Can You "Cheat" Your Way to Better Vision?

Many new products and eye exercise regimes promise to improve your nearsightedness. But do they deliver?

SAN DIEGO, CALIF. (February 02, 2018) - You’ve no doubt seen or heard of pinhole glasses - those weird-looking lenses with hundreds of tiny holes punched out. They’ve been around for decades, and to this day many people believe they can help reverse myopia by “training” your eyes to focus more clearly.

Not so, says one of the nation’s premier ophthalmologists.

“To this point in time, there has been no study done that proves pinhole glasses have any effect whatsoever on one’s long-term vision,” says Sandy T. Feldman, M.D., the Medical Director of Clearview Eye & Laser Medical Center in San Diego. “And while it is true that the pinhole effect one gets from looking at something through these glasses makes things appear sharper, it also reduces one’s peripheral vision. In fact, companies selling pinhole glasses in the United States are not allowed to make any claims about permanent vision improvement.”

What about some of the eye exercise regimes being promoted today?

“Vision Therapy is actually a promising field of study in optometry,” reports Feldman. “However, its promise lies in helping patients with alignment or eye strain, not vision. These ‘Throw Away Your Glasses’ programs have been around for nearly 100 years in some form or another, and once again, there isn’t a shred of scientific evidence that they reverse myopia.”

Feldman explains why these products and programs can’t reverse myopia. “Vision problems are primarily determined by the shape of the eye. If the eyeball is too short or too long, then light can’t focus properly on your retina and the result is nearsightedness or farsightedness. Until someone designs a program that can change the shape of the eye, the best - and only, really - paths to corrected vision are prescription glasses, contact lenses or surgery like LASIK.”

So is there nothing we can do to improve our vision?

“On the contrary,” says Dr. Feldman, “there’s much we can do to improve our vision. It all starts with being vigilant about maintaining and improving the health of our eyes, including regular eye exams and making sure we give our eyes the nutrition they need by eating foods high in such things as Vitamin A and Lutein.”

About Sandy T. Feldman, MD
Sandy T. Feldman, MD is the Medical Director of Clearview Eye & Laser Medical Center - voted best LASIK center in San Diego by the San Diego Union Tribune 2016/2017 and CityBeat Magazine for the second year in a row. She has successfully performed more than 20,000 refractive procedures. Her numerous awards include “Top Doc San Diego” and the Goldline Award, an honor granted to only 10 laser eye care providers in the U.S. each year, and she has been profiled in Forbes, Newsweek, and other respected publications. Dr. Feldman is a fellow of the prestigious American College of Ophthalmic Surgeons, as well as a member of the American Academy of Ophthalmology and the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery. For more information, please visit clearvieweyes.com.

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