Vision for Life

by Meir Schneider

  We work very hard from infancy to early childhood to create balanced use of the two eyes. Pediatric ophthalmologists understand how important it is to create bilateral vision. What puzzles me, however, is that most ophthalmologists will correct one eye to see near with cataract surgery and one eye to see far. This correction is an error, and it goes completely against nature’s will for the eyes to work together. It strains the eye and creates tension all over the body.

  The best solution is to request that your surgeon correct both eyes to see well from far away, and with glasses to see well from close up. With time and exercise, maybe you won’t need the glasses.

  Note: Remember to work these exercises into the entirety of your day. Don’t do an hour and a half all at once. Pace out the exercises so that you are working on your vision all the time, as a matter of habit. Habits determine your destiny.

  Extra Exercise for Cataracts: Bounce and Catch

  For this exercise you will need the opaque piece of paper to tape to the bridge of your nose, a ball, and, if possible, a trampoline. If you are not able to find a trampoline, or if your physical condition prevents you from using one, you can simply try running in place instead of bouncing. The point of bouncing is to distract your mind and body while you practice the exercise, as well as to engage your peripheral and central vision in a dynamic and different way.

  Simply put the paper on the bridge of your nose so it blocks the central vision of the strong eye, and play catch with someone while you bounce. Wave one hand to the side, above, and also below the eye that is obstructed. Make sure that you can see your hand only peripherally. Bounce and catch for five minutes; then take a break and sun for a minute. Then bounce and catch for another five minutes. Now take the piece of paper off and see how different the world looks. Notice a bigger periphery expanding around you. Notice the intensity of color and shape. It is also helpful to try this exercise with the paper taped to the bridge of your nose from your forehead down to your chin, as in the Melissa exercise.

  Figure 6.1. The point of bouncing is to distract your mind and body while you practice the exercise.

  Correcting Diabetes

  Diabetes is a condition caused when the body cannot produce insulin or does not utilize insulin in the right way. Insulin is actually a hormone. Insulin’s basic function is to transfer sugar (glucose) into the body’s cells. There is also a tendency for patients with diabetes to experience poor blood flow.

  Poor blood flow can lead to major difficulties in the body, from heart problems to a loss of limbs. And today, we are very aware of how important proper blood flow is to the visual system. Because of poor blood flow to the eyes, some diabetic patients get cataracts, retinopathy, and neovascularization, which are very similar to conditions related to high blood pressure. They lead to continuous bleeding in the retina, which could lead to blindness.

  Poor blood flow leads to a response in the retina in which new vesicles are formed. This response is very useful in every other part of the body. For example, if you are bedridden for a month because of a serious illness, you’ll have pain when you first stand up, partly because you don’t have enough blood flow to your legs. Very quickly, though, the body will form capillaries to bring you circulation, sometimes called collateral circulation. If your main arteries are clogged or not functional in any way, when the main arteries open up, those vesicles (the capillaries) will degenerate, and the main blood vessels will take over. So, the second or third time that you stand, your legs won’t hurt.

  Because of diabetes, high blood pressure, or other systemic problems, you do not get enough blood flow to the retina, and the body will form capillaries to nourish the retina. Many times those capillaries are defective; they leak and destroy the sensitive and small photoreceptive cells.

  To prevent diabetic attacks, always carry fruits or seeds wherever you go so you can have healthy snacks if there is a rise in your sugar level. More important, learn to exercise in a way that loosens the neck and brings more blood flow to your whole body and prevents lack of blood flow to your head and retinas.

  Exercise Program for Diabetes: 40 Minutes Daily

  • Massage: 20 minutes daily.

  • Shifting/Looking at Details: 10 minutes daily.

  • Extra Exercise for Diabetes: 10 minutes daily.

  Many people with diabetes do not develop eye problems. Doing these specific exercises may help the health of the eye. Concentrating on neck and shoulder exercises may prevent eye problems from occurring because what we need is more blood flow.

  Incorporate these exercises into every part of your day. Don’t just practice for one hour in the morning or one hour at night. Find five minutes here and five minutes there, all day, every day. Your diabetes is with you every minute of the day. So you must work to overcome the disadvantages of your diabetes constantly.

  For your extra daily exercise, you may choose from any of the following. On some days you might want to practice them all!

  Figure 6.2. Bringing more blood flow to the head and retinas.

  Extra Exercises for Diabetes

  Tapping

  I have found throughout the years that tapping on all the bones of the body makes a difference with diabetes. After massaging your face, head, eyes, neck, and shoulders, tap rapidly with your fingertips on every bone of your body. You can also stand under the shower and have the shower massager tap on every single bone of your body.

  Tapping helps to stimulate blood production.

  It’s also good for you to sit down, hold your legs, and rub your feet one against the other. That can help you to create more circulation. The extremities, such as the feet and hands, are far from the heart. So are the face and, of course, the eyes, and they have a complex vascular system as well. What we want is to bring better blood flow to every part of the body. Blood flow is what nurtures the body. The better the blood flow, the more vital, vibrant, and happy we become.

  Whenever you massage your body, you have to massage toward the heart. Start by massaging your feet, then your calves, and then your thighs in a rotating motion. Then massage your buttocks with your palms; use your fingertips to massage your inguinal area to loosen up the tension in the hips. Then massage your abdominal area firmly, but with some gentleness, and in a rotating motion toward the heart. Massage your chest and tap on the bones in your chest. Next, massage your forehead and then your entire head. This massage therapy can make a very big difference in terms of the blood flow in your body.

  Waving

  Many people with diabetes develop a major blind spot in their retina. If this is happening to you, hang an eye chart on the wall at eye level and wave your hand in the area of the blind spot while looking with the healthy areas at the eye chart.

  For this exercise, the point is to go back and do all the other eye chart exercises while waving your hand in the area of the blind spot you are experiencing. Review all the exercises in the rest of the book and do them with the stronger eye while you wave your hand in the blind spot.

  Patch the Strong Eye

  If you have a small damaged portion in one of your retinas, wear a patch on your strong eye and place a piece of paper with a small opening in the area of blindness in front of your weaker eye. Then go for a walk around your yard or somewhere else safe. This will force the weakest part of your eye to do all the work.

  If you cannot see anything this way, go into a dark room with your strong eye patched and put blinking lights in front of the weak eye until you begin to experience some sensation of light in the blind spot. Refer to the chapter on glaucoma for suggestions on using blinking lights.

  A Note about Laser Treatments

  I would like to discourage you from having too many laser treatments. Many concerned physicians do preventive laser treatments in which they basically scar a big portion of the retina to prevent rubeosis, or bleeding in the retina. But if you improve your blood flow, there will be no rubeosis.

  Too many laser treatments can weaken the retina
and blind too many parts of it. So while I respect and accept the use of laser treatments to stop continuous bleeding once it occurs, I would like you to aggressively embrace exercises, movement, and dietary change and to work on damaged areas in order to help the parts that are not damaged.

  These days, doctors use injections to stop bleeding. While injections of Lucentis and other future medications may be effective and less damaging than laser treatments, they still have some damaging effects. My recommendation is to do the injections only when there is bleeding, and not otherwise. Exercise to increase the blood flow, and you will decrease the bleeding.

  Cataracts and Diabetes

  If you do have cataract surgery, pay attention to your general blood flow and demand to be checked by the doctor every two hours after the surgery. Doctors hate to be patronized by patients, but don’t worry about it. Your health comes first. Make sure that you are being tested every two hours, and have them test you for bleeding and for any compromise of your retina or optic nerve.

  Correcting Glaucoma

  Glaucoma is a disease of the optic nerve, often caused by irregular pressure in the eyes, that results in loss of the visual field and, eventually, blindness. Glaucoma can be a scary disease for many people because of this, and also since its symptoms may not be obvious until the disease is quite advanced.

  The loss of vision that occurs with glaucoma has a few factors. One is pressure, and another is weakness of the optic nerve and disk (the area where the nerve connects to the retina). So if you have a very strong optic nerve and disk, even high pressure will not necessarily lead to a loss of vision. But if you have a weak optic nerve and disk, even low pressure could lead to a loss of vision. For this reason, everyone must be evaluated to determine whether they have a weak or a strong optic nerve and disk before the effects of pressure can be understood and predicted accurately.

  The complication here comes from Lasik surgery because it alters the thickness of the cornea, which will alter the perception of pressure, thus making it harder to measure. To date, it has been difficult to determine what the pressure truly is after Lasik surgery.

  We would like to assume that normal pressure in the eye is between 10 and 20 mercury points. Anything less than 10 could be insufficient pressure on the eye. We need pressure in the eye just like a tire needs pressure to maintain its integrity. But when the pressure mounts, it can destroy weak areas in our eyes. The main area that it destroys is the optic disk, which is rather weak in all of us but is even weaker in people who have glaucoma. Reducing pressure would take away the risk of blindness or, at least, of partial blindness.

  Statistically, it is true to say that those who have pressure above 30 will most likely lose more vision, but only statistically. In any particular case, it could be that even a pressure higher than 30 does not lead to vision loss. You could also say that some people at a pressure of only 24 or 25 may lose a lot of vision.

  The other problem that could easily occur is low-tension glaucoma. With low-tension glaucoma, the optic disk degenerates and is destroyed even at a pressure under that which is considered to be desirable for most of us. The optic disk is a weak and vulnerable area. When that area has pressure it cannot withstand, the optic disk can be compromised. In some people with completely normal pressure (the 16 mercury points that most of us would desire to have), the optic disk can still be destroyed. Still, the prevailing viewpoint is that the problem is the high pressure in high-tension glaucoma patients, and if they have surgery to reduce the pressure, the problems will go away. While I agree with it to a point, I believe that it is only a part of what happens. Therefore, the treatment is sometimes ineffective, and can even be dangerous because it works only on the eye pressure without considering other factors.

  Recently I had the pleasure of working with a bright woman named Lucia, who came all the way from Brazil to San Francisco for two weeks of intensive sessions with me. She came to me with much fear because she had lost 95 percent of her nerve functionality due to glaucoma. The surprising thing about her case was that, after doing the eye exercises and before she even met with me, she gained back the peripheral vision she had lost; her field of vision was almost completely normal—there was only one small spot of vision loss—and her acuity was 20/20. I am not the only one who is surprised with such magnificent vision after such significant loss of nerve tissue.

  Lucia also told me that several of her family members were afflicted with cardiovascular disease. Knowing that she had this family history, my conclusion from her case was that doing the exercises had increased her blood flow to the remaining nerve tissue and had improved the situation tremendously. Doctors had offered her a very risky surgery to reduce the pressure, but it would have also posed a big risk to her vision, and she could have lost it completely. I am happy she refused.

  I believe that the following can help people with glaucoma:

  • Reduction of pressure (in this I agree with doctors)

  • Balanced use of the two eyes and within each eye

  • Sufficient circulation to nourish the optic nerve

  In Lucia’s case, the bodywork we did was just as important as the vision work, and the part of the nerve that was working assumed the work of the nerves that had been destroyed.

  The frustrating part of it all is that even when you reduce the pressure to 10 or 11, as many doctors want you to do, the optic disk may be fine but could also continue to erode to the point of destruction, causing damage to the optic nerve. And the feeling shared by medical doctors is that the optic nerve can never regenerate.

  Unlike cataract surgery, about which physicians are very optimistic, physicians continuously see that they cannot fully control glaucoma: not with drops, not with surgery. There is no way to clarify to anyone that reduction of pressure equals reduction of destruction of the optic nerve. And it is clear that most people like to have a simple technical solution to complex problems. Since there seems to be no magic bullet for glaucoma, people live in fear. And that fear is one of the main destructive dangers to our eyes.

  The eyes feel this fear. The tissues feel the fear as well, and then become much worse. With some of my patients who had temporary improvement in therapy, I sometimes felt that this cloud of fear caused them to deteriorate anyway. With other patients, where the situation seemed to be grave to everyone else, their trust in the therapy dramatically improved their vision through the correct exercises and the right knowledge. Positive affirmation can be very useful. You can close your eyes and visualize that the strength of your eyes outpowers any phenomenon that can destroy them. Positive affirmation is 50 percent of your healing process.

  When it comes to high pressure in the eyes, all factors must be considered: lack of balanced use of the eyes, stiffness of the neck (which is a result of stiffness of the body), or even a sense of emotional loss—not just stress, but loss.

  A good example is the desire for peace and harmony in a relationship, but never finding it because of resolutions that never come. Similarly, kids of divorced parents feel this when they want to see their parents getting along but never do. There are many different situations that can cause glaucoma, so apply this book in a way that works for your specific situation.

  Some people may have lost a lot of vision before the practice of these exercises and will do anything they can to keep the vision they already have and to sharpen it to a great extent. Other people may have lost hardly any vision and, therefore, do the eye exercises to prevent any potential vision loss and to sharpen their vision. Some people may have only a mild vision loss. Pay attention to the area where your vision is mildly lost, and use the area that is fuzzy or almost blind; this will help you to defend the rest of your visual system. So, apply the book individually to your needs. Take time and pay attention to yourself in a way that works for you.

  I will never forget one of my dearest patients, Murray, who had glaucoma. He did well in his therapy with me for a period of seven years. But he took a turn for the worse w
hen his wife died. Issues between him and his wife were never resolved, and that’s one of the worst situations when a person you love perishes. If a person who was very dear to you did not get along with you, and the problem you had with that person was never resolved, with their death comes a sense of loss without closure. Part of this loss is not processing your inner feelings around the unresolved issues you had with the deceased. Murray had a problem with his wife’s senility and the Alzheimer’s she had developed toward the end of her life. He discovered much anger that she had against some people which she had never brought out during their marital life. It revealed much of her anguish that he had never noticed during her youth. He was struck by the amount of anger and frustration that came out of her when she forgot the present and only remembered the past. And here was a woman who was a world educator and a writer.

  When she died, his glaucoma became much worse because his emotional state lacked the stability that he had during most of the marriage. He was also exhausted from trying to keep his wife in as good a shape as he could during the last years of her life. Often, when there is a sense of loss and death, it can lead to a loss of vision. A sense of loss or death could result from the absence of anything that you really loved and adored, like relationships, stability, or a home you had liked but from which you had to move. Anything that deep inside leads to an emotional connection, and when it leaves your life without a positive resolution, it could lead to tremendous subconscious tension. That tension reveals itself as a great muscular contraction in your neck. And that neck contraction hampers and disturbs the blood flow to your brain and to your eyes. When it disturbs the blood flow to your brain, you run a risk of strokes and hemorrhages of the brain cells. When it disturbs the blood flow to your eyes, you run the risk of losing retinal areas and vision, and you run a greater risk of having high pressure in your eyes.