Natural vision correction

Pinhole glasses.

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Natural vision correction is the notion that poor vision (such as astigmatism or myopia) can be cured or compensated for "naturally." This is often paired with the belief that eyeglasses are unnecessary and that eyeglasses and eye tests can cause substantial damage.

Yes, eyeglasses denialism is actually a thing.

Science says…

Bad glasses can mess up your vision — you'll notice this, it won't be a surprise — but good glasses correct it without ill effects.

Lots of time spent inside during childhood can actually leave you nearsighted. So get your kids out more. If not, rest your eyes by looking at objects roughly 15-20 feet away. Nearsightedness is more than just an annoyance; because of the associated eye deformation, it also "increases the risk of retinal detachment, cataracts, glaucoma and even blindness."

Natural vision correction methods

• Pinhole glasses work by focusing light using pinholes, rather than lenses, similar to a pinhole camera. They do work to correct vision (though not as well as lenses) — but woo merchants claim that they can permanently repair your vision. The FTC has banned such claims in the US since 1993, but manufacturers have continued to make such claims where they think they can get away with them.
• The Bates eye method is an old piece of woo from the early 20^th century. Opthalmologists are pained that this terrible idea which doesn't work just won't die.
• Biofeedback methods are sometimes used. A machine reads the accommodation (focal distance) of the lens in your eye in real time, and turns this into beeping tones — the lower-pitched the tone and slower the beep, the longer the focal distance. Then the patient stares at a projection of a distant object while this is going on and tries to make the tone get lower through force of will, or relaxation, or some such. The patient can go through many sessions hoping for improvement that never happens. Sometimes the patient achieves a "breakthrough" by partly closing his eyes, which fools the focal-distance sensor into thinking your lens is much less convex than it actually is.
• Joseph Mercola sells a "Secrets of Regaining Your Vision Naturally" programme.
• There are, of course, those who offer to fix your eyes with supplements… or homeopathy.

Unassisted changes in vision

See the main article on this topic: Spontaneous remission

Many short-sighted people experience an improvement in their vision in their forties. This is their myopia interacting with presbyopia, which is the progressive weakening of the ability to focus. The happy period lasts a few years, then it's varifocals time!

Needless to say, if the timing of an attempt at natural vision correction happens during this period, it can easily provide an anecdote to feather the cap of natural vision correction practitioners, who (along with the patient) are clearly blissfully (and/or willfully) ignorant to the concept of "regression to the mean".