The Bates technique is a non-drug vision restoration method that was invented by the American ophthalmologist William Bates. It is important to note that this method is not recognized by science. It became known about him in 1917, when he began to offer paid courses through the press to educate everyone with 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 stated that his method could completely cure patients of hyperopia, myopia, presbyopia, astigmatism. In 1929, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission declared the technology deceiving. Modern research proves that the exercises offered by the American ophthalmologist do not lead to any noticeable improvement in vision. In Russia, this technique has found its supporters, who for some time actively promoted it.
Theory
The essence of the Bates methodology is based on two statements. The doctor believed that the human eye is able to carry out the process of accommodation, that is, adapt to changing external conditions. However, this does not occur due to changes 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 position of the Bates technique has been repeatedly tested and thoroughly researched. In particular, the American Academy of Ophthalmology has denied the allegation that eyeballs change shape to provide focus.
The second point of the Bates methodology was the assertion that the main cause of visual impairment is the mental stress that a person experiences. With each type of ocular anomaly, he correlated a certain type of tension, giving it the corresponding name. It is noteworthy that this applied not only to refraction anomalies, but also to other types of disturbances. For example, strabismus, presbyopia, astigmatism.
Essence
So, on what was Bates's vision restoration technique based. The ophthalmologist argued that the cause of visual impairment is the mental stress that a person experiences while trying to make out one or another object. In particular, myopia is caused by attempts to make out distant objects, and myopia - by close ones.
Based on this, Bates questioned the need to wear glasses, arguing that people who have never worn glasses are cured of ophthalmic problems more effectively than those who wear them all the time.
Therefore, he initially rejected the glasses, and if this could not be done without causing significant inconvenience to the patient, he allowed use only for a short time. For example, when the patient was forced to continue to work during treatment, and was unable to perform his duties without glasses.
The effect of eye muscles on vision
The vision treatment methods that existed in the late XIX - early XX centuries, when Bates lived, seemed to him ineffective. He often noticed that the glasses that the doctor picked up 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 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 focuses perfectly on the retina. Only in this case can one speak of ideal or almost perfect vision.
When a person with good vision is forced to begin to examine some object located nearby, his transverse muscles are 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 form of an oval.
If a person needs to consider some object located far away, his transverse muscles of the eye 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 strained for a long time.
Bates convinced everyone around that a shortsighted person was able to restore his vision if he began to strengthen the longitudinal muscles, while simultaneously relaxing the transverse ones. With farsightedness, 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 Bates’s technique for the eyes was to train some muscles while relaxing others.
Exercises
The ophthalmologist suggested starting to restore vision with the acquisition of weak glasses or lenses. He drew attention to the fact that in most cases, doctors prescribe glasses to the patient that 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 and a half diopters.
Exercises according to Bates's method of restoring vision had to be performed regularly. He developed several options for gymnastics for the eyes. Here is one of them, which consisted in alternately performing several actions:
- Smooth rotation of the eyeballs.
- Raising the gaze up, and then lowering it down.
- Turn your gaze left and right alternately.
- Drawing in front of you the gaze of an imaginary square along the diagonals.
- Drawing a look with zigzags and snakes, as well as eights and rectangles.
After each exercise, it was necessary to give the eyes a rest. To do this, you should relax your eyelids and actively blink for three to five seconds.
In the first week of the exercise, the Bates method of restoring vision should be performed only three times. Then, the body turns were added to the complex of these exercises, which were required to be done first with eyes open, and then with eyes closed. At this moment, the doctor advised to relax as much as possible, try to forget about the problems, not to think about anything.
Another exercise according to Bates’s methodology should be done at sunset or dawn, when the sun is not at the peak of its activity. The patient should turn to face the window, close his eyes and begin to perform turns of the body to the right and left. The exercise should be repeated twice a day for five minutes. When there is no sun on the street, it can be done by candlelight in a dark room.
Another piece of advice on Bates's recovery technique was to wear a lightproof dressing. It should be worn in each eye in turn, and then engage in their usual housework. In this case, it was required that the eye under the blindfold necessarily remain open. The bandage should be no more than 30 minutes.
Palming
Bates’s vision restoration technique was based on an exercise called palming. It looks simple only at first glance, in reality, doing everything right is not easy at all, especially matching the psychological part.
Palming was to be done after the completion of any set of exercises. In fact, this is the way to relax the eyes that Bates himself invented.
It was required to close the eyes with palms, fingers to grip on the nose, mentally imagining necessarily black. It is important that the black color does not contain any color spots or highlights, and be 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 Bates method, 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 injuries to both legs and disability, continued to study and work. In 1954 he graduated from the psychological department of Leningrad University. Having defended a dissertation on the higher nervous activity of an adult, he worked at the Institute of Experimental Medicine. A large number of his works were devoted to ridding a person of smoking and alcoholism.
At the same time, he supported the development of an American scientist. In the USSR, the concept of the "Shichko-Bates method" appeared. Gennady Andreyevich advised Soviet patients with low vision to perform the same exercises.
Vladimir Zhdanov
Currently, the promoter 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 Physics Department of Novosibirsk State University.
Zhdanov claims that in 1994 he completely restored his vision according to the method of the American ophthalmologist. Since then, he began to engage in the dissemination of 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 they began to call the Zhdanov-Bates method, since he supplemented them with the use of dietary supplements. In these courses, he not only talks about a method recognized as unscientific, but also sells nutritional supplements and his own methodological materials. Zhdanov himself advises to accept these dietary supplements as an auxiliary tool to accelerate the restoration of vision.
Methodology Efficiency
This technique was initially used in ophthalmology with the goal of preventing all kinds of eye diseases. Due to the fact that it was never scientifically proven that it has at least some therapeutic effect, doctors gradually began to move away from its use.
At present, some specialists can recommend this training of the eye muscles after prolonged stress. For example, judging by the reviews, Bates's 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 argue that these exercises really help restore vision, no. To do this, it is better to seek the help of an experienced specialist who will advise 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 Bates’s methodology, most patients who used these exercises on themselves emphasized that this did not lead to any results.
"The art of vision"
Bates’s teaching was widely spread after an ophthalmologist cured the famous English science fiction actor Aldous Huxley. He even wrote a book in 1943 entitled "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 in the cornea of the eye combined with astigmatism, claiming that he was able to successfully get rid of all these problems.
In 1952, Huxley gave a speech in Hollywood at a banquet, easily reading it without glasses. As one of the journalists, who was personally present at the same time, noted, at some point the writer hesitated, after which it became obvious that he was not able to read what was written on paper, and he taught his speech by heart in advance. To remember what was written there, he brought the paper closer and closer to his eyes. When he was unable to make out anything, he was forced to take a magnifying glass from his pocket.
In response, Huxley said that he uses a magnifying glass in low light.
Doctor's biography
William Horatio Bates was born in Newark in 1860. He received his medical education at Cornell, and his Ph.D. from the American College of Surgeons and Doctors in 1885.
He began his career in New York as a medical assistant at the Hearing and Vision Hospital in Manhattan. Then he spent two years in a mental hospital in Bellevue. Since 1886, he served as a staff doctor at the New York Eye Hospital, since then ophthalmology has become his main specialization.
In 1896, he decided to leave medical practice for several years in order to conduct a series of experimental works. Six years later, he still returned to work, starting to work already at the Charing Cross hospital in London. After some time, he opened a private practice in North Dakota. His office was located in Grand Forks. In 1910, he became a vision care physician at the Harlem Hospital in New York, having worked there until 1922.
In 1931, he died at the age of 70. The debate about the method he discovered is still ongoing, although it is worth recognizing that Bates’s supporters and followers are becoming less and less every year. Most recognize the unscientificity of the theories put forward by him, 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.