Rebutting an Old Theory!

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend a free seminar at The Adelphi (near City Hall MRT station) conducted by Natural Vision Centre. This is the company that manufactures the black pinhole plastic spectacles which serves to restore vision naturally, without necessarily opting for surgery or other scientific methods.

This is referred to as the Bates Method, needless to say, discovered by a doctor by the surname Bates. *Grin*. And probably just like any average person, I went to this free presentation with doubts in my mind. Of coz, deep inside, everyone wishes to have a hope to cling onto...

The man who presented this short 1 hour talk was quite young, probably in his 30s and wearing spectacles. He was right when he said to all of us present, “I’m sure all of you must be dying to ask me why I am wearing spectacles, right?” He had definitely hit the jackpot. But what I heard next, I never expected it to make so much sense… yet believe it or not, it’s really up to you.

The speaker shared that in the early 19th Century, Dr Bates began to research extensively into the cause of falling eyesight in human beings. Like most of us, he too suffered high myopia and he grew frustrated with his spectacles as they don’t seem to improve his vision one bit.

Discovery 1 – Wearing Spectacles Don’t Improve Our Eyesight

Like some of us, Dr Bates also started wearing spectacles at a young age. In fact, nowadays the age where kids start to wear spectacles is getting younger and younger! One lady who attended the talk shared openly that her daughter is only 2 years old and the school optician wrote a letter to her, advising that her daughter needs to wear spectacles! Just 2 years old! It’s very shocking!

And just like Dr Bates, many of us have been wearing spectacles ever since then, especially for those of us who have very high myopia, maybe even more than 1,000 degrees. Our spectacles have become like a necessity that we cannot live without. The moment we wake up, we quickly put on our spectacles.

Yet, after wearing spectacles for years and years, and even after a few decades, how many of us actually finally stop having to wear our spectacles? None! Or not that I know of! Not that the speaker knows of! Even if we chose to take the side of extremity, the vast huge majority of us never regain our natural eyesight by continuing to wear spectacles.

Worse still, I believe many of us can also testify that even while wearing spectacles, our eyesight can still increase! And for some of us, our myopia continues to increase and increase! Oh no! How?

Thus, it is clear that wearing spectacles does not improve eyesight and neither does it necessarily control our myopia. It is in fact, not reliable! Most of us can affirm this. I don’t even need to ask. Furthermore, there is another discovery…

Discovery 2 – Wearing Spectacles Is Too Straining on the Eyes

Surprised? But it is true! A person fitted with spectacles that enable him to see with 6/6 perfect vision, should be able to see something clearly from a distance away. His eye is at ease because it does not need to strain to see clearly at that distance. But what happens when he looks down to read a book?

According to Dr Bates’ research discovery, he states that to be able to see clearly AND comfortably over a regular viewing distance, a person would need to have 20 different spectacles with 20 different myopic degree levels. Why?

This is because the same myopic corrective power of his spectacle lens will be too strong for his eyes when viewing things at close range, e.g. reading a book!

Don’t believe, you can take this test – even if you are myopic (unless it’s extremely high), you can still read the words on a book in front of you, maybe e.g. 30 cm away from your eyes. You don’t need your spectacles to see the words. When you move your eyes to view something further, then even further, slowly your vision blurs. Why? This means that at different range of distance, your eye requires a certain amount of corrective power to see things clearly. And with varying corrective power for varying distances, you will be able to see clearly at each reasonable distance.

But what happens if you read the same book, 30 cm away from your eyes, with your full corrective power that allows your eye to see an object 20 m away? Now, isn’t that too strong for that short viewing distance? We can’t see the light that enters our eyes, but this test makes sense, doesn’t it? Why do you think so many children wear spectacles after going through school?

Discovery 3 – Myopic Is Not Because of Weak Genes

In countries such as Thailand where not many children go to school, why is the percentage of myopia so low or almost zero? Is it purely because of bad reading posture and dim light conditions? YES! But not only so! It’s because of the high stress that we are placing on our minds everyday, as well as the high intensity light that strains and stresses our eyeballs when we read books at such a close distance, with such high powered spectacles!

Or does that mean that certain races have better eyesight than us Chinese, because we have weak Chinese genes? No! Every normal child is born with perfect vision, whether or not his / her parents are myopic. Now, do we see a change in the paradigm of thought about myopia?

In his many years of extensive research, Dr Bates discovered a very interesting yet relatively unfounded discovery about our human body; specifically with regards to how our human body is made.

Discovery 4 – The Human Body Is Capable of Natural Healing

He realized that when a limb (i.e. arm or leg) is injured, somehow it heals over time. This is not a sharing about whether the injured limb will be perfect once again, but rather, to attest to the fact that our human body actually has a build-up mechanism to heal itself. In short, our human bodies are capable of self healing over time.

Now, when our limb is injured, we have to rest to recover. But how does the recovery take place? Well, when a certain body part is injured, our body sends messages to the brain, telling it that something is not right or normal about this part of the body and something needs to be done to return it back to normal state. Thus, naturally and over time, the bone of that limb heals.

Does the doctor do anything about it? No, the doctor just puts on a cast on that limb and tells you to rest. Maybe the doctor might even prescribe pain killers to reduce the pain during this bone healing process. How does the cast help to heal the bone, when it is just on the outside? The truth is that it doesn’t… the cast just keeps the limb from moving and injuring itself again, therefore aiding the healing process. But the fact is the body heals itself in the end, on its own. Now that’s bone.

This is similar to when we suffer a cut in our skin. We can stick a plaster over it or maybe apply some iodine. But it’s the same idea again – the plaster doesn’t cause the healing of the wound and neither does the iodine (it merely disinfects the wound). So once again, we can see for ourselves that our body heals by itself. And this is both blood artery and skin.

With human bone, blood artery and skin being able to heal itself, what other part of the body is left out? Not much, probably the organs - in this case, when a portion of our lung is removed to transplant into another person’s body, our lung still grows back. If we really want to explore into minor details, which I thought about, then even our nails also grow back on its own, when it is chipped or broken.

Surprisingly, huh? Fancy us being so busy with all other complex matters such as work, relationships, finances, etc… but probably many of us failed to see these small healing miracles in our own human body. So can we safely say that our human body actually has been ‘programmed’ with a natural healing system? Of course! So why should our eye be any different from the rest of our body?

* IMPORTANT – In fact, the danger of wearing spectacles is that it actually causes our body to tell our brain, “Well… there’s nothing wrong with my body. There is nothing to fix. Everything is fine. Well and good.” And that is why our eyesight does not improve! It does not have a chance to get better! How to, when we can already see clearly WITH spectacles?

The speaker is not implying that it is possible to guarantee a full regaining of 100% 6/6 perfect vision, but at least there have been testimonies of people who have regained eyesight close to below 100 degrees! Dr Bates himself reduced his myopia from 450 degrees to 25 degrees in 4 years! And that’s why he is keen on sharing his discovery with people around the world.

Yet, one issue stands – but why are schools, opticians and doctors still prescribing the old method of wearing spectacles, when now for those of who know that it doesn’t work? Well, it is going to be very difficult to make this sudden change coz it would throw eye doctors out of job! It’s going to be traumatic! But this is not an issue for us regular people to solve. But the question is – what do you believe now? And what should you do?