Ординатура / Офтальмология / Английские материалы / Relearning To See_Quackenbush_2000

Figure 26-1: "See" Food.

THE NUTRITION C O N N E C T I O N

Many students have asked me which foods they should eat to benefit their eyesight. I do not recommend which foods a person should eat for improving sight or any condition.

Students are referred to a nutritionist or doctor for any concerns regarding diet.

There are many factors that influence vision habits—and, therefore, how well we see. One of these factors is nutrition.

Some individuals have improved their sight simply by improving their diet. This fact puzzled me when I first started teaching vision

classes. I knew that it was not possible to improve sight naturally unless better vision habits were practiced.

Yet, these people did not know about correct vision habits. Their improvement was not related to an increased ability of the cones to see sharp detail, because these people could already see sharp detail by using compensating lenses. I also knew other people had improved their sight by initiating various types of lifestyle changes. How can these facts be explained?

I finally understood that all of these people were relearning correct, natural vision habits—but they were doing so automatically and subconsciously. As well as interfering with correct vision habits automatically and subconsciously during excessive stress, a person could also cease interfering with correct vision habits automatically and subconsciously when excessive stress is removed.

Most people have no idea of the incorrect vision habits they started when their vision first became blurred. What matters is which vision habits the person is using.

When a person takes steps to improve their health, they will be more relaxed, mobile, and

centered. As a consequence, the tendency is to form better vision habits. These ideas fit observed facts—and coincide perfectly with Bates' discoveries on natural seeing. They also help form a large, complete holistic picture of natural vision.

So, to the degree that proper nutrition supports correct vision habits and principles, sight improves.

tial to eat food that contains Vitamin A. We only need food that the body can convert to Vitamin A. Among other functions, the liver can convert carotene to Vitamin A.

Ann Wigmore, in The Wheatgrass Book, writes, "Vitamin A is not found in wheatgrass juice, or any other plant food, but its precursor, carotene, is.'n

Carotene, also known as Provitonin A, can be converted to Vitamin A by the body.

Figure 26-2: Typical American Diet.

Conversely, to the degree improper nutrition supports incorrect vision habits and principles, sight lowers.

It is simple. Most truths are.

For many students the relationship between nutrition and vision becomes obvious while improving their sight.

One student had a large milkshake during the third week of the vision course. He said his sight became blurred after drinking the milkshake. Many students discover how "wired," i.e., hyper, tense, and diffused, they become after drinking coffee or soft drinks. Many soft drinks contain caffeine.

T H E V I T A M I N A C O N N E C T I O N

As discussed in Chapter 17, "The Retina," Vitamin A is essential for normal functioning of the cones and rods. However, it is not essen-

G E N E R A L N U T R I T I O N PRINCIPLES

Henry G. Bieler, M.D., writes in his book

Food is Your Best Medicine:

When I was a medical school student in the early days of the century, the study of nutrition was very sketchy; even today most doctors are painfully ignorant of the real advances in nutritional science....2

The average American predilection for doughnuts and coffee, hot dogs with mustard, ice cream, fried meat, French-fried potatoes, pie a la mode, together with between-meal sweetened cola drinks, candy bars and coffee breaks, synthetic vitamins and aspirin cannot make for health.3

Here are some general tips on nutrition for better health:

*Eat the best quality food you can buy or grow. Organically grown food is the best. Minimize or eliminate left-brain, technologically processed "dead" food. The life-force energy, not just the chemicals, in food is important.

*Eat a variety of foods. The body needs many different nutrients.

*Learn "food combining." The digestive system is designed to take in similar groups of foods at one time. For example, eat starchy food together, eat pro-

tein foods together, and eat fruits together. The stomach creates different chemical environments to digest differ­ ent groups of food. Incorrect food com­ binations result in food not being digested properly and fully. It is ineffi­ cient. Diffusion is confusion. Centralize your food!

•Tobacco is out. Period.

•If you consume alcohol, do so minimally.

•If you like vegetable juice, buy a juicer and juice your own. Many juices lose their nutritive powers within a day of being juiced. Freshly juiced carrot/beet/celery juice is outstanding. Wheatgrass juice must be consumed within 30 minutes of juicing. (See The Wheatgrass Book, by Ann Wigmore.) Eliminate refined white sugar, caffeine, and white flour. (Brown sugar is white sugar colored with molasses.)

Mmirnize salt and spices.

Minimize or eliminate milk, milk prod­ ucts, dairy products, meat, and wheat. Only fresh goat milk is compatible with the human body. Wheat would normally be fine, but Americans have consumed so many wheat products for so many years, our bodies have become

allergic to it. Cow's milk and wheat cre­ ate mucus and congestion.

Have cool drinks in the summer and warm drinks in the winter.

Do not miss breakfast, unless, of course,

yon are fasting.

Do not eat when you are not hungry. The body knows when it needs nutri­ ents and when it doesn't.

Never eat during highly emotional or stressful periods.

*Eliminate unnecessary artificial preser­ vatives and other chemicals from your diet. "If you can't pronounce it, don't eat it." Read The Chemical Feast by James Turner.

*Think twice before putting anything into or on your body that is artificial.

®Do not eat late at night. The body detoxifies during the night. If a person eats late at night, the body will need to use its energy to digest rather than detoxify.

Seek out a good iridologist/nutritionist. Many nutritional imbalances can be "read" in the eyes. Read the DoctorPatient Handbook by Bernard Jensen.

*Be patient if you choose to change your diet. Dietary habits, like vision habits, take time to change. If you have a typi­ cal American diet, there is a lot to learn about correct nutrition.

*Continue improving your diet until you have normal bowel movements and stools.

*Avoid tap water.

© Eat 80% alkaline, non-acidic food. (Coffee is acidic.)

«• Masticate your food.

фStudy natural nutrition!

Since individuals have different nutri­ tional requirements, get individual counseling from a nutritionist.

Unfortunately, many Americans do not know what, how, or when to eat, and are unhealthy as a result.

TOM'S PERSONAL LOG: When I was a child, I assumed my body could easily handle any­ thing I put in it. I ate literally tons of candy, colas, donuts, cakes, pastries, pizza, "fast

foods," etc, I literally drank that "pink liquid" for my stomach aches. I had little apprecia­ tion of how important diet was to my health. During the period of my most serious health problems, I was 35 pounds overweight.

During the last fifteen years of healing, I have become much more "tuned in" to what I eat and its relationship to my health. I no longer eat anything that fights me back. I am happy to be free of my stomach aches and pink liquid. I am no longer overweight. Changes in my diet have been an essential part of my health recovery process. And they have accelerated my re-integration of correct vision habits.

As mentioned in Chapter 16, "Light," research has shown that there may be harm from sun­ light if a person has poor nutrition.

For example, much attention has been given to beta-carotenes, a natural antioxi­ dant found in many foods like carrots, toma­ toes, wheatgrass, lettuce, spinach, and asparagus. Beta-carotene appears to protect the skin from harmful "free radicals." Since beta-carotene can be "used up" while we are in sunlight, it is important to have a diet that supplies adequate reserves.

For more information see Dr. Zane R. Kime's book Sunlight Could Save Your Life.

" O H , I D O N ' T EA T M U C H "

In Better Eyesight magazine, July 1920, Emily C. Lierman writes about one of her vision students:

As she weighed over two hundred pounds and was sick in both mind and body, I asked her how much she ate every day.

"Oh, I don't eat much—nothing to speak of at all," she said. "In the morning 1 eat

eggs, or something like that, and rolls and butter and coffee. Then about ten I have a few slices of bread with more butter and more coffee. At noon I have soup, bread and butter and more coffee. For supper I have bread, butter, meat, vegetables and more coffee. That's all."

... Dieting ... helped her eyesight and nerves very much

T H E F I N A L K E Y T O NUTRITIO N

TOM'S PERSONAL LOG: After spending count­ less hours studying and changing my diet, someone mentioned that no matter how healthy my food was, the nutrients may not be assimilated by my body—due to excessive stress. So, relaxation became another key to my nutritional changes.

In silence, О dear one, eat without haste. With peace, delight, and onepointedness, thoroughly chew your food. Don't eat merely for

the pleasure of taste.

—Swami Muktananda

C H A P T E R C O M M E N T S

The body, mind, and spirit rejoice when nur­ tured with natural foods—and many serious health problems are avoided. A diet that sup­ ports the principles of relaxation, movement (circulation), and centralization will auto­ matically support natural clear vision. The principles of natural health and natural vision fit together.

Students with serious vision problems such as diseases, pathologies, growths, injuries, accidents, eta, should seek the aid of an oph-

thalmologist.

The Bates method is educational in nature only. It is non-medical and non-optometric.

THE RISKS OF B L U R R E D V I S I O N

Several references have been made previously to the relationship between blurred sight, compensating lenses, and the potential for more serious vision problems. Many serious eye problems are preceded by blurred vision.

From Perfect Sight Without Glasses (with some repetition from earlier chapters):

For the prevailing method ... of compensating lenses, very little was ever claimed except that these contrivances neutralized the effects of the various conditions for which they were given, as a crutch enables a lame man to walk. It has also been believed that they sometimes checked the progress of these conditions; but every ophthalmologist now knows that their usefulness for this purpose, if any, is very limited.

In the case of myopia (shortsight), Dr. Sidler-Huguenin of Zurich, in a striking paper recently published,3 expresses the opinion that glasses and all methods now at our command are "of but little avail" in preventing either the progress of the error of refraction, or the development of the very serious complications with which it is often associated.

... It is fortunate that many people for whom glasses have been prescribed refuse to wear them, thus escaping not only much discomfort but much injury to their eyes...

The idea that presbyopia is "a normal result of growing old," is responsible for much defective eyesight But once the glasses are adopted, in the great majority of cases, they produce the condition they were designed to relieve, or, if it already existed, they make it worse, sometimes very rapidly, as every ophthalmologist knows. In a couple of weeks sometimes, the person finds, as noted in the chapter on What Glasses Do to Us, that the large print which he could read without difficulty before he got his glasses can no longer be read with-

0Archiv f. Augenh, vol. lxxix, 1915, translated in Arch. Ophth., vol. xlv, No. 6, Nov., 1916.

out their aid. In from five to ten years the accommodative power of the eye is usually gone; and if from this point the person does not go on to cataract, glaucoma, or inflammation of the retina, he may consider himself fortunate....

The prevalence of myopia, the unsatisfactoriness of all explanations of its origin, and the futility of all methods of prevention have led some writers of repute to the conclusion that the elongated eyeball is a natural physiological adaptation to the needs of civilization. Against this view two unanswerable arguments can be brought. One is that the myopic eye does not see so well even at the near point as the normal eye, and the other is that the defect tends to progression with very serious results, often ending in blindness.

From Better Eyesight magazine, October

1920:

THE PROBLEM OF IMPERFECT SIGHT

Errors of refraction are so common that we have learned to take them Hghtly.They are usually reckoned among minor physical defects, and the average lay person has no idea of their real character. It is well known, of course, that they sometimes produce very serious nervous conditions, but the fact that they also lead to all sorts of eye diseases is known only to eye specialists, and not fully appreciated even by them. The complications of myopia (nearsight) constitute a large and melancholy chapter in the science of the eye, but most eye specialists say that no organic changes occur in hypermetropia (farsight). That this is very far from being the case was proven by Risley in the investigation alluded to above, and it is strange that this report on the subject has attracted so little attention. His studies also showed that these organic

changes occurring in all states of refraction are very common among children and have often progressed to an extent that would be expected only after long years of eyestrain

My own experience is that errors of refraction are always accompanied by some organic change. It may be only a slight congestion, but this may be sufficient to lower the vision

From the foregoing facts it will be seen that in the condition of the eyesight of our people we have a health problem, an educational problem, and a military problem of the first magnitude, and one would flunk that if any method of either prevention or reversal that was even tolerably successful had been found, it would immediately be put into general use.

From Better Eyesight magazine, Novem-

ber 1927:

It is an interesting fact that all diseases of the eyes and all diseases of the body are generally associated with eye tension.

Bates dedicated over thirty years of research to finding a way to improve sight naturally. It is clear his motivations were not limited to simply removing the "inconvenience" of compensating lenses. Was the "development of the very serious complications" what Bates was mainly referring to in his preface to Perfect Sight Without Glasses'?

The explanations of the phenomena of sight put forward by Young, von Graefe, Helmholtz and Donders have caused us to ignore or explain away a multitude of facts which otherwise would have led to ... the consequent prevention of an incalculable amount of human misery.

Bates is not alone in his concern about the potential long-term risks of blurred sight. Joseph Kennebeck, O.D., a practicing optometrist for over fifty years, warns in WTiy

People:

Wearing myopic glasses through life could lead to blindness from detachment of the retina, conical corneas, myopic cataracts or glaucoma, at middle age or past. Myopic cases are more subject to these conditions than other cases.1

Mary Dudderidge reports in Scientific

Natural vision teacher Clara Hackett, in Relax and See, writes, "No less important than improving vision defects is their prevention in the first place."4

Ophthalmologist Dr. Deborah E. Banker, M.D., stated at the 1995 Whole Life Expo in San Francisco:

... your reading [farsighted] glasses are causing you to lose your ability to see for near [sic], accelerating cataracts, glaucoma, floaters, vitreous detachment, potentially retinal detachment, and perhaps macular degeneration 5

American:

For too years the medical profession has wrestled in vain with the problem [of defec- tive sight], finding no means compatible with the conditions of modern life for preventing errors of refraction, and no means

of relieving them except eyeglasses. These, at their best, are poor substitutes for natural sight and often fail to relieve discomfort or to stay the progress of the malady, which is a much more serious one than most people imagine. The oculist knows that present conditions are ominous of evil for the future, that the nearsighted, farsighted, or astigmatic eye is disposed to all sorts of ocular diseases.2

Most myopes have worn glasses much longer than most farsights.

Ophthalmologist R. S. Agarwal writes in his natural vision improvement book Mind

andVision:

Not only do all errors of refraction and all functional disturbances of the eye disappear when it sees by [centralization], but many organic conditions are relieved or reversed.3

R I S K S NOT A V O I D E D B Y R E F R A C T I V E C O R N E A L S U R G E R I E S A N D

O R T H O - K E R A T O L O G Y

As mentioned earlier, nearsights who have

RK and PRK performed are still myopic regardless of the results of the surgeries.

Refractive corneal surgeries and ortho-ker- atology do not decrease the risks mentioned above.

Optometrist Bruce May writes in his pamphlet Rx for Nearsightedness—Stress-

Relieving Lenses:

When processes like keratotomy or orthokeratology produce improved distance acuity without the use of glasses, they do not change the basic problem of myopia, only the refractive status.

The change involves only the cornea, while the depth of the vitreous chamber remains increased, and so does the eyeball length. Thus, the person still has myopia and remains subject to all the risks of myopia.6

After a myope has had refractive corneal surgery in which sharp acuity is obtained, what would happen if extrinsic eye muscles then relax their chronic tension, and the eye returns to its normal shape? Presumably, "all

the risks of myopia" would be eliminated— but wouldn't the vision then become blurred (in particular, farsighted)?

In short, after refractive corneal surgery, if the eye remains strained, serious risks remain; if the eye muscles relax, blur would theoretically result.

As mentioned earlier, I do not accept students who have had refractive corneal surgeries.

S E R I O U S V I S I O N P R O B L E M S

CATARACTS

Better Eyesight magazine, September 1927:

In cataract, the pupil instead of being black becomes light gray or some other color, due to the opacity of the focusing lens of the eye, which is just behind the colored part of the eye, the iris. Rays of light which enter the eye pass through this lens and are focused on the back part of the eye, the retina. When the lens becomes opaque, the rays of light from different objects do not pass through the lens and the vision is consequently lowered and the person becomes more or less blind.

If one places six sheets of glass, one on top of the other, so that all are parallel, it is possible to see through them. If, however, one or more of the glasses form an angle or is not parallel with the rest, the layers of glass become cloudy, just like the layers which form the crystalline lens in cataract.

Cause: Cataract has been observed for many thousands of years by the people of India, Egypt, and in various countries of Europe. The theories of the cause of cataract are very numerous. The lens is composed of transparent layers. When these layers are squeezed or when the eyeball is squeezed, the layers which form the

lens become cloudy or opaque. It is a very simple experiment to take the eye of some [dead] animal... and to hold it with the tips of the fingers of one hand. By pressing the eyeball, the lens at once becomes cloudy, and a white mass, which can be seen twenty feet or farther, usually appears in the pupil. With the cloudiness of the lens, there may occur at the same time a cloudiness in the front part of the eye, the cornea. Just as soon as the pressure is removed from the eyeball, the area of the pupil becomes perfectly clear and the lens becomes perfectly transparent. It is such an easy thing to try and is so convincing that I wish that more ophthalmologists would study it.

Pressure on the eyeball may come from the contraction of the muscles on the outside of the eye, which are quite capable of keeping up a continuous pressure for many years, without the person being conscious of it.

Cataract has been produced in normal eyes by the memory or the imagination of imperfect sight. The memory of imperfect sight produces a strain of the outside muscles of the eyeball, which is accompanied by a contraction of these muscles, and cataract is produced.

Almost any kind of opacity of the lens has been produced by pressure. The area of the pupil may become varicolored, due to the difference in pressure.

Better Eyesight magazine, April 1928:

Some years ago a professor of anatomy was exMbiting the effect of pressure on the enucleated eyeballs of a dead cow and some other animals. At a distance of about twenty feet from the eye, the audience observed that the pupil was perfectly clear. Immediately after the eyeball was squeezed by the fingers of the professor, the area of

the pupil became at once completely opaque, from the production of a cataract. Then when the pressure on the eyeball was lessened, the cataract at once disappeared and the eyeball became normal. Again squeezing the eyeball, a cataract was produced as before. And again, the cataract disappeared when the pressure was lessened. The experiment was repeated a number of times with the result that the pressure on the eyeball always produced a cataract, which was relieved by reducing the pressure....

In animals the eyeball has been shortened experimentally by operations on each of the four straight [recti] muscles, which increased the pressure temporarily. These operations were performed after death.

Similar operations on the two oblique muscles at the same time produced pressure and increased hardness of the eyeball, with cataract following.

Persons suffering from cataract have increased the hardness of the eyeball, at the same time increasing the density of the cataract. While the cataract is being observed with the aid of the ophthalmoscope, it can be seen to change in size or density when the person consciously or voluntarily increases or diminishes the hardness of the eyeball with the aid of the memory or the imagination.

More than 30% of Americans over age 65 have cataracts. More than $3 billion is paid for over one million cataract surgeries each year.

One case history of cataract improvement by a student of Bates was given in Chapter 21, "Palming and Acupressure." More cataract references and/or case histories can be found in the following Better Eyesight magazines: March 1920, July 1920, January 1921, Septem-

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Serious Vision Problems

ber 1923, January 1924, September 1927, April 1928. The entire January 1921 issue is dedicated to the topic of cataract, and includes several case histories.

Ophthalmologist R. S. Agarwal writes in Mind and Vision, "The opacity of the lens or cataract is caused by a strain in most of the cases...." He gives case histories of improvement of senile, secondary, and black cataracts.7

W. B. MacCracken, M.D., gives case histories of cataract improvements in his natural

vision book Use Your Own Eyes.

Clara Hackett, a Natural Vision teacher who had many students referred to her from medical doctors, writes in Relax and See:

I have had the privilege of working closely with many physicians more recently, not only in cases of refractive loss, but also of serious eye disorders.

It must be emphasized that the vision reeducation techniques presented in this book do not constitute a panacea. They are not intended to replace medical care. It is essential that people with actual diseases or growths in the eye seek medical aid Only an oculist [eye doctor] is qualified to detect and identify disease.

In recent years, doctors who have encouraged individuals with such serious disorders as glaucoma and cataracts to undertake vision education have found that astonishing improvement often occurs.

Thus far, I have worked with 312 people with cataracts. Of these, 278 had improvements ranging from 10 percent better sight to complete normality, while only 34 had no noticeable lasting improvement.8

GLAUCOMA

From Better Eyesight magazine, September

1927: