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Dave (Fountain Inn, SC) on 04/08/2013: 
I was diagnosed with astigmatism in my right eye by an ophthalmologist when I was 20 years old while in college. Glasses were prescribed and I bought a set. My right eye had a stigmatism I was told by the doctor. A few years later I picked up a book by an ophthalmologist at a health food store because I wanted to find any alternative to deteriorating visual conditions. That book explained what astigmatism is and it is a simple phenomenon and an equally simple solution to obtain proper vision. First a stigmatism will always develop in the dominate eye. Each person has a dominate eye just has one has a dominate hand, usually right, and even a dominate leg. Mine is left!
To determine which eye is dominate, simply point to a distant object and without moving your hand shut each eye. You will see that the object moves when one eye is used and does not move when the other eye is used. In other words, the eye that is doing the focusing is the dominate eye. What the eye does then is uses one eye, the dominate eye, to dominate all focus actions. Now what happens in time, especially in a "book" focused society (worse now with computers) is the dominate eye will become strained... literally the dominate eye's muscles will be strained and will LOSE the ability to focus. As such the dominate eye will ALWAYS have the stigmatism.
The solution then is to relax the dominate eye and retrain the muscles in the dominate eye to be in proper focus. This is accomplished by a simple exercise. By using an eye chart or my favorite is a distant tree, one puts the palm of the hand over the dominate eye, but allowing light to come through on the sides, and you focus on the distant tree... A tree perhaps a hundred yards away. You focus with the non dominate eye on the limbs of the tree for perhaps ten seconds, then transfer the hand over the non dominate eye and allowing the dominate eye to "re set" by example of the non dominate but non astigmatic eye. Repeat three times. In a mere minute you have reset the stigmatized eye. This is harder to accomplish for a person who has over time put on ever stronger glasses. In that case, the book said the process had to be reversed and go backwards to the lest strong glasses and repeat over weeks to finally get to ground zero. Well, I was fortunate to find this book when I had the first weak set of glasses; as I said when I was only 20 years old. I used the eye chart provided in the book and now, over 40 years later still have that same eye chart taped to my vitamin cabinet. But usually I use an outdoors object, as I said, a distant tree. That's because you can use the limbs of the tree to find more refined focus points... some more narrow than others and so you can intensify the focus exercise.
Well, the book was very extensive and the ophthalmologist went into detail in explaining how a first "test" of children, for example, is almost always wrong and he'd always throw out the first eye test because the pressure on the child would cause the eye to be more strained than normal; hence, often children are diagnosed with problems that really do not have a visual difficulty at all. But once the glasses start, the dependency is ongoing. The need for stronger and stronger glasses is progressive. Unfortunately, I gave that book away over 30 years ago... all but the eye chart that came with the book. But I have shown the eye exercise method to hundreds of people. My eyesight is 20/20. I am nearly 64 years old. I can even see fine print out of a book so long as the lighting is good. I am sorry I do not have the name of the book or the remarkable ophthalmologist who was brave enough to write it. Brave I say because he revealed that children's tests are often flawed. But just remember that the stigmatism can be reversed. Remember I was diagnosed with that in my dominate right eye. And in fact I knew my right eye was off. That was why I went to the doctor to start with. But with one simple eye exercise, my stigmatized eye "learned" what its muscles "should" be by the non dominate eye. I have been so thankful for perfect sight now for all my life thanks to one book. God bless that doctor.
