October 25, 2019 - Double Vision (Strabismus)
I brought my film crew out here. We’re getting ready to shoot a video. All right, guys, let’s get ready!
Hey, folks, it’s Dr. Sam and I’m on my morning walk. I received the question yesterday from a gentleman who’s been diagnosed with sixth nerve palsy and vertical double vision. So let me unpack this for you. A sixth nerve palsy, the sixth nerve cranial nerve innervates the lateral rectus muscle – that’s the outside muscle of the eye – and it affects the ability for the two eyes to work together. And this can create double vision, problems with depth perception, eye stream, and even balance issues.
So some of the causes of six nerve palsy can be inflammation, vascular disease so things like stroke, brain tumors, and even infection. I would also add things like trauma, stress and nutritional deficiencies. Now, if we look at neuro neurodegenerative diseases, if you have a sixth nerve palsy, you want to rule out things like M.S. and even Parkinson’s disease.
Now, the standard medical care is that the doctor will say, well, let’s just watch it. And the other option is doing eye muscle surgery. Well, both of those are not really effective. And in terms of the eye muscle surgery, the success rate is less than 30 percent. And at best, it’s a cosmetic cure. And you’re gonna get a cosmetic result, but it’s not going to change the functional part of using the two eyes together. So it’s basically a symptom based approach.
So let’s deal with the double vision from a more holistic perspective. So when the two eyes, don’t work together, they’re misaligned. This is going to create double. And it can be a horizontal double or it can also be a vertical double. When there’s double vision, the brain gets confused. And either you’ll see double or the brain actually suppresses or shuts down one of the eyes to avoid double.
So an effective strategy is something called physical vision therapy, physical eye therapy. You know, I started my career working in hospitals and I was treating patients with traumatic brain injury and some of those had sixth nerve palsy – very unusual kinds of double vision – and being able to retrain and reeducate the eye brain connection, you know, teaching people how to improve their eye movements, their visual coordination skills. Because of the plasticity of the eyes in the brain, this is a very, very effective approach. And really it’s the only approach that’s going to help a person reduce the double vision. So this is what I would recommend for this patient. In addition, I think that things like cranial sacral therapy can be very helpful in reducing the double vision. Acupuncture and of course, increasing the trace minerals: magnesium, chromium, selenium, and of course the antioxidants. I think stress does play a role here. I also think inflammation is a piece to the puzzle. So improving your dietary absorption, improving your microbiome, especially in the intestinal tract. These are all things that you have to consider if you want to reduce or get rid of the double vision. So that’s my message for today. I really appreciate the question. And until next time, everybody. Take care.