Improve Your Eyesight

While natural eye improvement means not having to go under the knife, it is time consuming and has mixed results which means that although the investment of time is worthwhile if the benefits are achieved, there is a chance that you may not experience the benefits of this surgery free and often cost effective method. So then what?

Is laser eye surgery the answer and what all does it entail? What exactly is Lasik Technology and how can it really make all the difference?

In 1998, the FDA approved the LASIK (laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis) which is a type of refractive surgery for correcting myopia, hyperopia, and astigmatism. LASIK is similar to other surgical corrective procedures like photorefractive keratectomy and PRK but is much easier on the patient because the recovery time is greatly reduced.

The surgery is performed with a laser and is far less invasive to the patients. Over the last ten years, there are been massive advancements in this technology and although I personally have not had to do it, I have had friends who have and they all say it is worth the small financial investment.

As you might have already read, I went to the doctor three years ago and was told that I would have to wear glasses as I was getting very bad headaches and it was as a result of my eyesight getting worse and my eyes straining.

I didn’t want to have to wear contacts as I do a lot of diving and other sports and the idea that I’d have to buy prescription goggles for all the different activities I like just sounded like too much trouble and money wasted.  For the last two years I have had to buy two different prescription diving masks and two different snow skiing goggles in addition to my normal day to day glasses which I’ve broken twice and had to have the lenses changed twice.

What a loads of wasted cash!

I did a lot of research and found the bates method.  If you want to learn more about it, then take a look at this site.  The course to do was just too expensive for me to afford right then, but I carried on looking for some good information on it and found this great little downloadable book that worked on the same principles.

Click here to check out the downloadable book…

.

I bought the download and started working on the relaxation techniques.  It took around two weeks for my girlfriend to notice that I wasn’t frowning when I read something.  Over the next couple of weeks I noticed a small improvement and now just five months later, I’m only wearing glasses at night or when I’m really washed out.

It’s been really easy and I know that surgery was going to be my next option when I could afford it, I’m just really glad that I didn’t have to go under the knife.

Important Note:

Some Eye Exercises will damage your eyes by causing more strain.  When doing eye exercises always read all the literature given and understand the exact mechanics of each exercise.

You should know that straining your eyes is not good for them. If you happen to work on a computer for hours of the day, this is straining and it has a really bad effect of the way your eyes work. Your eyes will get tired and without a rest period, they will get damaged.

Doing eye exercises might sound like it a bad idea for tired eyes, but straining and doing eye exercises are not the same thing. In my research, the one topic that kept coming up was “how effective are these exercises” and “why do we need to do them”.

Why Do We Need To Exercise Our Eyes Anyway?

You’d think that we work our eyes hard enough as it is without having to now do eye exercises too, but the fact is that we are often just straining them.  Like with any exercise program, its about using all the different muscles and having recovery times between the exercises.

Once you start to do the exercises you’ll notice immediately that there is a difference in the way that they function.  Having good eyesight is the same as having a healthy body.  If you do the right stuff, it works well.  If you don’t, it falls apart.

The Dot Exercise – My first choice

Doing the dot exercise is pretty easy.  First you have to find a comma or period on a page and focus on it so that you can see it as clearly as your eyes will allow.  Keep focusing on it until you have it in clear focus.  After a few seconds you’ll might notice that it becomes a little blurry.  If this happens, then try relaxing your eyes and close them for around a minute so that they can fully relax.

Now you want to open your eyes and focus on the comma.  Don’t strain, just move your eyes around the page and refocus on the comma.  Again move your eyes around the page and back to the comma.  The movement around the page is good for your eyes.  Also remember that you need to blink.  Finally close your eyes and try to picture the comma on the page.  Open your eyes and look at the comma. When your eyes are completely relaxed, it will be much easier to see the comma.

This is a great exercise for people who strain to see things when they are out of focus.  Straining just makes the situation worse.  By relaxing, your eyes are able to do a much better job and less stress on the eyes will lead to better eyesight.

Double Vision Eyesight and Lazy Eye Exercises

A great exercise to do for those who suffer from a lazy eye, squintness as well as double vision is the double vision exercise.  You’ll get your eyes working together in this exercise which will improve a lot of different bad eyesight problems.

What you want to do is to focus on an object.  Open one eye while the other is closed and try to focus, then do it with the other eye.  Now open both and relax the eyes as much as possible until you are able to focus on the object.  Squinting can bring the object into focus, but will cause stress.  Try to relax the eyes again and try one more time.  Getting the eyes to work together is a really important way to improve poor eyesight.

The Bates Method – Reteaching Your Eyes to See

The Bates Method is named after Mr William H Bates who was a doctor in the early 1900’s.  He was a pioneer in surgery for hearing restoration and he went on to becoming a specialist in Ophthalmology which is all about eyesight.  He was really dedicated to finding out why people suffered from different eyesight problems including nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism.

His main principle was that people who have vision problems really only need to learn how to see again.  He also believed that stress was the major reason for most eye problems and if you showed people that they could see better, they would relearn how to see better.  A lot of the people that he treated recovered from their conditions, some very simple, but other very complicated conditions.  Case studies are available to read in  “Better Eyesight, The Complete Magazines of William H. Bates”. Published in 2000 which is over 700 pages long and is really interesting if you are into that sort of thing.

The Bates Method is Not Eye Exercises

The majority of the books available tell you that you need to do eye exercises and a lot of these exercises can cause more strain on the eyes.  Bates didn’t think that exercise was the most important aspect, more along relaxation exercises that allow your eyes to relax.

Bates found that memory and imagination had a huge amount of impact on the clarity of vision.  His method of helping people to relearn how to see properly included mental relaxation exercises.  These relaxation techniques not only helped their vision, but also helped them to feel better about themselves too.

Aldous Huxley was almost blind when he discovered the Bates Method

For those of you have read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World or Island will be interested to know that he used the Bates Method to regain his eyesight after going almost blind.

Aldous Huxley authored “The Art of Seeing” to share his views about the Bates method, why it works, and why he felt mainstream medicine was so closed to this approach.

The great advantage of this system is that it really does work.  There are hundreds of pages of documentation online and there are hundreds of thousands of testimonials.

The biggest disadvantage is that it is a little unconventional – many people walk away before they see the benefits because they don’t understand that sometimes things that don’t look normal can and do achieve the aims we all want.  If you think that it is normal for your eyes to have to focus on a computer screen for eight hours a day, then this is going to be a little too weird for you, but I noticed a change within two weeks and have gradually said goodbye to my glasses.  The Bates Method worked for me.

You Don’t Have To Be Old To Have Eyesight Problems

I’m not old, so I don’t think that I should need to wear glasses, but the only way that I thought I could improve my eyesight was to have laser surgery. I’m pretty active and do a lot of sports, so contacts have been the best option for me, but not when I want to go diving. The salt water really messes with my contacts and it became an issue for me.

There are other ways to improve your eyesight and a lot of the information that we get on the topic is not always the right information. For example, my eye doctor didn’t tell me that wearing glasses might not be the only solution. He also didn’t mention that my lifestyle could have contributed to the loss of clear vision.

Could wearing glasses make your eyesight worse?

A lot of the time, you have to do the research yourself to find the best solution for you. So that’s what I did and found out that diet, lifestyle and the way I was using my eyes were the reasons that I was having problems. A lot of the information that I found didn’t really address exactly what I could do to improve my vision, but a lot of it mentioned that wearing contact lenses or spectacles could actually make my sight worse.

This was a real shocker. The last thing anyone wants to do is to make the situation worse. So I started a program and did what needed to be done. The results were pretty drastic and although I still strain to drive at night, I’m more relaxed, my eyes are focussing better and my overall eyesight is almost 20/20.

Anyone can improve their eyesight if they know what is main causes of sight problem are!

What’s also really great about this program is that they talk about the Bates Method and go into detail about better eyesight through exercise and diet. They show you how you can rebuild your vision and not only how to improve your vision, but also how to improve your peripheral vision.