Chris Dixon

What was happening to meand will eventually happen to you, your younger brother, and Tom Bradyis called presbyopia. You dont notice this condition initially, but presbyopia can start as early as age 30. Every five years after that, youll lose the ability to focus on one more line on the eye doctors letter chart. By 40, most of us will start noticing it, squinting here, moving the iPhone a little farther away from the face there, whether or not youve ever worn glasses. And right around the big 5-0, nearly all of us are afflicted.

Because Ive never been hindered by a need to keep track of eyeglasses but I need to do a lot of reading for work, I dreamed of some outside-the-box solution to improve my eyesight rather than glasses or contact lenses. The first thing I learned is that presbyopia is correctable with surgerymonovision Lasik, corneal implants, or lens-replacement surgerybut Im leery of having laser beams or scalpels etch my corneas.

Then one night while Googling the condition, I was led to an app called <a href="http://www.glassesoff.com/" id="35765679-7904-3116-ad25-146857fda5f3"> Glasses-Off </a> . It promises to help you read type 50 percent smaller than you can right now and perhaps improve your reading speed significantly. There was even research indicating that the eye exercises it asked you to do could help you respond a few milliseconds faster to, say, a baseball flying at you, by improving a brain activity called visual processing.

<h1> What This App Requires You to Do </h1>

GlassesOff asks you to spend less than 15 minutes three times a week reacting by touch screen to tiny, blurry striped balls called Gabor patches as they flash across a featureless gray background. Early on, the patches are larger, slower, and better defined. As you progress, they appear and disappear more rapidly, eventually becoming mere ghostly dots that can be incredibly hard to see. And thats the point.

The very idea that this app might be effective in improving my eyesight seemed suspicious, since nobody I knew who needed to wear reading glasses was talking about this $10-a-month app. And it seems even more far-fetched when you take biology into account. Presbyopia occurs when your eyes flexible lenswhich is the shape and size of a soft Skittleisnt so flexible anymore. To focus up close, you contract the muscles that hold the lens in place. As you age, that Skittle hardens. You compensate by squinting, but in time, not even that helps.

Presbyopia is a game of dominoes, and your lens is only the first to fall. The next is neurological: That blurring of everything you should be seeing hampers your ability to discern contrast and interferes with how smoothly your neurons stream visual data to your brain. Basically, presbyopia chokes visual processing, slowing down reading and even response times.

<h1> The History Behind These Eye Exercises </h1>

About 12 years ago, a neuroscientist named Uri Polat, Ph.D., director of the Visual and Clinical Neuroscience Lab at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, Israel, wondered if he could get around that by harnessing the science of neuroplasticityessentially training your brain to process what it is seeing faster and more clearly. This might have the benefit of enhancing not only near vision but also reaction times. Low image quality puts a load on your visual-processing abilities and probably creates a bottleneck for the cognitive levels of the brain, says Polat, now chief scientific officer of the company that developed GlassesOff.

In a recently published study, Polats app was tested on guys whose visual acuity really matters: Israeli fighter pilots. Their visual clarity improved by an average of 35 percent, and their responsiveness to visual cues went up 25 percentcrucial when trying to recognize a camouflaged enemy plane streaking toward you at 700 miles an hour. Research on American baseball players showed similar results. A study by Polat in Nature Scientific Reports found that users were able to speed through lines in the smallest font they could discern on a reading chart 25 words per minute faster than they could when they started using the app. People with the most advanced presbyopia had the greatest gains, raising reading speed from about 47 to 85 or so words a minute.

Those figures were impressive enough for me to be intrigued. GlassesOff is not the only vision-improvement app on the market, but its the only one with any serious scientific study. (One competitor, Ultimeyes, was fined by the FTC for claiming that it could improve vision without having published data to back it up.) But to believe it, I had to test it myself.

Since I wanted to know whether I was just imagining things or my eyes had really improved, I visited Hugh Wright, M.D., a lead ophthalmologist with the Roper St. Francis Hospital System in South Carolina, where I live. He measured both my distance and near vision at around 20/25. My near vision is better than averageon a par with that of a person in his late 30sbut now that Im 52, my presbyopia is likely on an accelerating path.

I devoted the recommended ten minutes to GlassesOff almost daily and used it for eight weeks, the minimum required time to see results. The app is at first novel and challenging, but the repetition becomes monotonous. A month in, though, I was squinting less. Headlights and road signs seemed sharper. I stayed with it, and three months after my first visit to Dr. Wright, my chart vision remained pretty much the same, but I was now reading without glasses again. What was tough for me to decipher beforethe five-point fine print on a Dales Pale Ale canwas clear to me now.

It could be because, according to the app, my contrast sensitivity had increased by 51 percent and what Polat terms my brain processing speedthe rate at which Im able to recognize a Gabor patch onscreenshot up by 80 percent.

Dr. Wright wasnt ready to fully endorse GlassesOff, saying the evidence is too limited to wholly support enhancing neuroplasticity to reverse presbyopia. But he didnt dismiss it, either. Standard vision screening in clinics typically doesnt assess for contrast sensitivity or visual response times, which GlassesOff does, he said. If patients see improvement in these areas, then I see it as a plus. Those two measures are critical when dropping into a steep wave or skating vert, and that may matter to me more than what a static eye chart says. Neuroplasticity is a very real thing, Dr. Wright added. Making more connections is good for your brain performance, regardless of what it might do for your eyes. But, doctor that he is, he warned that the app shouldnt be used in place of getting your eyes checked regularly or wearing glasses if you need them.

Ultimately, both men agreed that nothing will completely halt presbyopia. Polat, of course, suggested that sticking with the programs maintenance regime (12 minutes a day once every two weeks) would help prevent my vision from declining significantly.

Even if its not perfect, Im still a writer and need to continue reading. And despite a skateboarding-related broken shoulder I wrote about for this magazine, sharing runs at the skate park with my ten-year-old son is about as rewarding as life gets. I need all the help I can find, so Im going to stay with the app.

Several years ago, while I was doing final sweeps through a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1452155852/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i2" id="2bb00a55-9435-3a0b-aa9d-1f8a5de1c001"> book Id just written </a> , I began to notice that my eyes were having a hard time speeding through the manuscript. That didnt really bother me, because the protagonist, a big-wave surfer named Greg Long, had such bad eyesight that he had trouble spotting giant waves on the horizon, and my situation wasnt ...

We Tried an App Designed to Help You Ditch Your Glasses

The author (front, left) on the hood of a buddys Delta 88 with his very first skateboard, a Variflex Vectra, senior year, Ridgeview High School, 1985.

One aspect of fatherhood Id always gleefully anticipated was the simple joy of teaching my kids to surf and skate. I just sort of never realized that by the time theyd be ready to rip it up, Id be busting ass to keep up. Fritzs gateway was a Carver Swallow, a retro modern board with fat wheels and insanely loose trucks. By age seven, Fritz and I were gleefully ripping around the tennis courts and our tiny local skate park. When the $4.8 million skate-of-the-art SK8 Charleston park opened 30 minutes from my house in 2017, ridiculously satisfying after-school runs with Fritz became the norm, as did regular sneak-outs with my buddies Luke and Chad for a fix after our children were in bed. Back when I was a Tony Hawkworshipping kid, I didnt know a single dad who skateboarded. But on Sunday mornings at the local park, we soon found as many dads-and even moms-as kids.

Which brings me to my driveway and the same simple frontside turn Ive done a thousand times in the past year alone. A millisecond of distraction and an unfortunate too-far-forward shift of my weight. Left arm outstretched, I meet the concrete with a dull thump at my hip and a sharp crack at my left shoulder blade. Wincing at a jagged, crunchy pain where arm meets torso, I register the gaze of Fritz and my beautiful and long-suffering wife from up on the front porch. Her face holds a mix of concern and anger at the possibility of a dinnertime trip to the hospital thanks to a husband who refuses to grow the hell up. Goddammit, that hurt. Im sure its broken. Thoughts slow as the pain really takes hold, and as I stagger up the stairs, Im overcome by a dawning melancholy. Wow, I wonder if Ill ever ride a skate ramp again. In a split second, Im at a crossroads-the first time Ive ever really faced the possibility that maybe Im just getting too old for this shit.

The author leaning into a downhill run on a Sector 9 pintail, San Clemente, California, 1999 or so.

facing a few months of wrestling with these inner voices before I could even think about putting four wheels under my feet, I considered it a good idea not only to get serious about rehab but to seek enlightenment from folks who are way smarter about whether and when any of us get too old for anything. My orthopedist, Shane Woolf, M.D., is a 46-year-old father of two, a mountain biker who currently works as a sports-medicine guru for Charlestons USL soccer and minor-league baseball teams. My old friend Ron Miller, P.T., 51, leads the team at Sawtooth Physical Therapy in Boise, Idaho. He still subjects himself to brutal mountain-bike competitions. Hes also a father of two kids. It turns out both of these fine gentlemen had been giving a lot of thought to exactly the sort of existential dilemmas the aging dad athlete faces.

Both warned me that injuries to athletes in their 50s are fiendishly common, especially those involving connective tissue. Theres also declining bone density, which could have contributed to my busted shoulder on what was, really, not a terribly violent fall. Hearing all this was, frankly, pretty damn depressing. Which is why I was surprised that neither Miller nor Dr. Woolf said he thought I should quit skateboarding. Physiologically, skating is a load-bearing exercise. The g-force loads and solid stresses can help prevent losses in bone density. Few activities require such intense coordination between the mind and body, so skating is also a great way to maintain-even boost-proprioception, your sense of your bodys position. Miller and Dr. Woolf suggested a few new protocols that could apply to any old fart who wants to do something stupid like return to skateboarding:

1. See a sports-medicine specialist. An expert can identify issues with your posture, muscle imbalances, bone density, motor skills, and even diet. Have that specialist also help you develop a personalized fitness program.

2. Dont skate-or pursue any sport-hard right out of the gate. A high level of cardio fitness and flexibility is especially vital as you age. An easy yoga program at least twice a week that ratchets up in intensity over time can be hugely beneficial.

3. To maintain bone density, introduce some load-bearing exercise like running or strength training twice a week. Youre in it for the long haul now, so start out slow-15 minutes a couple times a week.

4. Rest and recover. When he was younger, Miller trained on the bike hard every other day. Now he does very high-intensity workouts only twice a week. Many experts recommend a polarized training approach, 20 percent high intensity and 80 percent low intensity.

5. Visualize the activity. Our brain doesnt know the difference between us imagining something and doing it, says Miller. Practice those runs in your head so you get it down. You cant train 24 hours a day, but you can work in some skill sessions in your head multiple times a day.

6. Goose your proprioception. Regularly practice standing on one leg with your eyes closed for 15 seconds, then 30. Make it more challenging by extending outward in a yoga pose. Even stand on one leg, eyes closed, while brushing your teeth. Taking your eyes out of the equation helps keep your balance honed.

7. Get regular. Try to maintain a consistent level of activity, says Dr. Woolf.

Sitting in the orthopedists office typing this last paragraph, Im frankly still not sure what my skating future holds. In a lot of ways, Ive been so lucky. Hips, knees, ankles-and shoulders-still work pretty well. Had football been my youthful passion, I doubt Id be thinking about tackling my son on a grassy field at 51. On the other hand, if Fritz and I were golfers, wed have decades more of putting around and shooting the shit on the horizon. (My own dearly departed dad used to love nothing more than to take me out to the links, but nine holes was my limit.)

I returned to skating as much for bonding with Fritz as for the actual skating. I suppose I had hoped skating would become our golf. One day I hope his heart will swell half as much as mine when he watches his own kids drop into a bowl of cast concrete. What I didnt anticipate from all this, though, were the rekindled friendships, the hoots of support from young and old at the top of the ramp, and the scary rush of a near miss thats no less intense than it was when I was 20.

Late, great Dogtown skater Jay Adams once remarked: You dont quit skating because you get old; you get old because you quit skating. Well, yeah, that sounds great, and maybe its true. Maybe when Im fully healed and can look back on this episode with a fresh perspective, Ill be happy catching waves or just riding with Fritz to the skate park. Maybe seeing the world roll by through his eyes will be enough.

As I lie on the driveway between my front stairs and the quarter pipe my nine-year-old son, Fritz, and I built last year, replays of my greatest hits of skateboarding over the past 30 years flash before my eyes. Back when I was 20, at what you might call peak skate, I could lay out a stylish frontside or backside turn on any curved transition; boost an ollie onto and off of, say, a park bench; rail slide along a parking barrier for ten feet without much drama. Skating-and ...

Am I Too Old For For This Sh*t?

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Chris Dixon

Articles written by the author

We Tried an App Designed to Help You Ditch Your Glasses

Am I Too Old For For This Sh*t?