Please Recommend Effective Blinking Exercises You've Used

[CJ L.]

If anyone has seen any semblance of improvement from a particular blinking exercise, could you post it here? Thanks!

[Guest]

One area where they help me a LOT is when using the computer - I use the Time Out app by Dejal to remind me to blink.

Some background in this thread: http://forum.dryeyezone.com/forum/dr...lar-treatments

Currently, I'm doing them much the way Dr. Korb (I think it was him) demonstrated in a video presentation I watched: take a moment to ensure the lids are fully closed (not squeezing them, only concentrating on the feel of the lids making contact across the their entire width)... then I gently squeeze 4 times (and I concentrate when I do this, paying attention to ensure I am squeezing across the entire width of my eyelids)... then I open my eyes. Regarding the degree of gentle squeeze... if I put my index finger on the skin beside the outside corner of each eye (over the orbital bone), I can barely feel the skin moving when I do the squeezes... so it's very gentle. My goal is to come close to mimicking what a proper natural blink would do, to train my muscles to eventually do that on their own even when I'm not thinking about it.

Every 60 seconds when the Time Out app reminder goes off, I gently close my eyes... and do the blinking exercise in the above paragraph (i.e. 4 gentle squeezes) - it takes about 3-5 seconds in total.

Important: the every 60 seconds thing did NOT come from Dr. Korb's video... that is a timing that I use because doing it less often when on the computer leaves my eyes much more dry.

I also have Time Out set to remind me to blink every 10 seconds... for this break, I use the Time Out Actions feature described in their blog as follows:

"And if once per minute isn't enough, you can add as many as you want on the Actions page, spaced out by setting the offset After Start, like this to have it flash every 10 seconds:" See full details here >>>> https://www.dejal.com/blog/2019/02/t...link-reminders

When the screen flashes every 10 seconds, I concentrate on performing a single complete blink, ensuring my lids touch across the entire width of the lid margin, and doing a gentle squeeze.

My brain tunes out the flashing screen and blink reminders after a while... so every day I change the colour of the reminders that go off every 60 seconds, as well as the Action flashes that happen every 10 seconds. This really helps me notice them more.

I also try to do the Korb-style, 4-squeeze blinking exercise as many times a day as I can remember when I'm NOT at my computer. I'm trying to go really hard core with this, because I when I do it a lot, my MG's look a lot better, and my eyes feel a LOT less dry. I think it'll take intensive effort over many months to re-train my brain to blink often (and completely) automatically, if it's possible at all... so we'll see.

I've been listening to audiobooks about neuroplasticity and some of the things people have been able to pull off with persistent effort... the most dramatic case reports came from those who put in a hell of a lot of time doing exercises to retrain their brain for whatever it was they were trying to fix. That's a big reason why I've been trying to go really hard core about doing these blinking exercises, aside from the fact that my eyes simply feel better when I do this.

Anyhow, your mileage may vary... but I think these are great to do often, if you can find a way to remind yourself to actually do them. :-)

Oh, and one more thing... definitely listen to your body if you try to do them as often as I've been doing them. When I first started, after the first hour of doing them every minute, my eyelid muscles felt sore and tired. So I learned to back off, and just rest my eyes before it got to that point. But now, my eyelid muscles are stronger, I guess... so on a day like today, for example, where I've done them literally over 400 times today (that's 8 hours - or 480 minutes - of 4 very gentle squeezes every minute, for a grand total of 1600 today), my eyelid muscles are only a little bit tired (it's taken almost 2 months of daily practice to work up to this though). The plan is to meditate and listen to an audiobook for the rest of my evening now (with my eyes closed in a dimly lit room), which will allow my eyelid muscles to rest from all that work.

Another thing I've noticed... it used to be that if I lay down outside and closed my eyes to just chill out and enjoy the sun, I'd notice that my eyes would often open a crack once I got really relaxed, usually at the sides of my eyes near my temples. That doesn't happen anymore. I'm assuming my eyelid muscles were just being lazy/weak back then and that's why they'd creep open a bit? Who knows...