Oddbean

Yes it’s true. I resisted wearing glasses my entire life. When I finally started wearing them in my late twenties my eyes got weaker when not using the glasses. That said sometimes you need the glasses. I’m pretty sure 90% of the reason I was such a bad student was because I had no idea what the white board said lol 😂

I had glasses for a few months until I scratched them up too much and stopped wearing them. One thing I noticed, being a night owl who likes reading, is my headaches from squinting to read went away. Once I gave up on my specs I started accepting I needed to relax my eyes and read the slightly blurry words to avoid headaches. I never experienced the further deterioration mentioned above, but perhaps I’m a boiled frog and just don’t notice it. 😅

It was true for me. My initial prescription was -0.25 and ended up at -1.75 a decade later. Every time I went to the eye doctor, I walked out with a new script. I couldn't afford to replace my broken glasses during the GFC so stopped wearing them. I haven't worn them since. I'm not sure what I'll do if my eyes start deteriorating. Eye exercises?

Yeah I do that whenever I think to. When I lost my glasses I did lots of eye exercises regularly. I bought an eye patch and would throw a ball up in the air focusing on it. I'd also wear the eye patch over my stronger eye to work my weaker one more. Focusing on distant objects & then closer objects helps work the eye muscles.

Yes,I think it's true. 30 years of it for me. And definitely, definitely don't get transition lenses or clip-on sunnies! A Huge mistake I made. Never again. The growing dependency is SO obvious after the fact. (Ageing excluded)

I don't know. But studies have shown that myopia develops in children who don't play outdoors very much, and does not develop in children who do spend a lot of time outdoors (people used to think it had to do with reading books). Late-onset myopia (e.g. in your 20s/30s) tends to develop from heavy computer/screen usage where you don't refocus your eyes and just look at the same distance object for long periods of time. The best thing for your eyes is to look at things off in the distance, either by going outside, or putting your computer in front of a window so you can keep looking into the distance (not sure that has been studied though). You can also get some glasses looking things that you flip which go from +2 to -2 or something to force you to exercise your cilia muscle (the one bending your lens and focusing), not to make it stronger but to stop it from spasming. Myopia is caused by your eyeball growing longer. It is not about muscles being weak . It is not going to grow shorter. Wearing glasses could make it worse, yes, but I don't think you can make it better by eye-exercizing yourself out of the condition. Once you have it, you have it for life. Most people wear the glasses because they want to see clearly, even if it gets worse, because they can always just get a new prescription and continue to see clearly.

Good read. Can you comment on red light spectrum at dusk and dawn. Ive read good things about starting off into the direction of the sun at dusk and dawn. Also have heard anecdotes of people using this technique to improve eyesight

I don't know much about this, except that blue light at night supposedly might interfere with your circadian rhythms. Red light doesn't, and I suspect it is because we evolved with fire... if looking at a fire reset our circadian rhythms that would have messed us up quite a lot. I doubt looking at the sun at dusk/dawn improves eyesight. It certainly causes your pupil to shrink way down, which focuses things better, and so it may appear to immediately improve vision, but that isn't fixing anything permanently. But there might be more to it, I'm just not aware of it.