Alternative Treatments Cataracts
Cataracts is an illness that most of us have heard of, but few of us understand enough to explain it to another or, more importantly, prevent it in ourselves. We are familiar with the name of this disease for a very good reason: it is extremely prevalent in our communities. Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness in the world. About 60 percent of those older than 60 years of age and 70 percent of those older than 75 years of age have cataracts.
There is a growing trend amongst "developed" countries around the world to place a lot of importance on nomenclature. We follow the scientific field and attach complex sounding names to misunderstood phenomena, thinking that our memorization of these made up terms distinguish our intellects. This is what we refer to in the Schools of M'TAM intellectual dishonesty, and what we at the Rising Firefly magazine are serious about Retina confronting in ourselves. It is time that we did not allow ourselves to be satisfied with regurgitating and revering Greek, Latin or English names for illnesses, and looked further until we develop an understanding that is reliable enough for us to diagnose, prevent or heal an illness in ourselves and our loved ones. This is the reason for our acquisition discoloring and eventually clouding small areas of the lens and of knowledge: to strengthen our survival. Anything short of that is fooling ourselves. Let us look closer and deeper into the affliction known as cataracts.
Cataracts are an impairment or degeneration of the vision. It is defined by colonial medicine as a clouding of the eye's natural lens, which lies behind the iris and the pupil. In a normal eye, as one can easily imagine, a clean and transparent lens keeps vision clear.
First, what is the vision process? The process by which we see is understood much differently today by medical sciences from the way it has been understood in human history. Today, the human eye is compared to a camera. So the process of seeing starts when the lens of the eye focuses on an image from the outside world onto a light-sensitive membrane in the back of the eye, called the retina. The retina is really a portion of the brain that is isolated to serve as a transducer for the conversion of the patterns of light into neuronal signals. Cells called photo-receptive cells detect photons of light and respond by producing neural signals. These signals are processed by different parts of the brain. So, by this definition, in order to produce a sharp image, the lens must remain clear.
The lens is made mostly of water and protein. Protein arranges itself to allow light rays to pass through and to focus the light rays onto the retina. Sometimes, especially as we grow older, protein clumps together, blocking some light from reaching the retina. The lens will first turn yellow, then brown and finally, cloudy. This clouding is called a cataract. This process, as explained above is a gradual one, partly for that reason, it is often not diagnosed until the lens' fluid becomes so cloudy that it obstructs or interferes with vision. One should note that the cataract is a cloudiness of the lens; it is not to be confused with a nebulae, which is an illness in which a thin film grows over the eye. The word cataract, when traced to its Latin and Greek origins, means "waterfall" since the condition makes objects look as if seen through a waterfall.
The discoloration or clouding of the lens' protein fluid cannot be explained using any single cause. It can be due to eye trauma, genetics, certain illnesses or the body's reactions to the chemical poisons in certain medications given for these illnesses. Another causal explanation is the cross-linking or denaturing of proteins. This process converts proteins to thicker, darker colored materials. Cross-linking is said to be caused by exposure to UV light, radiation (microwaves, infrared, etc), and by the addition of glucose (sugars) to proteins. And perhaps the most common cause is the degeneration of the normal proteins of the lens or simply put, growing older.
Based on the above causes and the characteristics of the vision impairment, cataracts is broken up into three forms:
Nuclear Cataract - This is the most common form. This cataract forms in the center of the lens and is due to the natural aging process.
Cortical Cataract - In this case the cataract forms in the lens cortex and gradually extends its spokes from Norma the outside of the lens towards the center. Many diabetics develop this form of cataracts.
Sub-capsular Cataract - Beginning in the back of the lens, this form of cataracts is seen among people with diabetes, high farsightedness, retinitis pigmentosa or those taking high doses of steroids.
Symptoms:
Professional physicians will observe these symptoms upon visual acuity tests, eye examinations and pupil dilation procedures. These are some of the most common processes for diagnosing cataracts in the eyes:
- white pupil upon flashlight examination
- misaligned eyes
- involuntary rhythmic movements of the eyes back and forth, up and down, around, or mixed (nystagmus)
Patients will observe these symptoms within their own vision:
- cloudy or blurry vision
- decreased vision
- lights appear too bright and/or presenting a glare or a surrounding halo
Sadly, symptoms such as discoloration of the lens usually go unnoticed until vision is significantly compromised. Considering this, perhaps prevention is the modern world's best defense against the accumulation of cataracts. Though, most medical authorities say that no prevention is scientifically proven. However the use of UV ray blocking sunglasses is recommended as well as high levels of antioxidants in the diet.
In other cases, however, babies can be born with congenital cataracts when there is the presence of other eye issues or genetic causes such as metabolic disorder (caused by an inherited enzyme deficiency) or a chromosome abnormality (i.e., Down syndrome).
Treatment:
Specific treatment will be determined by your physician depending on age, progression of the disease, effect of vision impairment on lifestyle, foreseen course of the disease and the opinion and desires of the patient. In less severe cases of cataracts, vision impairment can be disguised with corrective lenses or glasses; however, the most widely used and recommended treatment for cataracts today is cataracts surgery. However cataracts surgery is surgery, and just the mention of surgery makes many people nervous, and for good reason. Whenever surgeons must open up or interfere with the natural structure or function of the body, they expose patients to a high risk. Therefore, as with any recommended medication or surgery, it is very important to weigh the possible benefits against the possible injury, loss of organ function and even death through an unsuccessful surgery.
Surgeons assure patients that delaying surgery can lead to accidents while doing things as complex as driving or as simple as walking. In addition, the surgical removal of advanced cataracts is more difficult than the removal of less dense cataracts; therefore, many patients feel pressured to authorise surgical procedures at an early stage. It is very important that any decision in favour of surgery be a logical decision. A logical decision is made difficult today because pharmaceutical and surgical companies value profit much more than a patient's health.
Cataracts Surgery
There are three types of cataract surgery:
Phacoemulsification
Also known as "phaco" surgery, is the most common cataract removal operation. Phaco can be done to remove moderate to severe cataracts. Phaco surgery starts when a surgeon or surgeon's assistant gives the patient drops to dilate the pupils. Then the area around the eye is sterilized and the procedure begins. Today, patients can choose to stay awake and go under anesthesia. Patients who choose to stay awake are given anesthetics to numb just the nerves around the eye.
First, a small incision is made at the edge of the cornea, creating an opening in the capsule (the membrane) that surrounds the lens with the cataract. Next, a small ultrasonic probe is inserted through the opening from the incision into the cornea and capsule. This probe has a vibrating tip which breaks up the cloudy lens into tiny fragments. While this is taking place, the tiny fragments that are created by the ultrasonic probe are suctioned out by an attachment on the probe tip. The result is a complete removal of the lens. The probe is then removed leaving the clear, empty, capsule. At this point an artificial intra- ocular lens (IOL) is implanted within the capsule. The IOL is made from soft acrylic or silicone in order to be folded and injected into the capsule by a small injector. As it is inserted, it unfolds and anchors itself behind the eye's pupil over the remaining clear capsule. The IOLs come in several strengths. Its power is specific for each patient's situation and is determined by the physician before surgery.
Phaco surgery is favored for a number of reasons. First, it is effective even with very severe cataracts. Second, it requires only a small incision in the cornea which seldom requires stitching or sutures to heal. Third, it causes less discomfort than other forms of surgery and fourth, it allows a quicker recovery and vision improvement. It is a common misunderstanding that phaco surgery is done with a laser. This is untrue. There is a new instrument used in cataract surgery that utilizes a laser, however this method is not favored, due to its inability to break up severe cataracts. Recently there has also been some investigation into using tiny powerful jets of water to break up cataracts.
Extracapsular Cataract Extraction
This is another method of cataract surgery. This method predates Phaco but is less favored due to the patient's longer recovery time. ECCE is however still utilized with very severe cataracts that the ultrasound used in Phaco is unable to break up, or in the case of multiple eye conditions.
The ECCE requires a larger incision than Phaco, sometimes as large 12mm. The incision is made on the side and in such a manner that the cataract lens is removed as a single piece. Just as with Phaco, an IOL is inserted to replace the extracted lens. Either a foldable or solid lens is used. The incision requires stitching after the surgery and therefore causes more discomfort during a slower, longer recovery.
Both Phaco and ECCE are outpatient surgeries, meaning that the patient is sent home shortly after the surgery with instructions on behavior to promote recovery. The patient may need an eye patch the first night while the eye is still numb, and is advised not to bend at the waste for the days following the surgery. Vision is usually blurry for 24-48 hours post-surgery and patients are re-evaluated the morning following the surgery to ensure proper recovery and to watch for bleeding or complications. Glasses are not prescribed until full recovery has taken place, usually a couple weeks after the surgery.
Side Effects
The frequency of cataracts surgery might make it seem less risky than many other surgeries. However, cataracts surgery does slightly increase the risk of retinal detachment and glaucoma (pressure buildup in the eye). Signs of retinal detachment include a sudden increase in flashes and floaters in the vision. Floaters are little specks that seem to float in the field of vision.
Floaters can also be a symptom of a more severe complication known as endophthalmitis. Endophthalmitis is an inflammation of the interior of the eye typically caused by an infection. Symptoms include floaters, light sensitivity, eye pain or discomfort, a red or pink eye, and vision loss. Endophtalmitis is treated as an emergency and can result in severe vision loss or even blindness. However only one in every thousand will experience endophthalmitis and surgeons closely watch for it in the post-surgery examinations.
There are also cases when the capsule that supports the IOL will cloud during the healing process due to the formation of scar tissue. When this capsule clouding is severe it is categorized as a condition known as posterior capsule opacification or simply "after cataract" and can reduce the vision if it becomes dense enough. In this case, patients are asked to return to the surgeon's table for another procedure.
Ytlrium Aluminum Garnet Capsulotomy
In YAG a small opening is made in the capsule behind the IOL with a YAG laser. YAG receives its name from the materials used to generate the laser's energy. This energy is precisely delivered to the capsule behind the IOL allowing the surgeon to remove the scar tissue from the capsule without returning to the operating room for a full operation. This procedure is relatively quick and painless. This technology was invented, in France, three decades ago by Dr. Danielle Aaron-Rosa.
Cataract surgery is now considered the most effective treatment in colonial medicine for cataracts. In fact, however, cataract surgery is extremely old. It is documented in many ancient medicinal texts from cultures all over the world. Ironically, modern colonial medical researchers cite this fact to support their claims that cataract surgery is the most advanced and effective procedure for removing cataracts. It has been argued that if these cultures knew a more effective cataracts removal procedure, they would not have stopped at cataract surgery. Coming from colonial medicine, this is an interesting argument because rarely do colonial practitioners acknowledge the wisdom of enduring elder cultures. Usually, modern colonial medicine plagiarizes and then discredits traditional wisdom as in the case of herbal medicines from around the traditional worlds which have provided the foundation of the current allopathic, pharmaceutical and political empire.
Today, Indian medicine is credited with the oldest written reference on cataract surgery: Sanskrit manuscripts dating from the 5th century BC, which show that Sushruta developed specialized instruments and performed the earliest eye surgery in India. However, the Edwin Smith papyrus of Ancient Kemet also mentioned cataract surgery, while explaining many other surgical and medical procedures and human anatomical functions. Today this papyrus is discredited and downplayed by political forces that support attempts by modern parasitic cultures determined to discredit (even while plagiarizing) traditional Africa's medical and scientific authority. One technical healing treatise, in particular, is written off as magic, because the energetic or unseen knowledge that these technical procedures are based on are far past the Western world's understanding, but the truth is that the technology documented in that treatise and in the majority of medical papyri has remained entirely beyond the capability of the Europeans who stole them to understand. They suspect, we are sure, that they are like the keeper of a stolen computer who does not have the password to unlock the information in it.
The particular medical text I am citing is the one an American Egyptologist and grave robber Edwin Smith, stole from Itoure (Nile Valley) in the mid 1800s. Today this text is known as the Edwin Smith papyrus, though the only thing Mr. Smith did was steal it from the civilization that produced it... This method of naming monuments exposes just the edge of a profound dishonesty and hypocrisy respectable European culture that makes more tedious our efforts to uncover the true nature of human intellectual history. One result of such dishonesty has been to cheat Africa of credit for introducing cataracts surgery. Because such dishonesty is consistent in European thinking, it operates as unwritten policy and is practiced in this case by rarely mentioning that that cataracts surgery is documented in the Edwin Smith papyrus. Harold Ridley introduced an updated cataracts surgery in which a new lens is implanted into the eye in the 1940s, exactly at the end of the ten years after it had taken Egyptologist, James Henry Breasted to translate the "Edwin Smith" papyrus. Breasted was the first American to receive a Ph.D. in Egyptology. Such is the manner in which modern European culture disguises brain picking as genius or scholarship.
Kemetic Healing
The deeper one investigates the continent of Merita, the more and more impressive the Kemetic ancestral culture and mind become. This culture which has chosen to present an unassuming face and a humble attitude in the modern world produced the model and apex of the world's schools of thought. Today, in secrecy, and in spite of a history of ongoing genocide and cultural warfare waged on it by modern political forces of Europe, it sustains such an intellectual eloquence that leaves the rest of the world wondering how such a humble culture could have developed such depth.
The depth of Merita's understanding of the universe can be attributed to its foundation in the original technical spiritual system of humanity. Today those who deny the spiritual half of human reality misrepresent spirituality as something based on faith, belief, and emotion. The misrepresentation has not completely succeeded because spirituality can still be approached as the technical study of the unseen aspect of the universe. The technical approach is what allowed Black civilization and successor indigenous civilizations to study the world around them from a totalistic perspective. This comprehensiveness in approach contrasts sharply with the currently imposed medical and scientific approaches which base their legitimacy on only what they can see.
In Merita, sight has always been understood accordingly--in its totality, un-fragmented, holistically. The proper question then arises: What happens when we see something?
Master Naba explains that when we see, what we are really doing is experiencing a dialogue of energies between groups of intelligences emitted by oneself and those emitted by the entity seen... what we are doing is sending out particles of intelligences and ensembles of intelligences to contact the object that we are looking at and return to us a description of the object. This is the real reason why we see things only under certain conditions. This view explains why objects moving at certain speeds are simply invisible because they are either too fast or too slow for the rhythm on which we are sending out our seeing team of intelligences. Even with all its complicated nomenclature the European understanding only accredits the conversion of light patterns into neural impulses for our sight. This is quite incomplete, but these researchers lack the tools/equipment with which to recognize other realities at work when we see something. They only rely on the natural phenomena whose rate of expression fall in between their own rate of perception while disregarding all else.
That said, according to the Healing Masters of Merita, cataracts is a blurring of the vision that happens with the natural aging process; a pathological condition affecting the surface of the eye and blocking the dialogue of energies or the field of vision of the patient. Some cataracts are the result of genetic predisposition, while others are caused by an extremely small type of parasite that can be found under the skin, between the skin and the muscles. These parasites are very difficult to detect by blood analysis. The only symptom these parasites manifest before they destroy vision is an itching on the skin. This itching can confine itself to the skin for months before the parasites move to the eyes and affect the line of vision.
What we learn from our Kemetic medicinal history is that cataract surgery is only one of many treatments for cataracts. It was performed in Kemet to correct cataracts many years ago. Removing the cataracts left two options. (1) The patient could grow a new lens (it's mineral based); however, growing a new lens demanded a much longer recovery time, even when assisted with herbal medicines, so it was rarely done. (2) In the second option, the healer inserted a new lens, in this case a certain kind of fish scale (known as hezmen in Medu or hieroglyph language) was used. If the scale was cut correctly, the patient would literally not know that it was not his original lens. There were no major risks to this surgery; people did not lose their sight or their lives from these procedures.
However in Kemetic history, even cataracts surgery with hezmen implantation was rarely done because when the herbal medicines for eye health were used, the cataracts seldom progressed to such a critical severity. Thanks to more recent medicinal findings, Kemetic healing has since been able to advance away from cataracts surgery. Simply stated, cataract surgery comes from a period in Kemetic healing that was considered less advanced many, many years ago.
Picture caption: The black eyeliner shown in most Kemetic artwork is called chiro, a powerful, versatile eye medicine.
Artwork and stele from what we now refer to as Ancient Egypt shows what looks like black eyeliner on many of the images of both men and women. This "eyeliner" was not like the makeup we have today. What these images show is a medicine known as chiro. There are many, many types and categories of chiro in the Kemetic healing system. Some chiros were used in the healing domain, others in the initiatic domain (those which would be called magic by the untaught). It is the evolution of chiro medicines that can be credited with the abandonment of cataract surgery in Kemet. Chiro has many advantages. There are medicinal recipes in which chiro is mixed with specific healing herbs that target specific organs or parts of the eye. Today, there is a careful selection of chiros and herbs that have been used to repair or prevent cataracts and other vision degeneration diseases. Besides chiro, one will observe many herbal recipes used to make teas that are applied as face and eye washes targeting the nerves of the eyes. These are used for many different vision problems, and some recipes are strong enough for even very severe cataracts.
It should also be understood that in Merita, a great effort is made to prevent vision issues. After birth a baby receives a special bath that harmonizes the development of body functions and nerve systems. Following this bath, parents apply a basic lower level chiro to the eyes of the newborn to strengthen the eyes and prevent vision problems later in life.
It also should be understood that living in nature is much more conducive to eye health. When we are outside and exposed to the dangers of the natural world, awareness is necessary and a dynamic approach to vision is required. The eyes are constantly switching between different depths, colors, etc. This dynamic and total use of sight prevents vision degeneration. Compare this with the average colonial lifestyle where one focuses on movies, televisions, computer monitor screens in sedentary lifestyle and sedentary vision for hours at days on end. The eyes function under the same philosophy as other organs of the body: "Use it or lose it". Now consider that the brain functions according to the same logic... now consider those who we call "primitive" have chosen to maintain an interaction with the natural world and its challenges which strengthen their brains, eyes and other human facilities instead of abandoning them for the tempting comfort and self-destruction of the modern luxurious lifestyle.
You can contact Ankhkasta Natural Healing--an international organization of healers promoting and preserving Kemetic healing traditions--for chiro, or herbal face and eye washes. Also, contact The MTAM School of Kemetic Philosophy and Spirituality for a more honest approach to humanity's history and intellectual heights.
