your adult children might learn from your "engineering approach" even if you are not successful.
I consider this to be very difficult - but not totally impossible. By making this sacrifice to work on plus prevention, you might be helping them, more than you help your self.
I think that a truly honest preventive study (at a four year college) could succeed, if each person (at 20/40) had the resolve to do what you are doing. But I always get "blocked" from publication - by the ODs who "assume they know everything". I regret the "friction" this causes me.
I wanted to clarify my comments on the plus or minus cylinder notation. What I mean't is that the prescription can be converted plus or minus, but of course the spherical also must change. thus, a -4 sph +2 cyl converts to -2 sph -2 cyl, this is the equivalent opposite sign I was talking about.
Regarding looking at print without glasses, at 20" the astigmatic blur makes the reading uncomfortable (but still barely legible). This blurriness seems to disable the pushing print focus mechanism for me. I best I can get without glasses is finding a focal plane where the print is least blurry. This is why, until I can get my cyl. below 1.0 D, I think I need to have enough astigmatism correction to have enough image clarity.
Regarding lack of 3D vision, you said that you had had this and overcame this. Did you also have the surgery? And what therapy methods did you use? Would you mind going into more detail on this and maybe spin it into a new thread, as I think there may be many who would have interest in this for themselves or for someone they know? Until today, I never would have guessed there would be hope for a young adult who does not have stereoscopic vision.
What I mean't is that the prescription can be converted plus or minus, but of course the spherical also must change. thus, a -4 sph +2 cyl converts to -2 sph -2 cyl, this is the equivalent opposite sign I was talking about.
so your spherical isn't so bad!
BTW, my last eye exam also gave me that value and I can confirm your near vision problems.
The weird thing, I got that astigmatic increase after my sph. values halfed but my astigmatism doubled.
While reading before (-0.5 cyl) never was a problem now my near vision is spoiled by that astigmatism.
But there is a trick to overcome. Simply put your finger tip in the corner of your lid and pull softly.
That way I can "tune" to compensate most of my astigmatism making all the page clear.
But I have no idea if it's healthy when doing so on the long run.
Yes, the right eye as you are noting is not too bad, but the left is -4.0 sph +2.25 cyl.
Its seems odd for your astigmatism level to double. However, if you were starting from .50D cyl, this is small and doubling a small number is still small(maybe measurement error?). From reviewing the forum and other forums, the pattern is that as the spherical gets corrected, the astigmatism tends to reduce also. You might want to check the PVS info (David De Angelis). He has some eye exercises (stretching, rotations) which you can find shown on some Youtube videos and his book. These exercises according to testimonials seem to help the astigmatism. This seems logical to me when you think of the eyeball as a flexible structure with muscles attached. If these muscles are imbalanced, the non-equal tensions probably is distorting the sphericity of the eye/cornea, creating the astigmatism. I spent many years staring at drawings and computers. My side to side eye movement range was limited and there was not alot of looking upward. I believe these conditions and ever-increasing myopia led to my large astigmatism.
I position this at my blur point with my reading prescription glasses. If all the radial lines look similar(one eye at a time) in darkness/sharpness, then the cylinder correction is about right. I have some cylinder test lenses (.25 and .75 D) that I can put in front of one eye at a time, and from that I can get a feel for how the wheel spokes vary in darkness. As my eyes improve, I notice the darkness of the radial lines becoming more equal. Also, if you look at the wheel without glasses (one eye at a time), you can also see the angle of the cylinder axis, since the lines have 15 deg spacings.
Conventional wisdom among eye health professionals is that 3D vision cannot be achieved if you don't have it by age ten.
Susan Barry described her ability to achieve 3D vision at age 48 in her book Fixing my Gaze. She worked with a behavioral optometrist to achieve this through vision therapy. Although optometrists in general get a bad rap on this board, behavioral optometrists try to solve problems with a reasonable end date instead of making money from keeping people in expensive glasses.
Subject: If you have 20/20 with a spherical lens - to you need a -1.5 diopters astigmatic prescription?
From all that I have seen, when you start "going negative" (from long term close work), some eyes launch into astigmatism. Other eyes simply develop spherical -2 diopters or so.
But the basic reason is the same: 1) Excessive over-prescriptions, that only make matters worse. 2) A refusal to discuss the preventive choice, when at 20/40, 3) A denial that prevention is possible.
As always I sense that you have a determination to succeed. We all agree that the persistence is the most difficult part of true-prevention.
First, thank you for your post about your experience with Strabismus, and the fact that you were able to teach your brain/eyes to see stereoscopically. I know this was a difficult experience, as I have seen it from the parental point of view as far as the operations etc. on a small child. Your experience and those of people like Susan Barry (Fixing my Gaze book) who was able to achieve stereopsis after 40 years, gives me some hope that my adult son may have a chance to achieve this with the proper training.
Regarding my astigmatism, as I look back over decades, the astigmatism component was gradually added(not a sudden appearance). I have many of my old glasses. I found some with only a little cylinder component. With these I could not find a focal plane that was clear, which I think is needed to perform the pushing focus training. This is why I am going to be reducing the cylinder part incrementally, each time that I change my glasses as spherical improvement happens. I started out with 2.75 cyl. on Left, and 1.75 cyl on right. I should receive my next set of glasses next week, which have 2.0 cyl Left and 1.0 cyl Right. On the Fraunfeld site, I found a recommendation not to reduce the astigmatic part of prescription until some progress is made on spherical correction. Once I get below 1.0 D cyl on an eye, I may then eliminate it for that eye.
I still trying to figure this all out, so I am trying to glean the collective wisdom here and other sources (PVS, Alex) and apply to a plan. So far, things are moving in the right direction.
Thanks for your post and all the links. I have been checking them out and getting up to speed on some the training methodology for Binocular vision therapy. Hopefully I get find a clinic in the area to recommend to my son that has the expertise. I know that this may be a long shot, but worth pursuing. In the case of Susan Barry, it is interesting that the therapy was to improve her 2D vision problems, not necessarily to achieve Stereopsis.
o. You might want to check the PVS info (David De Angelis). He has some eye exercises (stretching, rotations) which you can find shown on some Youtube videos and his book. These exercises according to testimonials seem to help the astigmatism. This seems logical to me when you think of the eyeball as a flexible structure with muscles attached. If these muscles are imbalanced, the non-equal tensions probably is distorting the sphericity of the eye/cornea, creating the astigmatism. I spent many years staring at drawings and computers. My side to side eye movement range was limited and there was not alot of looking upward. I believe these conditions and ever-increasing myopia led to my large astigmatism.
thx for the info. I will check the PVS Forum.
Concerning a measurement error I don't think so.
I always felt uncomfortable when doing prolonged nearwork with a minus prescription. So I prefered reading without those crutches and it never was a problem before like now.
Interestingly my keratomity test resulted in the corneal part of my astigmatism being negligible.
But doing the trick everything gets cristal clear.
I thought it was time to update my progress since it has been about 6 weeks since last update. I received my second set of Zennioptical glasses (distance & reading) approx. mid April, and I am now seeing 20/20 with them as of mid May.
This is 1.25 diopter spherical improvement and .75 cylinder improvement. I think I need to order 3rd set of glasses in a week or two( .50 sph. distance under-correction, 1.75 sph. reading under-correction). Folks, this technique works, but it does take persistence and perseverance.