Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks

IN today’s blog I want to tell you something I discovered recently which I think should be a standard form of Anti-Aging Therapy for certain people.

Two or three years ago I noticed my vision was not what it used to be. I am sure if I was honest it was actually noticeable before that but, it got to the point where the optimist in me could no longer deny that there were issues.

One of my beloved hobbies is building and flying radio-controlled airplanes (yeah, its nerdy I know!)

I had just finished a beauty and it was on its maiden voyage. While most people look at these models and say, “Wow that is really big”, an airplane with a 5 or 6-foot wingspan travelling at 90-100 mph can get small very quickly!

So, there was a moment of severe sphincter puckering when against a grey sky I was no longer sure which direction the airplane was headed, was it coming or going? If going it would be out of sight in less than 2 seconds. Fortunately, I have enough experience to trust what I was doing at the moment it “disappeared” to realize it would soon be relatively easy to see again. But not being able to trust my eyes was the last straw.

I started to use the old Stuart McFarland exercises from the early 1920’s and I did see a slight improvement.

Then by good fortune I met an optometrist (not an ophthalmologist) who practices Vision Therapy.

Vision therapy is usually reserved for children with reading disabilities and while I was not the first adult to be treated, I was the first adult who had not been treated as a youth to sign up. My training partner was still in his 20’s and had done vision therapy as a child and was in for a refresher.

Almost everyone else was under 10!

The doctor spent over 2 hours with me before saying, “I think vision therapy will help you!” In truth I had never had that much time with a health care professional and I certainly never spent anywhere near that much time with an eye doctor! As a matter of fact, it was somewhat intriguing to hear that the allopathic view of Vision Therapy is often, “That stuff doesn’t work!”

I had to laugh when I heard this because as an allopathic doctor I am sure I said and heard that phrase about many “alternative” therapies while I was a practicing Internist.

When I went to start the therapy (13 weeks) my binocular vision was 20/40 a far cry from what it had been 20 years ago. The glasses I was supposed to be wearing made me dizzy and slightly nauseated so they sat on the shelf instead of my nose.
I will cut to the chase in a moment but I want to share something I learned with you.

I had “distance vision” glasses that I got to help me see those flying aircraft I mentioned to you but they made me slightly ill soon enough after I put them on that I could never keep them on long enough to “get used” to them. The slight magnification of 1.5 I was given for reading worked ok but I just never got around to making it a habit to wear them.

This eye doctor told me I did not need the far glasses and they were way too much lens for me which is why they were making me sick.

He also told me- and this is important- Make sure your wear your reading glasses if they were prescribed for you because not wearing them and continuing to strain your eyes can increase the risk for nuclear cataracts.

Cataracts of this type are indeed a disease of aging so that peaked my interest. I am now wearing 1.25 magnification to read but that may be gone if I can commit to another 13 weeks of Vision Therapy.

What I did get from the first 13 weeks (and some home activities to support the class room exercises) was a return to 20/20 visual acuity with binocular vision (both eyes looking) a loss of vertical skewing which came from mostly using one eye to actually read (monocular reading) and individual monocular vision of 20/20 on the left and 20/15 on the right.

That is almost as good as I had when I was 20!

Needless to say, both eye and the doctor along with the vision therapist were ecstatic with the result.

I had pretty much reversed 40 years of aging in my eyes! It was also cool to be the star pupil at an age when most people don’t even think of being able to reverse the aging process.

Now hear comes the punch line.

In general vision therapy does not fix or work on structural changes in the eye. The problem for me was primarily in the way my brain interpreted the signals from my eyes, not so much from the eyes themselves.

Think of it like posture. Hours of sitting in front of books and computers often leads to walking and standing postures that are awful, cause health problems and are mostly adapted to sitting and doing nothing.

The body adapts to the position you put it in.

So too with the eyes and frankly I am telling you this in case you too may benefit from this as Anti-Aging therapy.
Now I did have a secret. It just so happens that my starting the therapy happened exactly 3 weeks after the introduction of Brain Force One.

I honestly think this was a big thing in helping the therapy reprogram my brain to work better with the therapy.
I have no doubt about it at all!

As someone who is used to excelling in “class” I found I still got a sense of pride out of performing at the top of the class LOL!
I encourage you to explore vision therapy especially if the following applies to you:

You have had a slow decline in your visual acuity and visual processing to the point where you do not feel absolutely compelled to wear glasses but you probably should.

You play sports that require high degrees of hand eye coordination and reaction time- yes reaction time and reactivation of your peripheral vision are part of the therapy. This would include baseball, tennis, golf, shooting and many other leisure activities like flying R/C planes and drones!

It will also improve your reading, your driving (safety is an important part of anti-aging) and your depth perception.
Keep in mind it will not changes things like astigmatism (which I have!) or other structural problems in the eyes and it will not restore lost connective tissue to the lens (primary cause of nuclear cataracts).

But negative age related changes in vision are not usually just a structural problem- there is almost always a “brain problem” that can be improved.

So while you are at it, don’t forget to give your brain a helping hand.

You can teach an old dog new tricks and make it behave like a young dog again if you remain open to learning about different things and regard medical dogma as an Old Dog!!!!!

Yours!

The real Doctor Dave who actually does design your supplements as opposed to the nonexistent one who claims to do so at some other company!!!!

PS Speaking of doctors there is more than one internet doc out there who scours my site and blogs for ideas and then because of a gigantic audience claims to have “discovered” a new thing. I don’t need a gigantic audience because I have YOU! And to me one dedicated loyal reader and user of my products is worth 10,000 tire kickers who will never understand the real value of what they are reading.

Love Ya! And Happy Holidays!!!!

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