In recent years there has been a lot of talk about eye exercises to treat or prevent conditions such as myopia, astigmatism or presbyopia. There are those who claim that with this specific physical therapy you can even avoid the use of glasses. Soon it seems like it makes sense. After all, the eyes also contain muscles necessary for them to function properly. Training them could be helpful. But, unfortunately, this is not what scientific research says.
Real eye exercises a practice born in China. There they are practiced especially with children and adolescents to prevent them from developing vision problems or to alleviate those they already have. However, even studies conducted in this country conclude that they are not as effective as they seem.
Some people can see that they have little short term effectiveness, but it is unknown what may happen over time. Others, however, they find no significant benefit in the practice of eye exercises.
Physiotherapy of eyes
Eye exercises can be done in three ways. Some consist of press on the eyes in a certain way, for example, by massaging the muscles that help adjust the pupils. Others, however, do not require manual intervention. You just have to move your eyes following a number of recommendations. But, without a doubt, the most striking and at the same time unpleasant are those made using unsuitable glassesso the eyes have to be forced to work harder.
All these exercises have been analyzed in many studies and in general the conclusions are not what we would like.
Major visual defects
Many vision problems arise due to optic nerve injuries. This cannot be solved even with glasses, so logically it is also impossible with eye exercises. So let’s focus on myopia, farsightedness, astigmatism and presbyopia.
Normally, if everything is fine, the light entering the eyes and coming from the objects in front of us should cross several layers. Firstly, it crosses cornea. This is the transparent layer that is located in front of the eye. It acts as a shield and also as a lens that allows light to pass into a smaller lens located just behind the pupil: crystal. This is where the light finishes refracting and hits the retina, where the nerves that carry light signals to the brain and convert them into images are located.
For myopic eyes usually lengthens or use an oval shape instead of a round one. This can happen due to too much eye strain, as well as genetic reasons. In this case, the lenses are no longer positioned at a precise point, so the light rays do not hit the retina precisely, causing the resulting images to appear blurry. This especially happens in distant rays, since rays that are closer are refracted properly.
On the other hand, farsightedness occurs due to shortening of the eye or lack of curvature in lenses. In this case, adequate refraction also does not occur, especially with close images, which will appear blurry.
Finally, with astigmatism, the cornea and lens have disparate curves. As a result, light does not travel from one to the other, but two different images are formed that overlap each other, causing blurred vision.
Very similar, but of a different origin.
The consequences of presbyopia are similar, but for different reasons, since they arise due to lens hardening what happens due to age.
All of these problems are solved with the help of glasses, which act as a third lens responsible for positioning the light so that it hits where it needs to go. But why do we say that eye exercises are useless?
Eye exercises will only target the muscles
In reality, the lens is not rigid and immovable. It becomes thicker to focus on close objects and thinner when further away. Small muscles called ciliary muscles. Perhaps eye exercises could help in this regard. But the fact that the eye is too long or short, or even the curvature of the lenses is wrong, there is little we can change by touching the eyes or moving them in a certain way.
Eye exercises in scientific literature
There are several studies that show that eye exercises provide little to no benefit. Already in 2012, a group of scientists from University of Alabama conducted a study involving 8 patients with presbyopiain which eye exercises did not show significant benefits.
We might think that this is too small a sample. And indeed it is. However, in 2023, other scientists, this time from Xuzhou Medical UniversityIn a meta-analysis of 12 studies with a total of 134,201 participants, the effects of eye exercises compared to myopia At best they will be modest. Especially in the short term. On the other hand, some researchers from University of Hong Kong This year 2024, in another meta-analysis of 11 studies with 921 participants, they confirmed that there is no evidence of effectiveness against myopia.
Yes, some positive results were seen in a study conducted in 2021 by scientists from Capital Medical University of China. It involved 1,443 people and found that eye exercises could help control axial elongation of the eye and, at the same time, refractive errors. However, this is just one study among many others. It has also not been proven how it affects vision-related conditions. Despite all this, we have no choice but to continue to give glasses the ability to correct our vision. Or surgery, more and more advanced. Eye physical therapy would be wonderful, but science doesn’t agree that it provides any benefit.
Source: Hiper Textual
