What Every Pilot Needs to Know

Who can Benefit?

If your goal is to have weaker glasses—for a change—rather than constantly stronger glasses, then just about anyone with sufficient motivation can benefit. If your goal is to throw away your glasses, however, your chances of success will depend on the power of the glasses you now wear.

For near-sighted (myopic) individuals—those who cannot see far away without glasses—the following rule of thumb applies. If your glasses are weak enough so that you can take them off and see to read a smaller-print paperback book at 16 to 20 inches (for a short time anyway) the odds are decent that you can learn to see without the glasses in the distance as well. People who only wear glasses for driving and movies, for instance, are usually good candidates to eliminate the need for them entirely.

Those, however, who with their glasses off are so nearsighted that they have to move the paperback book up closer than thirteen inches may learn to do without glasses for some but probably not all seeing activities.

For those in their forties or fifties who wear glasses for reading only, most can increase their independence from glasses. Some may even escape the need for glasses entirely, providing they are willing to continue a daily workout after their active therapy program is completed.

How Does “Seeing without glasses” work?

Imagine for a moment that your are taking aerial photographs from eighty thousand feet. If that film were developed, the photographs might be nearly impossible to interpret. But, if you ran your data through a computer, unrecognizable shades of color might suddenly become distinct landmarks and objects.

The brain, you could say, is a computer. Eye exercises for seeing better without glasses reprogram that computer. Thus even though the images falling on the back of the eye may be no sharper than the aerial photographs in our example, our brains can be programmed to sort through the blur and extract recognizable details.