Short-sighted patients who have their eyes tested by Grant Reid don't necessarily get to wear glasses. They might instead be told to change their reading habits, to alter the way they use their eyes, or be prescribed a programme of exercises.
Grant Reid is one of the growing number of 'behavioural opticians' who believe that how we see is the result of how we have learned to use our eyes, and that visual skills can be enhanced through exercise, relaxation and training. 'The main difference is that a normal optometrist will take a measurement of the eyeball and prescribe appropriate glasses, while we are more interested in why the eyeball has become the shape it is, what causes it to happen and what can be done to prevent it,' says Reid, who practises in Truro.
This holistic approach to eyes is based on the concept that eyesight, like most other conditions, can be affected by diet, exercise, lifestyle, environment and stress, and that glasses aren't always the answer.
'Glasses and contact lenses treat the symptoms of poor vision very effectively but they do not address the factors that produced the vision problems,' says Martin Sussman, executive director of the Cambridge Institute for Better Vision in Massachusetts, and author of The Program For Better Vision which is published this week.
In Britain it is estimated that one in 10 children and more than 40 per cent of adults wear glasses. Indeed, because it is such a big business and because patients tend to be customers for life, there has been suspicion that not all those who are prescribed glasses really need them. Some US estimates suggest more than half of those who have glasses either don't need them or require a lower power prescriptions.
More ammunition for these suspicions was supplied by US researchers who found recently that when glasses were fitted at random to young, healthy monkeys, the refractive index of the animals' eyes changed so that they become glasses-dependent, although their eyesight had previously been normal. For obvious reasons the study has not been replicated in children.
In recent years there has been growing evidence that eyesight can be improved by a variety of ways. Some research, for example, suggests that myopia occurs in spurts in children when they are not receiving proper nutrition. New studies from Hong Kong suggests short sight is acquired at some point in the early years, possibly from picking up bad vision habits.
'What this research suggests is that children don't inherit myopia but that they are using the same kind of visual techniques that their myopic parents use. It seems that myopia is more likely to be an adaption to the visual environment, so if you can alter that environment you can affect the rate at which myopia develops. With a child, for example, we might change reading patterns and distances, rather than prescribe glasses,' Reid says.
Sussman and the Cambridge Institute on the other hand claim to have helped 150,000 people gain better vision through a new set of DIY eye exercises. They say that after eight weeks of exercising, improvements of 10 to 50 per cent can be expected.
'No matter how bad your vision may be now, you can train yourself to have better vision. Only three people in 100 who cannot see clearly are born with a vision problem. The other 97 per cent develop problems at some point in their life,' Sussman says.
The exercises have a range of aims, including extending focal length, improving peripheral vision, strengthening eye muscles and getting rid of blur zones. There are also recommended good practices, like blinking every three to five seconds to lubricate the eyes, and constantly changing the focus to keep them alert. There are also special breathing exercises, dietary programmes and eye-massage techniques.
Eye specialists accept that some exercises do work, but are cautious about others. 'Some types of squint, for example, can be helped,' says Dr Gill Adams, consultant ophthalmic eye surgeon at Moorfields hospital, in London. 'When you look at something close you have to pull your eyes together - sometimes that mechanism is very sluggish and can be helped with exercises. But there are conditions which cannot be helped.' The bottom line is people with poor vision need help. 'I often hear parents saying they don't want their child to be dependent on glasses. But no one puts a child into glasses unnecessarily and the most important thing is how well that child sees,' Adams says.
The Program for Better Vision, by Martin Sussman, North Atlantic Books, is published by Airlift Books, price, £13.99.
Help Your Child to Perfect Eyesight Without Glasses by Janet Goodrich, Airlift Books, £14.99.
