Today’s episode is all about the misconception of solely focusing on reducing prescriptions to improve vision. I share a powerful story of a nearsighted patient who demanded a reduced prescription without doing the necessary reprogramming work. It resulted in frustration and discomfort. I emphasize the importance of vision therapy to reprogram habits and beliefs before pursuing reduced prescriptions. Whether dealing with myopia, astigmatism, or farsightedness, the key is self-awareness, discipline, and adaptability. Vision is a flexible process, and with proper physical therapy, reduced prescriptions can be more effective. Don’t rush the process. Do the work first for lasting results. Enjoy the show.

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SUMMARY KEYWORDS

prescription, nearsighted, reduced, nearsightedness, vision, reduce, shankman, people, work, therapy, program, habits, podcast, fixated, astigmatism, self awareness, eyes, plasticity, private facebook community, goal

00:05

Hey everybody, its Dr. Sam and I’d like to welcome you to my EyeClarity podcast. So if you want to get in touch with me, you can send me an email at Hello@drsamberne.com. Or you can text me now 1-844-932-1291 Send me your questions. Before we get to today’s show, I want to announce my membership program. This is an opportunity for you to get exposed to my exclusive content and resources, things you won’t see on my social media or website. The reason why I’m offering this membership program is to give you valuable information to empower you to make informed decisions about your vision and your wellness. You’ll receive personalized support and coaching, goal setting, and I’m going to make you accountable so that you achieve your goals. Also, with the membership, you’ll have the convenience of 24/7 access without having to pay for weekly appointments. We’ll be offering a private Facebook community so we’ll be able to share with each other. And you’ll be able to come to my live q&a and ask me questions. So if you’re interested, you can go to my website, drsamberne.com and sign up now. Okay, now to the show.

02:10

Hey, everyone, welcome to the program. So the title of today’s podcast is don’t just live to reduce your prescription. So many people that I’ve worked with over the years, who wants to reduce their prescription who want to improve their vision gets so fixated on the prescription, that they’re missing out on what is really needed to make the deep level changes. I’ll tell you a story. One time that happened when somebody came to see me she was very nearsighted. And she asked me to reduce her prescription. And I said, you know, without doing the physical therapy to reprogram your eyes and brain, it’s not going to work. And she said, Oh, no, I can handle it. Give me a reduced prescription. So I’ll give you the numbers. Not that it means anything, but she was a minus 3.25 in each eye. So she had a moderate amount of nearsightedness. So I reduced her prescription to a minus three.

So I reduced it by a quarter of a diopter. So she got the prescription. And she called our office. And she was irate. She was so angry. She said, Dr. Byrne has blinded me, I can’t see anything. Wow. Okay, so my secretary, and I talked about this. And we made an appointment she came in. And I had her put on the glasses, and she was going off how things were so blurry, and how I really how could I do this to her and, you know, stuff like that. So I put her into the exam lane with the minus threes. And I said, I read the chart, and she was able to read the 2020 eye chart, except she missed one letter.

So I paused and I said, Well, you’re still seeing close to 2020. And she’s like, Well, I’m not really seeing the same way as I saw out of my three and a quarters. So it was a great learning lesson for her because it triggered some very deep fear issues and insecurity issues that just by reducing the prescription a little bit. She went into blame mode. She went into fear mode, and she went into survival mode. And so we talked it through and she recognized how much hyper vigilance she was carrying into her eyes that went way back to when she was in school. And she was learning to read and she wasn’t a great student, and on and on and on.

But Case in point, here it was I reduced her prescription the minimal, the most minimal amount. And it triggered such a deep reaction that, wow, this is what people go through, when they start reducing their prescriptions. It’s like it opens up Pandora’s box. So she enrolled in my vision therapy program. And we forgot about the reduced prescription conversation. I said, we’re going to revisit this in about six months. And she came for vision therapy for about six months. And when I re examined her, I was able to give her a minus 1.5 that she wore just for driving, she was able to read without her prescription.

And she considered that a major success story. But what’s missed here is that people will contact me and they will say, Hey, give me the reduced prescription. And I’ll say, No, I’m not going to do that until you do the work first. And sometimes people get very upset about that, because I do talk about giving reduced prescriptions, and how they can be beneficial. But you have to remember that any prescription you get is reinforcing the habits, belief systems, attitudes, reactions, emotional responses, posture, that when you start wearing something that’s unfamiliar, even if it’s just a small change, like this lady, it’s going to cause some changes in your awareness.

And yet people live for this idea of just give me the reduction, give me the reduced prescription. I can handle it. And I would say 99.9% of the time, they actually can’t handle it. They can’t adjust to it. Unless they do the reprogramming work the reeducation work first. You know, I remember in my own case, when I was going through my nearsighted reduction process, the doctor that I went to Dr. Al Shankman, he was my optometrist. He said to me, alright, I want you to give up the goal of getting rid of your nearsightedness. And of course, nearsighted. People are very goal oriented, they’re very results oriented. And I was like that too. And they said, you know, Dr. Shankman, I don’t think I can do that.

And he said, Well, that’s going to be the key for you in dissolving all of your nearsightedness because you’re too fixated on the reduced prescriptions, you’re too fixated on getting the results. And what you need to do is do the vision therapy practices and use them as a mirror, use them as a experience to learn about your habits, your conditioning, the relationship between your two eyes and your brain and your body. So there was a lot that I learned in my self awareness that got me to the place where one day I woke up, and I didn’t need my lenses anymore, but it became a byproduct of all the changes I made in my awareness, letting go of all the habits and conditioning that put me into that nearsighted world to begin with.

Now, this also happens with the astigmatism. I get a lot of DM’s on social media. Hey, I’ve got a stigmatism. Would you write me a prescription for reduced astigmatism correction? Well, you know, if we do that, it’s going to really upset the applecart for sure, because there’s going to be distortion, there’s going to be blurriness, it could lead to headaches, because the reduce prescription is asking you to relax and be in a non warped state. That’s what a astigmatism astigmatism is. It’s warping your perception, because the eyeball is now shaped like an egg instead of a tennis ball.

And so it creates this irregular blur, it affects the posture, and so on. If you want to qualify for a reduced astigmatism correction, you’ve got to do the vision therapy first. That’s the sequence. And last if you’re farsighted, same thing, if you wear magnifying glasses, I mean, it’s not going to work for you to wear something less and strain and stress and create, you know, headaches and those kinds of things. You’re basically reacting to the reduced prescription and you’re not learning what you need to do to adapt or adjust. Vision is about flexibility.

Vision is about adaptability. Vision is about how the brain and the eyes and the Body Talk to each other. And the eyes have a plasticity even after the age of 25. We still maintain a certain level of classes, plasticity, now not the same as children, but we do You have a plasticity that we can change, but we have to be willing to have self awareness, discipline, persistence, consistency in the physical therapy before we can qualify for these reduced prescriptions. So the moral of the story today is don’t just live for reducing prescriptions, do the work first, and then you can slide right into the new prescription, and that will work better. So that’s my show for today. I want to thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, take care.

10:44

Thank you for listening. I hope you learned something from the EyeClarity podcast show today. If you enjoyed the episode, make sure to subscribe on iTunes or Spotify and leave a review. See you here next time.