A brutally honest reflection on healing beyond the cure.
The First Thing I Did Was Try to Fix It
CSR diagnosis in hand, I went into optimization mode.
I cleaned up my diet.
Started meditating.
Tried yoga.
Focused on sleep.
Cut back alcohol.
Supplements? Check.
Eye breaks? Check.
Blue light blockers? Double check.
And here’s the truth:
None of it “cured” my CSR.
But all of it changed my life.
The CSR Trap: Thinking You Can Hack It Away
If you’re Type A (like me), you probably approached healing like a project.
If I do X, Y, and Z — then this should go away, right?
But CSR isn’t that linear.
It’s a nervous system disorder showing up in your eyes — and it doesn’t always respond to clean food or cold showers.
That doesn’t mean those things aren’t helpful.
They just help in different ways than we expect.
What Yoga Actually Gave Me
I thought yoga would heal my retina.
It didn’t.
But it forced me to slow down. To feel my body, not just use it.
It taught me to breathe before I react.
To stretch out the adrenaline.
To notice how wired I really was — even when I thought I was “calm.”
What Sleep Actually Gave Me
I wanted perfect sleep so I could recover faster.
What I got was mental clarity.
When I slept consistently — real, deep REM cycles — my anxiety lessened. My mood stabilized.
And my ability to handle flare-ups improved dramatically.
Sleep didn’t fix CSR.
It fixed my relationship with my own mind.
What Diet Actually Gave Me
No magic food cleared my retina.
But nutrient density + blood sugar control = a more resilient baseline.
- Magnesium helped my calm.
- Zinc helped my immune function.
- Cutting sugar helped my mental clarity and inflammation.
And when your mind is clearer, healing becomes less of a battle and more of a rhythm.
So What’s the Point, If It Didn’t “Work”?
Because supporting your system is still healing — even if it doesn’t give you the quick win.
We want the one thing that “fixes it.”
But real healing isn’t a breakthrough. It’s a build-up of the quiet choices that make your body feel safe again.
CSR might still linger.
But your life doesn’t have to.
Final Word: Support vs Cure
Yoga, sleep, and diet didn’t fix my CSR.
But they fixed me — the stressed-out, burnt-out version of myself that created the perfect storm for CSR to begin with.
So if you’re feeling discouraged because “nothing is working” — maybe something is.
It’s just working in a way you can’t measure on a scan.
