Are There Any Risks?
Im scheduling to undergo Lasik in a few week from now in my2020 availing the promo of five years of annual Lasik-1 follow-up exams ($500 value) Anyway im the type of person who thinks not just twice but a hundred times before doing something, that is why yesterday I searched for any useful information about Lasik especially the risks of having it because I heard some people before who had a negative say about the procedure. After a few hours of research I found out that there are potential risks in any procedure and LASIK is no exception. The most common potential problems that can occur during laser vision correction are under-correction, over-correction and wrinkling. Under-correction and over-correction simply mean that while the procedure may have improved your vision, it may not have completely corrected it. Wrinkling is slightly more serious. It means that the corneal flap might have been moved which causes wrinkles that can possibly lead to the permanent appearance of blurry spots.
Some more serious side effects include, increased light sensitivity, halos around eyes, blurred vision and double vision. All of these symptoms should lessen and disappear after the first few weeks following the LASIK surgery. There is also a chance of corneal damage and/or scarring which can lead to partial or full vision loss. These side effects rarely occur, and ophthalmologists will always make sure that candidates are ideal for the LASIK procedure. Hope it helps you even a little folks and wish me luck for my treatment.
Both of my parents have had it and they are still fine.
My uncle had it and it is starting to revert back meaning he might have to have it again…but other than that, none of those side efects happened…
soo i say go for it.
the qualitly of life my mom had before was wayyyyy different.
it is worth it.
Jack,
I say don’t do it. I have no experience with it. I don’t know anyone who has had it. So, my opinion is not based on experience at all. Nevertheless…
Protect your vision. It is precious. You could be facing a lifetime of problems if it doesn’t go perfectly. Even if it does go perfectly, will it give you everything you are looking for? What problem are you trying to solve? You don’t want to wear glasses or contact lenses? For me, the choice between glasses and the risk of surgery is easy. I’ll stick with my glasses.
Have you looked into natural vision improvement techniques? Don’t ask your eye doctor about it. He has been taught by the system that it is quackery. But there was a Dr. William Bates of New York, who in the 1930s, did many experiments on animals and worked with thousands of people. He came up with a set of techniques that address the core problem of impaired vision.
You probably know that nearsightedness, myopia, happens because the eye is too long from front to back. The rays of light come to focus in front of the retina and you therefore have blurred vision. In farsightedness, the opposite is true. The eye is too short from front to back. With astigmatism, the eye is not perfectly spherical in the front.
If you believe Dr. Bates, there is a common cause of all of these conditions. The cause is the external muscles that attach to the eye. They become chronically tense and they pull and squeeze the eye out of shape. There are four muscles that attach to the front of the eye – on the top, bottom, left, and right. These muscles move the eye left, right, up, and down. There are two big muscles (the oblique muscles, I think) that almost wrap around the middle of the eye. They rotate the eye in its socket. You can see them it action if you look at your eye closely in a mirror and rotate your head. You can see your eye rotate in its socket (as it tries to stay level as you rotate your head).
These six muscles can pull and squeeze to produce a number of problems. If the two oblique muscles both contract at the same time and stay contracted, they will squeeze the eye and make it too long. Myopia. Nearsightedness. If the four muscles that attach to the front of the eye all contract and stay chronically tense, they can pull the eye back into the eye socket, making it shorter, i.e., farsightedness. If one of those muscles contracts abnormally, it will pull on a section of the front of the eye, warping it out of its perfect sphere, giving you astigmatism.
The problem is that these six muscles are not under voluntary control. So it’s hard to get them to relax. An eye at rest is focused on infinity, which is anything greater than 20 feet. There are techniques geared toward getting the muscles to relax, allowing the eye to return to normal shape, thus returning to perfect vision. They are NOT eye exercises – those muscles are more than strong enough already, especially the powerful oblique pair.
In addition to the relaxation techniques, there are proper vision habits that you will have to incorporate into your day. These habits are how people with normal vision see. People with impaired vision tend to stare. They tend to try to see everything clearly all at once (like a camera). This is not possible due to the layout of the rods and cones (the light receptors) in the retina. You see clearly only in the center of your vision. A person with normal vision will jump around looking at different things, building up a clear mental picture, but “hardware-wise” only seeing one small part clearly at a time. Again, people with poor vision stare. Their eye does not jump around sketching a clear mental picture. These are some of the habits that you once had (when you had perfect vision).
You want to look up the Bates Method. He’s on that sight (edit: site, not sight – interesting typo) that lists quacks (just be forwarned). Oh, and one other thing. He was dead wrong about how the eye focuses. He went against the medical establishment by saying that the eye focuses like a camera – it becomes shorter or longer (via the oblique muscles). This does not invalidate his techniques, however.
Think about when you first got glasses. Was it a time of stress? By looking through the family photo album, I figured out that I got glasses when I went into high school (or maybe it was middle school, now I can’t remember). There was stress that went along with the lowering of my vision. Those muscles became tense (like the neck and shoulder muscles do when you are stressed out). Getting glasses locked it in. More on that in a moment.
I’ll leave you with another thought. Has your prescription changed over the years? Mine certainly has. If the definition of myopia is that the eye is too long, fine. I guess it grew that way. But as a fully-grown adult, how is my myopia getting worse? My eye is getting even longer? How is that possible? The only explanation I have is that Dr. Bates is right – the oblique muscles are squeezing the eye (in my case, even the angle of rotation of my astigmatism changed). Those eye muscles are doing something WRONG. Yet glasses or surgery rewards you with correct vision. It’s not a proper feedback loop. In fact, your muscles have to continue to do something wrong – otherwise you will not see clearly. If those chronically tense muscles start to relax (a good thing), you will not be able to see correctly through your glasses. They will be the wrong prescription. So, those muscles must stay chronically tense. They must maintain a wrong thing in order to produce a right thing.
Glasses, contact lenses, and surgery do not address the root problem. They actually lock it in. Also, what happens when your eyes “get worse” in the future? Do you need surgery again?
This is the book you need –
It’s by Tom Quackenbush, who in my view is the world’s expert on natural vision improvement. His book is THE authority on the subject. You can also obtain Dr. Bates’s original books, but Relearning To See quotes extensively from Dr. Bates’s materials and is much more accessible. He also runs a natural vision center, but he has moved to Holland.
http://www.naturalvisioncenter.com/
So, to wrap this up… Your vision is so essential to the quality of your life that I wouldn’t risk messing it up. Also, vision changes throughout life if you don’t address the root problem. Surgury today is based on your prescription… today. What about tomorrow? And given the possibility of curing your vision naturally (it’s not easy, by the way), why not give that a chance first? Delay the surgery. Buy the book. What’s the rush? I mean, this is serious stuff. The surgeon can wait a few more weeks for you (if you are not convinced by the book). He won’t be heartbroken. Please. I’m not easily persuaded to believe in junk science. I truly believe in the Bates Method. One day I will cure my vision. I’ve been able to cause momentary improvements, but they don’t last (I also don’t stick with the program). My friend was able to produce dramatic improvements in his vision. So, I’ve seen this work first-hand (he didn’t follow through either, so I have not personally witnessed anyone curing their vision – I’ve seen enough to make me a believer, however).
If you go through with the surgery, I truly wish you the very best of luck.
Dave, really good post, i never really thought of it like that before. I now have 25-20 vision but it used to be worse. My life is definitely lower stress than it used to be and I don’t need my glasses anymore. You could be on to something.
Before reading Daves post I would have asked one question - How important is your night-vision to you? Both my parents have had the procedure and both are fairly happy with the results, especially my mom. My mom had it done about 10 years ago and my dad 6.
My mom got her vision corrected properly and it has not changed but she sais that her night-vision has decreased slightly. My dads vision was slightly under-corrected in one of his eyes (which he claims that while not intentional it is a good thing, he was farsighted) and now sees slightly refracted light at night when his pupils dilate.
The other day, I was going to get some Lasik surgery, but I was really thirsty, so I had to stop at a gas station and get some generic store milk. That was making me late though, so I had to start rushing, but the assholes in front of me wouldn’t get out of my way, so I had to bully them and edge up really close until they moved over. Jerks.
I guess I need to write a few thousand more words about raw milk, lasik, and tailgating…
LOL. Funny post!
Wow, I think I responded to spam. I’m a well-intentioned but not too observant idiot!
Dave, I found your post informative nonetheless. My eyes are slowly deteriorating and I’ve wondered about the natural treatments rather than a new, stronger prescription every other year.
Kobayashi Maru. You have re-written the rules of the simulation for your own purposes.
Well, I’m no James T. Kirk, but I did cause the opposite effect that the spam was trying to accomplish.
If that was spam it was an interesting approach. Were I to respond to Jack Brown I’d ask him if he read beyond the obviously canned statement he pasted into his post. Clearly what was missing from that was the rate of occurrence of the negative effects.
But anyway, I just ordered the book you recommended. $18.15 from Amazon. Cheap! I’m sure I’ll get something out of it. I’m currently in a place where I need glasses to read small type in low light. Bright light; fine. Bigger type; fine. So I got my first pair of glasses a couple of years ago. Recently my dog ate them. It’s not funny. I left them on the kitchen table, which he knows he’s not supposed to be on… I know I’m a bad puppy trainer. Anyway, I found them on the floor with one lens popped out, scratches on both, and the frame all chewed up. He has sharp little teefis!
But I’ve always wondered if some of us just had to give up on our vision as we aged. Maybe not, if muscles can be trained (or untrained). I’m willing to find out. Thanks for the link!
There’s a picture of the little monster (A.J., a French Bulldog). He’s so bloody cute we haven’t killed him yet…
John,
Although cute, your dog does look like an ailen.
Also, I know eye exercises can be used to correct having a lazy eye (that’s right, I’ve got a lazy eye, possibly two). I’m not sure about this whole other side of eye exercises you folks are talking about, but I’m really interested in finding more about it. John, when you’re done reading that book, it would be great if you posted a follow up with your thoughts here. Thanks to Dave for introducing the topic.
-nick
All bulldogs are aliens. Here’s an A.J. sandwich, with our two aging “English” bulldogs (the proper breed name for them is simply Bulldog).
I’ll try to remember to write up my experiences after reading and attempting the stuff in the book!
spam or not it is an interesting topic. And I thank you again Dave for your excellent eye opening post.
In America, I don’t think insurance will pay for Lasik…well medicaid/medicare won’t because they consider it “cosmetic surgery”. Whatever…I wear glasses. I won’t get Lasik because I can’t afford it. My glasses don’t bother me.