Eye diseases. The Myopia Myth deals primarily with myopia, which is a refractive error, not a disease. However, increasing numbers of people suffer from eye diseases such as cataract, glaucoma, macular degeneration, and diabetic retinopathy. It seems as if every disease gives rise to an organization backed by doctors that promises to find a "cure" if given enough money. Identifying and eliminating the cause is rarely mentioned.

Myopia increases the risk for cataract and glaucoma. For more on these, see Cataract and Glaucoma.

While macular degeneration can be caused by the abnormal lengthening of the eye due to the prescription of minus lenses for myopia, in most people it is diet-related. Like other degenerative diseases - heart disease, stroke, arthritis - macular degeneration can be prevented and is to some extent reversible. MD is the leading cause of blindness in people age 64 or older living in Western countries. The severe form with impairment of vision affects 1.7 million people in the United States, with 200,000 new cases annually. Characteristically, this is a disease of progressive, painless, loss of the central vision in the macula of both eyes simultaneously. The macula is the part of the retina which provides our most acute and detailed vision, and is used for visual activities, like reading, driving, recognizing faces, watching television, and other fine work. Our high fat/high cholesterol diet is the cause. MD develops simply because the blood vessels which serve the eye become clogged with fat and cholesterol. The average blood flow reduction in people with MD is 37% compared to people without this disease. The end result is deprivation of oxygen and nutrients to the visual tissues of the eye found in the retina and concentrated in the macula - and the receptors of light and color (rods and cones) soon become nonfunctional and die.

For more information on ways to prevent or improve these and other systemic diseases, visit CholesterolCheck.org. This knowledge could save your sight or your life.

Floaters. As myopic eyes get longer, the problem of floaters in the watery vitreous becomes greater. Many people suffer greatly from this impediment to clear vision, but no research is being done to find a way to treat the condition. The major reason is that such research would open up the much larger question of why myopes get such floaters in the first place.

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, GLAUCOMA 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!

A realistic disclaimer. When disseminating information about health topics, it is customary to include a disclaimer such as "This information is for educational purposes only. It is not intended as a replacement for consultation, diagnosis or treatment by a duly licensed practitioner." You will find no such statement here. Instead, the following advice is offered:

Many people feel that doctors in general cannot be trusted to tell you the truth. They feel that the amount of pain, injury and death inflicted by doctors on their paying customers is almost beyond comprehension. The media bring us stories almost daily about unnecessary surgery, misdiagnosis, overprescription of drugs, etc. The information you get is frequently erroneous rather than correct. Your doctor's main interest could be maximum income, not your health. Educate yourself by reading everything you can find about your health problem and don't overlook books written by people outside the medical establishment. In fact, those are precisely the books you should start with. You might be more likely to find the truth there because they are often written by people who have searched far and wide to find the truth. No one person knows everything. Look for material that deals with cause and prevention, rather than "cure." In the medical world, the word "prevention" often means "early detection" which translates to more money for the doctors and the pharmaceutical industry. Doctors seem to carefully cultivate an aura of godlike humanitarianism, wisdom and concern to such an extent that they believe it themselves. But the real name of the game is often MONEY. Always get several opinions before allowing anyone to "treat" you. Protect yourself from our present profit-driven "sickness-care" system.

The failure of our schools. The people who control the education of our children, from the local school boards to the state and federal bureaucracies, are failing in their duty. While they enforce compulsory education, they show no interest in the harm they are doing to our children's vision. Consider that it is common practice for school boards to place soft drink machines in their schools and thus contribute to the destruction of our children's teeth through the consumption of high quantities of refined sugar. This is inexcusable. If they show no more concern and common sense than this, can we really expect them to show any interest in investigating the cause of the high incidence of myopia development during the school years? Excessive reading and now the increasing use of computer monitors are extremely harmful unless proper protective measures are taken. For our presentation that was made to schools, but ignored, see Presentation.

A few eye doctors occasionally prescribe reading glasses or even bifocals for children in the hope that this will slow myopia development, but this is rarely enough to stop or reverse the myopia. It takes an aggressive use of a plus lens, eliminating all or nearly all close work stress, to reverse myopia. Some highly motivated individuals such as pilots, with myopia in the -0.5 to -1 diopter range, have eliminated their myopia by this method. But using the Myopter is still the best way, since it also eliminates convergence and removes the risk of creating external eye muscle imbalance.

Save your child's vision. Now that you are familiar with the benefits of the revolutionary devices that are feared and suppressed by the eye care establishment, you are ready to learn how to use these items in a simple, inexpensive program to save your child from ever becoming myopic. What better gift could you give your child? What's more, you can do this without the expensive "help" of an eye doctor. Once you have absorbed the information on this website and read The Myopia Myth, you will know far more about myopia than the vast majority of eye doctors. Just finding an eye doctor who has an open mind and is willing to be educated by a customer can be a hopeless task. See How To Save Your Child's Vision to learn how to avoid this problem and make your own decisions.

The dismal doctor's office. While ophthalmologists refuse to even question the inherited myopia nonsense, some optometrists claim they are doing their best to prevent myopia in their patients by using contact lenses, vision training, biofeedback or whatever "cure" or gimmick they can get the public to buy. In fact, they are not preventing myopia, they are "treating" it. That's where the money is. An eye care practitioner who is TRULY interested in myopia prevention would have copies of The Myopia Myth available for purchase or loan by the patient. There would be a computer monitor in the waiting room with this website running on it. Research papers by Francis Young and others would be available. There would be pamphlets about proper use of the eyes and the dangers of the usual minus lenses. The indiscriminate prescription of these lenses would be a thing of the past. The Myopter viewer would be used on those children whose myopia cannot be halted by other means. Our ten-minute video would be shown to the parents of all myopic children. Have you ever met an eye doctor who is doing ANY of this? Instead, the usual worthless magazines are lying around the waiting room. WHERE IS THE PATIENT EDUCATION?

Students of optometry and ophthalmology are getting a FLAWED EDUCATION. They are being set up as purveyors of optical goods for the benefit of the optical industry, just as M.D.'s sell drugs for the drug industry. Measuring someone's refraction and selling glasses to fit the findings requires little more competence than measuring feet and selling shoes based on the size of the feet. If that's all they do with their lives, do they really deserve to be called doctors, a term that originally meant "teacher"? I suggest "shopkeeper" instead. For more on this, read Eye Doctors and Their Flawed Education.

It is next to impossible to find a vision specialist who has a true interest in myopia prevention, but there are a few. As we learn of them we will add them to our list of Myopia Prevention Specialists Of The World.

Other information. If you would like to read some of the comments we have received from visitors to this site about their experiences with the eyecare business, go to Mail From Our Visitors. A few other good sources of information on vision can be found on our Other Links page.

The future. As this tragedy becomes more widely known to the public, doctors in the eye care business are risking an avalanche of malpractice lawsuits because of the harm they have inflicted on their customers. If they continue to refuse to change their ways, they are entitled to no sympathy when getting what they deserve in the courtroom.