Dyslexic Children See Major Reading Improvements With New Tinted Glasses
December 1, 2011
ABC News reported yesterday that specially tinted lenses sold by ChromaGen Vision are helping dyslexic children read faster and see words more clearly.
The special lenses were originally developed by British optician and researcher David Harris to help people with color blindness. However, he found that by altering the wavelength of light that reaches the eye, the tinted lenses reduced the visual distortions that make reading difficult for people with dyslexia.
Despite skeptics, parents who bought the ChromaGen Vision lenses for children who were diagnosed with dyslexia are reporting startling improvements in their children’s reading capabilities.
Available as either prescription eyeglasses that look like sunglasses or contact lenses, the ChromaGen Vision glasses typically cost between run $700 to $1,000, while the tinted contact lenses cost about 50% less.
Click here to read the full report on ABC News.
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6 Responses to “Dyslexic Children See Major Reading Improvements With New Tinted Glasses”
i fail to understand why you keep harping on the straw man idea of zero risk. i never suggested such a thing, as it is utterly unscientific. i am not an expert in evaluating studies. it is precisely because i am not an expert, and neither are the 99% of doctors in clinical practice, that we have something called “peer-reviewed literature”, where we rely on experts to look at data and publish it. your attack on my lack of credentials to evaluate scientific studies and statistics is really unfair and specious.
there is absolutely no reason why you cannot take 200 kids, have them evaluated by an independent party regarding their dyslexia, give half your glasses, and the other half “phoney” glasses a s a control, and have them re-evaluated in six months by the blinded third party. its not that complicated. i bet you a million dollars the cost of the study will not be nearly as much as the marketing campaign the company is conducting. if the cost is prohibitive- fine, then just say so. but dont suggest that this kind of study is not appropriate or cannot give the absolutely best chance of determining if they are effective. no study is fool-proof, and that is just another straw man. every study published in the peer-reviewed literature has drawbacks and limitations. thats the limit of our science. no one is asking for perfection. if we were, we would not have even 1 journal in print. again- i dont know why you keep harping on this ludicrous idea.
the risk of buying your glasses is purely financial. so of course, if one has disposable income, they would be crazy not to try your glasses. if your glasses had medical drawbacks, that would be a different story, but they don’t, of course, so that issue is moot. so let’s just leave it at that. your company is unwilling or unable to conduct a good scientific study that could be published in a peer-reviewed ophthalmology journal like archives, ajo or ophthalmology (even though many optometric studies have been published in these journals). on the other hand, there is not much to lose except a few hundred dollars.
vision therapy for non- convergence insufficiency issues also has no good scientific studies that could be published in a peer-reviewed ophthalmology journal, yet it is a cottage industry for those who can afford it. i am a capitalist- people will spend their money as they see fit. me? i wont spend a dime unless there is good scientific data to back it up. i mean, only recently, antibiotics for ear infections- something doctors have done for decades- was proven to be worthless in the vast majority of cases. without good scientific data in peer-reviewed journals, we really have no idea what works.
bottom line- you are right that the money-back guarantee makes a compelling case to try your glasses.
Ari, Let me guess . You have actually no first hand experience about any human study. You have no idea about even simple associated problems such as privacy issues and documentation requirements. Even a small study budget would run $50,000 and that would generate questionable results because of its small size.
I don’t want to pick on you personally but I can tell from your comment that you actually would have no ability to even determine the actual risk involved from the published results about a perfect study .
Please answer a couple of questions honestly .(1) Have you ever read the data from a dyslexia study and feel you are qualified to compare the published conclusions to the data?
Don’t feel bad if you can’t there are very few people who are able but if you are concerned about risk from there not being a study then , (2) Do you know where to go to get a proper impartial reviews of scientific studies about dyslexia?
Unless you answered yes to at least 1 of those 2 questions my contentions is that you don’t have the ability to evaluate risk from scientific studies about dyslexia.
For your education , here is a link from the dept of education http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/publications_reviews.aspx that has information about scientific studies about education ( and dyslexia ) interventions and methods and their analysis of the results. You will probably notice that there are few that actually meet scientific standards to be of a quality to even be reviewed. For the ones that are of adequate quality you will notice that the information doesn’t actually reduce the risk to anywhere close to zero because all have non-responders.
That link is somewhat hard to remember so you might find it easier to get it from my link page to free dyslexia products and information on my website.
Let’s discuss risk. Take ChromaGen glasses for example . You can pay $700-1000 with no guarantee of receiving any benefit at all. BTW they are trying for FDA approval for dyslexia but the FDA has rejected them in the past. There are no published studies about ChromaGen and dyslexia and their information about the percentage of dyslexics that may be helped is about 50 % a totally unreasonably high # in my opinion.
The risk of trying See Right Dyslexia Glasses is the cost of return shipping. In the US that is $5 and overseas $20 . That is because See Right Dyslexia Glasses have a money back guarantee.
I suggest that due to the % of non-responders for any type of intervention ( visual or otherwise ) the risk is much higher than the risk associated with See Right Dyslexia Glasses . Of course I cheat by only marketing my product to those that can describe visual problems that make reading difficult rather than claiming they are of benefit to some higher % of dyslexics but then I am handicapped by offering a money back guarantee for See Right Dyslexia Glasses.
You may be more impressed with Irlen lenses. They claim to be researched based and if you don’t read the data and believe their conclusions they should appeal to you. That the studies have design flaws that render it impossible to make valid conclusions may not be important to you as there are published studies . Many people such as yourself think that is the most important factor in reducing risk . Personally I think the most important factor is a money back guarantee for risk reduction which they lack but that may be because I read data like a book and am able to make my own conclusions based on the data.
Given a choice between a scientific study and a guarantee to reduce risk, I choose the money back guarantee as the more important factor in risk reduction.
I find most people do not even understand that most guarantees are qualified to the point of being worthless. Weight loss products for example that guarantee losing up to 50 pounds means that even weight gain is not a reason for refund. Only losing more than 50 pounds would qualify for a refund.
Because See Right Dyslexia Glasses will issue a full refund for any or no reason upon return of the glasses, if your car mileage doesn’t double when wearing them they can be returned for that reason. Scientific studies are not the be all end all you seem to think.
i am not asking for zero risk- that’s unreasonable and impossible, and is a classic straw man in your argument. the study i proposed would be very simple and inexpensive, and the fact that the company has not conducted such an experiment raises suspicion that the company lacks confidence in the product. but hey- the vitamin industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, and it, too, has no good evidence that vitamins work ( they all have that disclosure in the advertisements that the vitamins have not been proven to diagnose/prevent/cure/treat any disease and the results have not been confirmed by the fda etc…) . so on a purely business level, i am sure there will be many who will buy the glasses, for one always wants to try everything possible for one’s child with dyslexia. good luck!
Ari , I can understand your position about not purchasing a product that has no financial guarantees because who wants to spend $1000 for a chance they will be helped, but even scientific studies as you suggest do not necessarily reduce risk to zero.
As an example, most people seem willing to take medicine with side effects that even include death just because there is a scientific study behind it on the thought that not all that many die .
While visual dyslexia is not a life or death situation, having a visual problem that makes reading difficult , slow , and inaccurate is a hardship for those affected. The real risk involved in finding a solution is financial.
See Right Dyslexia Glasses have money back guarantee that reduces the financial risk to the cost of return postage. Their high success rate is due to marketing to only those that will benefit , people who can describe visual problems that make reading difficult. The standard of success is removing the described problems that make reading difficult.
While fairly simplistic , that means that people who have trouble reading because the text appears to be vibrating , text lines moving together , or experience something similar to what anyone might while riding in the back seat of a car going down a washboard road at 50 MPH and trying to read, will have the text stop moving when using See Right Dyslexia Glasses .
To people who experience light halos or having parts of words or letters difficult to read because they seem washed out by light , reading is similar to playing an unending game of Wheel of Fortune . They normally know that there is a letter in place but they really can’t be sure what it is so they guess and go on. See Right Dyslexia Glasses allow the user to see the complete text normally.
Text in motion or light halos washing out parts of words and letters are the two most common visual dyslexia problems.
Visual dyslexics have individual specific visual problems seeing text. It is a long list of possible problems. Not being able to read white letters on green, think freeway signs , or having to wait for each word to come into focus before it can be read , are a couple of more uncommon problems. Being able to read freeway signs or seeing all words in focus at the same time is a real benefit for those people.
Visual dyslexia is a minority problem and is only causal for reading problems in about 2% of the general population and 15% of the dyslexic population, but just as when the unemployment rate is 9% , when you are unemployed it is 100% to you personally.
i am always a skeptic until a randomized, double-blind study is performed. one group of kids should get these glasses, and another one should get “ordinary'” tinted glasses, and a third party should evaluate these kids pre and post, not knowing which kid got which glasses, and see if there’s a difference.
Using a sledgehammer rather than the more elegant individual approach, See Right Dyslexia Glasses are much more effective at removing the visual distortions associated with visual dyslexia that make reading difficult.
To be clear about who will or will not be helped by See Right Dyslexia Glasses , it is people who can describe visual problems that make reading difficult or for those who assume they have normal vision will report dysfunctions they considered normal in discussions about their vision.
ChromaGen’s method of producing results ( changing the wavelengths of light , sunglasses anyone ? ) is I guess magic or at least a guess . See Right Dyslexia Glasses on the other hand actually have the only real theory of a mechanism that explains why they work and are so effective. It also explains the high,or partial, failure rate of methods that use personal evaluations.
The mechanism of visual dyslexia is Auto-fluorescence caused by different proteins in the eye working at specific wavelengths of light from UV to IR phase shifting photons into the visible. For those skeptics who thought fluorescent phase shifting was always to a less energetic state , look up 2 photon phase shifting from IR to visible.
Dyslexics are sensitive to both auditory and visual extraneous noise with visual noise being caused by AF . Conceptually , it is easy to understand if any wave specific single photon is considered. When absorbed by an AF protein there is a loss of that visual information and when emitted on a different path and new wavelength it creates the visual noise when it overwrites the location it arrives at.
Since there are many different AF proteins and specific wavelengths involved individual evaluations often fail or are only partly successful when multiple AF proteins are involved and more successful when there is a single predominate AF protein.
The success of the See Right Dyslexia Glasses is due to the identification of all the AF wavelengths and being able to filter them out at the same time by dissolving specific minerals into glass to achieve that result. Just as sunglasses can relieve a general light sensitivity without removing all light it is only necessary to reduce the visual noise below the point that the visual noise sensitive dyslexic no longer is bothered. As a side benefit normal depth perception is restored for those with poor depth perception due to different types of AF generated noise in either eye.
By limiting marketing to only those dyslexics that actually have visual problems that make reading difficult ( being able to describe the visual problems or revealing their problems that the individual assumed normal ) the success rate of See Right Dyslexia Glasses approaches 100% and only fails when the individual has another problem that mimics visual dyslexia , lazy eye being the most common.
The high success rate makes a money back guarantee financially practical.
The elimination of the need for the personal evaluation by making a universal visual dyslexia filter made possible by understanding the mechanism that causes visual dyslexia, means the product can be sold on-line.
At a price of $220 for non-prescription glasses , See Right Dyslexia Glasses are the visual dyslexia solution visual dyslexics need.
