How I stopped wearing glasses

I have never sent y'all this many emails in one week. But I promised on my instagram account yesterday that I'd talk about eye rehab, and it's more than a social media post can contain, so here goes.

Before I get into the meat, I will remind you that this is what I did. It might be completely inadvisable for you to do this. I am not an optometrist. I'm just a person with what I'd call a success story. And if this isn't your first week as one of my readers, then you'll know that this is not likely to be short. Here goes (TL;DR version at the end).

I started wearing glasses when I was 17, and then shortly thereafter got contacts. My prescription wasn't strong, but I could definitely see more clearly with my glasses on and I didn't want the inconvenience of glasses (I was nearsighted). I think I may have actually started needing glasses (I was the only one in my family at the time) as a result of opening my eyes in the tanning bed too many times working on my prom tan. And forget about those silly little goggle things. I was much too cool to wear those.

I digress.

I give that background because I do love a good plot twist.

Every year I went to the optometrist, I found myself with worsening eyesight and a slightly worse prescription on each side.

Fast forward to my pregnancy with Eldon in 2013, when my contacts became quite uncomfortable to wear in my third trimester. This lasted only a few weeks, but I knew it was common for eyes to change during pregnancy. I was able to go back to contacts, but then in the postpartum period, when my child wasn't sleeping (and didn't for 17 months), I found myself with dry eyes that screamed when I put my contacts in. I wore my glasses a bit more frequently, but as Eldon got older, he became more and more interested in them, meaning he'd grab them off my face or smudge them with his greasy little adorable fingers.

I found myself more and more frustrated with the upkeep of my corrective lenses. I visited the optometrist around 9 months postpartum and found my prescription had again worsened. I opted not to increase my prescription because the strength she recommended seemed unnaturally strong; almost as if I was seeing *too* clearly. She advised against it, but I opted for my old prescription (for reference, I was something like -1.25 and -1.50, so not terribly blind by any means, but fuzzy enough to warrant assistance).

When I left, I realized that eyes were just about the only part of the body that I had no idea how to rehabilitate.

I got home and looked up eye rehab and found several things from a rehabilitative eye clinic (who said they wouldn't see me to rehab my eyes because it wasn't really about improving vision, but about helping the brain adapt; fine, don't take my money) to articles debunking the idea that you could actually rehab to advertisements about LASIK to the scariest stories about LASIK and its high rate of suicide to a few resources on how to do some eye rehab.

I started with this book https://www.amazon.com/Improve-Vision-Without-Glasses-Contact/dp/0684814382?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duckduckgo-d-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0684814382 and did the exercises in it, but wasn't sure how much good it was doing.

Then, one morning after a particularly rough night of sleep, I couldn't put my contacts in because my eyes were so dry, and I forgot my glasses before leaving. I was in the car before realizing I hadn't worn them, and could see well enough that it wasn't a true emergency. After all, I'd been doing some exercises and my contacts were actually starting to feel a bit too strong and my glasses (a slightly lower prescription) were more comfortable, so I knew they were working at least a bit.

Shortly thereafter, I decided I was sick of wearing glasses and contacts and figured that if nothing terrible was happening, it was probably better to just use my eyes rather than rely on other lenses. I stopped them. It was sort of cold turkey. No one was recommending that approach and it didn't seem very sensible, to be honest, but I wasn't interested in repeat trips to the optometrist to change my prescription. And as a reminder of what I said earlier, I am not recommending this for you.

I kept a pair of old glasses in my car so that if there was low visibility - rain, fog, dark, etc. - I'd put my glasses on. But otherwise, I never wore them.

I maintained a level that was somewhat less than my old glasses prescription (because they felt uncomfortable to wear; not because I actually got tested) until I decided I wanted to get better than just not-bad vision and came across Jake Steiner at https://endmyopia.org/about-us/. and started practicing his active focus technique.

This improved my vision noticeably so that I could only put my glasses on for a brief moment without getting a slight headache, but it was still a bit fuzzy in the distance.

Another thing I stopped doing was wearing sunglasses. I was noticing that the more I wore them, the more I needed them, and it felt like it was contributing to my ever-weakening eyesight. I discovered the reverse was true and now no longer feel the need for sunglasses on almost any occasion (including boating).

After the first Wim Hof workshop that I hosted in April 2019, we went to the mountains for Spring Break. On the roughly 3.5 hour car ride, I realized how clear the signs in the distance were; signs I would normally not have been able to read from such a distance.

The next day, that improvement had worn off, but I noticed the same thing after the next WHM workshop that fall - approximately 12 hours of improved vision. It didn't happen after my own personal ice baths or WHM breathing sessions, but did after the workshops.

I had to renew my license and took my vision test at the DMV without corrective lenses; it was a little dicey on the bottom line, but I passed and my license now officially says that I do not wear corrective lenses.

And then, I added something that would change everything.

What an incredibly dramatic sentence, eh? I've gotta get you interested again because this is getting a little tedious.

I've been doing morning grounding and sunrise viewings for about two years or so, and would briefly come outside midday to ensure that my eyes were seeing the midday sun - this is incredible for improving circadian rhythm.

Last year I stopped wearing sunscreen, started working on my computer outside, and was researching a lot about vitamin D when I found that LOOKING at the sun was actually one of the greatest stimulators of vitamin D synthesis. (I found this info at the bottom of a rabbit hole and haven't since re-located it.) I started to look at the sun in the middle of the day.

I know, it sounds a little bananas. But I noticed that the more I looked at it, the more I could look at it. My vitamin D levels are great, but I've also noticed a significant improvement in my eyesight. This is the same eyesight I had before I started wearing glasses, and I'm confident in that.

And then my friend Caroline shared that her functional medicine doctor actually encourages directly staring at the sun. And I felt a little less "out there" when one afternoon Caroline and I stared at the sun together before it was really setting and both felt comfortable doing so for several seconds.


TL;DR version: I started needing glasses from looking at artificial light and then marginally improved my eyesight by not wearing glasses and doing some exercises, and then transiently improved my eyesight by using cold exposure and breathing, and then significantly improved my eyesight by doing what everyone says you shouldn't do and staring directly at the sun.

And now you know why this isn't an instagram post.

Cheers to clearer vision - literally and figuratively.

Happy weekend! (See you tomorrow for brunch?)

xox
L