How Do I Know If I Need Vision Therapy?

For children struggling with vision-based learning problems, vision therapy can work wonders at helping them improve their classroom performance. But did you know that adults can benefit from vision therapy, too?

When left untreated, problems with vision-based learning can follow a person from childhood into adulthood. And we’re not talking about 20/20 vision or how clearly you can see. Your visual system actually performs a range of functional tasks that you carry in nearly every area of your life. Read on as a Washington DC vision therapy optometrist discusses commonly overlooked vision problems, signs of vision-based learning problems, and how vision therapy can help.

Vision Problems That Often Get Overlooked

Standard eye exams are designed to measure your ability to see far-away and close-up objects. Unfortunately, these exams don’t assess other, more functional aspects of vision, such as:

Eye teaming
Eye focusing
Binocular vision
Eye movement

These visual tasks are carried out by the eyes and the brain, which work hand-in-hand to process visual information. When your eyes have difficulty with one or more of these tasks, your brain has to work much harder to make sense of incoming information. This can, in turn, hamper your abilities to perform on the job, at school, or even in the sports arena.

Signs of Functional Vision Problems

Today’s modern age has made the digital device a central part of our everyday life, especially in the workplace. And as luck would have it, many functional vision problems affect a person’s ability to perform close-up tasks, such as reading, writing, and working on digital devices, like computers and mobile devices.

Individuals struggling with functional vision problems tend to experience one or more of the following symptoms:

Short attention span
Eyestrain
Problems concentrating, especially when reading
Dizziness
Headaches
Blurred vision
Memory problems
Anxiety
Poor hand-eye coordination
Motion sickness

Since standard exams don’t test for functional vision problems, someone who has difficulties in these areas can go undiagnosed for years, or even a lifetime.

How Vision Therapy Can Help

Vision therapy is a specialty field that’s designed to correct functional vision problems while helping your eyes and brain work together more efficiently. A vision therapist uses a personalized, structured treatment approach that works to retrain your visual system. Areas addressed include:

Visual perception
Visual processing speed
Focusing
Tracking
Visual reaction speed

Using a range of exercises, computer-based activities, and specialized lenses, vision therapy does for the eyes and brain what physical therapy does for the body.