The Bates method is an alternative therapy aimed at improving vision. Eye care doctor William Horatio Bates, M.D. (1860-1931) linked almost all vision problems with eye habits, and felt that the glasses were dangerous and never needed. Bates self-published a book, Perfect Sight Without Glasses, as well as magazine Better Eyesight Magazine (and previously collaborated with Bernarr MacFadden on a correspondence course) detailing approaches to help people relax like "tension", and thus, he claims, improves their sight. The technique centers on visualization and movement. He placed a special emphasis on imagining letters and black marks, and such movements. He also feels that exposing his eyes to the sun will help ease the "tension".
Despite continued reports of anecdotes about successful outcomes, including support published by Aldous Huxley, the Bates technique has not been objectively proven to improve vision. His main physiological proposition - that the eyeball changed shape to maintain focus - has consistently been contrary to observation. In 1952, optometry professor Elwin Marg wrote of Bates, "Most of his claims and almost all his theories have been considered wrong by almost all visual scientists." Marg concludes that Bates's method is very popular because "the glimpse of clear vision" is experienced by many who follow it. Such events have been described as effects such as moisture contact lenses on the eyes, or flattening of the lens by ciliary muscles.
The Bates method has been criticized not only because no good evidence works, but also because it can have negative consequences for those who are trying to follow it: they can ruin their eyes through their excessive eye exposure to the sun, putting themselves and people other. at risk by not wearing their corrective lens while driving, or ignoring conventional eye care, might allow serious conditions to develop.
Video Bates method
The underlying concept
Accommodation
Accommodation is a process in which the eye increases the optical power to maintain focus on the retina while turning its view to a closer point. A long-standing medical consensus is that this is done by the action of the ciliary muscle, the muscle in the eye, which adjusts the curvature of the crystal lens of the eye. This explanation is based on the observed effect of atropine while preventing accommodation when applied to the ciliary muscle, as well as the reflected image on the crystal lens becomes smaller as the eye shifts the focus to a closer point, indicating a change in the shape of the lens. Bates refused this explanation, and in his 1920s presented photographs which he said showed that the image remained the same size even as the focusing eye shifted, deducing from this that the lens is not a factor in accommodation. However, Philip Pollack's optometrist in a 1956 work characterized these photographs as "so vague that it is impossible to know if one image is larger than the other", in contrast to the subsequent photographs that clearly indicate the resized image size, such as which has been observed since the late nineteenth century.
Bates holds to a different explanation of the accommodation that has been largely ignored by the medical community of his day. The Bates model has muscles surrounding the eyeball that control its focus. In addition to known eye functions, Bates maintains, they also affect the shape, extend the eyeball to focus on the near-point or shorten it to focus at a certain distance. Commenting on this hypothesis in an interview with WebMD, ophthalmologist Richard E. Bensinger states: "When we put eye drops to dilate the pupils, they paralyze the focus muscles.The evidence of anatomical error is that you can not focus, but your eyes can move up and down, left and right.The idea that external muscles are affecting the focus is completely wrong. "Science writer John Grant writes that many animals, like fish, are accommodated by eyebrow elongation," it's just that humans are not one of the animals that."
Laboratory tests show that the human eyeball is too rigid to spontaneously change shape to the level required to achieve what Bates describes. A very small change in the axial length of the eyeball (18.6-19.2 micrometers) is caused by the action of the ciliary muscle during accommodation. However, this change is too small to take into account the necessary changes in focus, resulting in a change of only -0.036 diopters.
Causes of vision problems
Medical professionals characterize refractive disorders such as farsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism, and presbyopia (age-related near-dot vision) as a consequence of eye shape and other basic anatomy, with no evidence that any sport may change. However, Bates believes that this condition is caused by the tension of the muscles around the eyeballs, which he believes prevents the eyeball from a fairly altered shape (as per its explanation of accommodation) when the view shifts closer or farther. Bates characterizes this muscular tension as a consequence of the "mental tension" to see, the relief he claims will instantly improve his eyesight. He also connects disorders in the blood circulation, which he says is strongly influenced by the mind, not only for bias errors but also for double vision, cross eyes, lazy eyes, and more serious eye conditions like cataracts and glaucoma. Treatment is based on these assumptions.
Bates felt that the corrective lens, which he characterized as "crutches," was a barrier to healing bad eyesight. In his view, "tension" will increase as the eye adjusts to the correction in front of them. He thus recommends that the glasses be discarded by anyone applying the method.
Maps Bates method
Treatment
In his writings, Bates discusses several techniques that claim to help patients improve their eyesight. He writes, "The ways in which people seek to see are endless, and the methods used to alleviate the tension must be almost as varied," stressing that no single approach will work for everyone. The technique is designed to help separate this "tension" from seeing and thus achieve "central fixation", or see what is at the point of sight without looking. He asserted that "all refraction errors and all functional impairments disappear when viewed through central fixation" and that other conditions are also often relieved.
Palming
Bates suggests closing your eyes for a few minutes to help create relaxation. He insists that relaxation can be deepened in many cases by "palming", or closing the eyes closed with the palm of the hand, without putting pressure on the eyeballs. If the eyes are closed not tense, he says, they will see "black fields that are impossible to remember, imagine, or see anything more black", because light is removed by the palm of the hand. However, he reports that some of his patients experience "illusion of light and color" sometimes as "kaleidoscopic sightings" as they "coat", events attributed to "tension" everywhere and that he claims to disappear when someone is completely relaxed. This phenomenon, however, is almost certainly caused by Eigengrau or "dark light". In fact, even in perfect darkness, as in a cave, neurons in every level of the visual system produce random background activity interpreted by the brain as a pattern of light and color.
Visualization
Bates places importance on mental images, as he feels relaxation is the key to the clarity of imagination as well as the actual vision. He claims that one's composure can be measured by black visual memory; that the darker it came to mind, and the smaller the imaginable black area, the more relaxed it was. He recommends that patients think of the upper letters of the eye graph and then visualize the increasingly smaller black letters, and finally periods or commas. But he emphasized his view that a clear visual memory of black "can not be accomplished by any effort", states that "memory is not the cause of relaxation, but must be preceded by it," and warned against "concentration" on black, as he considers the effort to " think of one thing "as tension.
While Bates prefers if the patient imagines something black, he also reports that some objects are found from other colors that are easiest to visualize, and therefore most benefited by remembering them, because, he asserted, "memory will never be perfect unless it easy. "Skeptics argue that the only visual benefits derived from such techniques are imagined yourself , and show that known objects, including the letters in the eye graph, are recognizable even when they appear less clear.
Movement
He thinks that the way eye movements affect vision. He suggests "shifting", or moving the eyes back and forth to get the illusion of "swinging" objects in the opposite direction. He believes that the smaller the area where the "swing" is experienced, the greater the benefit to vision. He also points out that it usually helps to close your eyes and imagine something "swinging". By alternating actual and mental transfer of images, Bates writes, many patients can quickly shorten the "shift" to the point where they can "conceive and swing letters for a period in the paper". The man who controls this will achieve a "universal swing", Bates believes.
Perhaps finding Bates's concept of "shifting" and "swinging" is too complicated, some vision-enhancing supporters, such as Bernarr Macfadden, suggest simply moving the eyes up and down, from side to side, and diverting one's eyes between the near-dots. and point-away.
Sunning
Bates believes that the eye benefits from sun exposure. He states that "people with normal vision can see directly into the sun, or in the most powerful artificial light, without injury or discomfort," and provide some examples of patient visions that supposedly escalate after sungazing - this is different from the famous. the risk of eye damage that can result from direct sunlight observation.
Bates says that, just as one should not attempt to run a marathon without training, one should not immediately see directly in the sun, but he suggests that it can be done. He acknowledges that looking at the sun can have a bad effect, but characterizes them as "always temporary" and is actually the effect of tension in response to sunlight. He writes that he has healed those who believe that the sun has caused permanent eye damage. In his magazine, Bates then suggested simply showing the whites of the eyeballs into direct sunlight, and for only a few seconds at a time, after letting the sun shine on closed eyelids for longer periods.
The posthumous publication of Bates's book does not mention the expected benefits of direct sunlight that shines in the eyes open.
Results and criticism
Bates Techniques have never been scientifically established to improve vision. Some Bates techniques, including "sunbathing", "swinging", and "palming", combined with healthy changes to diet and exercise in randomized controlled trials of 1983 farsighted children in India. After 6 months, the experimental group "did not show statistically significant differences in bias status", although the children in the treatment group "were subjectively... relieved of eye strain and other symptoms".
In 1967, the British Medical Journal observed that "Bates [...] advocated prolongedly to view the sun as a treatment of myopia, with destructive results."
The philosopher Frank J. Leavitt argues that the method described by Bates would be difficult to test scientifically because of its emphasis on relaxation and visualization. Leavitt asked, "How can we know whether someone has relaxed or imagined something, or just thought that he had imagined it?" Due to the possibility of a placebo trial, Leavitt commented, "I can not imagine how we can put someone in a situation where he thinks he has imagined something while we know that he has not."
After Bates
After Bates died in 1931, his treatment method was continued by Emily's widow and other colleagues, some of whom incorporated exercise and dietary recommendations. Most of the subsequent supporters could not stand Bates's explanation of how the eyes focused mechanically, but it was maintained that eliminating habitual "tension" was the key to improving vision.
Margaret Darst Corbett
Margaret Darst Corbett first met Bates when she consulted him about her husband's vision. He became his student, and eventually taught his method at the School of Eye Education in Los Angeles. He of the belief stated that "optic nerves are really part of the brain, and sight is nine-tenths of mental and one-tenth only physical."
In late 1940, Corbett and his assistant were accused of violating California's Medical Practice Act for treating the eyes without a license. At the trial, many of his students testify on his behalf, explaining in detail how he has allowed them to throw their glasses away. A witness testified that he was almost blind from cataracts, but after working with Corbett, his vision had improved in such a way that for the first time he could read for eight hours without glasses. Corbett explained in court that he did not practice optometry or ophthalmology and represented himself not as a doctor but merely as an "eye training instructor". By explaining his method, he said, "We changed our vision by teaching our eyes to shift, we wanted to feel the movement to lighten the stare, to end the fixed view.We used light to loosen their eyes and accustom them to the sun."
The trial attracted widespread interest, as did the "innocent" verdict. The case spurred a bill in the California State Legislature that later made such vision education illegal without an optometric or medical license. After a campaign that lived in the media, the bill was rejected.
Aldous Huxley
Perhaps the most famous supporter of Bates's method is the English writer, Aldous Huxley. At the age of sixteen Huxley experienced keratitis attacks, which, after a period of 18 months of blindness, left him with one eye capable only of light perception and the other with the Snellen fraction without the aid of 10/200. This is mainly due to turbidity in both corneas, complicated by hyperopia and astigmatism. She could only read if she was wearing thick glasses and widen her better pupils with atropine, to let the eyes look around the opacity at the center of the cornea.
In 1939, at age 45 and with worsening vision, he overheard Bates's method and sought the help of Margaret Corbett, who gave him regular lessons. Three years later he wrote The Art of Seeing, in which he relates: "Within a few months I was reading without glasses and, what is even better, without tension and exhaustion.... At this moment , my vision, though very far from normal, is about twice as good as it used to be when I put on my glasses. "Describing the process, Huxley writes that" Vision is not won by trying to get it: Vision comes to those who have learned to put their minds and eyes into a standby state, of dynamic relaxation. " He expressed indifference to Bates's true explanation of how the eye focus, stating that "my concern is not on the anatomical mechanism of accommodation, but with the art of seeing."
His case resulted in widespread publicity and oversight. Optometrist Walter B. Lancaster, for example, suggested in 1944 that Huxley had "learned how to use what he had for better profit" by training the "visual part of the brain," rather than actually improving the image quality of the retina.
In 1952, ten years after writing The Art of Seeing, Huxley spoke at a Hollywood dinner, not wearing glasses and, according to Bennett Cerf, apparently read his paper from the podium without difficulty. In Cerf's words:
Then suddenly he faltered - and the disturbing truth became clear. He did not read the address at all. He has studied it with heart. To refresh his memory, he brought the paper closer and closer to his eyes. When it was only an inch or so he still could not read it, and had to fish for a magnifying glass in his pocket to make typing look for him. It was a tormenting moment.
Responding to this, Huxley wrote, "I often use a magnifying glass where light conditions are bad, and never claim to be able to read unless in very good condition." This underscores that he does not regain anything close to normal vision, and in fact never claims that he has.
Modern variant
"Natural vision correction" or "natural vision enhancement" continues to be marketed by practitioners offering individual instruction, many of whom have no medical or optometric credentials. Most base their approach in the Bates method, although some also integrate visual therapy techniques. There are also many self-help books and self-help programs, which have not been subjected to randomized controlled trials, aimed at improving vision naturally. Providers of such an approach argue that they do not have the funds to formally test them.
The highly advertised "See Clearly Method" (whose sale was stopped by court order in November 2006, in response to what was found to be dishonest marketing practices) included "palming" and "light therapy", both adapted from Bates. The program's creators, however, emphasize that they do not support Bates's overall approach.
In his 1992 book The Bates Method, The Complete Guide to Improving Vision - Naturally , Peter Mansfield's "bates method teacher" is critical of eye care professionals to prescribe corrective lens, recommending most Bates techniques to improve vision. This book includes accounts of twelve "real cases", but does not report any information about biased errors.
The native of Czech, John Slavicek claims to have created "eye medicines" that improve vision in three days, borrowing from ancient yoga eye exercises, visualization of Seth Material, and Bates methods. Although he has testimony from his neighbors and others, some of his students show that he greatly exaggerates their case. Slavicek's self-published book, Yoga for the Eyes , was rejected by an eye doctor who evaluated it, and showed no interest from the World Health Organization and the Eye Foundation. Erik was in Sweden because he did not double. test -blind.
Anecdotal support
To support the effectiveness of the Bates method, supporters point to many accounts of people suspected of improving their eyesight by applying them. While these anecdotes can be told and passed on in good faith, some potential explanations exist for reported phenomena other than the original reversal of bias errors due to the technique being practiced:
- Some nearsightedness is recognized as a result of transient spasm of ciliary muscle, not a defective eyeball. These are classified as pseudomyopia, where spontaneous reversals may account for some improvement reports.
- Research has confirmed that when farsighted subjects remove their corrective lens, over time there are limited improvements (called "blur adaptions") in the visual resolution without their help, although refraction indicates no corresponding change in bias errors. This is believed to occur due to adjustments made in the visual system. People who have practiced Bates techniques and notices such improvements may not realize that simply leaving dead glasses will have the same effect, which may be especially pronounced if the recipe is too strong to start.
- Visual acuity is affected by pupil size. When constricting (as in response to increased light), the quality of the focus will increase significantly, with the cost of reduced ability to see in dim light. This is known as the "pinhole effect". This concept is also used in photography when changing aperture size.
- Some eye defects can naturally change for the better with age or cycle (ophthalmologist Stewart Duke-Elder suggests that this is what happened with Aldous Huxley). Cataracts during the first arrangement sometimes produce much better vision for a short time. A person who happens to have practiced Bates's method will likely credit him for any increase experienced regardless of the real cause.
- Several studies have shown that the ability learned to interpret blurred images can lead to improved perceived perception. Optometrist Walter B. Lancaster said this: "Because looking at only part of the image problem on the retina and the sensations it produces, but in the larger part is the matter of cerebral synthesis process, where memory plays a major role, it means that by repetition, , with practice, one builds substrates from memories that are useful for sensation interpretation and facilitates synthesis which is a major part of the vision. "Lancaster blames general eye doctors for ignoring the role of the brain in the process of seeing," leaving to workers who are disorganized, semi-trained, cultivating the field ".
- A 1952 study involving 100 subjects who claimed to experience a clear "flash" of vision, in which instantaneous vision became much sharper, found only one subject that "showed remarkable transient sharpness (flash) but he could not defend it or repeat it for bias measurement "and conclude that" 'flashers' (those who can gain transient increase in great visual acuity) are rare. " A 2004 study suggested that the flash may be caused by "negative accommodation" (ie, the smoothness of the lenses activated by the ciliary muscles).
- A 1982 study of subjects undergoing computer-based visual training concluded that any improvement produced in visual acuity is best described as a contact lens-like effect on moisture in the eye, based on the increased tear action shown by 15 of the 17 subjects experienced the increase. A 2003 study of the claim that "positive suggestions (eg, using hypnosis) can significantly improve visual acuity" find that "both hypnotic suggestions and phenomena tend to significantly improve myopic vision".
General research
In 2004, the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) published a series of studies on "visual training", which consisted of "eye exercises, muscle relaxation techniques, biofeedback, eye patches, or eye massage", "alone or in combination". No evidence has been found that such techniques can objectively be beneficial to vision, although some studies have noted changes, both positive and negative, in the visual acuity of farsighted subjects as measured by Snellen charts. In some cases improvements recorded are maintained at subsequent follow-up. However, this result is not seen as a reversal of farsightedness, and is associated with factors such as "improvements in interpreting blurry images, mood or motivational changes, making of artificial contact lenses with tear film changes, or pinhole effects of pupillary miosis. "
In 2005, the Department of Ophthalmology at Christchurch Hospital New Zealand published a review of forty-three studies on the use of eye exercises. They found that "There is no clear scientific evidence published in the main literature that supports the use of eye exercises" to enhance visual acuity, and concludes that "its use is therefore controversial."
General criticism
Dead-end
A frequent criticism of the Bates method is that the method is relatively unclear, which is seen as evidence that it is not really effective. Author Alan M. MacRobert concludes in a 1979 article that "the most damning argument against the Bates system" and other alternative therapies is that they "bear no fruit". Regarding Bates's method, he reasoned that "If palming, shifting, and swinging can really heal bad eyesight, glasses will become obsolete as now as horse-drawn carriages."
Lens and corrective security
Disposing of a person's corrective lens, as Bates recommends, or wearing a weaker lens than a person-defined correction, as suggested by some Bates method advocates, poses a potential safety hazard in certain situations, especially when one operates a motor vehicle. James Randi recounts that his father, shortly after removing his glasses at the suggestion of Bates's book, damaged his car. Bates teacher's method often reminds that when driving, one must use the necessary legal corrections.
Avoid conventional treatment
One of the greatest potential dangers of faith in the Bates method is that a believer may be reluctant to seek medical advice on what could be a life-threatening condition requiring rapid treatment, such as glaucoma. Also, children with vision problems may require early attention by a professional to successfully prevent lazy eyes. These treatments may include exercise, but are different from those associated with the Bates method, and parents who subscribe to the Bates idea may delay seeking conventional care until it is too late. Perhaps further is needed for a child at risk of developing a lazy eye to use proper correction.
See also
- Behavioral Optometry
- Convergence insufficiency
- Iridology
- List of topics that are characterized as pseudoscience
- Needle pinhole
- Tibetan eye diagram
- Vision therapy
- See Clear Methods
References
Further reading
- Grosvenor, TP (2007). Nonsurgical of Myopia Control or Reduction Method . Primary Care Optometry (5th ed.). Health Sciences Elsevier. p.Ã, 370. ISBNÃ, 0750675756.
There is never any clinical or scientific evidence that this procedure can help control myopia.
External links
- "Endless search for 'Normal' Vision". Life . May 27, 1957.
- Antonia Orfield M.A. O.D. (1994). "Viewing Space: Brain Reprogramming that Happens to Reduce Miopia" (PDF) . Behavioral Optometry Journal . 5 (5): 123-31.
- "To See or Not to See Natural Vision Correction". BBC. September 27, 2004.
- Kate Robertson (October 14, 2007). "See eye to eye". Sydney Morning Herald .
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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