Exercise is helping!

[odydnas]

I know there are a few of you with very red and irritated inner eyelids like mine (in addition to other problems). Well, I have been on leave from work for about a month, and I have been going to the gym everyday for one hour doing some kind of aerobic exercise to get my heart pumping. I've started to notice that for 1-2 hours after I exercise, my inner eyes are not as red and are actually a nice healthy pink and I actually feel less irritation! I can now tolerate wearing my contacts while working out (improvement!!), which is great because trying being a -10 myope and running...haha. All my blood vessels on my eyelids are still there though, unfortunately.

I believe that exercise is really helping me bring down the inflammation in my eyes (in addition to the other things we're all doing). I hope every gets to exercise every single day, but I know how hard that can be. When I was working, I had to spend every minute that I was away from work at home, nursing my eyes because I could not open them. There was no way I could have made it to the gym M-F.

So I wanted to start a thread to let everyone know that exercise is helping me, and to help come up with ways that we can exercise at home everyday where our eyes are most comfortable and we can pamper them and do a quick warm compress if we need to. Plus, no driving to the gym and exposing our eyes to the outdoors.

Here are some things I can come up with:

1. Jump rope at home
2. Aerobics exercise DVDs
3. Punching bag
4. stationary bike for those that can afford it (we can close our eyes!)
5. Dancing

Please keep the ideas coming!

thanks!

[rubyslippers]

Exercise helps me too. Once I got my eyes stabilized with the new contacts I was again able to go outside and get back to running which I have done off and on for 14 years of my life. On the days I run, my eyes are most definitely better. I feel like it gets the oil flowing or something. In fact today, for the first time in 9 months, within an hour of my run, my eyes actually watered when I was cutting up onions!

[LasikLady]

This is funny. I was actually just thinking this before I logged on.
I took a 2.5 mile brisk walk with my husband and before the walk I was feeling some irritation in my eyes. After the walk it's feeling a whole lot better. That is always the case, my eyes always feel better with aerobic exercise. You're right, it's like the oils get flowing or something. I don't think it can only be attributed to less inflamation because the effects are immediate. Or maybe it is? Whatever the case it does work.

[Toril]

...I also usually see a postive effect on my eyes after going to the gym, doing yoga, going for a long walk, etc.! And..yes...I usually use less drops the next 1-2 hours. I've often been wondering what is causing this; if it's the endorphins reducing the inflammation, oils flowing better or what.

Toril

[odydnas]

For me, you can actually see the redness go away for a couple hours...and the effects are cumulative. I feel better now after a month of working out than in the beginning.

It is hard enough for people with normal eyes to get to the gym...it's so much harder for us especially when we have trouble keeping our eyes open and just want to sit at home and pamper them. Exercise makes our eyes feel better, but your eyes have to feel good enough to get up and out to exercise...that's the difficult part.

Like you Toril, I have no idea how it helps...except that I know it does and I just want to encourage everyone on this board to do this everyday (if you already don't) and to come up with ways we can exercise at home on the days that our eyes feel so bad that we can't leave the house to run or go to the gym.

[rubyslippers]

Exercise also greatly increases circulation. Circulation to damaged tissue is one of the ways to reduce pain, inflammation, and cause healing. Exercise, IMO, makes all the fluids in the body work better. Additionally, maybe the exercise induced "fever" makes the oil flow.

[Mika]

I exercise everyday at home
one of the most effective and easy to do exercise is
ROPE JUMPING. u just need a rope and jump !
its de-stressing and help my eyes a bit
So i urge everyone to rope jump ..! its easy, time consuming, safe and according to research, MUCH better than jogging! (just type rope jumping on the net and u'll see its much better!!)

[blackberry]

Off to the gym

I was going to skip going to the gym today, but everyone on this post has inspired me. My eyes also always feel better after a workout. Maybe it's the endorphins?

[marykate]

I've been so focused on doing things directly for my eyes such as fish/flax oil, eye drops, find a doctor, etc etc that I've completely forgotten about exercise. Thanks for bringing this up...I'm definitely going to jumproping at home since leaving the house is too painful.