Do you Squint to Read?
Squint is often referred to as
Lazy Eye, a
Cross Eye or the medical name of Strabismus, it is a medical condition where the eyes have difficulty focusing.
When people have strabismus, they are not able to bring their eyes together to focus on one specific point. The reason people have two eyes is so that they can focus on one object, whether close or in the distance, and form a sort of triangulation by providing a slightly different perspective.
The same process works with ears, which allows people to gauge the distance of the sound. Thus, both eyes are necessary for proper depth perception.
When it comes to people with a squint though, the eyes don't actually line up the way they are supposed to. One eye will often function normally while the other one drifts off to the side a bit. Most of the time this is due to weaker eye muscles on one side of the skull.
The weaker muscles tend to have a preferred position that they will normally fall back to after a few moments. This can cause Double Vision and lack of proper depth perception, two annoying symptoms, but luckily ones that are not life threatening.
Protecting Your Eyesight when it comes to strabismus can be as simple as performing Eye Exercises once or twice a day.
To exercise your eyes, focus on an object approximately twenty feet away from you while looking straight at it. If you have a squint you might notice that after the initial focusing the object will become a little Blurry and may become a Double Vision.
This is when your eye is moving away from the focal point. What you want to do next is turn your head as far to the side so that you can barely see the object out of the corner of your eye.
Now, work on focusing on it with both eyes. Then turn your head in the opposite direction and do the same thing. Finally, look at something as high above you as you can without moving your head and then do the same thing looking down. This will stretch and tone the smooth tissue of the extraocular muscles and can strengthen them over time.
Sometimes, a squint is not just a muscular problem. In all cases it is important to speak with your Eye Care Specialist, Eye Care Professional or opthalmologist to determine what the cause of the condition is with you. Sometimes it is even a brain defect that prohibits your eyes from focusing the way they were meant to.
Strabismus usually occurs when you are a child, and in most cases it will go away by the time you are ten years old. This is not to say that it doesn't occur in adults though, only that it occurs much less frequently than with children.
There are special prism glasses that can redirect your focus if you are an adult with a strabismus, but unfortunately there is no medical procedure that can take care of it at this time.
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Squint to other Eye Conditions
Squint to Protect Your Eyesight