Myopia reversal project: Progress Report

Progress in myopia reduction as of 8/7/2017.  Day 0 measurements are my longstanding prescription.  All other data points were measured by me in a well-lit room.  I have several Snellen charts (with the big E) on the wall and a piece of tape on the floor indicating the proper place to stand. I test every day in the morning unless I'm traveling, and testing consists of wearing the next weaker lens and attempting to read the 20/20 line.  Traditionally the Snellen chart requires getting >50% of the letters on a line correct, but I find that I usually go from seeing less than half to seeing nearly all.  If it's a judgement call I will test later in the day or wait until the next day to be sure.

At this point I'm convinced that something interesting is going on.  The initial improvement that happened very quickly could be explained by a reduction in eye strain, and perhaps I was overprescribed and did not know it. But I'm now paying close attention to the vision in each eye and noticing slow but steady improvement.  When I test my left eye with a -3.5D lens (the next step down in power) it is noticeably clearer today than it was yesterday, although not quite good enough to pass.  And if I try the -4D lens that was blurry at 20/20 a few weeks ago, I can read the 20/15 line which is one smaller than the 20/20.  My right eye is not improving as quickly, but it also does not have as far to go. And I don't really have that many data points here. I don't want to read too much into the relative slope of each line just yet.  That said, if I assume linear change, my left eye would get to 20/20 without glasses in about 4 months and my right in about 5 months.

Now that I've given my results to date, I should back up and explain what I'm doing.  I've previously written two posts about my research on myopia, so if this is the first page you've landed on you might want to read those first, although I will try to write this one without assuming the knowledge in the previous posts:

Myopia Reversal in Adults?
Causes and Potential Prevention of Progressive Childhood Myopia

My strategy is to expose my eyes to

1) as much myopic defocus as possible,

2) under bright light conditions when possible, and

3) while looking at shapes large enough to make out.

I bought glasses that allow me to see just to the end of my arm, so that I can see anything I'm doing with my hands, everything beyond that is in myopic defocus.  I wear these most of the time.  I have separate glasses for when I really need to see -- like when I'm driving.  At this point I have multiple pairs because my prescription keeps changing.  I buy cheap (~$10) glasses from Zenni or Eye Buy Direct online. I'm also walking outside without any glasses for 60-90 minutes every morning. It's like a stroll through an impressionist painting. While I have a strong (10-bulb) light next to my desk, the brightest light I get is outside. Seeing shapes indoors is easy.  Outside I sometimes have to remind myself not to look down at the pavement or lawn or stare blankly into the distance, but this has gotten easier with time.

To continue with my reverse scientific report, now that I've given the results and the methods, I should move on to the rationale for my methods.

Myopic Defocus

It's pretty well established that at least in animals, the eye will respond to myopic defocus (usually achieved with plus/convex lenses) by shortening the eye.  The shortening brings the image into focus.  All the studies I can find were done in young animals, but as I mentioned in my first article, there is reason to think that it would work in adult humans.  The cornea changes with age, and it appears that the eye is shortening to compensate. And one hour of watching TV while wearing a +3D lens caused human eyes to shorten by 13 microns, which correlates to 0.03 diopters of change.  Currently my left eye is changing at a rate of 0.03 diopters per day and my right at 0.02 diopters per day. I have no way of knowing whether or not they are actually shortening, but that seems like a reasonable explanation. Animal eyes change much faster than that, but I'll take what I can get. The mechanism of shortening in both humans and animals appears to be thickening of the vascular choroid layer behind the retina.  That pushes the retina forward, shortening the distance between the retina and the front of the eye.

Interestingly, the eye can apparently lengthen almost instantaneously when you do near work -- see the graph below.  This would help you to focus on the near object. But people with myopia take about 10 minutes to re-shorten their eyes, whereas people with normal vision shorten them almost immediately.  Myopes also lengthen them to a greater degree.  So although textbooks give the impression that the length of the human eye is more or less fixed in adulthood, there is plenty of evidence that eye length changes throughout the day in response to whether you are looking at something near or far.

Source

I have been preventing my eyes from looking at anything near (at least in an optical sense, by switching to low-power glasses while doing near work) for nearly a month now.

Bright Light

This one is based entirely on animal studies, so take it with a grain of salt. There are a number of different ways to induce myopia in animals, and you can prevent that experimental myopia from developing by exposing the animals to bright light. Bright here is brighter than you'd get inside unless you're in a film studio or growing pot, but not as bright as standing in full sunlight.  Think sunny day outside but in light shade or wearing a hat. This effect appears to be mediated by dopamine signaling in the retina.  Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is involved in reward pathways, and it has been hypothesized that the light-dopamine connection is how light therapy treats seasonal affective disorder (SAD).  We also know that in kids, myopia progresses less rapidly in the summer months than in the winter, and light exposure in the summer is one explanation for why (the other is that kids are doing more near work in the winter when they are in school).

Shape Size

This one is also based only on animal studies.  If you give an animal myopia with a minus lens, and then take it off, they will correct their myopia in time.  But this correction depends on the animal having the right image to look at.

This is good:

source

This is not:

Same source as above image

So at least for chickens, you want them to look at larger shapes rather than pavement, which is what the lower image looks like. I look at light filtering through trees and such.

There is by far the most evidence for the myopic focus, but the other two probably won't hurt and might reasonably be anticipated to help.

I will continue to report on future progress or lack thereof.

UPDATE 9/12/17: Two months in, my progress has slowed, but not entirely stopped. I have gained half a diopter in my left eye and a quarter diopter in my right.  I bought weaker computer glasses and have been using them for about two weeks now.  I might be stabilizing at a new normal, or maybe it will just be slower.

I have also been experiencing a weird transient (~10 seconds) clearing of my vision while I'm walking without my glasses.  Usually it is only in one eye.  I don't really know if this is something happening in the eye itself, or perhaps in the visual cortex of the brain.  There is some interesting research out there on the plasticity of the visual cortex, and I will eventually get around to writing it up for my blog.

Update 9/10/17: Three months in, and another quarter diopter in each eye.  It's harder to call an exact day because it fluctuates from day to day, but more often than not I can read 20/20 at this point.  I ordered new computer glasses again.  I'm getting close to being able to read from the computer screen without any glasses at all, but I'm not quite there yet.