Eye Exercises: Do They Actually Work?

Eyes are one of the most necessary sense organs, which let us enjoy the outer world, see and experience the everyday events. Eyesight is vital for everyday activities and thus caring for the eyes is a matter of supreme importance. But many are born with eye problems, or develop them at a later stage. These eye problems can be refractive vision problems like myopia, presbyopia, astigmatism and many more. Some even face cataracts, corneal ulcers and problems. Many people around the world depend on spectacles, contact lenses and other vision correcting systems for optimal vision. 


But, recently many people are preaching the goodness of eye exercises and claiming that these exercises, when administered in the right way and followed through, can reduce and even heal eye problems. Many people are spending their hard-earned money on these eye exercise programs and books that claim to help you lose your spectacles and heal your eyes naturally. Today, we spill the beans on these eye exercises and let you know if they're really worth your hard-earned money.


Many believe that eyeglasses make them dependent on it and can make eyes weaker, but it's not actually the truth. It's common fact that most people wait a significant amount of time and tolerate a good amount of blurriness till they finally settle in for vision correction. So after using the eyeglasses and getting the corrected vision, people find it hard to tolerate the blurriness without the glasses and they feel that they are getting dependent on the glasses. Also for nearsighted people who have worn eyeglasses since a younger age might have felt the same while they had to go from strong to an even stronger lens while their age progressed, but it's not because of your eyeglasses.

Do Eye Exercises Work?
Most people will believe that since eyes are muscles too, they can be exercised and trained to become stronger over time. But is there any evidence of the fact? Well, actually the answer is no. These self-help programs and exercises that claim to help you 'throw away' your glasses have been in existence since 1920's but there are still no scientific or long-term trials or very less results to show any effectiveness. Moreover, most health specialists believe these exercises have no effects on common eye problems like myopia, presbyopia or astigmatism. Also these exercises do not work for cataracts, ulcers or any other complicated eye problems.

Possibility of treating normal refractive errors with Eye Exercises:
Nearsightedness/Farsightedness: When the eyeball is too long, light rays have to go a much longer path than natural and thus cannot focus at a point on the retina. Thus making your eyes unable to focus on distant objects. Similarly, when you are farsighted your eyes are too short, so the lights entering your eyes focus at a point behind your retina, blurring out the nearby images.

Both these conditions are created due to the shape of the retina, which you cannot alter by exercising. When exercising your eyes, you will move your eyes one side to the other and maybe roll them from upwards to downwards, but will it alter your eye's shape. No!


Astigmatism: When your cornea has an irregular shape, you have astigmatism, which makes the light entering your eyes focus at multiple points, creating an overall blurry image.

This problem is related to the corneal shape and cannot be repaired through exercises.

Corneal Ulcers/Cataracts: These problems need to be corrected through surgery, or LASIK surgery, making them unfit to be corrected by eye exercises.

So Are The Eye Exercises Useless?
If you're expecting eyesight correction or hoping to skip your contacts or glasses, you might not get any such results. But these eye exercises can help children with 'Lazy Eye' syndrome to train their eyes to respond and work properly. Thus, these exercises can help in developing vision, not correcting it.

Till there is enough evidence or scientific data helping to prove that these eye programs can help you get rid of your lenses or specs, you can be sure that these would not work.

Eyes and eyesight is one of the primary topics on which the author writes her articles. She loves learning about new technologies and advancements in vision correction and eye treatments. Today she shares an informative article on Eyesight and eye exercises. Rather than using these exercises to try and correct vision, one can invest in a good pair of eyeglasses or other vision correctors to help their eyes see better.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Sayantani_Ghosh_Dastidar/2149084
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