The Bates Method is a non-pharmacological method of restoring vision, which was invented by the American ophthalmologist William Bates. It is important to note that this method is not recognized by science. He became known in 1917, when he began to offer paid courses through the press to teach everyone who wanted special exercises to restore vision. The enterprise became successful, and after the death of the doctor himself, it passed to his wife Emily and propagandist Harold Peppard. Bates claimed that his method could completely cure patients of farsightedness, myopia, presbyopia, and astigmatism. In 1929, the US Federal Trade Commission declared this technology to be fraudulent. Modern research proves that the exercises suggested by the American ophthalmologist do not lead to any noticeable improvement in vision. In Russia, this technique has found its supporters, who have been actively promoting it for some time.
Theory
The essence of the Bates method is based on two statements. The doctor believed that the human eye is capable of carrying out the process of accommodation, that is, adapting to changing external conditions. Moreover, this does not occur due to a change in the curvature of the lens, but as a result of the active influence of the external muscles that surround it on the shape of the eyeball.
This central point of the Batesian methodology has been repeatedly tested and scrutinized. In particular, the American Academy of Ophthalmology has refuted the claim that the eyeballs change their shape to provide focus.
The second position of the Bates method was the assertion that the main cause of visual impairment is the mental stress experienced by a person. With each type of eye anomaly, he correlated a certain type of stress, giving it the appropriate name. It is noteworthy that this applied not only to refractive errors, but also to other types of disorders. For example, strabismus, presbyopia, astigmatism.
Essence
So, what was the basis of the Bates method of restoring vision. The ophthalmologist argued that the cause of visual impairment is the mental stress that a person experiences when trying to make out one or another object. In particular, myopia is caused by attempts to see distant objects, and myopia is caused by close ones.
Based on this, Bates questioned the need for glasses, arguing that people who never wore glasses were cured of eye problems muchmore effective than those who wear them all the time.
Therefore, he initially rejected glasses, and if it was impossible to do this without causing significant inconvenience to the patient, then he allowed them to be used only for a short time. For example, when the patient was forced to continue working during treatment, and was unable to perform his duties without glasses.
Effect of eye muscles on vision
Methods of treating vision that existed in the late XIX - early XX century, when Bates lived, seemed ineffective to him. He often noticed that the glasses that the doctor selected for the patient did not cope with the main task of correcting vision. As a result, after some time they had to be changed to stronger ones.
Based on these observations, as well as on his own research, the doctor came to the conclusion that six eye muscles are responsible for visual acuity. They are able to adjust the focus and change the shape of the eye. In a person with normal vision, these muscles are in a relaxed state, while the eye takes the form of a ball. It is in this position that the image is ideally focused on the retina. Only in this case can we talk about ideal or almost perfect vision.
When a person with good eyesight is forced to start looking at some object located nearby, his transverse muscles become very tense. The longitudinal muscles remain in a relaxed state. As a result, the eye, according to Bates, changes shape, stretching forward. As a result, it takes the formoval.
If a person needs to consider some object located far away, his transverse eye muscles relax, the eye returns to a spherical state. This discovery convinced the scientist that myopia is formed under the influence of prolonged tension of the transverse muscles. In turn, farsightedness, in his opinion, was formed due to the fact that the longitudinal muscles were tense for a long time.
Bates convinced everyone around that a short-sighted person is able to restore his vision if he begins to strengthen the longitudinal muscles, while relaxing the transverse ones. With farsightedness, the actions should be reversed.
Based on his scientific research, the ophthalmologist developed a system of exercises that helped train the muscles of the eye. As a basis, he took the methods that were used by the Indians of North America, always famous for their vigilance. The principle of the Bates eye technique was to train some muscles while relaxing others.
Exercise
The ophthalmologist suggested starting to restore vision by purchasing weak glasses or lenses. He drew attention to the fact that doctors in most cases prescribe glasses to the patient, which are several diopters stronger than the patient's vision. Bates himself called for wearing glasses that would be stronger than your vision by a maximum of one to one and a half diopters.
Bates exercises to restore vision had to be done regularly. He developed several options for gymnastics for the eyes. Here is one of themwhich consisted in alternately performing several actions:
- Smooth rotation of the eyeballs.
- Raising the gaze up and then lowering it down.
- Turn your gaze alternately left and right.
- Drawing an imaginary square diagonally in front of you.
- Drawing with a look of zigzags and snakes, as well as eights and rectangles.
After each exercise, it was necessary to give the eyes a rest. To do this, it was necessary to relax the eyelids and actively blink for three to five seconds.
In the first week, the Bates vision exercises were to be done only three times. Then, to the complex of these exercises, body turns were added, which were required to be done first with open and then with closed eyes. At that moment, the doctor advised to relax as much as possible, to try to forget about the problems, not to think about anything.
Another Bates exercise should have been done at sunset or dawn, when the sun is not at its peak. The patient was to turn to face the window, close his eyes, and start turning his torso to the right and left. The exercise should be repeated twice a day for five minutes. When there is no sun outside, it can be done by candlelight in a dark room.
Another piece of advice in the Bates Recovery Technique was to wear a light-blocking bandage. It was necessary to put it on for each eye in turn, and then do your usual housework. At the same time, it was required that the eye under the bandagemust remain open. The bandage should have been worn for no more than 30 minutes.
Palming
The Bates method for restoring vision was based on an exercise called palming. It looks simple only at first glance, in reality it is not easy to do everything right, especially to match the psychological part.
Palming was to be done after completing any set of exercises. In fact, this is a way of relaxing the eyes, which Bates himself invented.
It was required to close the eyes with the palms, to clasp the fingers on the bridge of the nose, mentally imagining necessarily black. It is important that the black color does not contain any color spots or highlights, and is as saturated as possible. At the same time, one should imagine something pleasant, relax as much as possible.
Performing exercises to restore vision according to the method of Bates, palming should be repeated four times a day. The duration of each exercise is at least five to ten minutes.
Russian followers
At some point, the ideas of the American ophthalmologist became very popular in our country. In particular, they were promoted by the physiologist Gennady Andreyevich Shichko.
He is a participant in the Great Patriotic War, who, despite being wounded in both legs and having received a disability, continued to study and work. In 1954 he graduated from the psychological department of the Leningrad University. Having defended his dissertation on the higher nervous activity of an adult, he worked at the Institute of Experimental Medicine. A large number ofhis works were devoted to ridding a person of smoking and alcoholism.
At the same time, he supported the developments of an American scientist, in the USSR even the concept of "the Shichko-Bates method" appeared. Gennady Andreevich advised Soviet patients with poor eyesight to perform the same exercises.
Vladimir Zhdanov
Currently, the propagandist of Bates's ideas in Russia is Vladimir Georgievich Zhdanov, a 69-year-old popularizer of non-medical methods of getting rid of tobacco and alcohol addiction and restoring vision. He is a graduate of the Faculty of Physics of Novosibirsk State University.
Zhdanov claims that in 1994 he completely restored his vision according to the method of an American ophthalmologist. Since then, he began to spread these ideas. In particular, to give lectures on the restoration of vision in Russia and the former republics of the Soviet Union. He even organized courses that began to be called the Zhdanov-Bates method, since he supplemented them with the use of dietary supplements. In these courses, he not only talks about a method that is considered unscientific, but also sells nutritional supplements and his own methodological materials. Zhdanov himself advises taking these dietary supplements as an aid to speed up the recovery of vision.
Efficiency of the methodology
This technique was originally used in ophthalmology to prevent all kinds of eye diseases. Due to the fact that it has not been scientifically proven that it has at least sometherapeutic effect, doctors gradually began to move away from its use.
Currently, some experts may recommend this eye muscle training after prolonged exertion. For example, judging by the reviews, the Bates vision restoration technique helps to relax at the end of a busy day, when you constantly have to work with papers or at a computer. But there is no reason to say that these exercises will really help restore vision, no. To do this, it is better to seek the help of an experienced specialist who will advise an effective treatment. Gymnastics for the eyes can only be used as an auxiliary or preventive method. But even in this sense, it is not always effective. In reviews of the Bates technique, most patients who used these exercises on themselves emphasized that this did not lead to any results.
The art of seeing
The teachings of Bates became widespread after the ophthalmologist cured the famous English science fiction writer Aldous Huxley. He even wrote a book in 1943 called "The Art of Vision", in which he told how he coped with a number of his eye problems, following the advice of an American. In particular, Huxley mentioned farsightedness, clouding of the cornea in combination with astigmatism, claiming that he was able to successfully get rid of all these problems.
In 1952, Huxley gave a speech at a Hollywood banquet, easily reading it without glasses. As noted by one of the journalists, who personallywas present, at some point the writer stumbled, after which it became obvious that he was not able to read what was written on paper, and he learned his speech by heart in advance. To remember what was written there, he brought the paper closer and closer to his eyes. When he couldn't make out anything, he was forced to take out a magnifying glass from his pocket.
In response to this, Huxley stated that he uses a magnifying glass in low light.
Doctor biography
William Horatio Bates was born in Newark in 1860. He received his medical education from Cornell and his PhD from the American College of Surgeons and Physicians in 1885.
He started his career in New York as a Physician Assistant at the Hearing and Vision Hospital in Manhattan. Then he spent two years in a psychiatric hospital in Bellevule. Since 1886, he served as a staff physician at the New York Eye Hospital, since then ophthalmology has become his main speci alty.
In 1896, he decided to leave medical practice for a few years in order to conduct a series of experimental work. Six years later, he nevertheless returned to work, starting to work already at Charing Cross Hospital in London. After some time, he opened a private practice in the state of North Dakota. His office was in Grand Forks. In 1910, he became a visually impaired physician at New York's Harlem Hospital, serving until 1922.
He died in 1931 at the age of 70. Disputes about the openmethod continues to this day, although it is worth recognizing that there are fewer and fewer supporters and followers of Bates every year. The majority recognizes the unscientific nature of the theories put forward by them, that they actually turned out to be erroneous. However, the development of medical technology at the beginning of the 20th century did not allow Bates himself to understand this.
