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Comment by emmelaich | Hacker News Reader

Related -- has anyone here tried http://www.glassesoff.com/ and had some success?

It trains the brain rather than affecting the eyes.

I did it. It worked well for me for presbitopia. But it is quite expensive. There are also other -less sophisticated- Gabor wavelet pattern based games for iOS like "Eye Exercise" and "StretchEyes".

No. Looks like it's only for nearsightedness anyway.

I have practiced looking at a pencil end / hair follicle / other small object as close to my eye as possible and then looking at a distant object for years now. I have also read about the Bates method, palming, etc and have tried them on and off over the years.

The close-far method seems to be the only reasonable "exercise" - though no one can tell me for sure whether there is muscles involved (or relaxing said muscles) in looking far away.

Anyway, nothing has helped. I also don't see strong research on the topic however. As an example, doing a one-arm chinup is possible for most people. It can take up to half a decade of structured, regular training.

Maybe fixing eyes is possible, but it requires 30+ mins a day, every day for years. Who knows.

Edit: Also, the strongest studies are the ones comparing Chinese kids in China and Austarlia, where the latter spend more time outdoors and have reliably better eyesight. Not really relevant to adults, but can help when raising your kids.

One of my covid projects is improving my nearsightedness, I'm 20/200+. I've been spending 20 minutes a day doing techniques called Eqyptian Black Dot and Egyptian Letter Gazing plus other techniques I got from a book called The Art of Cosmic Vision by Mantak Chia, a well known Taiji master. I've been doing it now for 7 weeks and have noticed significant improvement in my vision. I'm not going to be driving without glasses any time soon, however, I am increasingly able to function without glasses, which was my main goal.

Your point about the outdoors is also made in the book. We are spending our time in near focus on screens and not using our far vision, as in nature. I now make sure to take time during the day to get outside and do distance gazing and expose my eyes to sunlight.

I printed out an eye chart and have consistent lighting in a room where I use it. My eyes have not improved in the past 5 years of doing exercises on and off.

I recommend printing an eye chart and testing yourself w/ the same lighting and distance from the chart.

Also, keep me updated please (if you remember to, post here or something), genuinely interested.

I am tempted to buy a huge screen and place it across the room from me to have the focus point further away.

I think part of the problem might be that it's focused on one place, rather than close focus. But I guess it's better to be focused further away.

I printed out an eye chart this week to do just that. I also purchased a device for testing and tracking my vision that I just started with: https://www.eyeque.com/visioncheck/ You can email me (davidwitt415 at gmail) if you want me to keep you updated on my progress.

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