Is it really useful to do eye exercises for more than ten years?

Data on myopia in children and adolescents

Data released by the National Center for Disease Control and Prevention on March 31 this year showed that the overall myopia rate among children and adolescents in my country was 51.9% in 2022, down 0.7 percentage points from 2021. The overall myopia rate among primary and secondary school students who were already myopic in 2022 was 36.7%; the overall myopia rate among junior high school students was 71.4%; and the overall myopia rate among high school students was 81.2%.

Eye exercises

The peak period for myopia is between 6 and 18 years old. Children at this stage are in the learning period and often suffer from eye fatigue. In addition, irregular eye habits can easily lead to myopia. In response to this phenomenon, my country began to popularize eye exercises as early as the 1960s.

Eye exercises have a profound impact on every Chinese child and carry the memories of several generations. As a tradition of Chinese school culture, it has been with us since we entered primary school.

Do eye exercises really work?

Eye exercises are a kind of eye health exercise. It is a massage therapy based on Chinese medicine's massage and acupoint massage, combined with medical sports. When children read, their eyes converge, their pupils shrink, and their lenses protrude forward. These three reflexes are prone to visual fatigue. Therefore, if you read for too long, you will experience obvious symptoms of visual fatigue and discomfort in the head and neck. Eye exercises stimulate nerves, enhance blood circulation in the eyes, relax the muscles in the eyes, and relieve eye fatigue in a short time by massaging the acupoints and skin muscles around the eyes.

Eye exercises are not the same as rubbing your eyes

Of course, before doing eye exercises, you must ensure that your hands are clean to avoid bacterial infection of the eyes. At the same time, you must adhere to the eight-character principle of "accurate, sufficient time, sufficient amount, and long-term", that is, the acupoints must be accurate, the massage must be strong enough to feel soreness and swelling, and the massage time must be sufficient. Only in this way can it protect the eyes and relieve eye fatigue.