Do you have either of these eye conditions?
Lazy eye (amblyopia)
Crossed-eyes (strabismus)
When you're reading do any of these things happen?
You often lose your place
Words go in and out of focus
You struggle retaining what you’ve read
If you answered yes to any of these questions you could benefit from vision therapy. Vision Therapy is a customized treatment to improve and strengthen a person's vision and how your eyes work together and with your brain. Most often vision therapy is done with children but anyone who has any of the above mentioned issues may be able to improve their vision and ability to read by one of many custom treatment plans. Vision therapy is designed to treat the vision problems that glasses alone can’t fix. These are some Vision Therapy techniques:
Eye tracking using computer games. This uses your eyes as the mouse to accomplish tasks in computer games. This may sound simple but it is actually very effective in getting your eyes working together and it’s fun.
A Marsden ball is used to focus on something finite and add movement while maintaining focus on the same thing. Our Marsden ball hangs from our ceiling and is white with letters randomly all over it.
Stereo viewers are used to find depth. Both eyes have to be working together to see the 3D image. Many eye doctors will do a stereo test on children as part of their routine eye exam.
Life saver cards are clear cards that have green circles that look like lifesavers on one side and red circles on the other side. Together the circles make a V shape. These cards are designed to get the eyes working as a team to see a phantom circle in between the 2 circles.
There are many other techniques that are used in vision therapy; these are just a few. The keys to making vision therapy work for you are: working with an Optometrist trained in vision therapy, following the plan, repetition, and consistency.