The Rise of Digital Eyestrain and How to Avoid It
Digital devices have become part of our everyday lives. We use them for work, study, reading, playing and communicating with loved ones. For many of us, our
Many people suffer hidden vision problems because they think that good vision is the same as clear sight. But the truth is vision is so much more than being able to see the whiteboard or read an eye chart. To help you pick up on the signs of hidden vision problems, here are five common but hidden eye conditions explained.
1. Convergence insufficiency
Convergence insufficiency occurs when you have difficulties maintaining how your eyes point together (converge) to focus on near work or read close. It can lead to headaches, eyestrain, double vision, blurred vision and reduced visual performance.
Interestingly enough, not everyone with convergence insufficiency experiences obvious symptoms, and many people can still pass the 20/20 eye chart test. There are many performance related issues that can occur with convergence insufficiency including loss of place with reading, reading avoidance and reduced concentration.
The following is a summary of some of the signs and symptoms that can occur while you’re reading or doing other close work and may include:
• Eyestrain (particularly after computer work or reading)
• Difficulty reading (words blur or move on page)
• Difficulty concentrating
• Short attention span
• Frequently lose their place reading
• Squint or close one eye
• Poor comprehension
• Double vision
• Headaches
• Not completing school work or homework
2. Amblyopia (lazy eye)
Amblyopia, or lazy eye as it is more commonly known, occurs when the eyes don’t work in unison. It often occurs with a difference in prescription between the two eyes or when an eye turn is present (see below). When the brain has difficulty making senses of the input from one eye, it favours the eye that can, by actively suppressing or “tuning out” the conflicting information from the other.
Amblyopia can also occur with Strabismus, is where one eye crosses and is no longer aligned with the fellow eye. The eye can cross in (esotropia) or turn out (exotropia). It’s important to pick this up early in children as their vision can deteriorate in the eye that can’t focus. Because the eyes aren’t working in harmony, it can also cause issues with depth perception, fine motor skills and clumsiness.
Symptoms of lazy eye include:
• An eye that appears to wander either inward or outward
• Squinting, or closing one eye so they can see better
• Complaints about things looking blurry
• Sensitive to sunlight
• Head tilting to try and focus better
• Poor vision
• Bumping into things because they find it difficult to judge distances particularly between objects
3. Accommodative Dysfunction
We often take it for granted that we can shift our focus from near to distance and back again without experiencing blurry vision. This ability to change focus is called accommodation. When accommodation works well, we are blissfully unaware of the process.
For people with Accommodative Dysfunction, holding focus at near distances, and being able to shift focus becomes more difficult. Sometimes this results in obvious symptoms like an intermittent blur, or noticing things take a while to come clear, but other times like with convergence insufficiency, the symptoms are not as obvious. This is because a child can bring things into focus with a lot of concentration so it can go unnoticed, but doing this does put a lot of strain on the eyes and on the ability to concentrate.
Symptoms of Accommodative Dysfunction can include:
• Reading avoidance
• Red or sore eyes
• Headaches
• Difficulty in copying from a board or screen then down on paper
• A diagnosed learning problem
4. Oculomotor Dysfunction
Introducing Alice ForsythAt Harmony Vision Care we are fortunate to have a team of leading optometrists who are passionate about helping our clients realise their best performance through better vision. One such member is Alice Forsyth, a behavioural optometrist who studied Optometry at UNSW and joined the Harmony Vision Care team in 2014.
In April, Alice traveled to Sydney to attend the 8th International Congress in Behavioural Optometry, along with the rest of the Harmony Vision team. Staying up to date with research and clinical practice is important to Alice, so when not cooking, spending time with her family or enjoying music, Alice enjoys reading and pursuing knowledge. To this end, she is currently studying for her Fellowship, which is a long road, and lots of hours of study!
We recently sat down with Alice for a quick question and answer session to find out why she’s so passionate about behavioural optometry and to help you get to know her a little better.
What inspired you to become a behavioural optometrist?
I was initially drawn into behavioural optometry to find more ways to help my son with his reading. Though I quickly came to appreciate the bigger picture that is vision. Over two million neurons connect the eyes to many areas of the brain (up to 60%), including input to regions that control touch, movement, attention and spatial judgment.
As optometrists, we like to pull things apart to discover how they work, but once we have that understanding we need to link the parts back together again, and there’s always a bigger picture.
What is the most rewarding part of your job?
The vision of children in the classroom is assumed to be good. A recent study has demonstrated that children who perform less well on NAPLAN results compared to the other children in the same school and demographic area, are also found to fail or get borderline results on a vision screening.
A critical point here is not just that vision is an overlooked issue in children in Australian classrooms, the types of vision screenings being done are not designed to pick up enough of the vision problems found by this particular research study. The difference is that in addition to screening for sight problems, this screening targeted Grade 3 for binocular vision or eye teaming or co-ordination problems too. This is something we have long championed. It is integral part of the vision exams we do on all of our patients.
Eye teaming difficulties must be specifically tested for and are not related to issues with clarity of sight. The most common type of school vision screenings do not typically include these additional eye co-ordination tests. I applaud the efforts of these researchers and hope that more of the type of screening they conducted reaches our schools.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0883035517300587
What is dry eye?
Dry eye is a condition when the eye does not produce tears properly, or when the tears are not of the correct consistency and evaporate too quickly.
Dry eye can adversely affect a person’s quality of life, due to discomfort, tearing or an inability to do things due to making symptoms worse (eg contact lens wear).
Dry eye can make it more difficult to perform some activities, such as using a computer or reading for an extended period of time, and it can make it difficult to cope in dry environments, such as the air inside an airplane.
The first step in treating Dry eye is a thorough consultation to try and identify the correct cause. In the past, day to day relief came in the form of eye drops. These frequently help symptoms, but as soon as you stop using them, the symptoms return. Now, new treatments such as “Blephasteam” are giving longer lasting relief, without the need for additional eye drops.
How can BlephasteamTM help?
