Myopia Can Be Controlled!

To find out what will work best for you, start with a thorough vision examination and let us explain the factors that are affecting your sight and how you can control them.

Have you been told that your child's eyes are "fine" but that he or she will need glasses soon?
If your child's eyesight is deteriorating it is not fine! Although changes in the sight of school-age children are common, they are not "normal". Healthy children are not born nearsighted. Extensive research has associated myopia with literacy, CRT usage, binocularity (eye teaming) problems, nutrition, and chronic illness. The earlier your child becomes myopic, the nore myopic he or she is likely to become - and high amounts of myopia are a leading cause of vision loss!

Even myopia found in families can be controlled and minimized. The key to your child's success in school and sports is good vision. Without it your child faces stress and frustration, and risks failure. All children should have a comprehensive vision examination before starting school, and at regular intervals thereafter to keep them seeing and performing well.

Anyone can sell you glasses or contacts. We evaluate the visual needs of each patient for work, driving, and recreational activities, then offer the best care available to keep you seeing clearly and comfortably now and for years to come.

Myopia: the causes
While there are genetic causes for myopia, the majority of nearsightedness is due to one's environment. The eyes and visual system were not designed for close work, but were designed "to look for dinosaurs and to hunt for food." Both of these are tasks done at a distance, while in today's society most people spend at least six to ten hours daily working at near-centered tasks. This puts a strain on the visual system to do tasks it was not engineered to do. The stress often results in an increase in myopia. The eyes react to their increasing near environment by becoming more myopic. This, in turn, relieves the stress of near point work on the visual system. Increased computer use in the workplace has precipitated new problems of visual stress. It has been estimated that the computer is six times harder on the eyes than conventional paperwork.

Conventoinal methods of treatment involve lenses to correct the distance sight, but wearing these lenses for near tasks will set up the stresses which originally created the myopia problem all over again, thereby increasing the wearer's myopia.

Myopia: the solution
Methods have been developed to slow down the progression of myopia, as opposed to merely correcting symptoms. Vision therapy has been shown useful in cases where there are problems with accommodation (focusing), convergence (ocular alignment), and binocular vision. Problems in these areas have been shown to be causes of progressive myopia. Special stress-reducing lenses called "plus lenses" have also been employed to reduce the strain on the eyes, thereby slowing down the myopia. Patients over 45 years old know that these lenses relieve eyestrain because most will not read for extended periods of time without their plus lenses or bifocals. These work to reduce stress by cutting down the focusing effort on the eyes by 20 to 50 percent. Instead of reading at 16 inches, your eyes are only focusing to a distance of 4 to 10 feet! This reduced stress on the visual system translates into less progression of a patient's myopia.

An increasingly employed method of myopia control and reduction is the use of Rigid Use Permeable Contact Lenses (RGPCLs). These lenses tend to stop the progression of myopia immediately, and in most cases cause a reduction to the previous myopic correction. RGPCLs, when fitted more aggressively, can actively reduce one's prescription, and in many cases achieve 20/20 vision without correction! The fitting necessary to produce these changes require expertise, regular patient monitoring and followup by the doctor. Not every method of RGPCL fitting will produce the desired effects. If necessary, children can be placed in RGPCLs as early as eight years old., depending upon individual maturity factors.

Myopia, in most cases, can be slowed, controlled, or reduced. You can only find the appropriate method of treatment for you after consultation with Doctors Davis and Kotlicky.