[Closed] anyone done eye exercises that reduce need for reading glasses ?

If excessive onanism causes short-sightedness then, surely, it can be a way to reverse long-sightedness??

Get on it lad!

IANAOptician

had to look that word up!

I just googled "eyelid weights" hoping for a picture of some dumbell/eyelid interface, wasn't expecting the results 😯

Have a look at the Bates Method.

not master bates i hope

just googled and you were serious ..looks weird but interesting

I read about this app in the paper at the weekend. No experience of it though.
Just turned 40 though so have started noticing these things....

[url= http://www.glassesoff.com/ ]Glassesoff[/url]

Have a look at the Bates Method.

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Have recently been prescribed vari-focals for this, in my 40's, having been short sighted since I was 12. I am holding off getting them owing to the expense. It's a tricky one as you have to buy in order to try. Anybody cycled in varifocals?

I ride with varifocals all the time. Strong prescription (-7) and astigmatism. Took a few rides to get used to, was totally normal thereafter.

I managed to hang on till I got to 50 for the reading glasses. They are a bit of a pain but less unwieldy than the extendable arms I was trialing before.

can't you just hold the book further out with tongs or something?

53 before I bought some reading glasses, 2 years later I have about 6 pairs of poundland ones scattered about the house.

Its the thickening of the skin that reduces flexibility of the lens so don't think there's much that can be done about it unfortunately. 🙁

Can't you get the lenses replaced with a flexible synthetic?

I do eye exercises - mostly to help with longer sight but everything benefits really. Eyes have muscles in, muscles benefit from exercise.

If you do need glasses then Zeiss do a 'digital' range which have blue tinting to guard against flicker and glare from phones, etc, and are effectively a bi-focal - seem like a good price for that type of glasses.

TurnerGuy do you have any more info on the eye exercises?

I read the Bates book but he specifies keeping the eyes relaxed, whereas I like to move them full travel and 'work' them.

So I move the eyes up and down full travel about 40 times, then left to right 40 times, and then 40 times up and down with them at the leftmost position, and then 40 up and down at the rightmost position. It is the latter 2 sets that seem to really 'free' up my eyes.

For long sight I also do a variation of the near and far exercise where you focus on something close, like your finger in front of your node, and then on something far, and keep alternating.

I focus on something far whilst tilting my head down so I am 'peering' out of the top of my vision, something like an aerial on a far away roof. Then I start to lift my head until it goes out of focus, then back up a bit to keep it in focus, and peer at it a bit more, then lift my head up until it goes out of focus again, then back up and peer, etc. Eventually I am looking straight at it and it is still in focus.

When I used to practise golf I found 3 hours or so of bashing 80 balls into the open and then walking around trying to locate them to pick them up, when the balls were a little muddy and the grass hadn't been cut for a while, would give my eyes a real good workout and after that my vision woul be nice and clear, ready for another week of working under flourescant lights and long hours of staring at flickering CRT tubes.

TG, how often do you go though that exercise plan?

I read the Bates book but he specifies keeping the eyes relaxed,

I was listening to an article about prison design in the US and specifically about whether US architects are breaking their own codes of ethics when designing them. It focused around practices of solitary confinement - two weeks without a window to look out of is reckoned to be enough to cause permanent damage to eyesight. So by designing rooms without windows the architects are facilitating practices that physically, permanently harm the occupants. Exercising your eyes is something people are doing all the time - its work of the eyes to focus on near objects. Lack of rest would seem to do the harm.

Despite 33 years of employment looking at computer screens and far too much time since looking at this forum my near vision is still good enough not to need a prescription lens. It's a distance thing for me, though it hasn't really deteriorated in the past 30 years.

Maybe all that computer work was actually the right exercise?

bedmaker - Member 
Glassesoff

Hmm, an app that links to articles from Fox News and Daily Mail doesn't fill me with confidence. It's monthly/annual subscription too.

Smacks of pseudoscience to me.

And in fact, seems it's been questioned before http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/09/ftc-cracks-down-on-vision-improvement-phone-app/

Exercising your eyes is something people are doing all the time - its work of the eyes to focus on near objects

often though the eyes are looking only at the same focal length - a screen for example - so the muscles aren't moving much. Plus flickering lights - flourescants mostly - cause a lot of strain. And then looking at surfaces, like phones, that reflect other light sources cause strain.

TG, how often do you go though that exercise plan?

not religeously although I probably should - mostly only when I notice they are bad, like at the cinema before the film starts and I don't want to put my 0.5 prescription driving glasses on.

I did this when younger (12-13) and avoided reading glasses more or less* until I was late 40's....
(*more or less means I had some from mid 20's but barely used them and probably spent 6-7 years after I lost them with non at all)

Then I got off a long haul flight ... and stuff didn't come back into sharp focus... but I could manage then I was repairing a iPhone and realised I couldn't even see what type of screw ... now when I wake up I can't read my phone and barely a laptop ... it gets better during the day then worse next morning but incrementally the focal length just gets further and further away...

If you end up opting for varifocals, Asda opticians do them at the same price as single vision, I got two pairs last year and very impressed.

My mum spent her youth running around playing sports, roaming the seaside and generally being outside. I spent much of mine staring at a computer screen. We both ended up with exactly the same eye problems, just mine are slightly worse.

Re. varifocals: The optician (Specsavers) made quite a big deal of the 'blurry zone' to either side of the lens, basically saying that the higher quality the lens (i.e. the more you spend) the smaller the blurry zone would be? Any truth in this?

44 years old. In 12 months my close vision has imploded from near perfect to bobbins so I now need reading glasses although my longer range is better than 20/20 still. It makes meetings a total pain in the arse - glasses on to read the notes, off again to see the person the other side of the table. Rubbish. Might give it a read later.

44 years old. In 12 months my close vision has imploded from near perfect to bobbins so I now need reading glasses although my longer range is better than 20/20 still. It makes meetings a total pain in the arse - glasses on to read the notes, off again to see the person the other side of the table. Rubbish. Might give it a read later.

Yep totally sucks and I also still have 20/20 .. my distance vision is definitely worse but the optician says that's because I had better than 20/20

I also just can't get used to meetings.... especially laptop/projector... and whereby I could manage on the laptop without glasses after I've looked at the projector/big screen I can't then focus back - especially the keyboard is just "mush"....

I seem to be wearing reading glasses more and more and forget to take them off - a few times I've even started the car without realising ... 😳