Seeing the Future By James Goss      You may think this article has nothing to do with the R/C hobby, but in a way it does. Being able to see your plane in flight is more important than any other aspect I can think of. The phrase “You can't fly what you can't see” is having more and more meaning for me, as I get older.  In our society it seems to be common for us humans to require eyeglasses, especially for reading small print, by the time we are in our late forties. Just look around and see how many folks you can find who are in their late forties and are not requiring reading glasses to see small print. I know that I was 49 or 50 when my eyes started to go south and my arms kept getting shorter and shorter until I could not reach far enough to read small print. I don't think you will find many eye doctors that will agree with what you are about to read. Of course selling eyeglasses is there business. Why do you think the oil companies are not interested in running your car on water? Where would the profit be? Eye doctors could advise a person of alternatives before they sell us eyeglasses if they had a mind to. This system that I am going to describe for you is very simple and I think it really does work to improve your eyesight. I am not recommending that you should do this, but I thought you might like to read about it.      Benjamin Franklin did us a great service when he invented eyeglasses, but he would have been of more service to us if he had given us the following information: Exercise your eyes! That's right, exercising the eye muscles is the key to keeping your eyesight. Your eye has six muscles that control its movement and holds the shape of the eyeball intact. These muscles are just like any other muscle in your body except they are very tiny in comparison. Like other muscles in your body they will also loose their muscle tone if they are not used on a regular basis. Muscle tone describes a muscle that has firmness and is capable of doing more work when called upon to do so than one without tone. To have muscle tone the muscle must be exercised on a regular basis, so exercise is the key to muscle tone.      Check this out, walk up to someone from his or her side and address them as to get their attention. They will not move their eyes to see who it is; they will move their whole head around to see who it is. It is a fact that we move our head and neck instead of out eyes to see our environment. Our neck gets plenty of exercise while our eyes get little if any. Have you ever noticed how good it feels to rub your eyes when they are tired? Of course your eyes have no feelings so it is the muscles that are responding. If we started exercising our eyes at an early age, say in the teen years, we may never need glasses for reading purposes. It may even help other eye conditions as well. When you are born, or shortly there after, your eyes form their perfect shape for being able to focus the light from objects just right so you will see clearly. Everything is down hill from there. As we get older and our eye muscles get out of shape and weak, the eyeball is allowed to change its shape. This causes the focal point of the eye to be different from what it was at an early age.      I know it is the shape of my eye that is failing me at this time and here is a simple test to prove it. Hold some writing in front of you that you can't quite make out the print. Now squint your eyes and the print will clear up. You are using your eye muscles to squeeze the eyeball back to its old shape that gives the proper focus. So I am sure it is the six eye muscles that are at fault and not the eye itself when it comes to reading small print.     About seven years back I was attending a video science conference held in Colorado Springs. I had just been selected the Technical Teacher of the year for 1995 in the state of Alabama and as a result I had $1000 that I could spend in the science field. I used this money to purchase science videos dealing with all types of future science discoveries, one of them had an eye doctor discussing care of the eyes by exercising them. She had a volunteer from the audience to come on stage. This person did need reading glasses and was given a list to read without her glasses. The reading print got smaller and smaller as she scanned down the page. She was able to read a few lines and was asked to mark where she stopped. The eye doctor had her to do some simple eye exercises that last for about one minute and had her to read the page again. This time she was able to read several lines past where she had marked before. Several other volunteers were ask to do the same test and all had the same results, they had better focus after the eye exercise routine. The vision would go back as time went on, but it did prove that exercise would help the eyes. With regular eye exercise each day the vision will slowly improve.      I have started this program several times since then but always got sidetracked with work and all. I have started the program again and plan to stick with it this go around. It only takes five minutes each day and if I can't spend five minutes to improve my eyes I am in really bad shape. I have also found that if you get your heart rate up before you do the eye exercises the results are more positive. I like to walk on the treadmill for about ten minutes before I start the eye routine. This seems to get the blood really flowing and the eye muscles can get pumped. Just like any other workout your eyes will feel very relaxed when you finish, and you can seem mush clearer than before.     The exercises mainly involve moving the eye to their extremities or the outermost perimeters of the eye instead of moving the head. Keep your head fixed and looking straight ahead during all the exercise movements. Exercise Number One: Move the eyes from 9 o'clock to 3 o'clock in a level line. Hold the eyes at the maximum position for about three seconds. Do about 15 repetitions for each of the exercises. Exercise Number Two: Move the eyes from 9 o'clock through 12 o'clock over to 3 o'clock in an arch movement. Number Three: Scan your eyes from 9 o'clock through 6 o'clock to 3 o'clock. Number Four: Move the eyes in a complete circle while at their extreme position, both directions. Number Five: Close your eyes and squeeze them as tight as you can and then open them as wide as you can. Number Seven: Using your index finger rub across the top of each eye starting at the top of your nose and move toward your ear. Number Eight: Same as seven except rub across the bottom of the eyes starting at the nose and rubbing toward the ear. While rubbing let your finger put a little pressure on the eye, not too much but just enough to feel it. Number Nine: Finally, pinch the skin on your cheek just below the eye and give it a good shake for about 30 seconds. The workout  will take about five minutes and when finished your eyes will feel refreshed. After a few weeks you may want to increase the eye workout to ten minutes.      The six eye muscles will have had a good workout and with time your reading vision will improve. Remember, we have been letting these muscles sit mostly idle for the last fifty years so it will take a little time to turn things around. If we do the workout every day for about three months I think we will see some progress. You may even want to do the routine two or three times a day for faster results. So I look forward in seeing the future and hope to be able to see those little model planes for many years to come. Let me say again I am not recommending that everyone should try this eye workout, but I thought you might be interested in reading about the process.