Few People Would Need Eye Glasses If....

[Guest guest]

Below is from an e-mail from Ambros, the first person I came

to befriend on the first health related e-list I joined, about 8 years

ago .

 

Alobar

 

=========================

 

I am a firm believer that getting older does not mean one's vision has

to deteriorate. Though I am almost 74, I don't need glasses. I can

read fonts as small as 8 points without trouble and I can descry a

crow in a tree half a mile away. I am sure that my jogging has a lot

to do with it. The right kind of nutrition does too. And I do eye

exercises according to the Bates system regularly.

 

Have long been aware of and conscious of good vision being the wages

of good living. While in Africa, just below the Sahara, I met many

old desert dwellers. They amazed me with their good eyesight. We'd

have contests at night who could identify smaller stars. Some of the

oldies, old enough to be my fathers, beat me. I had star charts, which

they could not read; but I'd know if they'd try to cheat.

 

Nowhere on earth are night skies fuller of stars than in the dry air

of the deserts.

 

Instead of further disquisitions, I send you an article I wrote on how

to maintain good eyesight. Ironically, I wrote it for an oculist in

the Philippines who checked out the eyes of my wife.

 

More some other time. Here the article. I think you wear glasses. I

think too that, if in addition to skating and jogging and otherwise

living reasonably healthy, you could dump your glasses if you did the

basic eye exercises for a few months.

 

Ambros

waterbuf @ chebucto.ns.ca

 

Could You Be Reading Without Your Glasses or Contact Lenses Again?

 

Few People Would Need Eye Glasses If....

 

 

I don't, Doctora, expect you to to everything I am about to

tell you. We tend to find it easy to believe what it is to our

advantage to believe but very difficult to believe what does not serve

out purposes. If you were to recommend to your patients what I

recommend to you, many of them would not need glasses any more; that

is to say, you would be doing yourself out of business, something one

can't reasonably expect of you considering the time, effort and money

you invested in becoming an eye doctor. Still, I hope that you will

find my piece at least interesting.

 

We tend to take it for granted that, as people get older, they will

get sicker, and we take it for granted that, as people grow older,

their eyes grow weaker and they need glasses. Neither assumption is

valid. If people do get sicker as they grow older, that's less the

inevitable accompaniment of aging than the cumulative effect of years

of faulty living; and, if a good many people need glasses before they

have reached the mid-point of their lives, that's less due to aging

than to years of eye abuse. If people lived right, there'd be little

illness in the world; if they treated their eyes right, few would need

glasses.

 

Eye health depends largely on three things -- an adequate supply of

eye- specific nutrients, a healthy set of retinal capillaries and a

healthy set of eye muscles.

 

The most important eye-specific nutrient is Vitamin A, which is an

integral part of visual purple, the substance that turns the retina

into a light-sensitive film. If Vitamin-A levels are low, vision

deteriorates. (Night blindness... color blindness... complete

blindness) Best food sources of Vitamin A are orange/yellow vegetables

and fruit such as carrots, squash, sweet potatoes, apricots, mangoes

and papaya. People who demand much of their eyes -- students,

academics, secretaries, pilots -- are well advised to use Vitamin-A

supplements.

 

Vitamin A alone does not guarantee good eye health. Other structures

that form part of the eye -- the vitreous body, the muscles that

" operate " the eyes -- need other nutrients, among them Vitamin C, the

B-vitamins and several trace minerals. A good and balanced diet of

natural, unrefined and largely unprocessed food can be relied on to

supply them. If there is one food that seems to have been designed by

nature as the all-round food of eye nutrients, it is sunflower seeds.

Do your eyes and yourself a favor by having sunflower seeds handy for

in-between-meals snacks.

 

There is one more nutrient which is of crucial importance for optimal

eye performance, oxygen. When an ophthalmologist checks your eyes,

one of the things (s)he is interested in is the condition of the tiny

blood vessels called capillaries that criss-cross the retina. To have

a good look at them, (s)he first puts drops in your eyes that keep the

pupils from contracting when (s)he looks through them the retina with

an ophthalmoscope (an instrument that permits a viewing of the retina

through powerful magnifying glasses even while a bright light is

beamed at it). Healthy capillaries are the alpha and the omega of an

adequate supply of the nutrient oxygen.

 

How does one ensure that the capillaries in the retina are in good

shape? For one, through good nutrition -- a diet that helps keep the

cardiovascular system clean; and then through adequate aerobic

exercise.

 

By and large, a diet that helps to keep the blood vessels, large or

small, clean is a diet low in foods of animal origin but high in

unrefined foods of plant origin, in particular whole grains and

legumes.

 

The kind of exercise the will put and keep your cardiovascular system

in good shape is aerobic exercise -- exercise which involves large

muscle groups and which makes you heart beat fast for an extended

period of time -- such as brisk walking, jogging, or swimming. It may

come as a surprise to you that a brisk walk of 45 minutes five times a

week can make a big difference in the health of your eyes. But do not

expect instant results; that is, expect a big improvement in your

vision if you jog only for a week or two. It took years of physical

inactivity for your cardiovascular system to deteriorate and it will

take at least months for it to recover. But if you persevere, your

heart and all the blood vessels in your body, the tiny capillaries

that supply the retina with oxygen and other nutrients included, will

be rehabilitated, a big step towards your goal of rehabilitating your

eyes.

 

Apart from general aerobic exercise that benefits your whole body,

there are several sets of exercises that are specific for your eyes.

A big part of the process of seeing depends on the muscles that

" operate " the optical components of the eye. These muscles, like every

muscle, need adequate exercise. If they don't get it, they

deteriorate and perform their assigned functions badly or not at all.

 

We are talking about three sets of muscles here. One set, the muscles

of accommodation, changes the shape of the lens so that images

entering the eye appear properly focused; a second set of muscles,

which move the eyeballs in their sockets, extend our ability to look

left or right, up or down beyond the limits of the head's movements; a

third set, finally, enables the eye to adjust to different light

conditions by changing the size of the pupil. In bright light, the

pupil contracts so as to protect the interior of the eye from too much

light; in dim light, by contrast, the pupil opens wide to let in as

much light as possible. But there is more to this contracting and

expanding of the of the pupil. As with the lens of a good camera, the

smaller the aperture, the sharper the image that is viewed and the

greater the depth of focus. That's why we can read better in bright

light.

 

In a natural setting such as that of the farmer, the sailor or the

steppe nomad, all these muscles get adequate exercise naturally. Eyes

focus now on near, now on faraway objects; eyeballs move frequently to

cover the whole field of vision; and the pupils have to keep adjusting

to varying conditions of light, from sunshine to shade and back, from

indoor to out. It is in the unnatural setting of our urban existence

that eyes get too little of the right and too much of the wrong kind

of exercise. People sit reading for hours with eyes fixed in the

unnatural near-focus position. When eyes look off into the distance,

the muscles of accommodation are relaxed; when we look at something

only inches away from our eyes, these same muscles have to strain to

keep the eyes focused for the purpose. If we do this for hours on

end, day after day, the muscles of accommodation fatigue and

eventually lose their flexibility. Eyes then won't focus properly any

more. That's when people who do a lot of reading find that " their

arms aren't long enough for reading any more. " They need glasses.

 

But every crutch weakens the structure it supports. With the glasses

doing the muscles' work, the muscles deteriorate even further. Before

long, stronger glasses are needed. A vicious cycle is initiated. Eye

doctors tend to make things worse by encouraging their patients to

wear their glasses continuously. One wonders whether they do this out

of ignorance or because they want sell more glasses. The sensible

thing to do would be to wear the glasses only when absolutely

necessary; that is, to wear them when there is a task to be completed

but eyes balk either because they are tired or because lighting is not

adequate, and to take the glasses off the moment eyes can cope again

either because they have had a chance to rest or because lighting is

better. You'd be doing your eyes and yourself an ill service if you

wore glasses when your eyes can cope without them. But don't expect

your eye doctor to tell you so.

 

Here are some of the things you can do both to prevent the

deterioration of the ocular muscles and to rehabilitate them if the

damage has already been done.

 

When you do something that keeps your eyes focused at a fixed level

for periods longer than just a few minutes -- whether it's solving a

crossword puzzle, working at the computer or reading a book --look up

frequently, vigorously blink a few times to promote the lubrication of

your eyeballs and then slowly alternate between looking at a distant

object for a few seconds and at a near-by one for a few seconds. Then

close your eyes for perhaps half a minute to let them rest. Repeat

the whole cycle two or three times. You'll be surprised how refreshed

your eyes feel when you resume doing what you were doing.

 

Now and then take a somewhat longer break. Get a bowl large enough to

accommodate your face and fill it with clean, ice-cold water to within

an inch of its rim. Having first taken a deep breath, dip your face

in the cold water and keep it there for a slow count to ten. During

that time, blink your eyelids slowly but vigorously. Repeat two or

three times. The contact with the cold water stimulates blood

circulation in your eyes. They will feel wonderfully refreshed after

such an ice- water bath.

 

You can do your eyes a favor by spending an occasional ten or fifteen

minutes lying on a slant board, head down. Normally, your heart has

to work against the pull of gravity to get the blood to your head.

When you lie on the slant board, head down, the flow of blood to your

head increases and all the organs lodged in hour head -- brain, ears,

eyes -- benefit from the improved supply of oxygen and other nutrients

that come in its wake.

 

The following set of exercises can, if performed regularly, be counted

on to rehabilitate out-of-shape accommodation muscles. Hold an

extended index finger about four inches from the tip of your nose.

Get your eyes to focus on that finger for two or three seconds. Then

look up, pick an object as far from you as possible and get your eyes

to focus on that objects for the same length of time. Repeat ten to

fifteen times and then, having blinked vigorously a few times, close

your eyes and keep them closed for ten to fifteen seconds. Repeat the

whole procedure two or three times.

 

For a variation of this exercise, cut a one-inch square out of black

paper and glue it on your living room window at eye level. Stand

facing that square, four to six inches away from it, and get your eyes

to focus on it. Then look out past the square and get your eye to

focus on a distant object. Then look back and forth between the black

square and the distant object as you did with the finger in front of

your nose.

 

I perform this exercise in all sorts of places without anyone becoming

aware of it. If I have to wait for a bus, I stand close to a light

post or a power pole, pick an object somewhere far away and then

proceed as with the raised finger or the black dot.

 

To exercise the muscles that move my eyeballs in their sockets, I

imagine myself looking at the face of a big clock. Without moving my

head, I look up at the 12:00 and from there, still without moving my

head, I slowly look my way around the face of that clock -- 1:00

o'clock, 2:00 o'clock, 3:00 o'clock, etc. -- till I get back to the

12:00. I do this, first in a clockwise and then in a

counter-clockwise direction, four or five times. Then, as with the

previous exercise, having blinked a few times, I close my eyes for

perhaps half a minute to let them rest.

 

Sunning is the term I use for the exercise which conditions the

muscles that make the pupils expand or contract. To sun, I face a

bright source of light -- the sky on a bright day, without looking

directly at or into the sun, or a bright source of artificial light on

cloudy days. I cup my hands over my eyes in such a way as to shut out

all light for a few seconds and then I swivel them open and close them

at intervals of perhaps two seconds, sure that my pupils will contract

all the way when my hands swivel open, and that they will open wide

when my hands swivel closed. After some fifteen repetitions, I pause

for perhaps half a minute with my hands cupped over my eyes. I repeat

the 15-rep cycle two or three times.

 

I had my eyes checked by an oculist a few days ago. When she was

done, she snapped at me in mock anger: " Get lost and don't come back

for a long time. Not fair that someone as old and as ornery as you

should have nearly perfect vision. "

 

I am 72 years old. Few people, I am sure, have asked as much of their

eyes as I have of mine. If they still serve me well, it is because I

have treated them well. And I am confident that, unless I fail them,

they will serve me well till far, far into old age. If you'd like to

be able to say as much of your eyes when you get to be my age or

older, all you have to do is treat them as well as I have been

treating mine.