Eye Exercises for Reading Glasses

If you wear reading glasses for close-up work, you will need to do some simple eye exercises to keep your eyes healthy and to reduce eyestrain. Taking frequent breaks and focusing your eyes on different objects around the room will keep your eye lens flexible and prevent bloodshot eyes. If you fail to exercise your eyes while wearing reading glasses, you may find yourself suffering from headaches, painful dry eyes and blurry vision.

Farsightedness

• As people age, their eye lens becomes stiffer and cannot focus on objects that are close to the face. Most people will need reading glasses as they reach middle age. The aging eye lens begins to have difficulty bending light to focus on objects. If you are a new glasses wearer, you should be aware that your eyes can still benefit from doing eye exercises to improve vision and lens flexibility. Even though you may need a stronger prescription every year, doing regular eye exercises can help improve coordination and focus to a certain extent.

Research

• The National Eye Institute has concluded that performing regular eye exercises can help people with macular degeneration and glaucoma, but is inconclusive on whether eye exercises improve farsightedness or nearsightedness. Nevertheless, doing eye exercises at home when you have your reading glasses on can prevent eyestrain and headaches.

Eye Exercises

• One way to exercise the eyes is to move your eyes straight up, hold it for a few seconds and then look straight down for a few seconds, all without moving your head. Look from side to side, holding each pose for several seconds. Focus on objects at different distances to exercise the lens. If you repeat this procedure several times during a reading session, then you should be able to keep your eyes from getting fatigued. Doing eye exercises every day can help you with coordination and focus in every activity, not just when you are reading or looking at an object up close.

Hydration

• In addition to doing eye exercises, you should keep your eyes hydrated by using saline drops and anti-redness drops found at your local drugstore. Having moist eyes will help you do your eye exercises easier. Make sure to blink at least every 10 seconds, since people wearing reading glasses while reading or working on a computer have a tendency to forget about blinking. Dry eyes are a major culprit of eyestrain and pain. To increase the moisture content of your eyes, you should be sure to drink eight glasses of fresh water per day and more if you sweat heavily.