Correcting Presbyopia
Warning: We have to understand that with hyperopia and presbyopia there could also be astigmatism. So before you do these exercises, it is good to first do the astigmatism exercises. Especially good is the exercise in which you wave the page with large print in front of your eyes while looking at the eye chart. This really takes away the astigmatism.
Hyperopia and presbyopia are similar conditions. The difference is that presbyopia is a stiffening of the lens that occurs through use of the eyes, usually when someone is around forty years old. This condition makes it difficult to focus on nearby objects. Often, people who develop presbyopia start to wear reading glasses to help them focus on books and newspapers or other objects at close range. Hyperopia, on the other hand, is a short eyeball, a condition you are either born with or that occurs because of a modification of the eyes.
The prevailing concept among most doctors is that once your lens is stiff, it can never become flexible again. This is the only reason why people don’t work for more flexibility: they have been incorrectly told that it is impossible!
If you are able to arrest that concept and understand that your lens is all-powerful and capable of responding to these exercises, you will never be presbyotic again. Furthermore, you will maintain good reading vision into your midnineties or early hundreds.
Exercise Program for Presbyopia: 60–90 Minutes a Day
(Work mostly outdoors at first. As you improve, work in gradually dimmer and dimmer light. And remember: don’t squint!)
• Extreme Close-Up: 20 minutes daily.
• Peripheral Exercises (using the opaque piece of paper between the eyes): 10 minutes daily.
• Bouncing the Balclass="underline" 5 minutes daily.
• Look Far into the Distance: 20 minutes daily, divided into two or three sessions.
• Rotate the Eyes: 5 minutes daily.
• Massage around the Eyes: 10 minutes daily.
• Extra Exercises for Presbyopia: 10 minutes daily.
It is important to reiterate the necessity to work on these exercises throughout your day. Even though I suggest 10 minutes of a particular exercise, it is better to do a few minutes here and a few minutes there to get into the habit of constantly working on improving your eyesight.
Extra Exercises for Presbyopia
Blinking One Eye
In this exercise, you are going to practice blinking with each eye separately.
As I have mentioned before, when you close one eye at a time, your brain learns to allow the two eyes to function independently. The way to do this is to close one eye as if you were blinking with it and then to cover it with your hand. Now take your hand off your eye and open it. Repeat this a hundred times for each eye. Afterward, you will find that you have a bit more control with each eye. Although you do this as a concentrated exercise, remember to blink gently throughout the whole day.
Reading in Dim Light
First, practice reading in dimmer and dimmer light each time you read. Now have someone turn the lights on and off while you are trying to read. Next, practice some of your other exercises, like reading large and small print or bouncing a ball in dim light as well.
This practice will improve your vision in strong light within four months. It will also improve your vision in normal light within ten months and will help you to see in dim light within sixteen months. No longer will you be dependent on glasses, which will be a great thing for you.
Look Near/Look Far
For this exercise you will want to find something that it is very pleasant for you to look at, like a beautiful picture. Look very closely at the object. Now put a small piece of black paper on the bridge of your nose so it obstructs your strong eye. Then look closely at the picture while waving your hand in the periphery of your strong eye. Next, look away from the picture and far into the distance. Continue to wave your hand in the periphery of your strong eye. Now look back at the picture again, this time close-up. Take the paper off your nose and look back into the distance with both eyes. Now look back at the picture close in front of you with both eyes. You may be able to notice more details this time. Palm for six minutes in order to relax your eyes. Remember to stop and relax anytime you are feeling strained. The object is not to strain but to relax your eyes, your neck, and your body.
Headlines and Large and Small Print
For some of the exercises that follow, these pages with text of gradually decreasing size will be helpful.
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related to near work which are experienced during or related to computer use.” The AOA developed this diagnosis after seeing an
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increase in the number of patients requiring eye exams due to symptoms they experienced at the computer. The visual stress of working at computers can bring on nearsightedness (myopia) or make it worse, and can also worsen middle-aged farsightedness (presbyopia).
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CVS is a repetitive strain injury. One muscle that is strained is the ciliary muscle, a muscle within the eye that changes the shape of the lens to determine the focus. Pixels, which make up the images we see on the computer screen, are bright in the middle and blurry on the edges;
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the brain is unable to determine a focal length for pixels, and endlessly attempts to do so. The iris, a muscle within the eye that regulates the amount of light that enters the eye, is strained by inappropriate lighting and glare, which are often a problem with computer work, and the result is light sensitivity.
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LARGE AND SMALL PRINT
Nothing is more surprising than change, when it arrives—but nothing is more predictable. When we get into our forties, most of us begin to have trouble reading small print. The newspaper becomes easier to read if we hold it out at arm’s length.
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LARGE AND SMALL PRINT
People who have always had 20/20 vision start to walk around with reading glasses in shirt pockets or hanging from a cord around their necks, and those who are nearsighted switch to bifocals. Doctors assure us that it’s a common change at middle age; our ciliary muscles, which change the shape of the lens to focus the eye for near vision, weaken, and the lenses become stiffer as we age. What they don’t tell us is that the lenses can get even worse—eventually we can get cataracts, the biggest cause of blindness throughout the world.
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LARGE AND SMALL PRINT
It’s not a lack of compassion that causes eye doctors to go on prescribing ever-thicker glasses without warning us of the dangers that lie ahead. They simply feel that it’s hopeless, that our eyes can only get worse. Schneider and other vision improvement teachers believe that eyes can also get better. They say that ophthalmologists are seeing only one end of a continuous spectrum—whether you see nothing more than lights and shadows or have vision that is more acute than 20/20, you’re somewhere on the continuum, and change in either direction is possible.
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LARGE AND SMALL PRINT
Even when your eyes are working hardest, trying to make out small print in dim light, for example, they need to function out of a sense of relaxation; this is the bottom line. This is why upper body massage is so important for good eye care.
The eye’s own built-in massage, blinking, gets curtailed with the frozen stare that is the hallmark of bad vision.
Blinking bathes and refreshes the eye, gives it intermittent rest, and promotes flexible use—for example, if you’re blinking while walking, your eyes open each time to slightly different scenes.