Imagine you’re walking down a supermarket aisle when, all of a sudden, a dizzy spell hits. The room begins to spin, your vision blurs, and you can’t seem to orient yourself to your surroundings.
For people who suffer from dizziness, simple everyday activities like taking a walk, driving and shopping can feel like monumental tasks.
If you experience frequent dizzy spells and difficulty maintaining your balance, you may be suffering from binocular vision dysfunction (BVD), a condition caused by a misalignment of the eyes.
Schedule an appointment with Dr. James Aversa to determine whether visual dysfunction is causing your symptoms.
What is Binocular Vision Dysfunction?
Binocular Vision Dysfunction (BVD) is the eyes’ inability to work together as a team due to the eyes’ physical misalignment.
Ordinarily, an individual’s two eyes work as a team to move and focus, allowing clear and comfortable vision. If their eyes are misaligned, they cannot work together, so instead of the brain receiving one image, it receives 2 separate images. The brain struggles to combine these two distinct images and responds by trying to force the eyes to work together. This results in eye strain, fatigue, double vision and/or blurred vision, which can lead to dizziness and balance issues.
How Does BVD Affect Balance and Dizziness?
Binocular vision, or the ability of the eyes to work together to create a coherent and cohesive view of the world around you, is the most important visual skill for maintaining balance. Since the visual system aids in the regulation of the other systems involved in maintaining balance, any defect in the visual system will result in a balance disorder.
Treatment for BVD
If a visual dysfunction is detected, your neuro-optometrist will prescribe a neuro-optometric rehabilitation program to treat the visual components contributing to your balance disorder.
Neuro-optometric rehabilitation therapy, a type of vision therapy, teaches both eyes to work together using a combination of approaches and techniques. It consists of individualized exercises that, when performed over time, help the patient regain balance by rehabilitating any visual and perceptual disorders. This effectively decreases or eliminates dizziness, vertigo, and loss of balance symptoms.
Your optometrist might also prescribe micro-prism lenses. These lenses correct the misalignment of the two eyes, relieving or reducing the symptoms of BVD.
The neuro-optometric rehabilitation program offered at Heights Eye Care Vision Therapy Center addresses the underlying vision problem causing your dizziness and balance issues.
To schedule your appointment contact Heights Eye Care Vision Therapy Center and begin your road to recovery today.
Q: Why does binocular vision dysfunction often go undiagnosed?
- A: Routine eye exams include assessments of visual acuity — whether a patient is nearsighted or farsighted, for example, but usually don’t assess how well your eyes work together as a team (binocular vision). Or, such exams may fail to detect subtle misalignments between the two eyes.
Q: What are common symptoms of BVD?
A: The most common BVD visual symptoms include:
- Blurry or double vision
- Difficulty with night vision
- Dizziness
- Difficulty with close-up vision
- Eye strain and sore eyes
- Poor depth perception
- Poor hand-eye coordination
- Light sensitivity
- Nausea
- Difficulty with reflections or glare
