Around half of the world’s population suffers from myopia (short-sightedness) or hyperopia (long-sightedness). The wearing of glasses and contact lenses, though important for certain activities such as driving or reading, only accelerates the trend of visual deterioration. The more time that is spent wearing corrective lenses, the greater the crutch, and the lazier, more fixed the focusing-muscles become. Myopia largely develops through prolonged close work such as reading, studying, computer work and up-close television viewing, especially in low light conditions. But the situation is swiftly advanced as formatively developing children enter into the remit of industrialised optometry, where well-meaning opticians channel them into what often amounts to an ever-worsening prescription as their eye muscles become lazier and their eyesight hazier. Children, unless absolutely necessary, should be kept away from corrective lenses. They should use blur-reducing technology everyday instead. Keep reading and I will explain all.

In high school my eyes were tested and I was considered “borderline” shortsighted. That was still enough for the over-zealous high street optician to start grooming me into a life of wearing corrective lenses. But I refused, and my eyesight stabilised for my remaining school years (improving slightly in my early twenties as my diet improved). Meanwhile, my glasses-wearing peers were often prescribed thicker lenses each time they were tested. This is not the time nor place to deconstruct the dubious tenets on which modern, capitalist optometry is predicated, though it sure knows how to reel in life-long customers. Understanding that there are natural solutions to blurry eyesight, whether you are near or far-sighted is the first step on the road to more astute vision, and one excellent answer lies with a relatively little known device “invented” in Germany during the 1890’s.

The device in question is pinhole glasses and they look like this:

They look like sunglasses perforated with holes right? Well they basically are, without the see-through lenses that is. In fact they are a perfect replacement for normal sunglasses because they effectively reduce glare while still letting natural, full-spectrum light hit the back of our retinas.

So how do they work to improve your eyesight?

Using the diagram below we can see the problem inherent with long and shortsighted eyes.

If you are long-sighted, the light enters the eye, but the potential clear image (of whatever you are looking at) falls too far beyond the light-sensitive retina, therefore what you see is blurry. The greater the focusing error, the larger the amount of blur experienced

Conversely, if you are short-sighted, the light enters the eye, but the potential clear image (of whatever you are looking at) falls short of the light-sensitive retina, therefore what you are looking at becomes blurry. Again, the greater the focusing error, the larger the amount of blur experienced.

During the time they are worn, pinhole glasses immediately fix or enhance both sides of this sight-interference coin by narrowing the hole or opening through which light travels into the eye itself. Each “pin” hole within the glasses only lets a narrow beam of light through, whilst blocking out peripheral light rays that are naturally harder to focus. This combination of factors allows the focal point to be repositioned, more or less back to  to where it should be on the retina and our visual acuity is sharpened, often dramatically so. It is recommended to wear pinholes for at least 20 minutes a day. But many people wear them for 1-2 hours or more.

Ok, so they are effective when I am wearing them, but what about when I am not? How do they help my eyesight in general?

Pinhole glasses work to engage and exercise the eye muscles that are directly in charge of focusing the lens to achieve optimal visual acuity. Lazy, inflexible, uptight, often stressed eye-muscles are simply irresponsive to the organic range of focusing that good sight demands. By wearing pinhole glasses regularly, the brain is gradually trained to recognise what a correctly focused image actually looks like, reigniting a more efficient relationship with the eye muscles permanently. Many people notice visual improvement in as little as a few weeks, particularly in reading, whether that be for a shortsighted person reading subtitles on the television or a longsighted person reading a book up close. Gradually the world becomes less blurry, sharper, more definite and brighter. We can literally say that we have become well and truly vital-eyes-ed.

See here for the high-quality optical-grade pinhole glasses I recommend.