Eyenvisioncare Store & Info Center

Do you know what those numbers used to refer to your eyes like 20/20, 20/40, and really mean? Here’s the answer. you read the Snellen eye chart from a distance of 20 feet or 6 meters if your metric. Someone with 20/20 vision can see as well as the average person when looking at the Snellen eye chart from 20 feet away. If your vision is 20/40, you are seeing like that normal person would see if he or she were standing 40 feet from the chart, and so on. A person with better-than-normal 20/10 vision, on the other hand, can see as well as someone standing 10 feet from the chart. If your vision is 20/200 with corrective lenses looking at the top letter, you’re considered legally blind.

Eyes like a hawk? Birds of prey have about 20/2 vision. Their eyes are much smaller than our eyes, but are packed with far more light-sensing cells than human eyes. 

Have you ever come across those home programs that promise to improve your sight if you buy their product? There’s no evidence to support that such programs help improve you of anything including your hard-earned cash. The creators and distributors of the “See Clearly” method—a program of exercises, massage, positive affirmations, and other self-guided activities had to pay $200,000 in restitution for making false promises to consumers. Despite a money-back guarantee, consumers found it  impossible to get hold of a anybody when they called to get back the $350 they spent on the program. So don’t be fooled by any self administered programs of eye exercises, massage, heat/cold, and acupressure like the “See Clearly” method or the Bates Method. They don’t work.

Vision therapy, on the other hand, can be administered by an optometrist. This is a sort of physical therapy given to train the eyes and brain in ways that can effectively relieve common visual problems such as lazy eye, crossed eyes, double vision, and convergence insufficiency. Some reading and learning disabilities in children can be helped with vision therapy, if the child’s disability has to do with visual obstacles that interfere with reading and visual learning. But vision therapy is not used to treat myopia, presbyopia, or blinding eye diseases.