Eye Exercises Can Improve Your Eyesight

A Simple Method to Improve Reading

One way in which the pressure of our machine age and our growing admiration for speed for its own sake affect our eyes is in the contemporary attitude toward reading and eye exercises. We are taught not how to read better but how to read faster. People take an inordinate amount of pride in the fact that they can read a book in an hour, or go through two or three books in the course of an evening. It is part of contemporary nerve tension and the feverish rush of our days that we pride ourselves on doing things fast rather than doing them well. To improve reading we need to acquire new reading habits.

Rapid reading means skimming, which in turn means the loss of central fixation. The person who boasts that he can read a book in an hour-and people who do things fast almost always boast of it-overlooks the fact that he is subjecting his eyes to a severe strain, often resulting in headache and impairment of vision, to say nothing of the fact that the speed of his hasty reading gives him no time in which to absorb the real savor of the book or the inner value of the author’s thought.

Stop to think that when the normal eye looks at a printed letter, four separate and minute shifts of vision are required in order to see the letter in its entirety. If you look at a line of fourteen letters the eye makes some seventy shifts in the fraction of a second.

Now when you try to take in a whole block of words at a time, you are endeavoring to cover a larger area than the center of the retina can cope with and you lose the normal shifting which begins to slow down as a result of eye strain. When you read at great speed, glancing swiftly down the page, there is no central fixation, the eye does not shift, and strain is the result.

It is always difficult to develop the lost central fixation in the rapid reader, and one reason is the reluctance with which the reader approaches the idea of acquiring new reading habits. Doing things fast is so fine an achievement in itself!

READING PROCEDURE

Read through a slot.

An excellent way to regain central fixation and improve reading by keeping the eyes focused on a small area, and to curb the rapid skimming of pages which always causes strain, is to cut a long, narrow slot in a rectangular piece of black cardboard or paper, making the slot slightly longer than the average line of print, and just wide enough so that the line of type and the white space below it is visible. 
Train the eyes to follow this white space with an easy, flowing movement.

Now, holding the piece of cardboard over the printed page, slide it along the line, or down from line to line, so that your eyes are compelled to take in only a limited area at a time and the reckless spreading of your eye vision is checked.

Certainly, this is a more intelligent system than to resort to squinting, frowning and trying to look through narrowed lids, which causes a continuous muscular effort, in an attempt to force the eyes to see. 
Squinting does not create better vision. It merely creates tension, impairs vision, and causes wrinkles around your eyes.

Practice this method and you will have much more relaxed eyes and greatly improved reading.

Eye Care For Common Eye Conditions

There are three different eye conditions from which a person may suffer, They are hypermetropia, presbyopia and astigmatism. These are explained below.

HYPERMETROPIA

Hypermetropia, commonly called far-sightedness, is the opposite from myopia. In this condition, rays of light are brought to a focus back of the retina. There are usually blurred vision, headache, and nervous fatigue in attendance upon this form of eye strain, and always the difficulty in accommodating at the near point.

The so-called far-sighted eye is not, in actual fact, better able to see at a distance than the normal eye. It is simply unable to see the things that are close to it.

It is obvious that the person troubled with hypermetropia is unlikely to become the recluse “who always has his nose in a book.” Reading over a period of time causes giddiness, clouding of the vision and often an inflammation of the eyelids. So this victim of eye-strain becomes the person of action.

PRESBYOPIA

The popular name for the eye condition presbyopia is middle-age sight and it is caused by flabby muscles which have lost their powers of accommodation. It has generally been supposed that presbyopia is one of the inescapable handicaps of increasing age and that nothing can be done about it.

Both presbyopia and hypermetropia have points of resemblance, the chief being that, in both cases, there is a strain to see at the near point. The person suffering from presbyopia can demonstrate for himself the effect of strain on his vision. If you find that you are suffering from discomfort after reading, try placing your palms over your eyes for a few moments, and you will discover when you start reading again, that you are able to read, with clearer vision. This improvement may be only of a few minutes’ duration, but it will be evidence of the fact of strain.

Perhaps, from a personality standpoint, it might be said that no one gains so much by visual re-education as the victim of presbyopia. As this type of eyestrain ordinarily appears with middle age-though the list of exceptions is long, ranging from presbyopic eyes in the very young to normal vision at ninety-it is accompanied by the beginning of mental rigidity, of fixed habits of thinking and acting, of indications that a person has “become fixed in his groove.”

ASTIGMATISM

In astigmatism, there is no exact focus because of an unequal pull of the muscles, which causes the eyeball and cornea to be unsymmetrical instead of a perfect sphere. Anyone can bring about a condition of temporary astigmatism voluntarily by staring so long and hard at an object that the sight becomes blurred and the image takes on strange shapes.

Psychologically, there is usually an emotional condition accompanying astigmatism that may lead to an impairment of the health or to nervous upsets. The person with the eye condition of astigmatism not only has difficulty in seeing distinctly but the object at which he is looking may take on strange shapes and forms. Of no case is it so true that “seeing is deceiving,” for the astigmatic eye is the victim of odd illusions. He may see the object at which he is looking in multiple form; he may see one part of it and not the rest. It is small wonder, then, that he frequently tends to be a somewhat confused individual, as he is constantly registering distorted images upon his mind which struggles to identify and interpret these false pictures.

Sometimes these eye conditions can be helped with relaxation eye exercises.

Vision Problems

It is said that spending time in front of the computer can be detrimental to your eyes, however, I used to spend almost 10 hours a day in front of it and have never had any problems. Some have started wearing glasses after only a couple of years of intensive computer use, but I’ve used it for over 10 years and my sight was perfect.

Being very proud of my eye sight, I used to test it on different things such as moving cars, or reading small text on different things, from as far away as possible. My friends, however, started telling me to take care, because at one point my vision would certainly be affected.

Since my parents were telling me the same things as my friends, I decided to take up jogging. I spent some time online looking for the perfect jogging equipment, a good mp3 player, and the best time of the day to start. Armed with this knowledge, my jogging began, every morning.

The equipment recommended online was great, and made jogging a pleasure. The Sansa c250 also helped keep my mind occupied, while running. Small and cheap, the player showed me that price doesn’t mean everything. It even sounded better than my PC, which really surprised me.

I don’t spend less time in front of the PC, but jogging has opened my eyes and I have started taking better care of my body. My physical condition is much better, and that is clearly visible, while my friends and family are very proud of my achievement. I personally like the idea that I can have better health while still enjoying doing what I love to do–computer work. There’s a fantastic feeling knowing that!