Has anyone investigated the "improve your eyesight with exercise" claim?

For what it’s worth, I’ve been playing with Flash Focus on the Nintendo DS, which puts you through a number of exercises. I can’t say whether it’s improved anything, but it does suggest different exercises that can be done such as holding one thumb close and one at arms length and shifting your focus from one to the other (an ability of mine that I’ve noticed is slowing). It’s something I’ve always been interested in trying, so maybe I will and will follow up with another post.

As far as the game exercises go, I’ve seen a little improvement, and generally my “eye age” is close to my real age. I’d need to test it on someone older and younger to see if that really makes a difference.

I can’t speak for any particular program, but as a kid an eye doctor (don’t remember what kind) put me on a program of eye exercises, and the accelerating progress of my myopia stopped.

My older brother was told his dream of being an airline pilot was gone as his eyes would not pass their requirements, but has been doing a program of eye exercises since then. Within 2 years his eyesight had improved sufficiently for him to fly for the airlines, and he swears by these exercises and has not had any further decrease in his vision.

My boyfriend’s optometrist recommended some eye exercises for him, so there must be some merit to it.

I understand that this is a physical issue with the eye itself, but why not work on sharpening the other half (your mind) to pick up some slack as well? Even though it may not be exactly what you had in mind, I would certainly categorize this as a viable exercise.

Playing video games improves eyesight

My neice was born with a tumor above her eye. It was removed when she was a baby. She wears glasses because it affected her vision but every so often she wears a patch on her good eye for a few days to strengthen the bad eye. So in her case it does help.

My experience is that the more you rely on glasses and contact lenses, the more your eyesight degrades over time. The muscles determine the shape of your eye. Any muscle on a crutch/glasses cannot be toned properly. I have not had complete success but between dr. appts. my eyesight has not gotten worse at such a high rate as before.

I know of no scientific evidence that exercises of any type can improve eyesight. The problem is the shape of the eyeball itself.

The Chinese govt. has all their school age children do eye exercises everyday and it hasn’t worked to well because China has the most nearsighted children in the world and some put the number of Chinese children that are nearsighted in the 70–90% range. So I wouldn’t put to much stock in doing the eye exercises.