So, you have heard that certain eye exercises can minimize the risk of vision-related problems caused by computer work? That is correct, taking regular vision breaks and relaxing your eyes with vision exercises can reduce the risk of Computer Vision Syndrome and many eyesight disorders associated with eye strain. But whether it is better to get an eye exercise software or stick to old-school eye exercises? Let’s see if eye exercise software is truly your friend or just another enemy to good vision.
What is eye exercise software? In essence, that is a computer program designed to assist/remind people of doing eye exercises. An eye exercise software may be running at the background and pop up at regular intervals of time to remind you to take a vision break. Or, it may be stand alone software which you should start every time you want to exercise your eyes.
The eye exercises included in such software may vary but it is quite likely that you will come across modern versions of the classic eye exercises and relaxation techniques described by W. Bates in his book Perfect Sight Without Glasses. In other words, you may find eye exercises for relaxations as well as different eye exercises for nearsightedness, farsightedness, ageing vision and/or astigmatism.
At this point you may be thinking “If these eye exercises can help me relax my eyes and improve eyesight naturally, why not to do them with the help of a computer program in front of my computer screen?” Well, let’s see.
One of the most important purposes of eye exercises, and particularly of eye exercises for computer users, is to help a person relax their eyes. Obviously, if you take a break but keep on staring at the computer screen, you will not be relaxing your eyes.
Another goal of performing eye exercises is to improve the power and flexibility of the eye muscles. This is usually done with eye exercises that ask you to move your eyes left and right, up and down, as far as you can. A person can do such exercises either by following the movements of their thumb, a pen or by using their imagination. Eye exercise software may include similar vision exercises and you may be asked to follow the movement of an object on the screen. As you can guess, a computer screen is not big enough to offer your eye muscles a full stretch.
It seems that eye exercise software is not a real friend to vision. Perhaps the only good use of such programs is to remind people of taking periodic vision breaks i.e. software that will only remind you to take a break and rest your eyes and not one that will ask you to keep on staring at the screen. If you are really eager to minimize computer-related vision problems by doing eye exercises, stick to traditional eye exercise methods such as palming, eye stretch, alternating focus exercises, green therapy and so on.
