New Audio: The Great Eyeglasses Scam

[Fintan]

The Great Eyeglasses Scam

How Opticians are Destroying Our Vision

Special Guest: Donald Rehm, author of The Myopia Myth
http://www.myopia.org and http://preventmyopia.org

For a hundred years it's been known that young reading causes short
sight. What's worse is that distance lenses only increase the problem.
Our guest, Donald Rehm has an effective solution to save children's sight
-which opticians ignore as they profit from destroying our vision.

Including:

- The True Cause of Shortsightedness.
- The Eye: An Engineering Marvel.
- How Minus Lenses Destroy our Sight
- How to Save the Sight of Children
- Dangers of Laser Surgery & Eyedrops

DSL Mp3 Audio
http://www.breakfornews.com/audio/NextLevel070403a.mp3

Dialup Mp3 Audio
http://www.breakfornews.com/audio/NextLevel070403.mp3

REFERENCES

Donald Rehm's Biography
The International Myopia Prevention Association (“IMPA”) was founded in
1974 by Donald Rehm. IMPA is a Pennsylvania not-for-profit corporation.

Mr. Rehm had invented and built the Myopter optical viewer in 1972, and
introduced it to the optometric profession at the 1973 Annual Meeting of
the American Academy of Optometry in San Francisco. His paper, "The
Myopter Viewer: An Instrument for Preventing, Improving and Eliminating
Acquired Myopia", was subsequently published in the American Journal of
Optometry and Physiological Optics.

http://www.myopia.org/authorbiography.htm

DOWNLOAD THE BOOK FREE

http://preventmyopia.org/thebook.html


BreakForNews Discussion Topic:
How to Avoid the Opticians 'Eyeglasses Scam'
http://www.breakfornews.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1734


http://www.i-see.org

The truth about minus lenses.
Minus lenses create the need for stronger glasses YEAR AFTER YEAR!
Minus lenses cause the eye to lengthen ABNORMALLY!
Minus lenses greatly increase the risk of RETINAL DETACHMENT, CATARACT and RETINOPATHY!
Minus lenses cause myopia that doctors treat with RISKY CORNEAL SURGERY!
Minus lenses are a crutch that must be worn a LIFETIME!
Minus lenses lead to eye exams and corrective lenses that are EXPENSIVE!
Minus lenses enrich the eye doctors and destroy YOUR HEALTH!
Minus lenses and their frames reduce peripheral vision and are HAZARDOUS!
Minus lenses have never been proven SAFE!
Minus lenses can lead to BLINDNESS!
Minus lenses and the doctors who recommend them are your ENEMIES!

International Myopia Prevention Association.
http://www.myopia.org/

How doctors destroy vision with minus lenses.

The wearing of distance or minus power (concave) glasses aids the vision of myopes by bringing everything closer so that distant objects are within the range of focus. A book may still be held at arm's length but from a focusing standpoint it has now been moved closer to the eyes. This begins a vicious circle which soon results in the need for stronger glasses. Increasing amounts of effort are necessary to focus each time the power of the glasses is increased. Isn't it logical that this could cause the vision to get worse much faster than if no glasses were prescribed?....

For the past 100 years, myopic people have been receiving treatment that is the exact opposite of what they should be getting. It is the old story of treating symptoms and ignoring causes that has always permeated the medical establishment.

Research proving the environmental cause of myopia. Here is a sampling of research done in the USA during the past several decades that has provided evidence that this acquired myopia is not hereditary, but environmental:

1) Since the eyes of certain monkeys are nearly identical to human eyes, a hood was used to restrict the vision of such monkeys so that they could see no farther away than 15 inches (38 cm). It was found that most of them developed high myopia just as humans do (Francis A. Young, "The Development of Myopia," Contacto 15, no. 2, June, 1971). Monkeys living in the wild, however, do not develop myopia (Francis A. Young, "Visual Refractive Errors of Wild and Laboratory Monkeys," Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Digest 27, August, 1965).

2) The vision of Eskimos living on the northern shore of Alaska was examined. It was found that the parents and grandparents, who were illiterate and living a typical outdoor life, were not myopic. Of the children, who had the benefit of compulsory education, fully 60% were myopic (Francis A. Young et al, "The Transmission of Refractive Errors within Eskimo Families," American Journal of Optometry and Archives of the American Academy of Optometry 46, no. 9, September, 1969). Primitive or illiterate people around the world generally do not develop myopia. How can this be explained by the heredity theory?

3) In a study entitled "Bifocal Control of Myopia," Kenneth H. Oakley and Francis A. Young described how they used bifocals on children to reduce their rate of myopia progression to a fraction of what it would have otherwise been. (American Journal of Optometry and Physiological Optics, 52, no. 11, November, 1975). For the full report, read Bifocal Control of Myopia.

4) Navy submarine personnel, working in a confined visual environment, develop myopia much faster than other personnel (Ira Schwartz and N. Elaine Sandberg, "The Effect of Time in Submarine Service on Vision," Medical Research Laboratory Report no. 253; Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, Navy Department project NM 003041.57.03).

5) In a study entitled "Accommodation, Refractive Error and Eye Growth in Chickens," and published in Vision Research., Vol 28, No. 5 pp 639-657, 1988, Pergamon Press, Frank Schaeffel, Adrian Glasser and Howard C. Howland found that:

• All eyes treated with positive lenses became consistently more positive (hyperopic).
  Negative lenses produced more negative (myopic) refractions (focal states) in all eyes.
  In a test of plus/minus lenses on left/right eyes, the eye with the plus lens moved in a positive direction. The eye with a minus lens moved in a minus direction.
  The control group did not change significantly in any direction.

The amount of acquired myopia in the Far East is much higher than in the USA. The large amount of study needed to master and use oriental characters is thought to be a contributing cause......

The spreading of lies. Nearsightedness can be prevented and controlled. Yet the eye doctors seem to ignore anything that has to do with prevention. It is not considered profitable. There is no financial incentive to prevent myopia. When has your eye doctor ever mentioned the body of research that supports the environmental cause of myopia? Shouldn't you be made aware of this? Could it be that there is a better living to be made in selling eye exams, glasses, contact lenses and "vision training" to repeat customers at regular intervals as myopia develops? There is also money to be made by the surgeons who treat the disease and detached retinas that develop later.

The eye doctors join forces with the National Eye Institute, the media, public "education" organizations and others to feed their viewpoint to the public while ignoring the harmful effects of excessive close work.....

READ MORE:
http://www.myopia.org/page3.htm

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What causes myopia?

Children are normally born farsighted and must exert focusing effort (accommodate) even for distance. This causes a ciliary muscle spasm followed by an eye elongation that reduces the farsightedness and accommodative effort. This is nature's way of refining the length of the eye so that excellent vision is the end result. The process is supposed to stop when only a little farsightedness remains. It is constant close work which causes this process to go too far and move the eye into myopia. If we did not learn to read, we would not become nearsighted

Is myopia preventable?

We believe that the answer is yes. If children use reading glasses for reading and other close work as soon as the first signs of nearsightedness appear, myopia can be prevented.

Continues at:
http://preventmyopia.org/faq.html

THE PROOF
http://preventmyopia.org/validation.html

EYESTRAIN - ITS CAUSES, CONSEQUENCES AND TREATMENT
http://myopia.org/brumerpaper.htm

HOW TO SAVE YOUR CHILD'S VISION
http://myopia.org/savechild.htm
--------------------------------------------
Normal and abnormal.
Vision Testing.
Printable Eye Chart.
Test Lenses.
Lens Selection.
Reading Glasses.
Pinhole glasses.
The Myopter.
Your role.
--------------------------------------------
http://myopia.org/savechild.htm

FDA Petition
http://preventmyopia.org/fdapetition.html

CLOSE-UP LENS SELECTION
http://myopia.org/closeuplensselection.htm

ORDER ONLINE AT:
http://myopia.org/products.htm

LASER SURGERY MAY RUIN EYES
http://myopia.org/observerarticle.htm

TOXIC DILATING DRUGS
http://myopia.org/dilatingdrugs.htm

[Ormond]

Glad I heard this.

I knew prescription lenses made my eyes worse with alarming speed. They fitted me at seven so I'm blind as a bat.
Initial cause: I grew up with my nose in books about 4 inches from my eyes.

I want to add, though, that contact lenses arrest the problem. Progressive distension ceases.
But concave prescription eyeglass lenses are a highway to hell! Wtih those I needed a new pair annually. And it never stops.

BUT...I had been considering LASIK, which recently became much cheaper here. Now I won't go there.

Contact lenses are inconvenient, but better than blowing a cornea. Now that we know that LASIK means carving away at the interior of the cornea and making it thin, it's clearly a risk.

[Alex Eulenberg]

Contact lenses are no better than eyeglasses when it comes to the near work factor. They may seem to reduce myopia progression, but they don't really, no more than wearing tight pants will keep you from getting fatter. Actually, tight pants may even be more effective in this area since they may keep you from eating as much. Contact lenses for myopia, on the other hand, still force you to focus for the near point no matter what you're looking at, which, especially in the growing eye, paves the way to more nearsightedness.

Dissenting Optometrist J. J. Kennebeck had this to say on the subject in chapter 4 of his 1969 book "Why Eyeglasses are Harmful for Children and Young People", available on the I-SEE web site: http://www.i-see.org/eyeglasses_harmful/

Contact lenses are as bad or worse than glasses. Wild claims are made for contact lenses. Eyemen who would never before admit to the faults of glasses do admit these faults after they get into contact lens work, mostly because of the greater remuneration. They claim that contact lenses will stop the progression of myopia. Just how they do that they do not say. As with myopic glasses, if nearsightedness does not call for stronger contact lenses within a year or so, the contact lenses were too strong the time before. They could cause deterioration or ulceration of the cornea. They take more care than they are worth. Many quit wearing them soon after they get them. Actors and athletes are acclaimed for being able to do their stuff with contact lenses, as if the contact lenses make them normal-eyed. It is strange that some eyemen who fit contact lenses do not wear them themselves.

I maintain the I-SEE web site, which is all about methods of improving naked-eye vision, and I also moderate the companion I-SEE discussion group. We have a quite mainstream optometrist, Dr. Judy, our resident devil's advocate, if you will. She claims that eyeglasses have no effect on the progression of myopia, and prefers the genetic theory. In her posts, she always defends the standard practice of optometrists, so if there were good evidence that contact lenses helped slow myopia progression, I'm sure she would mention it.

But she is quite clear about it: contact lenses cannot help stop myopia progression. If they seem to do so, it is an illusion. Here is from a recent exchange on the subject:

Is it true or is it a myth that wearing hard contacts (and--I have heard--wearing soft contacts) tends to slow myopia progression?

Of those who believe this to be the case, what mechanisms are in force that produce this effect?

A myth. In the bad, old days before gas perm lenses the chronic oxygen deprivation caused changes in corneal curvature and corneal thickness and change in refraction, usually a loss of myopia or increase in hyperopia. Upon ceasing lens wear, the refractive error would return.

A contact lens fitted a little too flat also exerts some mechanical pressure on the cornea to flatten it and can cause decrease in myopia.

So long term rigid lens wearers will often find, upon refraction after lens wear, that their myopia is less. If they progress, the progression can be masked.

The other factor is that people usually can't afford contacts until their late teens or early twenties, about the same time that myopia usually stops progressing. So the individual experience would be that their myopia progressed from age 10 to 18 wearing glasses and didn't progress after age 18 while wearing contacts.

Here's a paper I wrote in 1996 on the subject of myopia prevention. It will give you a good background on the subject:

http://www.i-see.org/prevent_myopia.html

And here is a collection of three articles from optometric journals, two of which I discuss in the above paper, on how reading glasses help nip myopia in the bud:

http://www.i-see.org/plus_therapy/

[Ormond]

Sorry to differ, but hard lenses do arrest distension, physically. I got the first pair when I was 14, and needed no new prescription for 16 years, until I switched to soft lenses. Because hard lenses are notoriously uncomfortable to wear.

Meanwhile, soft lenses were such an ordeal to put in, that I went back to glasses, since the 'thin lenses' had come out (as a kid I wore 'coke bottle' glasses). And my eyesight worsened rapidly within a year.

[Alex Eulenberg]

Ormond, it seems to me that your case might well fit the explanations of Dr. Kennebeck and Dr. Judy: either you were overprescribed to begin with (your vision will not necessarily be blurred with a prescription that is too strong; your eye muscles will likely accommodate to make up the difference), or the contact lenses had a superficial effect on the cornea that wore off once you stopped using them. Note that when the eye elongates as myopia progresses, it is mainly the back of the eye (behind the retina - thus the risk of retinal detachment) that elongates.

The effect of contact lenses on myopia has been the subject of many studies, and in these studies, the myopia progresses at much the same rate as with eyeglasses. So my guess is that if you had been fitted with contact lenses at age 7 (I know it isn't done at such an early age, but suppose it were possible), your prescription would have followed the same course.

Studies show that with contact lenses, myopia continues to progress in children...

A Randomized Trial of the Effects of Rigid Contact Lenses on Myopia Progression (2004)

http://archopht.ama-assn.org/cgi/conten ... 22/12/1760

and adults...

A Retrospective Study of Myopia Progression in Adult Contact Lens Wearers (2002)

http://www.iovs.org/cgi/content/abstract/43/7/2110

The rate of progression in myopic children wearing any type of corrective lens, whether glasses or contact lenses, averages at about a half a diopter per year. For adults the rate is lower.

[Ormond]

Thanks for the info.

I noticed all along that I was always overprescribed with glasses. So this has to be a standard procedure. I know that the nice clear selection I would say 'best' for when they took the readings in the office would be comfortable and best.
But when the glasses were done, they would seem too strong. Always the doctor would say, 'it might take a few days to adjust to them, don't worry about it, that's normal'.
And of course they fill up your eye with stuff to dialate the pupil and make vision distorted for a couple of hours anyway.

I don't blame the doctors. These procedures are taught to them and they must be given lots of rational sounding reasons for all of it. I only wonder why ophthalmologists who've been fitted for glasses themselves since childhood don't figure it out.

[manmade]

LASIK was the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. Some say that is quite expensive but its well worth it. The procedure really changed my vision into much better as I expected, and I will bring the benefits of it for the rest of my life, so price shouldn’t be the major determining factor in vision correction. Im 37 year’s old and very outgoing person I always into extreme sports and last year the illness of my eyes became a major factor that I relinquish in my field of interest. Its kinda disturbing wearing eye glasses or contacts when I do climbing or biking. Good thing ,my friend recommend me the my2020 with their financing deals for my lasik surgery, now I’m back in my passion which is climbing and biking. Dr. Stephen B. Wiles my surgeon is so informative and has such a calm demeanor; he put me at ease even though I was nervous about the procedure. He went through all of the steps involved in the treatment so that I knew exactly what to expect. I appreciate everything he has done to make my vision what it is today. I can now see 20/20 with no help and do the things that im into before. I feel like Im back in my teen’s life right now. I look great without having a thick glasses and I feel good of it.

[noplacebo]

ormond, through talking about your goggles youve just been googled,,,mined all mined.

[bjones]

Before I had treatment I had problems with my work 'coz i hated wearing my glasses, I?m a graphic artist of a web-hosting firm and having bad eye sight is a bit of a problem in this business. I visited my2020.com and decided to have Lasik surgery. Now after I had surgery, I doing my job better and faster with out 2 extra eyes. My life is so much better now.
________
Genetically modified food

[Rumpl4skn]

Wow... so we have two brand-new members here who sing the praises of my2020.com!

I can see better already: they are clearly pursuing a vigorously effecting forum spam-bombing campaign.

[Peter]

C'mon Rump! They are obviously troothers that can finally see clearly!!

They are just spreading the good word. I am sure they have no commercial interest in the endeavor and googling them and the site and etc. etc. would never reveal that they are shills.....not here...surely....uh...maybe?

[Continuity]

ARRGH! My retinas are hanging off!