exercises for your eyes, do they or don't they improve vision.
 

Dear all I am slightly short sighted and was wondering if anybody has tried the exercises that the USAF advise wannabe pilots to try. Any information anybody could provide would be great. At the moment I do not need glasses to fly however as eyesight changes constantly I am concerned that one day I will fail the medical and need specs.



Many Thanks

L'Fly

I don't know what the exercises are but I knew a senior officer who was of an age where you would have thought he needed glasses but didn't have any and I once found him doing exercises for his eyes. My experience is that your eyes do their best to cope with focussing etc and I guess exercises might help; once you resign yourself to wearing glasses or contacts your eye muscles breathe a sigh of relief and go into 'relaxed' mode and let the lenses do the work. On that basis I guess that once you have used glasses or lenses the exercises will be a lot less effective. Good luck anyway!

Bates Method
 

Just wondering what the general thought is on whether or not the Bates method works, and is there a book or anything that you can buy with details on what to do.

Many thanks in advance

L'Fly

Hello,

Have you tried searching on here? Numerous posts about it that I remember reading when I researched it.

K,

did it work for you?

L

I never tried it.

I am -2.25 in each eye and am fairly happy, still within the limits for things I want to do. In saying that, I am trying to be more careful about furter damage.

I think Aldous Huxley wrote a book on the topic?? maybe I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure there is a book on it, try making a search.
IMO if you did the exercises regularly leading up to an eye test it would give you an edge and you might pass when you would otherwise have failed. By extension of that it you did the exercises regularly all the time your eye sight might be that slight bit better. However, IMO the margins are very small and you would be only kidding yourself if you could have better sight with glasses / contacts, at worst it could be dangerous. In particular I think with fatigue your sight might revert to form...
Nevertheless, I think that exercising you eyes will give you every chance of keeping up the strength of vision you presently have.

Merged with the Bates method thread started by ladyfly.

Cheers,

BM

That sounds a bit like an eye exercise and is probably a good thing. The senior officer I mentioned in an earlier post was actually looking at the tip of a pen and moving it backwards and forwards, presumably to exercise the focussing muscles of his eyeballs. Is this the same as the 'Bates' technique, with which I am not familiar?

Many thanks guys for all of your help, my current eyesight is 6/7.5 although this is not extremely bad it is bordering limits for observer in the navy. I have just purchased a book written by Bates himself and will keep you all posted on any changes.


L'Fly

No conclusive evidence that the Bates method works.

Your eyes accommodate all the time when you are looking at different objects, unlikely that a few minutes here or there will contribute significantly.

I tried the Bates method for many years (10 times a day or more during my teens) and noticed that I was slowly going blind. That was a variation called the Masterbates method though!

Seriously though, there are other eye excercise regimes other than Bates. This area is known as Vision Therapy. I went to a vision therapist in the UK several years ago because my eyes were being strained by doing constant VDU work. As I was doing my initial Class 1 ordeal, I was getting very jittery about the medical. I was given a program of eye excercises that concentrated on focusing on a near object and then at a far one. After a month or so of excercising my peepers, they felt much more healthy and I passed the medical. Now I fly most days my eyes feel pretty good without training them, but I still use the program I was given once in a while. Here's a link to my favourite excercise toy:-

http://www.merrimackvision.com/pr_teamingBROCK.html

Ah! So that must be the reason!

Just to keep you all updated. I have been doing the bates method exercises for a few weeks now, and I can't say that as yet I have noticed a drastic improvement. However I can tell that the strain on my eyes to see things far away has reduced, and things are not quite as blurry.


L'Fly