It's an accepted fact that glasses weaken your eyes because they encourage you to use your eyesight in the wrong way, and this can actually promote visual defects. I suppose it must have been about twenty five years ago when I first realized I was straining to read newspaper's and book's. I was about forty at the time. Now there's nothing unusual about a middle aged man's vision starting to deteriorate (along with everything else!) so I did what everybody did back then - went to the opticians.

About a week later I was sporting a flashy new pair of 'Michael Caine' type glasses. They took a bit of getting used to at first and I did have the occasional headache, but I remembered the optician told me to expect mild side effects and not to worry because things would definitely get better.

Well things didn't get better, they got worse! After about six months I found reading anything was only possible at arm's length, also the headaches were getting stronger and more persistent. I realized that something was wrong and decided to seek specialist help from the eye clinic in my local hospital. They told me I had macular degeneration which would only get worse with the passing years. The advice was to get my eyes re-tested every six months - and buy new, stronger lenses each time.

So, until about a year ago, that's exactly what I did. During all those years I must have spent thousands on new frames and lenses - thinking I was doing the right thing.

Now,in recent years eye surgery technology has advanced in leaps and bounds and, like thousands of others, I've thought about getting this new fangled laser treatment.

If not for reading a magazine article one day at a train station, I probably would have. I found the article fascinating. It was all about an American surgeon I'd never heard of called William Horatio Bates who was born in Newark, N.J., in 1860. He gained his medical degree from Columbia University in New York and became a highly respected eye surgeon in that same city.

Turns out that Dr. Bates was a bit of a lateral thinker for his day. He believed that poor eyesight is mainly caused by stress or mental strain, poor vision habits and... wearing glasses! This really did score a home run with me because I'd already noticed that whenever I was under pressure at work, or stressed out for any reason, my eyesight definitely suffered.

The good doctor's reasoning was that "why, if glasses are correct, must they be continually strengthened because the eyes, under their influence, have weakened? Logically, if a medicine is good, the dose should be weakened as the patient grows stronger."

Reading this article was something of a 'light bulb' moment for me and I decided to find out all I could about trying to get better vision through natural healing.Thanks to the Internet, fact finding is so easy now and the more research you put into anything the more likely you are to make a sensible and balanced decision on what to do. I'm now aware that most corrective eye surgery carries an inherent risk - as do all surgical procedures, also, since it only treats the symptoms, not the causes of poor vision, it can possibly lead to other problems later in life.

I've quizzed optical professionals about dealing with my own problems by natural means and the answers I received varied from 'it's all witchdoctor stuff' to 'everyone's eyes deteriorate...just get used to it.' Of course it's really not in their best interest to say otherwise, is it?

It's strange to recall that it really wasn't that many years ago that acupuncture was derided by most western medical professionals as third world mumbo jumbo. Take a look at these same doctor's now - not only have they changed their tune, they're queuing up to get their greedy little snouts in the trough! The proof of this is the amount of advertising these good folk pay for extolling their new acupuncture 'partners.'

Isn't it funny how attitudes and principles change when there are fortunes to be made by simply reversing them.

Consider this, just why is it that you can't watch a television program, open a newspaper or a magazine without seeing slick adverts trying to sell 'sexier spectacles' or 'laser eye correction?'These advertisements cost megabucks and the only reason they appear constantly is because eye problems generate huge revenue for these companies worldwide. They're not in it for altruistic reasons!

Most doctors have a nice little sideline pushing the big pharmaceutical companies latest wonder drug (regardless of the fact it may not be in the patient's best interest!) and it's the same with spectacle and contact lens' companies - their profit margin is enormous. This is the truth.

They say that given time we can get used to anything and the hardest thing to break is a bad habit. Well that's certainly true when it comes to wearing glasses. We become so accustomed to stronger and stronger lenses that we just accept what we perceive as the inevitable.

A hundred years ago Dr. Bates taught us that declining vision is not necessarily inevitable and that natural healing methods and techniques are well worth studying.

So before you reach for your check book to pay for laser surgery or yet another pair of expensive glasses or contacts, take some time to explore the alternatives - it could save you a lot of money and be much more beneficial!