The famous Beatle Sir Paul Maccartney was recently featured on the Podcast where he explained how eye exercises or eye yoga has saved him from needing glasses. It turns out this is not news, he has been making these claims and preaching about these eye exercises to improve vision for some time now. There is even an old youtube video of him walking people through it. This is one of the oldest and longest running myths about the eyes and really stems from a poor understanding of physics and how the eyes work. So let’s break down how the eyes really work.
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The eyes and the focusing system is incredibly complex and even for most healthcare professionals, if they are not a specialist in this area, they probably still don't fully understand how it works.
The eye exercises that Sir Paul Maccartney has been teaching is just looking up down left right and the diagonals directions and doing a few sets of these along looking at the tip of his nose and repeating that several times.
The eyes have 6 pairs of “external eye muscles” we call the extra ocular muscles. And they allow your eyes to look up down left and right, and they also have these torsional muscles that allow your eyes to twist and turn - whenever your turning your head and tilt your head from side to side. That way your eyes stay in alignment and you don't end up seeing double vision.
So looking up and down and side to side, that really isnt going to do anything and for sure is not going to improve vision. It may help with eyestrain and if I was going to be very generous- maybe doing these alone could help with eye coordination after having a head injury.
But that again is being pretty generous. The focusing on your nose bit is really the only thing that has some mild truth to it.
You see your eyeballs have three distinct muscles within them, 2 of which are part of the iris, the colored part of your eye. Yeah, those are in fact 2 different muscles working together to help make your pupil either really large, or really small.
And when focusing on a near object your pupils constrict and get small creating what is called a pinhole effect. which will increase your ability to focus on a near object basically improving what is called your depth of field or making your range of clear vision a little bit wider.
You can even test this principle out on your own by creating a little pinhole size with your fingers like this over an eye and you should see things in the distance and up close seem just a little bit sharper.
The other muscle inside the eye which is the real powerhouse for seeing up close is called the ciliary body, and when you flex this muscle it relaxes the tension on the crystalline lens inside your eye
Which is kind of like a glasses lens except it's flexible and allows you to focus on near objects
So when Paul Mccartney has been doing the eye exercises, this eye yoga where he looks at his nose, He has been essentially teaching his muscle to flex more inside the eye to relax the lens, and allow him to focus better up close.
And this is not medical news, doing these types of pencil pushup exercises has been long used to help with reading ability for children with a condition called accommodative insufficiency where they are not able to fully coordinate the use of those muscles.
as well as for people who have had traumatic brain injury or any sort of head injury because most of the those cases they also have trouble with coordination using these muscles.
This is commonly used in an evidence based eyecare practice called Vision Therapy - which involves doing prescribed eye exercises to help people with lazy eye, double vision, and neurological conditions.
BUT Still with that part even being somewhat true - There are many more factors at play with the eyes that makes doing eye yoga not a real science and why eye doctors laugh or do an eye roll when they hear people talk about this.
For someone like Paul Mccartney - who is in his late 70s and claims to not need glasses, he is well past what we call Presbyopia -which sets in around the age of 50, that is where the lens inside the eye grows thick and hardens,
and with that lens hardening, even if you are using that muscle inside your eye to focus, the lens still cannot change shape and you can no longer use it to focus on near objects
This is why people over 50 usually need bifocals or reading glasses.
It is just a normal part of aging.
That means for someone like Paul who is 78, even though he is flexing his muscles to focus on his nose, that lens inside his eye is not able to flex and so it is not really what is giving him good vision.
Now I personally do not know Paul McCartney's eye health and even if I did I would not share it due to HIPPA laws.
But if really doesn't need to use reading glasses or prescription glasses, here are probably the reasons why.
Number 1 is that as we age our pupils get smaller and smaller, and when we are reading up close the pupils get smaller still. So when Paul is focusing on a near object his pupils get so small the pinhole effect essentially gets better and it gives him a wider range of clear vision. And thats really helpful for looking at things like your phone or reading a book.
Again it just gives you more leeway to trombone your way to finding that sweet spot.
The second reason is that at least one or both of his eyes are probably mildly nearsighted.
that means he can see up close a little bit easier and he has just gotten used to things in the distance being a little bit blurry but enough for him to "get by".
Again I don't know what his visual acuity is but I will tell you Paul if you ever watch this and you want to come out to our clinic so we can do a thorough test, you are always welcome.
Or perhaps like many people in their 70s they have had something like cataract surgery where they remove that hardened lens inside the eye and replace it with a new implant.
and thankfully these days we have really advanced technologies which allow for your implants to be either multifocal or trifocal to give you that extra clear distance vision as well as up close.
now again I dont know if Paul has already had cataract surgery or not, I know he has been a long time vegetarian advocate and studies do show that people who eat more vegetables such as vegetarians or vegans have a less risk for things like cataracts.
As far as the argument for eye yoga or doing eye exercises to improve vision or reverse the need for prescription glasses. Unfortunately there is just little to no evidence that suggest that this is even possible.
almost all anecdotal reports from people claiming it helped them can be explained by some other mechanism at play.
But I will tell you that if there was ever good evidence that suggests that doing eye yoga or eye exercises could prevent or reverse the need for glasses, eye doctors would instantly jump on board and recommending it and prescribing it for people
But unfortunately, right now, there is just no evidence for it.
but again please dont confuse these types of exercises, this eye yoga that we are talking about here with what is called vision therapy, which is a well documented and study subspecialty of eyecare which really does help people witch certain eye conditions.
so if you are somebody who is a kid with lazy eye, or double vision or if you have had brain injury in any way and your having trouble focusing then definitely try to find someone in your area that offers something like vision therapy.
but hey if you found value in this video, click that like button for me and let me know in the comments what your thoughts are on all of this with eye yoga, Have you tried it yourself? any positive or negative sort of issue with it? Just, what are your thoughts? Drop them in the comment section below.
And stay tuned and make sure your subscribed to the channel because I hope to have one of my vision therapist friends come on the channel so we can break down these myths and issues with eye focusing and all of that a little bit more.
and please understand I know a lot of people want something like eye exercises to work, I personally try to stay open minded about this but I myself have to follow evidence based practices.
And also please understand the little we have gone over in this video is barely scratching the surface for how complex the eye coordination and eye teaming really is
And as always if you are having problems with your eyes and vision be sure to call your local eye doctor, right away.
Otherwise keep an eye on it and we will talk to you soon.