Bringing the Symptoms of Binocular Vision Dysfunction Into Focus

symptoms of binocular vision dysfunctions
Just because you keep up with your eye exams doesn’t mean you know everything about the overall health and function of your visual system. If you have a binocular vision dysfunction, a standard eye exam might not be enough to catch it. The binocular vision dysfunction occurs whenever the eyes are misaligned, which can lead to a variety of symptoms. This can include dizziness, headache, light sensitivity, motion sickness, and anxiety in large spaces with tall ceilings. Patients may be misdiagnosed with having migraine disorder, sinus headache, or vertigo.

Symptoms Associated With Lightheadedness, Dizziness, Nausea and Motion Sickness

When the eye muscles strain to correct a misalignment, it often leads to a variety of complications that are intertwined with disorientation, migraines and dizziness as well as feelings of lightheadedness. The frequency and intensity of these symptoms vary and are most often triggered by:

Moving your head side to side or up and down
Quickly standing up from a bent over or seated position
Driving around curves
Riding in the passenger seat
Driving on the highway with vehicles speeding by on either side
Large spaces with tall ceilings such as big box stores, supermarkets, malls, or airports.

Additional indications that you might be suffering from BVD are experiencing nausea due to dizziness, walking slower to correct an unbalanced gait, slowly drifting to the side as you’re walking, unsure footing and constantly walking into objects, usually on the same side of your body. If BVD is the cause of these symptoms, relief is commonly found quickly with specialized prismatic visual orthotics.

Learning Disability and Reading Symptoms

Having misaligned eyes can also impede your learning and reading. Since BVD may affect up to 50% of children diagnosed with ADD/ADHD, reading and other learning problems, it is critical to test for even small amounts of misalignment. Specifically, binocular vision disorders can make you feel tired while reading, cause words to blend together as you’re reading, make it hard for you to concentrate and make you skip lines or lose your place as you’re reading. Often patients report that words move or swim on the page. These very small misalignments are missed on routine eye examinations. The Neurovisual evaluation was designed to detect very small and subtle misalignments.

Sleep Pattern Symptoms

Some of the ways misaligned eyes and the resulting strained eye muscles can affect your sleep patterns include:

Sleeping better in the complete absence of light. Light seen through the eyelids can lead to experiencing visual vertigo.
Not being able to get a restful sleep because eye movements lead to disorientation and dizziness, even as you’re attempting to drift off.

A good night’s sleep is essential to properly functioning during the day as well as for your overall health. Let us help keep you from tossing and turning and potentially wasting your money on sleep aids that don’t address the true cause of your sleep problem.

Symptoms Associated With Double Vision

In addition to dizziness and nausea, you might also be experiencing double, overlapping or shadowed vision. It can also manifest as extreme light sensitivity caused by seeing an amplified glare coming from surfaces. If you’ve always been clumsy or uncoordinated or have poor hand-eye coordination, difficulty with sports which require catching or hitting a ball, you may be suffering from BVD. Besides blurred vision, shadowed vision or layered vision, you might also find yourself covering or closing one eye to make visual tasks easier.

Neck, Head and Shoulder Symptoms

Many patients with BVD experience headaches at the base of your skull, throbbing at your temples or pounding in your forehead. You might also feel intense pressure at the crown of your head. Patients with BVD caused by Post Concussion Syndrome typically experience these constant, intense headaches. Other symptoms of binocular vision dysfunction found in the shoulders, neck and head include pain in the jaw region or sinus area. Severe neck and shoulder pain due to a head tilt is often described as a neck headache or neck migraine. This symptoms are similar to those seen in patients with sinus problems, true migraine, TMJ, and spinal misalignment issues. is characterized by intense shoulder and neck discomfort.

Other Symptoms

You might have other signs of a binocular vision disorder that weren’t mentioned or aren’t related to those above. Other common symptoms include:

Difficulty concentrating
Having a hard time of meeting someone else’s eyes. This particular symptom can be exacerbated whenever the person you’re with moves her or his body or hands, which can easily lead to a dizzy spell due to the intense visual stimulation.
Finding it hard to focus whenever someone is speaking to you, which can become quite notable when the individual speaks for several minutes.

Come in for a Diagnosis

Take our easy to fill out questionnaire to determine if your symptoms are stemming from BVD. Dr. Israeloff specializes in such dysfunctions and has helped patients find effective ways of treating them. Treatment options include special prismatic eyeglasses called visual orthotic devices and even prism contact lenses in some cases.

Call the Neuro Visual Center of New York at 516-224-4888 to discuss whatever symptoms you have, to learn more about your disorder and what you can do to improve it. See just what you’ve been missing in your life and in your vision.

Testimonials

Prior to being treated by Dr. Cheryl, I constantly felt off balance. I had suffered from frequent migraines since I was 12 years old. I often suffered from neck/ back pain, and always felt like I was straining my neck and/or tilting my head to focus on the computer. My family had always noticed that I walked a bit sideways as well, but they attributed that to me being "clumsy". I had awful anxiety about walking down flights of stairs or through the mall, as I always had this irrational fear of falling. I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and depression, as I would tend to avoid social situations where I felt uncomfortable or not in control. At my annual eye exam, Dr. Cheryl asked how my migraines had been. I casually mentioned that I was having dizzy spells and felt off balance. As Dr. Cheryl went through a series of questions, it seemed like she was reading off a script of my symptoms. She started to explain binocular vision dysfunction and asked if I would consider a neuro visual test that may be able to determine if I was a candidate for the type of treatment she was involved in. I was skeptical, but desperate. The tests administered by Dr. Cheryl produced black and white, concrete results. I was blown away by how clear it was that this "visual vertigo" I was experiencing was not only completely legitimate, but treatable. My skepticism disappeared immediately when Dr. Cheryl had me wear a trial pair of glasses with prisms in them. I felt taller, grounded, and completely in control. My glasses have made a tremendous difference in my everyday life. I feel balanced and aware of my surroundings. I no longer catch myself tilting my head while reading through pages of documents on my computer, or tilting my head to get a better view of the TV. It is more than a change in my prescription or a "clearer view," it is an entire perspective change. I have not had a single migraine in 6 months - I am still in shock when I say those words. My dizzy spells have subsided, as well. When I am not wearing my glasses, which is rare, I can immediately feel the difference in my equilibrium. I would never have guessed that all of these symptoms and subsequent issues, were vision related. Dr. Cheryl was 100% supportive and genuinely concerned about my comfort and progress throughout this whole journey. I would, without hesitation, recommend her to anyone that suffers from these symptoms. She is a true life saver and is passionate about investing her time and energy into this growing field.

A. S.

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