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- Eye Care Treatment
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Exercise Your Way To Better Eyesight
Stimulating perception is one of the most effective
methods of improving eyesight. Although your eyes respond to light
and images and send these signals to your brain, it is your brain
that ultimately decides what you see of the world around you. It is
the information stored in your brain that is reactivated by what you
see.
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Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and
advanced computer programs to map specific areas of the
brain, scientists have been able to observe both what
happens to the signals the optic nerve sends to the visual
cortex and how the cortex interprets them. It turns out that
the more information you possess about the visual world, the
more adept your brain is at interpreting what the eyes see
from even a minimum of clues. For example, you can recognize
a person you know well from nothing more than the sight of a
familiar tilt of the head, the curve of a chin, or a
hairstyle.
The basis for recognizing other persons and objects begins
when a baby learns to know its mother as separate from self.
Afterwards, the things a person knows and learns influence
how he experiences different objects. |
What we know determines how we see an object.
Seeing becomes perception only through knowledge of the object.
Unfortunately, if you have glaucoma, the drops,
the cataracts, and the decreased vision often corrode your
desire to examine objects carefully. You may find you have
little interest in examining the features of a person's face, or
looking at paintings. Yet developing your perceptual powers can
actually help you to overcome the debilitating effects of
glaucoma and its treatments. Perception-sharpening exercises
like those outlined below can help.
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Before performing any of these 11 exercises,
take a few minutes to practice your breathing. Breathe in
from your diaphragm or stomach, through your nose; breathe
out through your mouth. Your breathing should be slow and
steady. Now you can begin the exercises. For the following
perceptual exercises, pretend that you are an artist or a
writer and that you must examine details.
1. Look at a building. Observe the brickwork, the inset of
the windows, the door frame, the roof. If you can read the
building address, look at each number individually. Keep
your eyes traveling over the surface of the building. Do not
stare at one spot.
2. Bring a friend. Look at your friend's face - the
eyebrows, eyelashes, nose, cheeks, mouth. Pretend you are
going to draw the face and you want to represent each
feature. |
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3. Look at a tree. Then look at the bark, a twig, a leaf, the veins
in the leaf, and so on.
4. Blink a lot. Blinking is nature's way of lubricating your eyes.
5. Slowly open and close your eyes, one at a time. Move your head
back and forth with your eyes closed, then, for a fraction of a
second, open each eye slowly. By opening each eye very slowly, you
can eventually blink with only one eye at a time.
6. Draw a large E in black magic marker on a sheet of paper. Look
first at the lower bar, then at the upper bar, the vertical bar, and
the center bar. Picture the E in your mind. Then step five feet away
from the E. Blink slowly a few times. Look at the E again, then
blink slowly again a few more times. Never stare. If you can see the
E, move back a few feet. Repeat this sequence until you can no
longer see the E.
7. Stimulate the cells responsible for peripheral vision. Extend
your arms out to each side. Wiggle your fingers. Can you see the
motion? If not, bring your arms closer to your body until you
glimpse your wiggling fingers.
8. Close your eyes. Visualize a large circle. Pretend there is a
pencil affixed to your nose. Trace around the circle. Squeeze it
into an oval. Trace around the oval. Make it into a figure-eight.
Trace around the figure-eight. Write your name, tracing each letter.
9. Tape a piece of paper over the bridge of your nose. Hold your
index fingers in front of you and move them first clockwise, then
counterclockwise, then have one finger go clockwise and the other
counterclockwise. Follow the motions with your eyes.
10. When reading, sit where you can see a wall calendar or some
other item with large type. If you can find an eye chart, hang it on
the wall. Raise your eyes occasionally to look at it. If you read in
daylight, look out the window after every five or six pages. Focus
on a distant object when you do so.
11. Pause occasionally in your reading and remember the last word
you read. Visualize the whiteness around the word. Think of the
blackness of the letters. Look at the word again.
Remember to avoid staring. Move your eyes around the object. When
you think of it, shift your eyes. You see best when your eyes make
saccadic movements, that is, tiny automatic movements that your eyes
make to fixate on objects. Your eyes will experience the least
fatigue when viewing an object consisting of words or letters with
quick glances.
In addition to perceptual exercises, the following are 4 tension
relieving exercises that may be helpful:
1. Massage your jaw. Yawn. Allow yourself to make noises. releases
facial tension.
2. Feel the sternocleidomastoid muscle - the muscle that runs from
behind your ear, down the side of your neck, and into your
shoulders. Place four fingers on each side of the muscle and massage
the muscle, checking along the whole area for tension and sore
spots. Massage twenty times.
3. Do shoulder rotations, ten times with each shoulder.
4. Move your head loosely around in a circle, first clockwise, the
counterclockwise, ten times each.
These exercises should relieve tensed-up muscles and promote healthy
circulation. Many of us become tensed up when we concentrate on an
activity. Tension in the body restricts blood flow, and restricted
blood flow to the optic nerve is implicated in glaucoma. |
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