ESH #70 | How to Improve Night Vision

It’s not just people with eye conditions like retinitis pigmentosa who want to know how to improve night vision. Many people find that as they age their night vision gets worse; they also want to improve it. To get an understanding on how to improve night vision we need to understand what part of the eye we use for night vision and how can we strengthen it.

How to Improve Night Vision 1 : Peripheral Vision Eye Exercise

There are 120 million rods cells in each eye that are responsible for seeing movement and low levels of light. This part of the retina with all the rods cells also provides visual information from your periphery. By strengthening these cells in your periphery you are also helping to improve your vision at night.

By performing the peripheral vision eye exercises you are stimulating the rod cells because you are waving the hands to the side of the face whilst obstructing the central vision. To enhance this process you can perform the peripheral vision exercise in the dark. Because you will be using flashing lights (movement) along with being in the dark, which activates the rod cells even further, you are exercising the rod cells one step further, making it easier to see in the dark.

How to Improve Night Vision: Sunning Eye Exercise

The pupil also plays a part in night vision. It dilates to allow more light to enter the eye. When Sunning you have the eyes closed and face the sun. This fully constricts the pupil. Then as you turn your head to the side the pupil dilates. By constricting and dilating the pupil you are exercising the iris muscles which create the pupil. So when it is night time your pupils can dilate better, allowing more light to enter the eye. As you can imagine, by allowing more light to enter into the eye we can see better in the dark.

How to Improve Night Vision: Palming Eye Exercise

When palming you are spending long periods of time in the dark helping to rest the retina and optic nerve. In doing so we allow the cells in the periphery to be ready to receive information from the eye when there is only a little bit of light.

This can easily be experienced by walking into a dark room with low light. Pay attention to how dark it is in the room and then palm for 10 minutes. When you take your hands away, the room will seem much brighter than before, showing how palming can improve night vision.

 Vision Improvement Question of the week

This week we answer a question from our audience regarding the need for a smart phone when  using the Eye Exercise Express

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