Our eye muscles are the most vital components of sight. In order to see or analyse an object, the eyeball must focus on it. The six muscles that allow each eyeball to look up, down, sideways and obliquely also hold the eyeball steady so that you can fix your gaze, even when your head is moving.
It’s vital that both eyes are coordinated, otherwise you might see double. If the muscles are weak, this coordination may not be perfect and the eyes may be lazy or even develop a squint. I suspect that is why your little girl has been prescribed a patch over her ‘good’ eye so that the other eye has to work harder and tone up its muscles.
The eye muscles usually become weaker because of a trauma at birth or before. The nerve centre in the midbrain that controls the eye muscles may have been starved of oxygen for a brief period, because the blood supply had been impaired. Also, the pressure on the skull of the newborn when it passes through a very tight birth canal is enough in itself to cause a trauma. Nutritional deficiencies when a woman is pregnant or in a growing child may cause general fatigue, which can lead to weak eye muscles. The very delicate muscles behind the lenses of the eye may also be involved.
You need to understand that the eye works as a camera. Light enters through an aperture – the pupil which dilates or constricts according to the brightness of the light (When you look at a very bright light which might damage the sensitive retina, the pupils constrict in order to protect it.)
What you see is projected on to the retina. In order to get a sharp, clear image, the eye needs to gauge the focal length correctly. The muscles behind the lens control the point at which your eyes focus by causing the lens to automatically flatten or thicken, thus shortening or lengthening the distance to the focal point – exactly as you would focus the lens on a camera.
These little muscles are controlled by nerves in the midbrain, which continuously assimilates what you are looking at and prompts the muscles to respond accordingly. Sometimes the nerve centre becomes weak due to trauma or to genetic problems, so that the nerves fail to tell the muscles to change the size of the lenses. The result is long or short sight. To correct this problem and focus the image clearly an additional lens is needed: spectacles, in other words.
Here are my suggestions for helping your daughter’s sight:
- Make sure her nutrition is good; avoid bought soft drinks, especially fizzy ones (because of the sugar, caffeine and additives), excess cheese, pizza, sweets, chocolate and ready-made and processed foods.
- Give her a cup of freshly squeezed organic carrot, apple and celery juice every other day for two months.
- Twice a week for three months, massage her neck and shoulders with Junior Massage Oil or Lifestyle Massage Oil, or make your own with two tablespoonfuls of baby oil, two drops of eucalyptus essential oil and five drops of lavender oil. Focus on the neck. This will improve blood flow to the brain and help the delicate nerves that control the various eye muscles.
- Give her Vitasorb multivitamins by Biocare :six drops daily on the tongue for two months.
Do the following eye exercises with your child:
- Keep the head still: only the eyes should move. Hold each position for five seconds and repeat five times. Between each set, rub your palms so that the friction heats them up and cup both eyes with your hands so that the heat of the palms is in contact with your eyes.
- Look up and then look down.
- Look to the right and then to the left.
- Look right and up, then down and left.
- Look up and left, then down and right
- Put your index finger in front of your nose and look at it. Move the finger in a circle and follow it with your eyes. Do this five times in one direction, then five times in the other.
- Look at a distant object, gaze for five seconds, then at the tip of your nose for five seconds.
- n a dark room, place a candle in front of you. Gaze at it for five seconds, then away for five seconds.
