Different Treatments of Glaucoma

Glaucoma, a major cause of blindness, is a condition due to increased eye pressure. In conventional medicine, most eye doctors would recommend surgeries and eye drops to relieve high ocular pressure in the eye.

However, there is one problem: surgeries and eye drops would also create a chronic condition, ironically enough, leading to ultimate blindness. The use of eye drops may have adverse long-term effects, one of which is the falling off of pieces of iris, causing blockage, and thereby instrumental in increasing eye pressure over the long haul, instead of reducing the eye pressure.

Dr. Leslie Salov, M.D., O.D. Ph.D., in his book Secrets for Better Vision, states that most glaucoma patients are highly intelligent professionals who lead very stressful, busy lives. This finding led Dr. Salov to believe that to improve vision or eye health, you need to improve the health of your entire person simultaneously because your body is a set of interlocking systems that affect one another. Given that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, your eyes are only a small part of your whole person. Accordingly, to heal the eyes, you must heal the body first. It is just that simple!

To have healthy vision, even as you age, you must employ not only the sciences of physiology, biology, and chemistry, but also the healing powers of philosophy and even spirituality. This is no exception when it comes to treating glaucoma. In other words, to treat glaucoma, you need to examine not just your eyes, but also every aspect of your life, including your emotional and spiritual health.

The methods of glaucoma treatment recommended by Dr. Salov include the following:

Visualization is the use of guided imagery to direct blood, oxygen, and leukocytes (immunity cells) to the eye through a mental image of a healthy eye. Essentially, your conscious mind controls the involuntary processes that occur automatically inside your body. Specifically, visualization relaxes the muscles in the walls of your canal of Schlemm (circular channel in the eye that collects watery substance between the lens and the cornea). By relaxing these muscles, extra fluid can be excreted to relieve the glaucoma pressure. Without using eye drops with chemicals, visualization can naturally relax eye muscles so that your pupils become small enough to open up the canal of Schlemm to excrete the fluid for eye pressure relief.

However, it must be pointed out that visualization     works only when you use it with dedication and consistency. In other words, you have to practice visualization daily and diligently.

Meditation is the art of thinking of nothing to remove everyday stresses and worries. When you are under stress, you body produces chemical changes within your body, which decrease blood flow and oxygen level to your eye. Practice meditation to de-stress yourself.

Stephen Lau        

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Simple Things to Do for Eye Relaxation

There are some simple things you can do for your eye relaxation:

"Vision is about the eye. It is all about what you see, or how well you see. Healthy vision gives you sensation, perception, and conception. Your life depends on your eyes. In short, healthy vision gives you all the raw materials for living for life.

Do some simple things to relax eyes for better vision.

Shifting: Train the eye to look from one object to another frequently, from a close object to a distant one, and then back again in order to relieve tension and eyestrain, which impair vision. Reinforce shifting with constant blinking to clean and to rest the eye.

Tracing the “8” eye exercise

Sit comfortably in a relaxed posture.

Consciously breathe in and breathe out through your nose until you attain a natural rhythm.

Imagine the figure “8” in the distance.

Let your eyes trace along the imaginary figure without moving your head.

First, trace it in one direction, and then in the opposite direction.

You can modify the exercise by imagining other alphabets and figures. The objective of this exercise, in addition to promoting relaxation and flexibility, is to train your eyes to consciously shift when focusing on an object in the distance.

You can modify the exercise by imagining other alphabets and figures. The objective of this exercise, in addition to promoting relaxation and flexibility, is to train your eyes to consciously shift when focusing on an object in the distance.

You can do this when stopping in front of the traffic light, or when you look away from your computer screen. Do this anytime, and just be conscious of it.

The Taoist squeeze-and-open eye exercise

This ancient Chinese exercise developed by Taoist monks thousands of years ago increases blood circulation to the eyes, prevents watery eyes, and alkalizes the eyes to detoxify the liver. It removes eyestrain and soothes eye-muscle tension.

Inhale slowly, while squeezing your eyes tightly for 10 seconds.

Then, slowly exhale your breath, making the sh-h-h-h-h sound, while opening your eyes wide.

Repeat as many times, and as often as required to cleanse the eyes and the liver.

Again, you can do this anytime.

TIPS: Always be aware of the BLINKING and SHIFTING of your eyes. Avoid STARING and EYE-FIXATION. It is just that simple."

The above is from Health and Wisdom Tips.

Remember, take good care of your eyes, and eye relaxation is something you can do.

Stephen Lau

Important Factors in Overcoming Poor Vision

AWARENESS and RELAXATION are two important factors in overcoming poor vision. No need to go for perfect vision! Never strain your eyes in order to see better! 

Poor vision leads to further vision loss and impairment, resulting in legal blindness (20 percent or less vision), which is defined as 20/200, that is, the capability of seeing within 20 feet what a person with normal vision can see within 200 feet. Legal blindness occurs to more than 10 percent of population aged between 50 to 69, and more than 70 percent aged 70 and over.

Wearing contact lenses is not any better than wearing eyeglasses. As a matter of fact, wearing contacts may have many other less-than-desirable side effects: distortion of the cornea; drying out of the eye; eye infection and inflammation; irritation of the eye and eyelids; oxygen deprivation; pPain and dizziness; further vision loss.

Awareness also implies your consciousness of good vision habits, such as constantly blinking and shifting your eyes.

Relaxation holds the key to holistic health of the body, the mind, and the soul. That said, living in this contemporary world is stressful. Learn to overcome your daily stress.

No Ego No Stress is made up of 4 parts.

PART ONE: An Introduction to Stress

It explains how and where stress comes from; the damage and devastation of stress to human health.

PART TWO: Conventional Wisdom

The major life stressors come from career, money, relationship, adversity, and time. Conventional wisdom offers many strategies for stress relief, such as exercise, herbs, medications, meditation, and psychotherapies, among many others. Conventional wisdom may reduce stress levels, but it does not eradicate stress completely. Conventional wisdom only complements the ancient Tao wisdom for ultimate stress relief.

PART THREE: Tao Wisdom

This part not only explains what Tao wisdom is all about, but also contains the complete translation in simple English of all the 81 short chapters of “Tao Te Ching” which is one of the most translated works in world literature. Going through the whole script, interpreted and translated by the author, will enable you to understand the essentials of Tao wisdom for stress-free contemporary living.

PART FOUR: No Ego No Stress

Stress originates from the human mind: how it perceives and processes life experiences. What is stress to one individual may not be stress to another. This part explains in detail how having no ego can eradicate all stress related to career, relationship, money, adversity, and time.

Stress is one of the many underlying causes of human diseases, especially autoimmune diseases, and a major stumbling block in natural health and self-healing. Unfortunately, stress is common in modern living: it may come from careers, relationships, finance, and simply everyday living. To get rid of stress, you need more than just relaxation techniques to help you:  you need to get rid of your ego. Without your  ego, you have no stress. It's just simple!

Get your book: NO EGO NO STRESS.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Improve Your Vision Health

Vision is one of the most important assets given by your Creator because it is the most important of the five senses. Without good vision health, the quality of life will be considerably compromised, especially as you continue to age. Therefore, it is important to improve vision throughout your life. To improve vision, you must empower yourself with self-help and self-learning tools to keep your eyes in good shape and maintain good vision health so that you can enjoy good eyesight for the rest of your life without major eye problems, such as cataracts, glaucoma, and macular degeneration.

What is vision health, and how to improve vision?

Vision health is the application of natural eye science in natural healing of poor vision and related eye problems through eye relaxation, eye exercises, eye nutrition therapy, corrective eye habits, and natural vision improvement techniques. Vision health is holistic health, because your body, your mind, and your eyes are interrelated in terms of health and healing. For example, a yellowish tint in the whites of the eye is often a reflection of a toxic colon, manifested in jaundice or a liver disorder.

My book VISION SELF-HEALING SELF-HELP may help you improve vision. It is based on the groundbreaking work of Dr. William Bates (1860 - 1931), the well-known founder of natural vision. For more than a century, many doctors and scientists have expressed many different controversial opinions on the famous Bates Method to improve vision.

According to Dr. William Bates, poor vision is the result of eyestrain, due to mental and physical stress on the eye, and hence the distortion of the eye shape, leading to nearsightedness and farsightedness. Dr. Bates strongly believed that eye relaxation holds the key to improving vision.

Vision health is holistic health, which means it includes not only the health of the eye, but also the health of the body, the mind, and the spirit. Eye relaxation begins with the mind first, not the eye. To improve vision, the mind must be completely relaxed before it can relax the body—and then the eye, which is only one of the organs of the body. In other words, eye exercises can improve vision only when the body is also completely relaxed. According to Dr. Bates, wearing prescription lenses (eyeglasses or contact lenses) is not only unnatural but also detrimental to recovery from poor vision.

Improving your vision takes time. You must first and foremost have the intent to get rid of your eyeglasses or contact lenses to improve your vision. It is a long and slow process that may take months or even years. So, you must be persistent.  Remember, even if you cannot get rid of your glasses, at least you can prevent your vision from further deteriorating as you continue to age.

 Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

BETTER ENGLISH FOR YOU - New Book

 BETTER ENGLISH FOR YOU

WHAT this book is all about:

This book is about every aspect of both written and spoken English.

It covers the basics as well as the essentials of good and effective written and spoken English.

It helps you avoid all the common errors made by both native and non-native speakers of English.

WHY you should read this book:

This book is for every one who speaks and writes English every day.

This book is especially for ESL learners who are not familiar with the use of the English language.

This book is also for native speakers of English, who need to write good English in their education, and throughout their careers.

CONTENTS

ONE: WHY BETTER ENGLISH
TWO: HOW TO HAVE BETTER ENGLISH
LEARING TO SPEAK BY SPEAKING AND TO WRITE BY WRITING
GETTING BASIC TOOLS FOR BETTER ENGLISH
      An English Dictionary
      A Thesaurus
THREE: BETTER WRITTEN ENGLISH FOR YOU
THE PURPOSE OF WRITING
THE ENGLISH GRAMMAR BASICS
     Nouns
     Pronouns
     Adjectives
     Verbs
     Adverbs
     Conjunctions
     Prepositions
     Interjections
THE ENGLISH SENTENCE
     Sentence Patterns
     Different Types of Sentences
     Balanced Sentence Construction
THE TENSES
THE PUNCTUATION
      The Comma
      The Semi-Colon
      The Colon
     The Dashes
     The Period (Full-Stop)
COMMON SENTENCE ERRORS
     Avoid Double Negatives
     Avoid Omission of Key Verbs    
     Avoid Omission of Words in Comparison
     Avoid Dangling Participles
     Avoid Misusing Dependent Clause
BEGINNING TO WRITE
     Paragraph Development
     Learn Commonly Used Difficult Vocabulary
     Learn Commonly Used Difficult Vocabulary
     Learn Idioms and Colloquial Expressions
     Learn to Know the Difference
     Learn to Avoid Wordiness
DEVELOPING THE TOPIC
     Point of View
     Tone
     Planning the Writing
     Writing the Introduction
      Planning the Outline
      Expanding the Writing
      Writing the Draft
GOOD WRITING
      Clichés
      Figures of Speech
      Italics
      Simplicity in Writing
FOUR: BETTER SPOKE ENGLISH

      Slang and Colloquial Expressions

Glaucoma Treatment

Glaucoma is an eye disorder often associated with aging. According to Western medicine, there is no cure, and no reversal of the conditions connected with the symptoms. However, we must also look at the underlying causes of glaucoma, and look at the disorder with a different perspective and with a holistic approach to the treatment.

Below is taken from: Health and Wisdom Tips:

“Glaucoma is an eye condition due to increased eye pressure that may lead to blindness. In conventional medicine, most eye doctors would recommend surgeries and / or eye drops to relieve high ocular pressure in the eye.

However, there is one problem: surgeries and eye drops would also create a chronic condition, ironically enough, leading to ultimate blindness. The use of eye drops may have adverse long-term effects, one of which is the falling off of pieces of iris, causing blockage, and thereby instrumental in increasing eye pressure over the long haul, instead of reducing the eye pressure.

Dr. Leslie Salov, M.D., O.D. Ph.D., in his book Secrets for Better Vision, states that most glaucoma patients are highly intelligent professionals who lead very stressful, busy lives. This finding led Dr. Salov to believe that to improve vision or eye health, you need to improve the health of your entire person simultaneously because your body is a set of interlocking systems that affect one another. Given that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, your eyes are only a small part of your whole person. Accordingly, to heal the eyes, you must heal the body first. It is just that simple!

To have healthy vision, even as you age, you must employ not only the sciences of physiology, biology, and chemistry, but also the healing powers of philosophy and even spirituality. This is no exception when it comes to treating glaucoma. In other words, to treat glaucoma, you need to examine not just your eyes, but also every aspect of your life, including your emotional and spiritual health. Get a holistic approach to healing glaucoma.

The methods of glaucoma treatment recommended by Dr. Salov also include the following:

Visualization is the use of guided imagery to direct blood, oxygen, and leukocytes (immunity cells) to the eye through a mental image of a healthy eye. Essentially, your conscious mind controls the involuntary processes that occur automatically inside your body. Specifically, visualization relaxes the muscles in the walls of your canal of Schlemm (circular channel in the eye that collects watery substance between the lens and the cornea). By relaxing these muscles, extra fluid can be excreted to relieve the glaucoma pressure. Without using eye drops with chemicals, visualization can naturally relax eye muscles so that your pupils become small enough to open up the canal of Schlemm to excrete the fluid for eye pressure relief.

However, it must be pointed out that visualization works only when you use it with dedication and consistency. In other words, you have to practice visualization daily and diligently.

Meditation is the art of thinking of nothing to remove everyday stresses and worries. When you are under stress, you body produces chemical changes within your body, which decrease blood flow and oxygen level to your eye. Practice meditation to de-stress yourself.

The bottom line: eye pressure can be relieved by eye relaxation; it is important to relax your eye muscles, just like you would relax the muscles of different parts of your body.”

Remember, vision has to do with the mind too, and not just the eyes. Without mind relaxation, the eyes are stressed and unrelaxed, and thus raising the eye pressure, which is the underlying cause of glaucoma. Does it make sense?

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

What Is Good Vision?

Vision is all about light. Without light, there is no vision.

“In the beginning, when God created the universe, the earth was formless and desolate. The raging ocean that covered everything was engulfed in total darkness, and the power of God was moving over the water. Then God commanded, ‘Let there be light’—and light appeared.” (Genesis 1-3)

Give that vision is a gift from God, do not abuse it; make the best and the most of your vision power. Improve your vision at any age!

Good vision is about how your eyes make use of light to see the world around you:

• How much light is available to the eye?
• How efficient is the eye lens in refracting the light?
• How sensitive is the eye (macula) in receiving and transmitting the light to the brain?
• How proficient is the brain in processing the visual data from the eye?

Good vision involves more than just the eye: it includes the body and the mind.

So, never strain the eye to read or to see when the light is insufficient.

So, relax the eye in order to avoid distorting the shape of the eye, which will squeeze the lens out of shape, and thus causing the refractive error.

So, protect the macula (for detailed vision) on the retina (the back of the eye) by increasing peripheral vision (on both sides) to avoid overusing the macula.

So, improve brain power through affirmations and visualization to help the eye focus and process visual information efficiently.

Good Vision

Good vision means the capability to look clearly into the distance, but nearsightedness causes blurry distance.

Good vision means having peripheral vision, but the grim reality is that there is only central vision, with little or no periphery.

Good vision means the eyes shift constantly, but the problem is that the eyes are constantly staring, or have developed eye-fixation.

Good vision means the eyes can adjust easily to light, but the truth of the matter is that the eyes tend to squint at different light conditions.

Good vision means the eyes can look close up and far away almost instantaneously, but farsightedness prevents the instant shifting of the eyes.

In other words, the characteristics of the eye with good vision are: 

• It will “naturally observe” or “notice” what is around.
• It will never “strain” to see “everything.”
• It will relax and rest even when it is “looking.”

To improve your vision, you must enhance these characteristics at all times.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Understand How the Eye "Sees"

The eye with good vision and the eye with weak vision do not “see” in the same way. Understanding how normal eyes “see” may help you make your eyes “see” in a totally different way.

Look at a simple illustration of the difference in the process of “seeing” by the eye with good vision and by the eye with weak vision. Here is how and what the healthy eye will “see” when it looks at the following:

A  B  C  D  E

 The eye with good vision will be able to “absorb” or “see” A, B, C, D, and E all at the same time, irrespective of the closeness or distance.

Then, the eye with good vision will subconsciously “select” the one (e.g. E) that it wants to see, and immediately shifting its focus to E. Remember, the healthy eye can “select” its own vision.

In other words, the healthy eye has “soft vision”—it sees everything immediately but without gazing. “Soft vision” is practiced by all martial arts practitioners because they need to know where the attack of the enemy may be coming from—which could be from any or all directions. Therefore, it is important to train your eyes to have “soft vision” so that you can see everything all at once.

Soft Focus 

Train your eyes to “see” and “look” at the same time.

Look at a printed page with a lot of details.

• Become “aware” of what you are looking at, without blinking your eyes for five to thirty seconds.
• Practice soft focus for five minutes at least once a day.

AWARENESS: Look without blinking (soft vision) for 10 seconds or so.

When you gaze, you use mostly your central vision, with little or no peripheral vision (which is side vision); accordingly, you weaken your macula, which is responsible for seeing visual details. Over time, you begin to lose much of your peripheral vision (use it or lose it). Because you cannot see what you want to see, you form the bad habit of “staring” or “frozen gaze,” and thus further weakening your macula. This is how the vicious circle of poor vision is formed. To improve your vision, you must break that vicious circle.

The eye with weak vision will do the following when looking at the above:

• The eye with weak vision will probably look consciously at C first, without seeing the other alphabets (probably due to constant use of central vision).
• Then, the eye with weak vision may probably shift its gaze to B and D, and then to A and E, back and forth, in order to “select” what it wants to see. Finally, the eye may decide that E is what it wants to see, and begins to focus on E (all these happen subconsciously and within only a fraction of a split second).

The above illustration demonstrates how the eye with weak vision may “see.” One of the characteristics of the eye with weak vision is its “frozen gaze,” which allows it to focus on only one object one at a time. To improve your vision, you must overcome the bad habit of “staring.”

AWARENESS: Do not stare!. Blink frequently to stop frozen gaze!

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Overcoming Eyestrain

Eyestrain is one of the underlying causes of many vision disorders. The opposite of eyestrain is eye relaxation, which essentially comes from the mind.

Develop your mental awareness to change your bad vision habits that cause eyestrain.

Shifting: Train your mind to edge or trace the outline of any visual object with your eyes. Form this good vision habit to avoid “staring” or “eye fixation.”

Eye balancing: Wear an eye-patch (obtainable at a pharmacy or local drug store) over your stronger eye in order to strengthen your weaker eye.

Periphery: Use a two-eyed patch to cover your eyes to enhance your peripheral vision. Make a two-eyed patch out of a strip of stiff cardboard (3” x 1”), with a small part cut off in the middle to accommodate your nose.

Sunglasses: Avoid wearing sunglasses to avoid “squinting.”

Mind Relaxation

The eye conditions are constantly changing such that they can be adversely affected by any emotional or mental stress, resulting in eyestrain that can cause vision blur. By the same token, you can significantly improve your vision if you relax your eyes completely through relaxation.

Using a Relaxed Mind to Relax the Body, and hence the Eye

It is almost impossible to relax just your eyes, while the rest of your body remains tense and stressed. Total relaxation begins with the mind first, and then the rest of the body, including the eyes. Use your mind to relax your body, and then your eyes -- the best way to achieve mental relaxation.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Food Choices and Vision Health

Food choice holds the key to healthy vision. Always eat naturally to avoid seeing the doctors. Always eat whole foods. Your food choice should be based on nutrients, neither availability nor convenience. Processed foods offer you nothing except convenience.

There are many reasons why you should avoid processed foods:

(1) Processed foods are dead foods, devoid of nutrients. For example, bleached flour lacks nutrients, and it contains unnatural products.

(2) Processed foods are often loaded with salt, and high levels of salt lead to high blood pressure. Remember, the salt in processed foods is not natural sea salt, but chemicals that contain brain-toxic aluminum.

(3) Processed foods often require high level of processing, which not only removes anti-cancer agents that may be present in the food, but also produces cancer-causing heterocylic amines during high-heat processing. In other words, processed foods provide an environment promoting cancer growth.

(4) During food processing, fiber is degraded, if not totally removed. Fiber is beneficial to the removal of pollutants and toxins from the body.

(5) During food processing, unnatural toxic amino acids are formed, and they may adversely affect the production of DNA.

(6) Processed foods are often loaded with trans-fatty acids and other oxidized fats that damage the arteries, and thus affecting heart health as well as brain health due to clogged arteries. In addition, neurotoxic chemicals are one of the causes of dementia and Parkinson's disease.

(7) Simple sugars are often added to most processed foods. The high levels of simple sugars affect mental alertness when blood glucose levels drop. In addition, artificial sweeteners not only affect the absorption of amino acids by the brain, but also cause toxicity and hyperactivity in children.

Most food items in the supermarket that come in a box or carton are processed foods. In grocery shopping, read the food labels before any purchase. If they contain chemicals or terms unfamiliar to you, they are additives, colorings, and taste enhancers. If the main ingredients contain more than five items, you can forget about that food item - it is processed!

To live long, you need wisdom not only in food choice but also in living lifestyle. Get a copy of my book: The Book of Life and Living for more information on healthy living for healthy vision.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Age-Related Eye Problems

Age-Related Eye Problems

Age-related eye problems may affect your vision health as aging continues. Your eyes are one of the most important body organs because vision is one of the most important senses in that it affects how you look at the world, and thus affecting every aspect of your life and living.

Some of the most common vision problems are your focusing errors, such as astigmatism, farsightedness (hyperopia). nearsightedness, and presbyopia.  

When you have astigmatism, your cornea with irregular shape causes light rays entering your eye to split into different points of focus, and thus creating blurry vision.

When you are farsighted, your eyes cannot focus on near objects because light rays entering your eye focus on a point far beyond your retina.

When you are nearsighted, your eye balls are too long, and light rays "fall short" of achieving a point of focus on your retina.

When you have presbyopia, your eye's natural lens starts to lose elasticity and your eyes can no longer focus at multiple distances. This condition typically causes your near vision to start blurring, beginning at around age 40.

Most of the age-related eye problems have to do with your eye muscles that control how your eyes see. In real life, you exercise your body muscles; there is no rhyme or reason why you do not exercise your eye muscles to maintain your vision health. When you "exercise" your eyes, you move your eye muscles to create up-and-down, side-to-side or circular motion. You also "work" the muscles controlling back-and-forth movement of your eye's natural lens, to help achieve sight at multiple distances. There is a saying: “Use it or lose it”; that should also be applied to exercising your eye muscles.

Of course, there are many other ways of taking care of your vision health, just as there are many ways of taking care of your physical health. Don’t wait till it is too late to do anything. Your vision health has to do with your diet; for example, a diet that is bad for the heart is usually bad for the eyes, because anything that creates blockage in blood vessels may be damaging to the eyes, and not just the heart.

Read my book: Vision Self-Healing to find out how you may heal your eye problems through diet, exercise, and the mind. With better vision health, you can live your life as if everything is a miracle.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau