Visual gymnastics, carrots and glasses with holes – we figure out which of these helps and does not harm the eyes.
Myth 1. To restore vision, you need to do eye exercises
Eye “gymnastics” does not guarantee vision restoration. But such training cannot be called completely useless either.
However, it is useless to hope that eye exercises will rid you of myopia , hyperopia and astigmatism or at least reduce their manifestations.
The only exception is convergence insufficiency. In this condition, the eyes cannot focus on the same point at the same time due to muscle spasm, resulting in blurred or double vision. In this case, eye exercises help relieve muscle tension and improve focusing.
One of the most popular exercises for this is pencil push-ups. It involves focusing your gaze on a small letter on one of the edges of the pencil or on the tip of the lead and trying to follow this point, sometimes bringing the pencil closer to your face, sometimes moving it away from your face. It should only be taken into account that such exercises have contraindications.
Myth 2. If you wear glasses all the time, you will see worse
The explanation for this misconception about vision restoration is this: if you do not put stress on your eyes and make your life easier with glasses, then your eyes will “relax” and vision problems will worsen.
The myth comes from a popular technique of partial correction in previous years. Previously, ophthalmologists believed that wearing weak glasses and spending a lot of time without them would help train the eyes and improve vision.
That is why many are afraid to change their glasses to stronger ones, put on “glasses” or lenses only on special occasions, and the rest of the time they prefer to painfully strain their eyes, trying to train them in this way. However, to suffer is pointless and, moreover, harmful.
Myth 3. To strengthen your vision, you need to eat carrots and blueberries
It is true that vitamin A is necessary to maintain healthy eyes. And it is true that carrots contain quite a lot of beta-carotene, a plant precursor of vitamin A. However, all this does not mean that eating carrots will improve your vision.
The fact is that the body does not need that much vitamin A to keep the eyes healthy. And we get it from many sources : spinach and other leafy greens, orange vegetables and fruits such as pumpkin, sweet potatoes and apricots, as well as from dairy products, liver, fatty fish.
In general, if a person is not starving, most likely, everything is fine with the level of vitamin A. Trying to improve vision by adding more carrots to the diet is pointless.
gadgets less
If you spend hours in front of the TV, computer monitor or smartphone, your eyes may get tired. But it is almost impossible to damage your eyesight this way . And, accordingly, you won’t be able to protect your eyes by simply giving up working in front of the screen.
Yes, long-term continuous visual strain is one of the factors that increases the risk of developing myopia. However, this factor is far from the only one. A significant role is also played by:
- heredity;
- hormonal changes;
- the amount of time spent outdoors in natural light.
So the impact on eye health of constant use of gadgets and any other prolonged visual load, such as reading in poor lighting, is greatly exaggerated.
Instead of giving up working with devices, you should walk more in the fresh air. And if you have to sit at a laptop or use a smartphone for a long time, try to blink more often and give your eyes a rest every 20 minutes. For example, go to the window and look into the distance or move your gaze from the screen to the ceiling or wall and back for 1-2 minutes.
Myth 5. Perforated glasses will help restore vision
If you put on black glasses with lots of tiny holes in the lenses, the image in front of your eyes will actually become clearer. That is, your vision will actually improve a little.
The clarity of vision directly when using such glasses increases due to the fact that focused beams of light fall on the retina through many holes in the dark plates.
However, there is no research that has proven the long-term effect of using such glasses. As soon as a person takes them off, vision becomes the same as before.
Myth 6. As long as I can see normally, I don’t need to go to the ophthalmologist.
Nearsightedness and farsightedness are not the most unpleasant vision problems, especially if they do not progress. Much more dangerous are retinal detachment or glaucoma – insidious diseases that do not make themselves known for a long time, and if they do, then with minor symptoms.