I have been wanting to use exercises to improve my vision since the moment I got eyeglasses at age 9. Over the decades since then, I have made sporadic forays into researching this and trying it out. But, for some very odd reason, I’ve never really made the time for it, even though it’s very important to me.

So, my myopia (near-sightedness) and mild astigmatism got slowly worse, because, of course, corrective lenses are highly addictive. There were fluctuations, and occasionally my eyesight would get a bit better. Also, some eye exams showed that when drops were used to relax my eyes, my vision improved considerably. This proved that my acuity was not linked solely to having an elongated eyeball, which has been the prevailing theory of myopia.

Now, during w/d, my eyesight has worsened in some ways, maybe improved in others, and generally fluctuated wildly. There was this day during my early taper, when I’m pretty sure I was in the midst of serotonin syndrome, when my acuity became nearly normal briefly, although with haloes. Plus, I have gone through w/d in my 40s, so aging may be part of the explanation for my worsening near vision. But! Normal aging sure doesn’t account for the wild fluctuations, and furthermore, some behavioral optometrists claim that age-related presbyopia (far-sightedness) is common but not normal. I believe the Chinese have children do daily eye exercises in school, and have a far lower incidence of vision problems throughout the lifespan than we do in the U.S.