Maria is a 12-year-old student who often has a tough time when doing the reading assignments. She often gets tired; she gets headaches and double vision or blurred text when she tries to read longer than 10-15 minutes, She also finds it hard to keep her place while reading, and her eyes tend to drift apart. Her teachers notice that she avoids reading and gets frustrated with her schoolwork.
After an eye exam, Maria was diagnosed with convergence insufficiency. Her eyes were not working well together when she focused on a close object, such as a book or computer screen. Her optometrist suggested to see a vision therapist to help her eyes work better together and improve her focusing ability. Her therapist suggested her vision therapy so let’s talk about it
What is Vision Therapy?
Vision therapy is tailored treatment to enhance visual skills for the patient in overcoming problems related to eye coordination or processing. It includes treating strabismus, also known as squinting eyes; amblyopia, also referred to as a lazy eye; convergence insufficiency, difficulty in focusing on objects up close; and tracking eye problems. The treatment mostly involves sessions in the office and exercises to be performed at home, which make it improve focusing ability and strengthen the muscles around the eyes through enhancement in visual processing. Unlike glasses that only correct refractive errors in the eyes, vision therapy works with functional visual problems. It can be much helpful for any children and adults, particularly those who experience eye strain, difficulty reading, or trouble with visual tasks.
How Vision Therapy works?
Vision therapy works by using customized exercises to improve the coordination between the eyes, making vision therapy increase the ability to focus and to track the objects. As guided by an optometrist or a vision therapist, patients take part in activities that aims at building up the strength of eye muscles, enhancing depth perception, and improving visual processing. Exercises that could be undertaken might include eye tracking, where one focuses on objects placed at various distances from oneself, or merely training the eyes to work in a more cohesive manner. Vision therapy tackles intrinsic problems of vision, such as convergence insufficiency or strabismus, through a non-surgical treatment process that often enhances vision drastically.
Benefits of Vision Therapy
Some benefits which we get by pursuing vision therapy are:
Resets Eye Alignment and Coordination
- Vision Therapy Removes strabismus (squint eye) and convergence insufficiency of the eyes.
- Vision Therapy enhances the depth perception and binocular vision of the eyes.
Reduces Eye Strain and Fatigue
- It also helps to alleviate the discomfort of extended screen use (computer vision syndrome).
- It makes reading, writing, and doing other near work easy.
Cures Double Vision
- Vision therapy trains the brain to process visual input from both eyes correctly to enhance the eye sight.
- Improves Focus and Visual Tracking Ability
- Vision Therapy improves the ability to focus and follow objects or words with high efficiency.
Helps Children with Other Learning-Related Vision Issues
- It improves reading speed, comprehension, and all aspects of learning.
- It also compensates for other visual processing issues that disrupt academics.
Promotes Neurological Recovery
- Vision therapy also helps in restoring vision in traumatic brain injuries, strokes, and concussions.
Enhances Athletic Skills
- It Enhances hand-eye coordination, reaction time, and tracking ability for athletes.
Non-Surgical and Tailored
- It is a non-surgical treatment for most eye disorders.
- It is customized based on each individual’s needs and situation.
Increases Confidence and Quality of Life
- Vision therapy reduces frustration from visual challenges. .
- It also enhances productivity and satisfaction of daily activities.
In vision therapy, permanent changes are made on the fundamental causes for visual impairments to ensure better general wellbeing.
Vision Therapy Exercises
Vision Therapy includes exercises as given below :
1.Pencil Push-Ups – Use your focus on a pencil moving towards your nose to enhance convergence.
2.Brock String – Focus alignment of beads along a string to improve eye alignment and binocular vision.
3. Saccades Training – Move your focus quickly between two objects to enhance eye movement control.
4. Near-Far Focus – Switch from near to far, and vice versa, for increasing flexibility in focus.
5. Barrel Card – Use a card with circles on it to overcorrect converging or diverging.
6. Eye Patching – Cover dominant eye to make the non-dominant one.
7. Lazy Eights – Move your eyes in a figure-eight pattern to trace the shape to enhance eye tracking and coordination.
8. Peripheral Awareness – Pay attention to a central object while perceiving peripheral movements
One can perform these exercises under professional guidance for best results by going on this link .
Conclusion
Vision therapy is an innovative treatment of eye disorders that, in the case of Maria, gives her hope. It differs from traditional glasses used to correct refractive errors in that vision therapy seeks to enhance the vision system’s function and coordination. It is an exercise with tailored activities devised by the vision therapists to strengthen eye muscles, enhance focus, and optimize visual processing.
Vision therapy treats a multitude of conditions such as strabismus, known as squint eye, amblyopia, known as lazy eye, and computer vision syndrome, with pencil push-ups, Brock string activities, saccades training, among other treatments. Beyond the relief of symptoms such as eye strain, double vision, and fatigue, it can improve depth perception, reading ability, and general visual efficiency.
This way, vision therapy offers much more than just an improvement in vision. It plays an extremely crucial role in helping a child overcome a learning disability, recovery from neurological injuries, and even an athlete improving his performance. And most importantly, it is non-surgical and customized for every patient, making it safe and effective for all ages.
In short, vision therapy addresses the root causes of visual impairments and enables people to lead more confident, productive lives with improved visual function and overall well-being.
