Despite having two eyes, when you look at something, you only see one image. It’s because your eyes work together as a team with binocular vision. When you have binocular vision dysfunction, the eyes aren’t synchronized, causing symptoms like nausea and dizziness that can easily be misdiagnosed as something else.
Vision therapy can help identify and treat binocular vision dysfunction (BVD) to restore eye coordination and address the problems BVD can cause. A trained vision therapist can work with children and adults to improve visual skills.
What Is Binocular Vision?
Your binocular vision is the coordination between your eyes. Typically, each of your eyes sees an object and works together to blend the images to create one image.
Binocular function allows your eyes to look with both eyes and send a sensory message to the brain. Any disruption in binocular function can lead to issues processing visual information.
Signs of Binocular Vision Dysfunction
BVD can occur when the eyes are misaligned and can cause physical, intellectual, and visual symptoms.
In children, BVD can cause amblyopia (lazy eye), causing poor visual acuity and depth perception, or strabismus (crossed eyes).
Physical Symptoms
As your eye muscles work to correct eye misalignment, it can lead to dizziness, light-headedness, or headaches, as well as:
- Soreness in the neck, shoulders, or back
- Inability to walk straight
- Frequent falls
- Motion sickness
- Nausea
- Sinus discomfort
Learning & Reading Problems
When your eyes can’t work together to see near objects, this can indicate convergence insufficiency. It can lead to symptoms including:
- Words running together
- Difficulty concentrating
- Skipping lines
- Struggles with reading comprehension
- Getting tired while reading
Visual Symptoms
A common visual symptom related to misalignment of the eyes is double vision. Images can appear overlapping or shadowed instead of merging into a single image. Other visual indicators of BVD include:
- Blurry vision
- Seeing halos and glare
- Sensitivity to light
- Eye strain
- Trouble looking at digital screens
- Difficulty seeing in dim lighting
BVD affects more than just the physical—mental health can be affected too. Your symptoms’ impact on your life is significant, especially if they lead to a misdiagnosis.
How Can Binocular Vision Dysfunction Be Misdiagnosed?
It’s common for binocular vision disorder and other vision problems to be diagnosed as something else. Some common misdiagnoses include:
- ADHD
- Anxiety
- Psychogenic dizziness
- Migraines
- Vertigo
- Reading & learning disabilities, such as dyslexia
- Sinus problems
- Traumatic brain injury (TBI)
Slight misalignments of the eyes are difficult to discern in a comprehensive eye exam. Therefore, you or your child may need a further assessment with a vision therapist to accurately identify BVD.
How Can Vision Therapy Help?
Vision therapy works on your visual skills with tools, exercises, and techniques to re-establish the connection between your eyes and brain to improve binocular vision. It’s drug-free, safe, and effective at correcting many vision problems that affect your quality of life.
Some skills you can work on may include:
- Diplopia, or double vision correction
- Squinting, tilting head, or closing one eye
- Improving body-hand-eye coordination
- Poor stereo vision, distance judgment, and depth perception
Your eye care team can use therapeutic lenses, prisms, filters, and special tools for customizable vision therapy exercises. With dedicated vision therapy, you can develop fundamental visual skills, improve efficacy, and alter how you process visual information.
Explore the Benefits of Vision Therapy
Binocular vision problems can affect your professional life, academics, and lifestyle. Trained therapists at Total Vision Tierrasanta can use proven methods to help retrain your brain to increase the functioning of your vision.
Schedule an appointment with us today to learn how vision therapy can transform your eyesight.
