Is it really useless to do eye exercises since childhood?

The theoretical basis of eye exercises is qigong, massage and acupoint theory. In the absence of scientific basis, at the beginning of the promotion of eye exercises, some people claimed that the effect was remarkable: in less than half a year in a primary school in Shanghai, 34 nearsighted students returned to normal, including a girl with a right eye of 0.2 and a left eye of 0.3. After doing eye exercises twice a day for half a year, the vision recovered to 1.2 and 1.0 respectively. In fact, Shanghai Eye Disease Prevention and Control Center has long pointed out that there are obvious problems in the experimental setup supporting eye exercises.

The experimental basis does not meet the modern scientific experimental standards, and there is no scientific basis to prove that eye exercises can prevent myopia. Modern medicine believes that myopia is mainly due to the tension of the eyelashes, which leads to the extension of the axial length. There is no obvious relationship between the compression position of eye exercises and the blood supply of ciliary muscle and eyeball. It is impossible to relax the tense ciliary muscles, let alone treat myopia. Although many people think that doing eye exercises can at least relieve eye fatigue, according to the experiment of Shanghai Eye Disease Prevention and Control Center, the effect of eye protection for 5 minutes is obviously better than doing eye exercises.

Vision training is not original in China, and there is a famous Bates therapy similar to this in the world. 1920 William Bates, an American ophthalmologist, said that after 37 years of clinical practice, he believed that all vision problems were caused by eye fatigue and nervous tension. As long as your eyes are relaxed, you can restore your normal vision. Therefore, he created a set of eye exercises. This theory was all the rage, but it was regarded as a "false and misleading" advertisement by the US Federal Trade Commission at 1929. Many ophthalmologists also believe that Bates's theory is inconsistent with scientific facts. For eye diseases, doing exercise will only delay medication and surgical treatment, resulting in permanent vision damage. In fact, there are many kinds of Bates therapy, but in Europe and America, the medical community generally believes that this therapy has no scientific basis and its curative effect is unreliable.

In 2004, the American Academy of Ophthalmology published a research statement on various "eye exercises". It says various behavioral therapies, including eye exercises, muscle relaxation, eye massage and so on. Whether used alone or in combination, there is no evidence that these therapies can significantly improve vision. The International Vision Correction Association has also issued a similar statement.