Vision Therapy - Why is it Controversial?

So, vision therapy huh? I bet it sounds good. After all, who doesn’t want to improve their vision naturally? You could treat eye ailments and get rid of visual stress with just some easy eye exercises. Seriously, what’s not to love?

But hold your excitement. Vision therapy is not as easy as it seems. There’s a reason why it’s still a controversial topic among optometrists.

If you are considering vision therapy for your child or you are an adult excited to try out this discovery, make an informed decision. Get in-depth information about vision therapy to know if it’s the right thing for you.

What is Vision Therapy?

Vision therapy is an eye care program meant to resolve each individual’s vision problems and improve their visual abilities. It is a progressive program that challenges the patient’s vision with new eye exercises and techniques.

Based on your eye condition and age, the eye doctor will determine if this procedure is right for you and how many sessions it will take to get you normal vision.

Unlike prescription glasses and contact lenses that correct vision by bending light on the right spot, vision therapy aims to improve your fundamental visual skills. Take it as physical therapy for your visual system.

It may even alter the way your brain interprets visual signals and information (or at least that’s what they say).

This therapy is performed with the use of some specialized tools including corrective lenses, prism lenses, optical filters, eye patches and balance boards.

Does Vision Therapy Really Work?

Many studies have shown successful vision therapy outcomes for school children with reading or learning disabilities.

Advocates of this program also believe that it is an effective alternative to traditional vision correction tools such as glasses and contacts. They claim that vision therapy can teach the visual system to correct itself and many even address medical issues related to the eyes.

Many doctors recommend this therapy to treat dyslexia in children. However, there’s a lack of evidence to support this claim.

With the growing use of digital devices, computer vision syndrome is the most common problem in adults and children alike.

Vision therapy has been found to reduce eye strain from screen time. While I don’t know how true that is, if you want a sure shot solution for digital eye strain, nothing could be better than prescription blue light glasses.

Wearing blue blockers is the most practical way to protect your eyes from blue light damage. And these will cost you a lot less than paying for those vision therapy appointments.

Vision Therapy Exercises

Vision therapy involves a complete eye exam that not only tests your distance vision but takes other factors such as visual acuity, depth perception, lazy eye or convergence insufficiency into consideration.

After the eye exam is done, the therapy plan may include the following exercises.

• Computer Programs: Computer-aided vision therapy includes a set of eye exercises that aim to correct a patient’s binocular vision. They are meant to improve eye movements, accommodation and visual information processing.
• Pencil Push-up Therapy: It is a prescribed eye exercise for convergence insufficiency and visual disorders such as strabismus. Hold a pencil and draw it close to your eyes until you start to see a double image. Your eye doctor may recommend you doing this exercise several times a day.
• Patching: This technique is used to treat the problem of lazy eye in kids. When the brain stops taking signals from one eye, wearing a patch on the good eye will force your brain to take cues from the weaker eye. This will stimulate development in the lazy eye.
• 20-20-20 Vision Rule: This procedure is for people who spend a significant portion of their time in front of digital screens. It involves looking at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds for every 20 minutes of screen time.

Visual therapy sessions are usually 1 hour long and take place once or twice a week. But, based on the condition of your vision, your eye doctor may even give you eye exercises to do at home.

What Problems Can Vision Therapy Correct?

If you are looking to get vision therapy in the UK, you must know what problems it can possibly solve. Here are the instances when you are more likely to get a good outcome.

• Vision therapy works for a lazy eye problem in kids. The patching technique is useful in attaining normal visual acuity in many cases related to the lack of coordination of the eyes.
• The success of vision therapy for strabismus (abnormal alignment of the eyes when reading) involves training the brain to use both eyes and merge the images from each eye to create a 3D price of information.
• Studies have shown the effect of VT in resolving eye movement disorders that may hamper your reading ability or near vision.
• Other problems where vision therapy might work include accommodative disorders, visual perceptual disorders and vision-related problems acquired from head injuries.

However, you must understand that vision therapy is not for all. Severe ocular problems will require the use of prescription glasses to get better vision. And, not everyone can afford expensive vision therapy sessions.

If you are looking for an affordable means to better eyesight, consider getting cheap prescription glasses. You can buy them from us if you like your glasses customized for your individual vision and lifestyle needs. The frames are fashionable and trendy so you don’t feel shy but confident about wearing your glasses in public.

Vision Therapy for Children

Most parents have taken a strong stand in favour of this therapy. But, while this may help a small percentage of children, most of them still need glasses or some other form of vision correction.

Some eye doctors will claim that vision therapy could treat thinking and learning disabilities in kids. However, being able to see letters and being able to decode the letters are two different things. While VT would make reading easier for your child, he/she might not be able to understand letter-sound relationships.

Until strong evidence is available to make a case for vision therapy, you can rely on the conventional method of correcting vision - eyeglasses. And you can buy prescription glasses online from our amazing collection of children’s eyewear in fun frame styles that your kid will just love.