Improve Your Life with Vision Therapy/Vision Rehabilitation
Background
Vision disorders are one of the most underdiagnosed yet common conditions in the World today. Vision therapy is a result of modern medicine that offers numerous strategies to ease or possibly alleviate these vision disorders that can affect every aspect of life, from driving to learning and socializing.
Definition
Vision therapy is a treatment developed by optometrists, who specialize in how vision is used, known as behavioral optometry or developmental optometry. This is different than the standard optometrist, who identifies and corrects defects in acuity (clarity) and looks at basic eye health – mostly known as “20/20” vision.
Optometry looks at eyes that are otherwise healthy, but function poorly due to disruptions in development or brain injury, this is different from Ophthalmology, which is a specialty that focuses on pathology (disease) of the eye. Because the brain tells the eyes what to do, vision can be poor even when standard eye tests have found nothing wrong. Vision therapy is a non-invasive and proven effective option in addressing a variety of vision issues, including eye turn, “lazy eye” (amblyopia), convergence insufficiency, double vision, and more. There are numerous benefits to vision therapy, and it can be used to treat a wide variety of disorders, including:
- Strabismus
- Amblyopia
- Ocular-Motor (“eye teaming”) Dysfunctions
- Visual-Perceptual (“eye-brain” coordination) Disorder
Symptoms of Vision Disorders
Blurred vision, sleepiness when reading, reluctance to drive, covering one eye, head tilt, blind spots, floaters, double vision, dizziness, problems with depth perception, poor memory, needing to re-read frequently, and problems with eye tracking all could potentially indicate a vision disorder. Left untreated, symptoms can cause frustration, anxiety, fatigue, and lower quality of life.
Diagnosis
The first step towards determining if you or a child may benefit from vision therapy is a full eye exam by a licensed provider. These exams go beyond the standard “20/20″ exam in order to find potential problems in how the brain processes information from the eyes, rather than only testing the physical capability of the eyes to see. This can uncover issues that would be missed in most standard vision exams. The comprehensive exam includes close vision acuity, color blindness, how well the eyes team together, how well they make the transition from near to far, tracking and focus, eye movement skills, vision-vestibular integration, gross motor skills, fine motor skills, primitive reflexes, and more.
To learn more about the education of Vision Therapy and OEPF's research in this field, please consult our other website pages.