6 steps to improve your eyesight

Eyesight like skin health has been treated symptomatically in the modern age rather than opticians trying to find the root cause. They just tell you that your eyesight has become worse, give you extra prescription on your lenses and send you on your way.

But why have the rates of myopia and the number of people reliant on glasses risen dramatically in the last 20 years? and is there anything we can do to improve our eye sight? The modern world is set up for short sightedness, most of us stare at screens all day long and hardly spend anytime looking at vast expanses out in nature. 

If you are blessed with 20/20 vision then this article will give you some tips for staying on top of it but if you are looking to improve your eyesight then instilling these techniques could help reverse some of the damage caused by screens or at the very least support your eye health. 

1. Gaze at far distances 

As mentioned above people spend most of their time looking at what’s directly in front of them, this is typically a phone or a computer screen. The eyes adapt to this stimulus by becoming very good at seeing what’s on the tiny screen in front of you but they begin to struggle to see into the distance with rising screen time. 

So by decreasing time spent on screens and taking yourself outside to cast your sight far into the distance can both help your eyes regain what they have lost or are maybe beginning to lose the ability to do. Being able to see both close up and far away are survival skills, if one is fading we need to support its return as much as possible. There are a million reasons to get outside into nature more, this is yet another one.

2. Release fascia 

Our eyes are held in place with muscles, these muscles not only help move the eyeballs but also help to shift focus from short sighted vision to longsighted vision. As with all things within our bodies, everything is connected. If we have tight fascia and muscles this will translate to tight muscles and fascia in our head and the muscles that control the eyes.

Releasing your fascia and supporting your muscles is therefore crucial to maintaining good eye health and vision. If your feet splay outwards when you walk or stand, if you have trouble sitting in a deep squat or preforming basics stretches the chances are your fascia is tight and stiff. Eyesight aside, improving your fascia health will improve numerous aspects of your health and help you stay mobile into old age.

3. Eye nutrients 

If we took screens and fascia out of the equation many people would still struggle with their eyesight because their diet lacks the nutrients that our eyes need. Similarly to not getting enough nutrients for our hormones to thrive, if we don’t get enough nutrients in our diet that are supportive to our eyes, this can come the cost of our vision and long term eye health.

Nutrients such vitamin A, C and E, along with omega 3’s and zinc are all crucial to eye health and therefore vision. Most people aren’t getting enough of these and those who turn to synthetic supplements aren’t getting the full bioavailability that whole foods bring. 

By restoring these nutrients to our diet, we help give the eyes what they need to work effectively and over time these nutrients may improve eyesight.

4. Changing focus

Most people initially develop myopia through what is called pseudo myopia, which is where the eye muscles that help the eye focus become stuck in a spasm, this is caused by focusing on close up vision for too long, such as close up screen use. Pseudo myopia and its muscular spams cause long distance vision to become slightly blurred. 

Naturally, people then head to the opticians and get prescribed glasses. The issue began due to too much screen time and close up viewing. In the modern day less and less people are using their sight to see far distances and therefore their eyes are adapting to short sighted vision only.

This is where focusing comes in, when we practising focusing on the distance just out of readable range, we train the muscles of the eye to release and allow long sight vision to take place, this takes practice but can really help your eyesight. It isn't about squinting, it's about relaxing your eyes, blinking gently and allowing your eyes to refocus naturally.

Any activity or sport that will require a change in focus is also one that will help your eyesight, sports such as tennis, golf, badminton and archery which are all known help improve eyesight. 

5. Lower inflammation 

As with fascia, where excess tightness can cause a strain on our eyes, the higher our inflammation levels are, the more likely we are to suffer from bad eye health and therefore eyesight. Lowering inflammation is as simple as giving your body what it needs to detoxify  effectively and avoiding as many toxins as is possible for you. 

High inflammation levels can sometimes cause what is often referred to as eye “floaters” which appear in our vision. However, high inflammation isn’t the only thing that can cause this. 

Reducing the burden that your body is under will help improve eye health since all the connective tissues, sockets and muscles that the surround the eyes, will be under much less strain.

6. Decrease dependance 

If you don’t rely on your glasses to see everything, reducing your dependance on glasses is a big first step towards healing your eyesight. As mentioned above, once pseudo myopia takes hold people tend to get glasses, this then leads to lens induced myopia where the eyeball begins to grow longer and thus increasing the severity of the myopia or shortsightedness.

Close up viewing with glasses on is often over-correction for those with short sightedness. In areas of your life where you don’t need glasses, trial taking them off and spending more time without them. Of course for cases where you really do need them such as driving make sure you definitely still wear them.

Overtime with less dependance on your glasses and wearing them less for close up viewing (if shortsighted) you may find your prescription becomes too strong as your eyesight improves and you may be able to lower your prescription or even go glasses free.

Summary

We are told that much like our teeth, our eyes, once they start to decline cannot get better unless we take drastic action, in the case of our eyes getting surgery such as LASIK. But no one questions why their eyesight became worse in the first place and if a life of ever increasing prescriptions is truly the answer. This also isn’t some crazy idea either, there are thousands of research studies published on pseudo myopia and lens induced myopia. 

Both giving your eyes the environment they need to thrive as well as re-training them to operate correctly again is how you heal your eyesight or at the very east protect your eye health for life.