How to Improve Your Vision

Video Transcript

"I'm Dr. Jim Kirkconnell of Bellevue Eye Care Center, in Nashville, Tennessee. Are there ways that a person can improve his or her vision? Well, that's an interesting question. The way that I was trained and the way that most people believe is you have a a problem in your vision for really only a few reasons. One is that your eye is too long compared to the focusing ability of your cornea and so light falls short of it, of reaching the retina. You can have where your eye is too short compared to the focusing power of your cornea where it falls behind. You can have a an a cornea which is the wrong shape. It's oval, and you have astigmatism because actually it's spoon shaped or football shaped in a certain direction so you don't have one focus point. And then finally, you can have your natural lens not changing shape so easy anymore because you have presbyopia. There are treatments that are advertised to correct your vision. They are typically on the radio, and they talk about how you can train yourself to to see better. I have had a patient bring in what that looks like, and what it looks like is a spirograph that you're told to look at and to relax your vision to see better. What it accomplishes is separating you from your money. It doesn't accomplish anything else. Now, if we go back about a hundred years there was an ophthalmologist names Dr. Bates, and he talked about the palming method. Now, the palming method is where a person presses against his or her eyes like this, and and in a fact that will flatten the eye for a short period of time and that can help nearsightedness temporarily. And and when it comes to actually seeing better it still comes down today to your glasses, contact lenses, or laser surgery which is either Lasik or PRK. People who are above the age of fifty three or fifty five who have a true distance problem are frequently helped by having cataract surgery early. Now, that's a a financial decision because that is more expensive actually than having Lasik or PRK. So, those are the ways you actually can help your vision."