J. Baxter Swartwout, O.D., F.A.A.O., F.C.O.V.D.

Yup, that's Rae and me with my Dad....

When the father of Functional Optometry, later called Behavioral Optometry, A.M. Skeffington passed away, the torch passed to my father as the next President of the profession's largest post-graduate continuing education organization, the Optometric Extension Program Foundation.

When I was in second grade, I was a C student. I was becoming nearsighted. I suffered from frequent high fevers and I was the smallest in my class. I was failing to thrive on every level. That summer, my father put me through his vision therapy program. I remember coming up with new variations on his Marsden ball techniques that he added to his Optometric Vision Therapy Manual still used by thousands of doctors. For me, it was like someone turned the lights on. From 3rd grade on, I got straight A’s. I chose to wear counter-stress low plus lenses in my free time, and stopped the myopic progression. I still had serious health challenges, and a very intermittent exotropia. In my fourth year of optometry school I found out that I also had IOPs in the upper 20s and an expanding blind spot. The Ophthalmology professor who diagnosed my glaucoma said that with vision loss starting already at age 25, I would likely be blind before the age of 50 even with the best standard medical care. Knowing my background as the top student ever to attend SUNY, he recommended that I do my own research to identify and treat the underlying causes instead. Following that mission to save my own vision, by age 30 I discovered that I was dying of mercury poisoning. Once I corrected that through Biological Dentistry, Naturopathy and European Biological Dentistry, the final element that restored normal homeostasis in my eyes with IOPs of 15 OU was Syntonic Optometry, originated by Harry Riley Spitler, DOS, MD, MS, ND, PhD, who was also a founding father of Naturopathic Medicine. It was a session with indigo light that brought forth such an experience of relief that I cried uncontrollably with joy. That was the epigenetic signal I needed to complete that part of my healing journey.

I practiced with my father for several years after establishing the Optometric Center of Tokyo (OCT). At OCT I brought my father's in & out-of-office vision therapy work to Japan. I also demonstrated the innovative method of Ed Gording OD using interaction with fluorescent monocular and binocular targets in a 3-D space under black light. The third VT system I implemented combined vision therapy with rebounder exercise based on the Stress Point Learning work of Robert Pepper OD. On returning to the States, I served as Medical Director of my father's Learning Disabilities Associates in New York, replacing Stephan Rechtschaffen MD, the co-founder of Omega Institute.

My father was my one of my first clients in natural medicine, and one of my best mentors and supporters all along the way... Other than treating myself intensively ever since learning how to do German Diagnostic Electroacupuncture, my father was my very best patient. He practiced decades beyond typical retirement age, beat cancer twice and lived well into his 90s. One testing experience with him stands out in my mind. The State Board of Optometry had requested that I separate my healing practice from my Optometry practice, so my father came for his appointment to my natural medicine office in my home. When I attempted to run the Vegatest protocol (a method of German Diagnostic Electroacupuncture), an electrodermal screening test (that’s the American terminology), or as I describe it a method of biocommunication or Biofield Analysis, I could only get any stress response to a single stimulus: the test ampoule for Electromagnetic Stress. Normally a whole range of stimuli would show stress responses, representing the particular tissue locations and types of stresses the body’s vital force was identifying with in real time. In other words, his body wasn’t trying to heal anything except EMF! This led to probing questions about the potential EMF sources he might have been exposed to recently... It turned out that since it was autumn and the temperature had gotten quite cold the night before his morning appointment, he had turned on his electric blanket for the first time that season! Eureka! I had already begun writing my first publicly published book, Electromagnetic Pollution Solutions, so this clinical correlation hit home in a powerful way. The only other test that ever showed a similar reaction of the Biofield to a singular stress source was a patient who came for her very first test. I simply couldn’t get any responses. Asking her if she had done anything unusual prior to the visit, she reported that she had come straight from the gym. Since she was seeing me with the intention of turning her health around, she had done an intensive workout just an hour or so before arriving, having not worked out in years. In that case, giving her some water to drink and a half hour to let her body’s energetic compensatory systems settle, I was then able to complete a normal test.

My father was the recipient of the prestitgious GN Getman Award in 1995. I was lucky enough to meet Gerry Getman early in my career.