Your Vision Therapy Eye Doctor
We love helping our patients enjoy the beauty of life by improving their vision. At our vision therapy center we treat a variety of vision problems through retraining the eyes with special exercises and activities, these patients leave our program with dramatic vision improvement, heightened school performance, and positive self esteem.
What is vision therapy?
While eyeglasses and contact lenses are effective treatments for refractive errors like nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism, and presbyopia, there are other vision conditions which corrective lenses cannot fix.
Vision therapy, often referred to as “physical therapy for the eyes and brain,” is a treatment program that consists of a series of “eye exercises” or activities that are prescribed and monitored by a trained optometrist, and are used to retrain the visual system to function more efficiently. The therapy program is customized towards the visual needs of each patient, and is adjusted throughout the process to encourage further visual improvements. The human brain is remarkable in its ability to adapt to new information with remarkable speed and success. This is known as neuroplasticity, and is the guiding concept behind vision therapy’s success.
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Who can benefit from vision therapy?
Healthy people with good visual acuity can still suffer from vision problems that affect their quality of life. Vision therapy has shown to be an effective method of treatment for patients of all ages and for many conditions that affect the visual system, including but not limited to:
- Oculomotor dysfunction (eye movement disorders)
- Accommodative disorders (eye focusing disorders)
- Non-strabismic binocular disorders (eye teaming disorders)
- Strabismus (crossed eyes)
- Amblyopia (lazy eye)
- Visual sequelae of acquired brain injury (stroke or concussion)
- Visual information processing disorders
These vision problems are treatable, and are often overlooked at visual screenings. At Vizen Optometric Center, we help people overcome these challenges by addressing the underlying vision problem.
Our Vision Therapy Doctor
How can I enroll in vision therapy?
A comprehensive eye examination and Developmental Visual Evaluation is required to determine if vision therapy is an appropriate treatment option for you and your condition. Contact our office to book an appointment and learn more about vision therapy.
How long can treatment take with vision therapy?
Effective therapy requires visual skills to be developed until they are integrated with other systems and become automatic, enabling patients to achieve their full potential. The length of treatment varies between patients depending on the complexity of their condition and the specific needs of the patient. This may take as little as 10 sessions, or it may take longer.
Success with vision therapy
Vision therapy results can vary depending on each condition and circumstance. Successful vision therapy requires active engagement from the prescribing doctor, vision therapist, patient, and parents of any children enrolled in the program. With time, consistency, and hard work, patients can experience significant improvements in symptoms and efficiency in school or work-related tasks. Many school-aged patients often report increased reading speed, reading comprehension, and performance in school overall.
Many patients experience blurred or double vision and after vision therapy they reported that is diminished or completely resolved.
Our patients have also shown improvement in handwriting skills. Vision therapy enhances a patient’s eye hand coordination, therefore improving their fine motor skills to allow for better penmanship, sizing of letters, and spacing in between words. Patient’s are also able to writing staying on the line easier and no longer reports writing up or down hill.
BEFORE
AFTER
Here are a list of SYMPTOMS that may indicate a visual problem:
- Headaches with near work
- Words run together while reading
- Burning, itchy, or watery eyes
- Skipping/repeating lines while reading
- Tilting head or closing one eye when reading
- Difficulty copying from a chalkboard
- Avoiding near work or reading
- Omitting small words when reading
- Writing uphill or downhill
- Misaligning digits/columns of numbers
- Poor reading comprehension
- Holding books or near work very close to eyes
- Short attention span with near work
- Difficulty completing assignments on time
- Saying “I can’t” before trying something
- Clumsiness and knocking things over
- Poor use of time
- Losing belongings or misplacing things
- Forgetting things
Vision Therapy has recently proven to be quite effective in fighting, and in some cases even reversing some of these conditions. Vision Therapy refers to a non-surgical program involving vision exercises performed under your eye doctor’s supervision, and customized to your particular needs. Sometimes, this kind of therapy may help patients develop fundamental visual skills and abilities, improve visual comfort, ease, and efficiency, and even change how a patient processes or interprets visual information.
If your child displays any of symptoms discussed here, consult with our doctor immediately to receive a thorough check-up and begin treatment, including Vision Therapy, as soon as possible.