Preparing for a Diet

I have past experience with diets since I tend to enjoy experimenting with nutrition if the proposed change in eating habits promises something beneficial enough to warrant the change. I am usually very strict when it comes to diets since I do not want external factors affecting my results (among other reasons), and become very upset when I accidentally do something that goes against the diet. I’ve noticed that if I make a mistake like this, it happens only when the following two conditions are met
• I started the diet a few days ago
• I am not at home (a friend’s house, shopping at the grocery store, etc.)

For example, imagine you’re shopping at a health food store and some tasty snacks are being sampled. You’re almost positive that the food is allowed on your diet and help yourself to a few bites. You then come home and realize that whatever you ate is in fact a big no-no food on your diet. Of course, an easy solution would be too never sample snacks in such places, but I find that one way or another, if I don’t really know the diet rules too well, I will usually slip in the early stages of the diet, and this is really frustrating for the perfectionist in me. Additionally, many seemingly innocent products you're consuming may actually contain disallowed ingredients. For example, the green tea you drink every morning may contain "natural flavors" when you're diet prohibits any added flavors, natural or not.

Now to find a workaround to this problem, you would have to find a way to acquaint yourself well enough with the diet to avoid any slips. To do this, I propose rehearsing the diet for about a week in advance before you actually start it full-on. For example, I’m planning on starting McCombs Plan sometime soon. The “Plan” consists of four components: supplements, diet, sweating, and drinking lots of water. For the “trial period” I’m going to rehearse three components of the Plan as best as I can: eating the permitted foods, drinking all the water required, and sweating every day by spending a half-hour in a warm bath. Any unintentional errors will be permitted since I have not officially started the Plan.

Additionally, I will take “mock supplements” as part of my trial period since there is a specific protocol for taking them. For example, when the time comes to take my Detox Essentials supplement, I will dedicate a few seconds of my time to envision myself taking the supplement.

Now the McCombs Plan has two phases regarding supplements. Though Detox Essentials is taken throughout the whole time you are on the plan, Candida Force is only taken during the first phase and Flora Prime is only taken during the second phase of the plan. However, there is an overlap period one week in which you are to take all three supplements. It is this period of overlap that I will be basing my trial period on in regards to supplements.

Lastly, I’d like to clarify the reasons why I’m not going to conduct the trial period of the diet with the real supplements. First off, the supplements must be ordered and they are sold in the exact quantities necessary for the Plan. If I were to take the real supplements during the trial, I would have to spend an extra an extra $89 plus shipping and taxes for supplements. More importantly, I see that for psychological reasons, the trial period must have some aspect that differentiates it from the true diet. If the trial diet is identical to the real one, then it becomes difficult to view them as distinct phases. By loosening some aspects of the diet for the trial period, you are psychologically reinforcing that what you are doing is preparing for the diet and not actually starting.

For example, lets say I wanted to try a vegetarian diet; for my trial week, instead of eating vegetarian all day long, I would eat purely vegetarian for all meals except for lets say dinner. In this case, I would be careful to make sure throughout the day that the food I’m eating contains no meat. At dinner time, though, I would resume my regular eating habits. Once the initial trial week was over, I would be ready to begin my vegetarian diet and would eat all my meals vegetarian.

How to Cure Hyperopia

Update 9/21/09
I have found a doctor who had already performed research into a similar therapy to the one I've developed. Though my method might work, it could possibly cause a residual refractive error that can not be corrected. However, his research was on using plus lenses to correct myopia. In any case, I strongly recommend avoiding this therapy for now until more information comes up. I will keep updating this article.

Whenever I ask my friends the prescription of the glasses they’re wearing, they usually don’t know. Many people are unaware of what doctors prescribe them. Luckily, with the age of Wikipedia in our stead, we have more information readily available whenever a question arises. However, the problem still appears when the patient blindly accepts whatever the doctor tells them without even caring to know what is going on. It is important for the patient to realize that they too have a right to understand their health situation. In regards to the treatment of eye disorders, it is very important for the patient to be aware of what is going on. For this reason, I would like to clarify how our eyes work and reveal the potential danger of wearing "minus" lenses (glasses and contact lenses). Most importantly, I would like to present a possible cure for hyperopia that I have developed from my knowledge on the way our eyes function.

Before anything, I must distinguish the difference between hyperopia, myopia, and emmetropia. Hyperopia is when your eye is too weak or small. This translates to trouble seeing from up close, but increased ability to see far distances. Myopia, on the other hand, is the opposite disorder; you can see really well from up close, but at a distance, everything is blurry. This happens because your eye is too large or strong. Emmetropia is the midpoint between the two, and the standard state of human eyesight. Emmetropia means your vision is in the right range; you can see well from afar and up close. There are many levels of myopia and hyperopia. The most common form of indicating the degree of hyperopia or myopia is with “diopters”. Myopia uses negative numbers (-) for diopters while hyperopia uses positive (+) numbers for diopters. You could compare the eye-focusing spectrum to a number line: myopia for the negative numbers, hyperopia for the positive numbers, and zero for emmetropia (normal vision). Therefore, the closer your diopters are to zero, the better your vision is.

It is easier for your eye to grow than to shrink. When you are born, your eyes are hyperopic (+), or small. However, as you grow, your eyes get stronger/larger and they start becoming less and less hyperopic (+) until they reach emmetropia (0).

It has been proven by scientific studies on animals that wearing minus lenses that are too negative, make the eye grow and become more myopic**. For example, if a chick (a baby chicken) with emmetropia is given -4 lenses, their eyes will eventually (after a matter of months) become -4 myopic, even when the lenses are removed. This means that they will not be able to see clearly from a distance, only from up close. Similarly, if an individual is accidentally prescribed glasses that are slightly more negative than necessary, their eyes will become more myopic, and therefore stronger than they originally were. Now remember that stronger does not mean better because it comes with the price of reduced distance vision.

If many studies have been performed on animals on the power of lenses to alter the eye’s focusing power in the long term, then why haven’t practical solutions been found to cure hyperopia? Is it because of the financial losses that would result if hyperopic glasses were no longer needed? This may or may not be the case; the elderly use hyperopic glasses for an unrelated, but similar condition known as presbyopia, so plus lenses would still be sold if this therapy was implemented.

The “emmetropization therapy” I’ve devised, which for some reason is not even being researched, consists in prescribing negative lenses to a hyperopic patient to make their eyes stronger/larger until they reach the state of emmetropia. The glasses or contact lenses would have to be worn all day in order to work effectively. The progression of the eyes must be monitored by an optometrist or ophthalmologist to make sure that myopia is not reached. In any case, when an eye becomes more myopic, the newly reached myopic state is transient, and the eye can revert back to its previous state by removing whatever is stimulating the eye to become stronger/larger.  After about two months with transient myopia though, the acquired myopia becomes permanent. In regards to the therapy, this means that if the patient passed into the “minus zone” (became myopic), then the doctor would have two months to terminate the use of the lens to prevent the establishment of permanent myopia.

I hope that eye doctors involved in research begin to consider this theory and eventually implement it. If it works, then hyperopic patients would not have to subject themselves to wearing glasses or contact lenses and avoid the risks of surgery. Many could benefit as it would be relatively inexpensive and easy to implement. If you have hyperopia, send your eye doctor a link to this article, and ask them what they think.

**Schaeffel F, Glasser A, Howland HC. Accommodation, refractive error and eye growth in chicken. Vision Res. 1988;28(5):639-57

For more information, read the Myopia Manual, where many of the aforementioned studies are cited