We're growing, and our patients are graduating!

Many exciting things are in the works here at Optometric Physicians and Nashville Vision Therapy. I am excited to announce in the next few weeks we will show off our new website! After tireless work, we can not wait to launch. We also just received this new device for our Vision Therapy room: Sanet Vision Integrator. We're looking forward to assembling it and learning all the new programs. We are growing! We have been busy with great new changes and loving every second.

Not only are exciting things happening here at the office, but exciting things have happened to our patients. I have graduated many patients the last month from our Vision Therapy program. To see our patients meet their goals and beyond, is a great honor to be apart of. It is also an honor to be apart of their journey! I have one of the coolest jobs!

In the next post, I am going to talk about sports and vision. Just a tid bit of what to look forward to: Vision, just like speed and strength is an important component in how well you play your sport.

Thank you to all our followers and readers! It is my pleasure to share what it is that we love to do!

"Fixing My Gaze"

Has anyone ever heard of Sue Barry? Sue Barry was a women who was born "cross-eyed", and she saw her life in only two dimension. She wrote a book about her experience called Fixing My Gaze. This book describes her astonishing experience of gaining 3D stereovision after a lifetime of seeing in only two dimensions. She did intensive vision therapy which created new neural connections, and with them, a new view of the world.

In this video below she discusses how vision therapy transformed not only her vision, but her beliefs about the neuroplasticity of the adult brain. It is a great story and just shows how beneficial Vision Therapy is at any age.

"For most of my life, the last place I wanted to be was an eye doctor's office. I had been cross-eyed since infancy, and despite three surgeries, remained cross-eyed and stereoblind. Scientific dogma indicated that my visual deficits resulted from changes in brain circuitry that occurred in infancy and could not be reversed in adulthood. So, when I finally consulted a developmental optometrist and began optometric vision therapy at age 48, I took a significant risk. I had to think beyond the conventional wisdom, abandon old visual habits, and master skills that most children acquire within the first six months of life. As I began to straighten my eyes and see in 3D, I learned that the adult brain is indeed capable of significant plasticity. Rewiring in the adult brain requires the presence of novel and behaviorally relevant stimuli, the conscious abandonment of entrenched habits, and the establishment, through intense practice, of new ones."

The Importance of Visualization

Last week, I wrote about Pinterst and how I loved it because it was so visual. I am a very visual person; meaning a person can talk all day long on how to do something, but if they do not perform the task for me to see, I won't be able to comprehend it as well. That leads me to today's blog, "The Importance of Visualization".
  
First, what is visualization? It is the ability to create mental images in your mind. Can you imagine how many things that can affect in your life with the inability to visualize?

The inability to visualize can impact all subjects in school for your child.

• Reading: If your child has vision problems, reading is probably very challenging for them. Your child is spending more time decoding the words individually rather than visualizing and comprehending. You will notice their fluency when reading is very slow, leading to difficulty processing the words. While decoding the words individually, they will not "see" the story when reading. Thus making reading very time consuming which leads to frustration. Reading should be fun!  
• Spelling: With spelling your child has to create a mental image of the words without seeing the word. The visualization skill is crucial in spelling. Creating that mental image will be based on a past visual experience.
• Writing: Visualization is important in handwriting because your child has to create a mental image of each different word while writing it on the page. Multi-tasking at its finest!  
• Math: If your child lacks the visualization skill they usually count on their fingers or silently verbalize the different number sequences. Your child needs to be able to visualize numbers and quantities in able to be successful in math.

Does your child have difficulty in any or all of the above areas? As you can see visualization is crucial in the success of all school subjects. Your child wants to be able to visualize the story when he/she reads, and get As on spelling test. Let Nashville Vision Therapy give them the tools to improve visualization. Your child will see a whole new world when they have the ability to visualize.

Social Networking at its Finest!

Hope everyone has enjoyed making home exercises more fun. In our busy worlds, sometimes it is hard to interrupt a routine and be creative. I hope you got creative this week with home therapy exercises.

During the times without patients, I am constantly looking for new and creative things relating to vision therapy. I think it is safe to say learning new things about what we do, brings more excitement into our lives. Through my search, I have found a lot of great things through social networking sites.

Social networking is a great place to share interests and/or activities. Facebook is the biggest social network (please like us if you haven't). But there is more out there, like Pinterest! Have you heard of Pinterest? "Pinterest is a Virtual Pinboard. Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests." I don't know about you, but I love Pinterest! I love that it is so visual!  

It's popularity has grown within the past year. I started searching in their search engine "vision therapy." And what do you know, several therapist or parents have started their own Pinterest. Please check some out:

-VT Possibilities

-Vision Therapy

-Vision Therapy Resources

-Just search "Vision Therapy"

Following these can give us more creative ways to do therapy with our children. Being connected can help all of us grow and expand our knowledge of Vision Therapy. It is a great way to share new, interesting, and creative therapy activities. Start pinning, searching and if you have not started an account, request your invite today!

Fun Home Exercises! Continued....

  

Did anyone try those tracking exercises? If so, which ones did you try? Anything that is new and fun always makes children excited, so I hope you were able to incorporate them into your home exercise regiment. Today we are going to talk about convergence and fun exercises to do at home or on the go.

First, what does convergence mean? It is when the eyes aim inward at the same spot in order to fixate on print. Can you imagine what happens when the eyes do not converge together? It tells us there is a lack of proper eye teaming. This leads to double vision, poor depth perception, exhaustion and headaches when reading, writing, or doing other near tasks for extended periods of time. A lot of children having the above problems have convergence insufficiency (inability to converge eyes together). Through different exercise we can get the eye to work together as a team - our main goal in Vision Therapy!

Fun! Fun! Fun! Convergence Home Exercises:

On the go and want to do Vision Therapy Exercise? Try these:

• Put a small sticker on the window nearest your child, and instruct him/her to look at the sticker for a few seconds, then to look outside at the farthest thing their eyes can find, and then back at the sticker again. Have your child do this at least 10 times every time they get in the car.
• In the morning when your child is brushing their teeth in the bathroom have them doing convergence exercises. First, put a sticker on the mirror, have them stare at the sticker, then have your child look at themselves through the mirror, then back to the sticker again. Brushing your teeth becomes more fun!

More Fun:

• Push Ups: Use a fun toy that lights up or interests your child. Place the toy about 10-12 inches from your child's nose and gradually bring toward the tip of their nose with your child converging to avoid diplopia (double vision). Just before there is a break in fusion, your child holds fixation on the target for 10 seconds. This push-up is repeated 10 times. 
• Brock String: Who loves the Brock String?! I know all of you do. Make it fun by having your child use their imagination and pretend there is a bug at the end of the string. Have them slowly watch the bug come toward their nose. No beads to look at, just a bug! 
• Magic Eye Books: Have your child pick one of their interest.
• Stringing Beads or Shapes at a near point. 
• Eye Can Learn website: Great eye teaming exercises. 
• Use accommodated flippers while reading a story of your child's interest. These flippers help with the motion of convergence and divergence. You flip the lenses with every paragraph. These flippers can be purchased through Nashville Vision Therapy.

Incorporate some of these exercises into your schedule. Next week we will talk about Balance and Coordination.  Happy converging!

How to Make Vision Therapy Home Exercises Fun!

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A big part of our Vision Therapy program is home exercises. In Vision Therapy, newly acquired visual skills are reinforced and made automatic through repetition and by integration with motor and cognitive skills. The key word I like to focus on is repetition. Seeing our Vision Therapist once a week is great and recommended, but the work still has to continue at home. Home exercises should be done at least 4-6 times a week for best results, and it is through repetition of these exercises the visual system will be greatly improved. 

A big question we get asked is: "How can I make these home exercises fun?" Great question! In today’s blog we are going to go over some great tracking exercises. 

First, why do we do tracking exercises? Most of our patients have Ocular Motor Dysfunction (OMD), in easier terms a "Tracking Problem." That means the eyes are unable to follow a moving object smoothly. This diagnosis does not mean there is a physical problem with the eyes, but it is disconnect between the eyes and the brain. As most of you know when doing the tracking exercise that is prescribed, you will see your child's eyes jerk, lose focus, or have jumps and quivers. This is because of the OMD. Some symptoms your child might experience when having OMD is losing place when reading, eyes easily fatigue, and often get headaches with near activities.  Through different tracking exercises, we will teach the eyes to track better, which creates a better pathway of communication to the brain. 

Here, we give the usual tracking exercise where you follow a pencil top going vertical, horizontal, and circular motions. This is a great simple exercise but can get boring for your child. Let’s change it up and make tracking exercises more fun! For these fun exercises, you will need an eye patch, lots of reminders to keep the head still, and exercises that involve a moving target for them to focus on. Make sure each eye gets equal time with the patch, and do same exercise with patch off for the eyes to have time to work together. 

Ways to make more fun:

• Use a light up toy with lots of colors to track with.
• Use a lollipop to track with. Then they can eat it after!
• Soccer and other ball sports
• Search and Find Games: Where's Waldo, I-Spy, Hidden  Pictures
• Marsden Ball: First, attach a ball on a long string. Then hang it from a high place. Make it about 3-4 feet above the floor. Now you're ready! Have the child lie on the floor looking up with patch on left eye, and move the ball in wide circles, and in horizontal lines while the child is following the object with just their eye (no head movements!). Repeat with right eye patched and then no patch. Switch up the ball with more objects to make new and exciting.
• Eye Can Learn website has some great tracking exercises.
• Mazes: Print off the computer and use bright colors to find your way out. 

Try one of these this week! Let us know how it goes. Next week we will blog about Convergence exercises. We have a lot to look forward too! Happy Tracking!

Vestibular System and Visual System. How do they work together?

A big part of the NORA conference was about the vestibular system and why it's important to vision. Too often we look at the vestibular system and visual system as two separate entities. After this conference, it helped us understand how these two systems work together. The purpose of the vestibular system is to sense changes in motion. It is connected to many parts of the body including digestive tract, language center of the brain, the limbic system and to the muscles of the eyes. Basically, it is the "balance system", that is located in the inner ear.

When the vestibular system is functioning at its highest, it will contribute to healthy digestion, the emergence of receptive and expressive communication, emotional bonding, and visual focus. So why is the vestibular system so important to vision? The vestibular system works in conjunction with the visual system to detect head and body motion as well as eye movement. This interaction is called the opto-kinetic system, which serves as the body’s motion detection system, and allows us to make two types of eye movements. Slow, steady, smooth eye movements called “pursuits,” and large eye jumps that occur without blur in between points A and B called “saccades,” take place effortlessly when the visual/vestibular interaction is intact.

What conferences have you gone to and did you have any light bulb moments? I would love to know.