DO EYE EXERCISES IMPROVE VISION?

Self-help programs of eye exercises that claim to reduce or eliminate your need for glasses and contacts have been around since the 1920s. But before you spend time and money on anything that promises you will be able to "throw away your glasses," be aware that these programs remain highly controversial and most vision experts contend there is little or no scientific evidence that shows they work.

In fact, several popular eye exercise programs have been removed from the marketplace for making apparently false claims about their effectiveness.

For example, an Iowa district court in November 2006 halted all sales of See Clearly Method kits that had been marketed for several years by a company called Vision Improvement Technologies as a way to improve vision through eye exercises.

Based on allegations that included misleading advertising, the state court ordered the Iowa company to pay $200,000 into a restitution fund to compensate consumers who had paid about $350 for each of thousands of kits.

In the lawsuit, Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller accused the company of making "dramatic claims for its product that could not be substantiated."

Steven M. Beresford, PhD, is founder and CEO of American Vision Institute (AVI) — the entity behind the original See Clearly Method. Beresford told AllAboutVision.com via e-mail in late 2008: "In our opinion, the Iowa attorney general was paid off by the AOA [American Optometric Association] by means of a bribe or campaign contribution to carry out a proxy attack."

AVI operates a website that offers a new Power Vision Program "consisting of the most effective techniques of the See Clearly Method," according to the company. The Power Vision Program, which AVI claims can "reduce, perhaps even eliminate your dependency on glasses or contact lenses," can be downloaded from the company's website for $35.

Self-help programs like the See Clearly Method, the Power Vision Program and other eye exercise programs promoted online usually claim they can reduce refractive errors such as nearsightedness and astigmatism, as well as presbyopia.

These programs differ from supervised programs of vision therapy prescribed by eye doctors (usually optometrists) to correct certain eye alignment and other binocular vision problems, or to enhance dynamic visual skills for sports vision.