The process of aging is of particular concern for Americans. This concern is not only related to the likelihood of increasing your chances of developing diseases such as heart disease and diabetes, but more importantly, to concerns about losing your eyesight. As we age the chances that we will develop age-related vision conditions and disorders such as Presbyopia, blurry eyesight, Macular Degeneration, Cataracts, and Glaucoma increase.
Therefore, many people believe that it is very difficult if not impossible to improve your vision naturally as you get older due to concerns that the visual system begins to deteriorate at that stage of life. These people also believe that they are stuck with their glasses or contacts for life. So the question is can aging prevent you from improving your vision naturally?
The answer to that question is no. While aging is inevitable, when it comes to improving, protecting and preserving your precious eyesight, there are things that you can do to reduce or slow the negative effects of aging on the visual system. For instance, you can take preventive steps in terms of nutrition and eye exercises that can reduce the negative effects of aging on the eyes.
In terms of exercise, eye exercises are an alternative way to improve your vision naturally without glasses. These simple and easy to perform techniques strengthen the visual system thereby helping you to improve your vision. They also improve the focusing power of the eyes through vision training eye exercise techniques. As we get older circulation to the blood vessels of the eyes decreases leading to poor eyesight. These techniques improve blood flow and circulation to the visual system thereby improving your eyesight. The question is can these eye exercises help improve vision even in older people? Well, the answer to this question is yes.
There is actually mainstream scientific evidence available that backs up the claim that eye exercises can improve vision in older adults. This scientific research study was spearheaded by the National Institute on Aging. It has shown that elderly adults can quickly improve their vision with a branch of eye exercises called Perceptual Training. Perceptual training relates to the ability to improve a variety of visual skills by exposing a person repeatedly to activities involving various stimuli. This improves the way the brain processes visual information by strengthening the connection between the brain and eyes through neuroplasticity.
A scientific study involving this branch of eye exercises known as perceptual training was published in the November online issue of the Journal of Vision. It was conducted by a team of researchers from the University of California and Boston University. A professor of psychology at U.C.R and his team of researchers at these colleges did a series of experiments. This way they were able to determine whether or not a series of repeated visual tasks and activities that go beyond the limits of what a person could see would improve vision in the elderly.
The findings of the study revealed that activities related to exposing the elderly test subjects to different stimuli repeatedly, resulted in a significant and rapid improvement in elderly people’s vision. The results of these tests showed that these techniques enabled them to see as clearly as college-aged adults in 2 days! The results were maintained for a 3 month period. These results revealed that such vision training activities can actually reverse the negative effects of aging on the visual system. This is due to the fact that elderly people actually have a higher degree of brain plasticity.
While the negative effects of aging are inevitable, the visual system is resilient and can respond positively to eye exercises. A branch of eye exercises called perceptual training can re-build the visual system and ultimately, as research shows, restore it to a normal function once again.