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Cause and Effect
Ok, let me digress a bit. First of all, let me state that my path back to 20/20 vision was not some goal I set with the knowledge that it was attainable. Indeed, the events that led up to my search can be considered quite accidental in nature. "Way back when", I was like you ... believing that as we age, we inevitably needed glasses. You may be wearing glasses or contacts now. I used to wear glasses myself. Anyway, my journey back to youthful sight does not involve just the eyes. I will write about many things that I feel are applicable to the issue of preserving or restoring vision without glasses, contacts or surgery. I will even share with you other anecdotal evidence, perhaps unrelated to vision, that supports my picture of the world and how it spins. You don't have to agree with me. Frankly, you can just close this window and move on. And, I imagine that that is exactly what some will do. If you feel that inclination to "surf on", that's probably what you should do. You probably are not of a mindset to understand, let alone accept the possibility that the world does not spin the way you thought. Follow along if you will. But, if you do, be forewarned that I have little patience for lazy people, people looking for quick solution or people who aren't used to doing things for themselves. Doing what I did will take time and patience but it can be done (took me about 7 months to discard my glasses permanently). Believe me, I could not have imagined being where I am today. But, I have had tremendous success restoring 20/20 (actually, it's better than that - perhaps 20/15) vision and plan to keep it for the rest of my life. It is my hope that some will benefit from reading my words. As you read, you may feel at times that I'm "off track" and forgot that I was writing about restoring my vision. Just keep reading. I don't wander too far and I always come back.
Almost all of my life, I have been keenly aware of the principle of cause and effect. I believe this is one of the basic tenets of our existence. I believe that every "effect", no matter how seemingly unrelated, has a "cause." For the most part, people are not hit on the "blind side." Indeed, we live in a world with a very rigid set of physical laws - laws that are predictable and in some ways very unforgiving. I also happen to believe in God. You don't have to - it's up to you. I'm not here to shove religion down your throat. However, I am trying to give you a feel for how I got to where I am. Because I believe in God, I believe that everything, including the human body, is extremely well designed. We can all witness one manifestation of this incredible design when we simply cut ourselves and the body proceeds to automatically heal itself. We all take this for granted but have you even stopped for a moment just to marvel at this incredible feat? Anyway, this belief in a well-designed system did not allow me to easily accept that the function of the eyes should degrade earlier in life than just about every other body part. It made no sense to me. And when something doesn't make sense to me, I look for reasons why. Some may just call it curiosity. I call it curiosity with a mission.
Working along these lines, I began to search for a "cause" for my failing vision; a cause that I could then eliminate. One eye (my left) was having difficulty seeing at a distance. My right eye had difficulty reading. This was an interesting point in my life. Many people have essentially asked me "what would make you look for a cause?" It is almost universally assumed that vision will degrade with age and that the average person should accept this seemingly "normal" change. Everyone in their forties has glasses, right? But, why then are kids wearing glasses? Perhaps you are beginning to see that I tend to challenge many things that the average guy just accepts as normal. As you continue reading, you will see that I have a different picture of the world in many areas - a picture that I personally believe to be closer to the "truth" or I wouldn't be writing about it.
So, my starting position with regard to just about any health issue tends to be one which assumes that the body strives to maintain excellent health including excellent vision. In spite of the assaults on our health, our bodies do a marvelous job of allowing us to live relatively normal lives. Indeed, it's miraculous that some people can even draw a breath considering the way they take care of themselves (or don't take care of themselves). When something goes wrong or is not in excellent condition, I tend to look for a reason and to alter conditions to allow the body to restore itself to excellent condition.
Back in 1989, I had a bout of atrial fibrillation. It was the first time in my life that I had any serious interaction with the medical profession. Prior to that, my experience with doctors was limited to camp physicals. For those unfamiliar with atrial fibrillation, it is essentially an electrical aberration of the heart's normal rhythm - one in which the atrial chambers of the heart beat erratically - sort of a short circuit. During this erratic beating, it is essentially useless as far as blood movement is concerned. Fortunately, this is not life threatening as the ventricular chambers of the heart perform the bulk of the work to move blood out of the heart. Still, my chest was pounding (you could see my heart beating by just looking at my bare chest). I don't have to tell you that this scared the shit out of me. As I protested calling 911 (why do people do that? I think it's a type of denial), my wife (who was pregnant at the time) was screaming through the phone for an ambulance. I was taken by ambulance to the hospital - awake and aware the entire time - just waiting to black out and die. All I could think was "is this what it's like to die?" I didn't know at the time that the condition was not life threatening but it sure felt that way. So, about 24 hours later, my heart reverted to a normal sinus rhythm unaided by electrical shock (you know, like you see on ER with the paddles and someone yells "CLEAR"). A day after that, I was discharged from the hospital in a state of disbelief - "what the hell happened?" - and with a course of pills to take. I was perhaps 20 lbs overweight but other than that I had no extraordinary medical history.
I had instructions to return if the condition reappeared (it didn't) and had an appointment with a cardiologist the following week So, not only did I now have my own doctor ... I had my own cardiologist as in ... "Who's your cardiologist?" At 32 years of age, this did not seem "normal" to me. In fact, I had to be half the age of every other patient in the cardiology ward. My visit with the cardiologist triggered a bunch of tests which were all negative (normal) and resulted in him ordering a pair of prescriptions to keep the heart beating normally. One pill was to be taken twice a day and one pill was to be taken three times a day. I did this and scheduled my next appointment about one month later. But nagging me in the back of my head was the thought that until just recently I did not need any pill to keep the heart beating normal.
When I returned to the cardiologist a month later, I had nothing bad to report regarding my heart. However, I had much feedback on the prescriptions he had me taking. As it turned out, one or both of them affected my digestive tract in such a way that I could not drive to work without stopping to look for a bathroom. Suddenly, my life revolved around "where is the closest toilet?" I found myself always scoping out the nearest toilet as mother nature had changed from gradually alerting me to the need - to making frequent urgent demands. Needless to say, this was unacceptable. Indeed it was a worse condition than the one with my heart - at least from a social standpoint. My natural question to the doctor was: "how long do I have to take these pills". His casual reply: "Oh, you'll be taking medication for the rest of your life".
NO NO NO NO NO!! RING RING RING RING RING!!! Wow - did the bells go off in my head! There is no f**king (why do I even bother; everyone knows what word that is) way I was going to take any pill for the rest of my life even if I didn't have to keep track of the location of the nearest shitter (can you guess my position on prescription drug coverage for seniors???). It's not like I was in an accident and there was some trauma to the body. Or that some acute condition existed. The cardiologist even told me that they ("they" is presumably the medical profession) do not have any idea what caused my fibrillation. Yet "they" were comfortable with giving me a concoction of chemical compounds to supposedly deal with it - FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE!! One day everything was fine and the next day I had this atrial fibrillation thing. It seemed logical (I work on logic) that the erratic heart beat was the result of a gradual process - some assault on the body that continued for months or years and finally culminated in this seemingly "sudden" condition. What scared me almost as much was this doctor's casual reply as if I should accept his wisdom without any concern at all. He's the cardiologist, right? He had absolutely no concern about the side effects. He was a cardiologist and his focus was exclusively on the heart. If he kept this little corner of my body functioning, his job was done. Something wrong with your digestive tract? Need to see a gastroenterologist for that. He even offered me more pills to deal with the digestive distractions and a referral to who-knows-where if I wanted it.. However, my life experiences told me that there was something I was doing wrong that needed to be corrected. Taking pills, in my mind, was a recipe for more problems and ultimately disaster (you remember fen-phen?). It was also logical that I needed to change something I was doing or "undo" something I did. Or maybe start doing something that I had failed to do. It made perfect sense to me that I had to simply change something (either small or drastic) in order to avoid this problem in the future. But what was it? I once read "Pain is NOT the body's way of telling you that you are low on pain medication". Wow!! Is there wisdom in that or what?
So, off I went on a health regimen. I studied atrial fibrillation and tried to find some cause that the doctor was unaware of. I was not able to do so at the time. I also took myself off of the medication against the doc's recommendation. However, he did at least tell me that if I do stop taking the medication, I should do so gradually (I followed this advice and took half pills, quarter pills and finally no pills). I exercised 35 minutes each day (vigorous 160 beat per minute exercises; not some sissy crap). I vastly altered my diet to look like the model for the food pyramid. I had quit smoking many years earlier but I thought I'd mention here that if I was still a smoker at the time, I would have quit instantly without any help of "stop smoking" systems or other assistance. Sheer willpower had served me very well in the past and anyone who tells you "willpower" doesn't work has some pills to sell you.
By the time I returned to the cardiologist at the 6-month mark, I had lost 34 pounds and, frankly, I felt and looked great. My cholesterol had dropped 75 points and my HDL (good cholesterol) had climbed to 62. My ratio of total cholesterol to HDL was 2.7:1 which is excellent. He remarked that he had never seen anyone experience such a dramatically positive change with diet and exercise alone especially in so short a time frame. It gave me a tremendous sense of accomplishment and sense of self-reliance. He actually took notes while I told him what I did but I don't think it will replace his prescription pad. In private, I thanked God because it was His system that deserved credit. I had only decided to work WITH THE SYSTEM rather than to allow the pride of human knowledge (medical profession) to determine the course of action. My faith in "the system" was immensely bolstered and helped to clear the lens through which I viewed all future medical conditions. This was my first good hard look at how the medical profession works. And the biggest lesson I came away with was that the profession is highly compartmentalized and specialized and it is rare that the profession studies or treats the whole body. They prefer to "tweak" a little piece of it and hope that the effects elsewhere are minimal or at least tolerable. At this point, I mentally put the whole episode behind me and moved forward with my life as if it never happened. At the time my oldest son was 2 years old, my middle boy was "in the oven" and my daughter was three years away. Soon it would be time for the kids to see the doctor.
When my oldest had his first ear infection, he went to the pediatrician for the routine course of antibiotics. Geez, what the hell did parents do before antibiotics? We are told that society needs to cut back on the use of antibiotics for fear of incubating antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. Yet, this is the first thing that doctors recommend for ear infections. I just cringed at the thought of my son getting these powerful concoctions. There had to be a better way. My first thought was to find a cause but how do you do that and then prevent it with a small child? So, my second thought then was to work with the system. The next time he got an ear ache and against my wife's judgment, I tried something different. When his ear began to hurt, I gave him some mild over-the-counter decongestant. The idea was to keep the ear canal open to mitigate the development of an infection - allow the body to heal itself; let the ear drain. Guess what? It worked almost immediately. The pain was gone in a couple of hours and did not return. I kept him on the decongestant for a couple of days and that was the end of that. Long story short: we did this with each of our children from that point forward. My two youngest have never had antibiotics in spite of having the same frequency of ear aches as just about any child. They've never been to the doctor for an ear ache or a sore throat or a cold. Except for school vaccinations and camp physicals, they don't go to the doctor. My oldest has only been that one time for an ear ache. As of this time, they are 15, 13 and 11 and have been taught to use the decongestant to mitigate the problem early. It's rare that they even do that these days. Except for that first visit, and as a result of taking the decongestant, my kids have never seen a physician for any ear, nose or throat problem. Just keeping things open was enough to allow the body to deal with this on its own. This was an incredible discovery as far as I was concerned. In fact, I made it a point to tell every one of my friends or acquaintances as the opportunity allowed. Everyone who has ever tried it with their kids has reported to me that it works wonderfully. So, at one time I decided to write to the kids' pediatrician to get his feedback. His reply was predictable - he protected his turf by indicating that I was fortunate but each kid is different. Reading between the lines ... his income was derived only after an ear infection had set in. He had no incentive to foster something that might diminish that lucrative piece of his practice.
By the way, if any of you are thinking of getting laser eye surgery, see if you can get a straight answer to the following question. I went to (visited) and called several laser eye centers. I watched several of their "how it works" videos. One of the things they all universally claim is that with successful surgery, you will live a life without the need for glasses. But surgery provides the exact same functional crutch that a pair of glasses or contacts does. It alters the focal point of the eye without requiring it to change shape. This is done by blasting it with laser light. The question I posed to all of them: Tell me: By what line of reasoning can I expect that my eyes will remain corrected after surgery when it is universally expected that my eyes will degrade over time without surgery? In other words, even with surgery, my 30-year-old eyes will change to 40-year-old eyes and 40-year-old eyes will become 50-year-old eyes. Without surgery, it is expected that one will need a stronger prescription over time. Why is that expectation any different if I have laser surgery? The obvious answer: there is no different expectation. But I could not get anyone to admit this obvious truth. The truth is that laser surgery is still relatively new and you just don't have critical mass yet where all those baby boomers begin to realize that they do need glasses 10, 15 or 20 years down the road. Either that or they will need surgery a second (third?) time to continue to accommodate the weaker and weaker eye. The laser eye industry is able to avoid this unpleasant reality either because not enough people are asking the right questions or not enough time has gone by for the patients to realize their eyes are failing "again." The other shoe will drop. Think: class-action lawsuit and a lot of people who can't see very well.
Anyway, I saw how well the system (body) worked when you work with it. I
also saw again (referring to the pediatrician) how the medical profession was not really interested in
preventing or avoiding a problem. Their very existence depends on problems
- problems that many people feel helpless to deal with on their own. The
medical profession, like the pharmaceutical industry, fosters what the Democrats
Republicans government has been pushing for many decades
- a culture of dependency. I was
determined to pay careful attention to the children's use of the medical
profession and to make sure that, when it came to their health, we were going to
be