How to Cure Astigmatism: Glasses, LASIK or Eye Exercises for Astigmatism?

Copyright © Rebecca Turner

Nearly everyone has some degree of astigmatism - a squashed cornea. But it's only those with higher degrees that need to wear glasses for it.

Usually that means people who already suffer from nearsightedness (myopia) or farsightedness (hyperopia) - because these conditions force the eyeball to change shape, which in turn creates a deformed shape of the lens.

If you are affected by astigmatism - fear not. It may be possible to cure astigmatism like I did with eye exercises. This article will explain how you may be able to improve your vision naturally and gain better vision for life.

What Causes Astigmatism?

Sometimes incorrectly called a stigmatism, it's the result of an unevenly shaped cornea. It's often caused by uneven tension of the extraocular muscles that surround the eyeball - in other words, prolonged eye strain.

The result is blurry vision. The uneven shape of the cornea causes rays of light to focus unevenly - some in front and some behind the retina.

If you're getting individual health insurance with coverage for astigmatism
or other eye-sight problem, be sure you get the proper supplemental
coverage since eyesight is almost never part of basic health insurance.

If you suffer from astigmatism, you have three options to correct your vision:

1. Glasses or contact lenses
2. Laser eye surgery
3. Eye exercises

I'll now briefly compare each option and their major benefits and drawbacks.

Curing Astigmatism With Glasses and Contact Lenses

When your optometrist diagnoses you with astigmatism, he is essentially saying you will likely need to wear glasses for the rest of your life. This is not only expensive, but it hinders your quality of life and can even impact on your self esteem.

Worse, this so-called solution punishes you with deteriorating eye health. Bad vision now can lead to potentially blinding eye diseases later in life - which in turn are costly and painful to cure. In my view, glasses merely disguise the fact that you have astigmatism. They do absolutely nothing to improve your vision naturally.

In fact, prescription glasses and contacts work by refracting the light differently into your eye, which helps you see clearly artificially. As for your natural vision, it is scientifically documented that glasses can make eyesight worse:

The implications of this study are huge - not least because humans and monkeys have almost identical visual systems. What's more, it highlights that wearing glasses or contacts doesn't even treat your condition. As a result, 30% of people who wear lenses end up with one or more serious eye diseases by the time they are 70 years old, simply because their natural vision is so bad.

When a muscle is not used, it can become weak and loses function. So in an attempt to reverse the damaging effects of corrective lenses, you must exercise your eyes on a regular basis. This begins with downgrading your current lens prescription, and wearing your glasses less. More on this in a moment.

By the way, it's not just monkeys that can demonstrate the damaging effect of glasses and contact lenses. Here are a couple more examples of real-life studies:

Astigmatism and Laser Eye Surgery

Some people want a quick fix to their vision problems, and I can totally understand that. If I wasn't so squeamish I may even have turned to LASIK myself once. But having researched laser eye surgery properly for this website I can now say: NO WAY! Not even if it was free and everyone was doing it. There are just too many potential side effects that could ruin your vision for life.

Even more disturbingly, patients who appear fine after LASIK are still at risk of vision deterioration years later. Here are some other reported long term effects:

• Permanent weakening of the cornea - directly leading to blurry vision some weeks, months or years after the surgery.
  
  
• Damage to the corneal nerves - which stimulate tear production, leading to permanent Dry Eye Syndrome.
  
  
• Complications - during routine glaucoma screening and cataract surgery.
  
  
• Persistent decrease in corneal cells - and it is simply not known how seriously this affects the long term viability of the cornea.

How Does Laser Eye Surgery Work?

This is what happens in a typical LASIK treatment and what you can expect if everything goes well.

Laser eye surgery can be used for astigmatism treatment on an out-patient basis. It involves the use of a suction ring to hold your eyeball still, a surgical knife to cut open a flap in your outer cornea, and a computer-controlled laser to precisely reshape your inner corneal lens. The actual procedure is not painful but it can be disturbing - apparently you can smell your own eyeball burning under the laser. LASIK is certainly not for the squeamish!

After paying $3,000 and following a stringent after-care routine, you can expect to start seeing an improvement in your vision after 24 hours. However, even in a successful LASIK operation, there is still nothing preventing further vision loss.

That's because you will still subject yourself to the same old vision habits: hours at a computer or close-up reading, putting your eyes under near point stress. Whatever vision habit caused your astigmatism in the first place is still there to cause it again. You have not strengthened your eyes. You have simply cut your natural lens to refract light differently - just like glasses. It's an artificial fix.

Astigmatism and Eye Exercises

There are a number of professional eye exercise courses available online and through select optometrsits which may offer a solution to curing farsightedness.

If you've read my story, you'll see that I dramatically improved my vision using eye exercises, from around 20/150 to 20/40 in a matter of weeks. I also cured my astigmatism which I'd had for at least a decade.

A typical eye exercise course involves performing 20-30 minutes of specialized routines every day to improve your accommodation and focus. It's important that you choose a routine that is designed to treat your condition - there are special exercises designed to treat astigmatism and restore naturally clear vision.

While doing vision training at home, I noiced small improvements in my vision almost daily, starting at around Day Three. This is what motivated me to continue for a number of weeks until I no longer relied on glasses. It was a great day when I stood 20 feet away from the eye chart and could read the tiny bottom line!

What Are The Best Eye Exercises?

I highly recommend the routine I used, called Rebuild Your Vision. It's currently available under a free 30-day trial (only pay when you actually see it works). It's also downloadable so you can begin eye exercises in the next few minutes. This program has a 94% success rate among thousands of customers who decided it was finally time to improve their vision. Now you can do it too - for free!

Read My Full Rebuild Your Vision Review Here