Vision is an irreplaceable sense that enables us to move and interact with the world around us. And while other major systems in the body can be just as important, when your vision starts to fail, so does your quality of life. In this respect, anything that can sustain or even improve vision will go a long way towards helping your eyes work at their very best. Vision therapy is designed to do just that.

Read on as a vision therapist Annapolis, MD talks about vision therapy and the many ways it can help improve your vision.

What Is Vision Therapy?

Your eyes are made to take in visual information and send it to the brain, which then translates this data into the images we see. The muscles of the eyes enable you to track words on a page or watch a ball soar overhead. The retina and optic nerve convert this incoming data into a form your brain can work with. These processes rely on your eyes’ ability to focus, work together as a team, and communicate with the brain.

Over the years, the eye muscles can learn to function in ways that actually compromise your vision. When this happens, it can affect your ability to focus, track moving objects, and even concentrate. Vision therapy is a specialty field in optometry that focuses on retraining your eyes muscles to work as they should.

How Does Vision Therapy Improve Vision?

Not all vision problems can be treated with corrective lenses. Nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism are all caused by refractive errors, which have to do with the shape of the eye or problem with a particular component, like the cornea. Corrective lenses can fix these problems. Vision therapy addresses issues involving eye misalignment.

Eye misalignment keeps your eyes from working together as a team, and when this condition is present, the following problems can result:

Blurry vision
Eyestrain
Headaches
Mental fatigue
Intermittent double vision

What Conditions Can Vision Therapy Treat?

Eye misalignment can give rise to a range of issues that compromise your ability to see clearly. These include:

Problems with depth perception
Difficulties with hand-eye coordination
Visual perception
Slow processing times (in the brain)
Difficulty performing close-up tasks
Lazy eye
Crossed eyes

Vision therapy uses a regimen of personalized eye exercises, prisms, filters, and computer-based therapies to retrain how your eyes work together. These treatments not only help correct eye misalignment but also greatly improves communications between the eyes and the brain.

If you have more questions or wish to schedule a consultation, please don’t hesitate to call us, your local vision therapist Annapolis, MD, anytime!