> Health and Disease > Eye, Ear, Nose, and Throat

There’s a simple test for your eyesight. It’s in the sky.

On a clear night, find the constellation of Ursa Major, the Big Dipper or Big Bear. Then, take a closer look at the three stars that make up the handle, the bear’s tail.

The bright star in the middle of the handle is called Mizar. It has a "rider" attached to it, named Alcor. With keen eyesight you can resolve the two stars and see the rider clearly. Children usually spot the rider right away. As we age, it becomes a little more difficult. If you cannot detect Alcor at all, it’s time to have your eyes examined!

Failing vision and afflictions of the eye are always a reason for concern. Yet, while modern medicine has an impressive array of devices at its disposal to correct vision, shape corneas, replace a cloudy lens and grind complex tri-focals, there are a number of things you can do to keep your eyes healthy.

Feed, Splash and Exercise

The first is your diet. Poor nutrition is the leading cause of partial or total vision loss, worldwide. That’s quite a surprise considering how inundated we are with good information on nourishment. It requires a whole-body approach. While there is no specific diet to improve eyesight, perhaps it’s time to replace three cups of coffee and a handful of vitamin pills in the morning with a bowl of muesli garnished with fresh strawberries.

Next, have a good look at "power lunch," TV-dinner and eating on the run. There may be room for improvement. While you’re at it, consider an exercise program as well–even if it’s only a daily half-hour walk. Anything you do to enhance your overall well-being is good for your eyesight.

Regular eye exercises are known to improve or correct the inability to focus properly--far sight, near sight and old sight. Focusing involves muscles and these can be trained. The pioneer in this field is the late Dr William H. Bates, a New York ophthalmologist whose book Perfect Sight Without Glasses (1920) continues to be published to this day.

Bates believed mental strain and poor visual habits to be among the major causes of defective eye sight. His best-known exercise for relaxing the eyes and the muscles surrounding them is called "palming."

Sit comfortably in a chair, close your eyes and cover them gently with your cupped hands. This should be done for about 20 minutes twice or three times a day. After the muscles are perfectly relaxed, a number of eye muscle exercises should be performed, such as moving the eyes slowly up and down six times as far as they will go with minimal effort; then move from side to side.

Followers of Dr Bates have developed several hundred eye exercises over the past 70 years. A very simple one involves cold water. After washing your face in the morning, fill your hands with cold water, close your eyes, then splash the water on to your eyes ". . . smartly, but not violently" about 20 times before drying yourself. Repeat the performance three times during the day. It’s essential that the water be really cold and not tepid. If you can make this a habit, the long-term benefits will surprise you.

Heal the Whole Body

In customary holistic fashion, Oriental medicine acknowledges that diseases of the eye are not separate from the rest of the body. It’s never an astigmatism on two legs that walks into a healer’s house. It’s a sick human being. Consequently, good diet, gentle exercise and improvement in mental stability are emphasized.

To eliminate various eye disorders a Shiatsu practitioner begins with a total body treatment, paying special attention to the liver and kidney meridians as both these organs compete with the eye for oxygen. Any malfunctioning of the body affects eyesight and vision. In addition the practitioner would treat a pressure point on the gallbladder meridian. (GB-16, straight above the pupil of the eye and four centimetres above the hair line. The name means "window of the eyes.") He may also recommend adding a mushroom tonic to your diet, the fabled Ling zhi (Chinese) or reishi (Japanese), Ganoderma lucidum. This fungus has an ages-old reputation for improving eyesight as well as generally improving the quality of life. It’s available at health food stores.

Eye compresses are another popular and effective component of traditional Chinese medicine. A pad of gauze or cotton is drenched with green or black tea or water and placed upon the eyelid for about 15 minutes.

A Chinese prescription to beautify and tone the eyes calls for 30 grams of dried chrysanthemum flowers, 10 grams of green tea and five grams of soybean skins steeped in one cup of boiling water for five minutes.

All eye compresses have a calming effect and bring relief to tired and irritated eyes, especially after a day’s work at the computer. They are simple to prepare and easy to apply, but you must take time to do it.

These are only a few of the many things you can do to preserve and improve your eyesight. The most important first step is to know where you stand. Have your eyes examined. A disease like chronic glaucoma is insidious. It has no symptoms and any vision loss caused by it cannot be recovered.

Hajo Hadeler is a writer and Shiatsu pratitioner in Sechelt, BC.

Source: alive #221, March 2001