Building Confidence Through Vision Therapy
Do you feel as if something is holding you back? Maybe you wish you were more successful at work or better at sports, but it just seems like you can't reach your full potential no matter how hard you try. It's possible that your struggles could be caused by an undiagnosed vision problem. Vision therapy could improve your vision and give you the confidence you need to finally achieve your goals.
How Vision Problems Affect Your Performance
If you wear glasses or have 20/20 vision, you may be wondering how vision therapy could possibly help you. Visual acuity, or sharpness, is just one aspect of good vision. Although you may be able to read an eye chart with ease, you could still have a problem that interferes with your vision.
Good vision is essential for so many things, from knowing where to stand to catch a ball to remembering what you read to solving math problems correctly. Your eyes are just one part of the vision equation. The eyes capture light rays, turn them into electrical impulses, then send those impulses to the brain. The brain converts the impulses into images you recognize and stores the information it receives in your visual memory. If the brain doesn't process the impulses correctly, has trouble storing images, or receives incomplete information from the eyes, you may develop subtle vision problems that don't show up during a standard eye test.
Vision problems can cause issues with:
- Hand-Eye Coordination. Do you blame your coordination problems on clumsiness? Poor depth perception could be the reason you trip over nothing, have illegible handwriting, or can't seem to get any better at your favorite sport.
- Tracking Skills. Tracking skills allow you to follow the path of a ball in the sky or keep your place when reading.
- Eye Teaming. Your brain receives conflicting information when your eyes don't work together as a team. Strabismus (crossed eyes) is a common cause of eye teaming issues. You might think that someone would have noticed you had strabismus when you were young, but slight misalignments between your eyes can go unnoticed. Unfortunately, even minor misalignments can cause blurry or double vision, poor reading comprehension, headaches and difficulty seeing three-dimensional objects. Strabismus can eventually turn into amblyopia (lazy eye), a condition that occurs when the brain ignores the signals from one of the eyes.
- Visual Memory. If images aren't stored in your short- and long-term memory correctly, you may struggle to remember passwords, recall the route to your doctor's office, or retain the fine points of a report you've read.
- Focusing. A focusing problem could be making your life more difficult. Blurry or double vision when looking at close objects could be caused by convergence insufficiency. The vision problem occurs when both of your eyes don't turn inward to the same degree when focusing.
These are just a few of the vision problems that can affect both children and adults. During a comprehensive eye examination, your vision therapist performs a variety of tests that help him or her diagnose your particular vision issues and prepare a vision therapy plan for you.
Benefits of Vision Therapy
You're never too old to improve your vision. Vision therapy can help you:
- Write More Legibly
- Keep Your Place and Remember What You Read
- Read Without Becoming Tired After Just a Few Paragraphs or Pages
- Improve Peripheral Vision and Awareness (essential for good sports performance)
- Correct Eye Alignment Issues
- Quicken Your Visual Reaction Time
- Become More Coordinated
- Connect with the Ball, Hit a Golf Ball or Throw a Pass Accurately
- Put an End to Headaches and Eyestrain
- Remember Directions
Wondering if vision therapy really works? Multiple research studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of the therapy. University of California at Berkeley researchers discovered that special video games that involved shooting at targets or building objects improved visual sharpness and 3-D depth perception in adults with amblyopia. College table tennis players' eye-hand coordination improved in one study, while virtual reality-based vision therapy improved convergence insufficiency symptoms in young adults in another research study.
During vision therapy, you'll strengthen the eye/brain connection with video games and hands-on activities that slowly but surely improve your vision. Vision therapy can be life-changing no matter what your age. Are you ready to try therapy? Give us a call to schedule your comprehensive eye examination.
Sources:
Berkeley News: Playing Video Games Helps Adults with Lazy Eye, 8/31/11