On 11/19/2013 8:51 AM, RobertMacy wrote:
On Tue, 19 Nov 2013 05:36:35 -0700, bob haller wrote:
Crew members on the international space station are not only
required to do X amount of exercising daily like running teathered
on a treadmill, but spend time looking on a device to exercise their
eyes.
otherwise they cold loose the abilty to see things that are far
away. like a few hundred feet. although theycoul still see the earth
at a couple hundred miles away.
use it or loose it.......
Didn't know that.
I started questioning the whole concept of wearing eyeglasses when I
first heard about split personality people having some characters with
20/20 and some characters that required coke bottle bottom glasses.
Seemed like something more than 'camera construction' concept going on
here. Then later, from a TV ad showing 'glasses' with tiny holes to
relax the muscles in your eyes and remove the bias placed upon them by
your glasses. Wearing those glasses for even a short time did some
wild things to my eyes in straightening out the damage from using the
'crutches' of eyeglasses for so many years.
For example, I am slightly near-sighted and have astigmatism in the
left eye. The left eye saw a standard TV not as 4:3 but actually as
3:4 it was so bad. Playing pool the left hand corner looks about 6
inches lower, downhill, those kinds of distortion. However, the left
eye did NOT see any distortion if a pinhole opening were placed in
front of it. That intrigued me, plus I could just as easily read the
labels [tiny printing] on boxes across the room as be able to read a
six point type in a telephone book in front of me! Something else is
going on here. Those glasses, as primitive as they were, actually
reduced my near-sightedness from being restricted driver to not
restricted AND softened the astigmatism so the TV looked more square
than 3:4, but moving the right direction.
Which brings me to the point, Eye exercisers exist! Can we get that
for our home computers? Everybody spends at least an hour in front of
one, why not 'exercize the eyes while there? Like, wear a set of plain
piezo-glass LCD lenses alternatingly blank each eye and simultaneously
flex the 'lens' to focus near, focus far?
Now THAT would help a lot of people.
It would not, because it is bull****. From Quackwatch:
Since ancient times, many people have held the mistaken belief that
poor eyesight can be cured by special eye exercises. This belief was
brought to its highest state of fruition by a one-time reputable
physician, William Horatio Bates, M.D., who in 1920 published The Cure
of Imperfect Eyesight by Treatment Without Glasses.
In 1917, Bates teamed up with Bernarr Macfadden, a well known food
faddist who published the magazine Physical Culture. Together they
offered a course in the Bates System of Eye Exercises for a fee that
included a subscription to the magazine. This venture met with
considerable success and led many people to believe in the Bates
System. However, the big impact of Bates's work materialized after
publication of his book. This book attracted large numbers of
charlatans, quacks, and gullible followers who then published scores
of unscientific books and articles of their own on the subject of
vision. Extolling the Bates System, these authors urged readers to
"throw away" their glasses. Some of these writers even established
schools.
....It should be obvious that these exercises cannot influence eyesight
disorders as Bates claimed. Nearsightedness, farsightedness,
astigmatism, and presbyopia result from inborn and acquired
characteristics of the lens and the eyeball€”which no exercise can
change. As for eye diseases, the only thing the exercises can do is
delay proper medical or surgical treatment and result in permanent
impairment of vision. The claims Bates made in advertising his book
were so dubious that in 1929 the Federal Trade Commission issued a
complaint against him for advertising "falsely or misleadingly."
There is one rational method of eye training and eye
exercises€”orthoptics€”carried out under competent optometric and
medical supervision to correct coordination or binocular vision
problems such as "crossed eyes" and amblyopic ("lazy") eyes. If the
muscles that control eye movements are out of balance, the function of
one eye may be suppressed to avoid double vision. (The suppressed eye
is called an "amblyopic" eye.) Covering the good eye can often
stimulate the amblyopic eye to work again to provide binocular vision
for the patient. Orthoptics, surgery, or a combination of the two
often can improve problems in pointing and focusing the eyes due to
poor eye-muscle control.
Remember: no type of eye exercise can improve a refractive error or
cure any ailment within the eyeball or in any remote part of the body.
http://www.quackwatch.com/01Quackery.../eyequack.html
The article is a good read. It includes quite a list of quack
eye-exercise promoters and the legal action taken against them.