Can Everyone Unfocus Their Eyes on Command?
It’s funny to think that unfocusing your eyes can be a skill that some people are good at, but others just can’t do. Kind of like rolling your tongue, whistling, or wiggling your ears. Can everyone unfocus their eyes on command? Not necessarily. Do we need to be able to? If you want to see objects clearly, yes!
Can You Control Your Eyes’ Focus Willingly?
If you’ve ever tried to find a hidden picture in an abstract image, your ability to focus and unfocus your eyes deliberately is thoroughly tested. You must defocus your eyes to be able to see the picture. Kind of an oxymoron!
You may not know that your eyes focus and unfocus many times each day just to help you see things far away and up close. It usually occurs so naturally that we don’t even know it’s happening.
Some health conditions can keep you from being able to control your eye focus. If you have been able to change the focus of your eyes in the past and find that ability changed, you should see your doctor to address other possible health problems that may exist.
Do You Need to Control Your Eyes Focus?
Focusing and unfocusing your eyes is a very needful thing. You may have thought it was just a natural thing that happened as you stared out into space. Changing the focus of your eyes can help you see objects up close, including things like books to read. If you cannot focus your eyes appropriately, you may experience eye strain, headaches, blurry vision, and a lot of frustration!
You may not even realize that you are having problems unfocusing or focusing your eyes. Making an appointment with your eye doctor can help you figure out whether you have a simple vision issue that can be easily corrected or a more serious underlying health concern.
Why Our Eyes Control Focus Automatically?
Our eyes were made to shift from objects up close to things farther away automatically. Our eye lenses change shape to allow for this shift, but some health conditions can make it difficult or even impossible for this to happen. y
See Your Eye Specialist Sooner Than Later
While it’s always essential to have regular vision checkups with your eye doctor, it’s imperative to have your eyes examined. If there is a noticeable change going on, especially if you lack the ability to focus on the things you need to see, visit a doctor.
Many vision issues can be easily corrected with appropriate vision prescriptions for glasses or contacts. If a problem needs further investigation, your eye specialist is the best person to let you know.
Vision Boutique has a team of eye specialists trained and skilled in making sure you receive the best vision care available. Schedule an appointment today to learn more about the healthy vision habits we can help you make.
Cool article, but I did want to make one critique. This may seem pedantic, but seeing hidden images in those “stereograms” actually has nothing to do with our ability to adjust our focus (Called accommodation). Instead, when looking at these objects, you can “train” both eyes to intersect at some point behind instead of directly on the image itself, which changes your depth perception and causes something called binocular diplopia (basically double vision). It’s actually this double vision that allows us to see a hidden image in stereograms as it causes two parts of the image to come together in a way that doesn’t happen when your eyes are trained directly on it.
That’s why, when we see those images, they are still perfectly in focus and three-dimensional. I always compared these to “Mad Magazine” fold-ins. This is going to age me, but back in the day, the magazine’s back page had a cartoon with a hidden image. When you folded the page into three parts and put the first and last part together (hiding the middle part), it would made a new image. These stereograms work very similarly.
I’m in my 50s and lost accommodation years ago but can still see those stereogram image quite easily and fairly quickly. In addition to health conditions, we all suddenly lose the ability to “auto” focus (presbyopia) usually in our 40s, and our manual focus becomes stuck at near infinity. This is why we all eventually become far-sighted and need reading glasses to see up close. Our eye muscles simply lose their ability to focus on close-up objects — sort of like my leg muscles lose the ability to do chores sometimes. haha
Again, great article and thanks for listening!