July 5, 2022 - EyeClarity Podcast
Today we are talking about Amblyopia also known as Lazy Eye. It’s been a common idea that this can only be treated in childhood, but today we are going to look at research and discuss how it might be treated as you get older. Enjoy the show. If you want more, sign up for my newsletter at: www.drsamberne.com.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
eye, lazy eye, child, doctors, perceptual learning, lazy, created, visual, adulthood, age, adults, ai, called, improve, therapy, vision, general anesthesia, institute, development, infant
Hello, everyone, it’s Dr. Sam, I’d like to welcome you to my EyeClarity podcast. This is a show that offers cutting-edge information on how to improve your vision and overall wellness through holistic methods. I so appreciate you spending part of your day with me. If you have questions, you can send them to hello@drsamberene.com. Now to the latest EyeClarity episode.
Hi, everybody, Dr. Sam here, and we are at another EyeClarity podcast. So I want to talk about lazy eye. Another term for that is amblyopia. The reason why I bring this up is over the last six months, I have treated a number of children and adults who have been diagnosed with lazy eye. And in every case, the doctors that they went to see, said that if you don’t correct the amblyopia by age seven, you won’t be able to improve the vision. Now, in each case, the three children and the one adult, not only did they eliminate the amblyopia, but they were able to improve their depth perception, and their spatial awareness, increase their balance, their focus, their concentration. So I could sit here and say, you know, doing this over three decades, this information that most patients get from their doctor, that if you don’t correct this by age seven, then there’s nothing you can do. So I’m going to point to a couple of research studies.
The first was conducted by the National Institutes of Health. And what they were trying to ascertain is the belief that the majority of eye doctors, what they’re saying in their offices, is that there’s a cut off age, and unless you treat the lazy eye before this cut off age, then forget about it. You can’t help people. So in this study, it was conducted at 49 different eye centers across the United States. Some very famous Institute’s like the Mayo Clinic, Emory Eye Center in Atlanta, Ohio State, Southern California, College of Optometry Bascom. Palmer Eye Institute in Florida. So what the study showed was that, well, there were 507 children between the ages of seven and 17. And the question was, could amblyopia be improved up to age 17. And the results showed that 53% of the seven to 12 year olds had improved vision following treatment, and 47%. Between the ages of 13 and 17 year olds, also gained improvement in their eyesight. So I want to take this a step further, because what about adults?
Can human amblyopia be treated in adulthood? adulthood? And there was a really great research study was a collection of research papers, and it was put out by the Europe. It’s called Europe PMC author manuscripts. So it’s the PubMed of Europe. And in that research, they specifically studied can amblyopia be helped in adulthood. And, without a doubt, the results showed that adults with amblyopia could restore several aspects of their visual function and perceptual learning. And in this form of fine ocular to eye therapy. They found that there was a really strong positive influence when you do things like daily visual stimulation, you know, other broadband activities that would provide feedback to the adult so that they could again begin to stimulate and improve the lazy eye the amblyopic guy as a relates to The the better seeing eye.
05:04
So now we know that it is in the science, it’s in the literature, even though again, the eye doctors are saying, well, after a certain age, you can’t really do anything. Clinically over the years, I have seen incredible success stories with both children and adults who’ve been diagnosed with lazy eye visa vie amblyopia. And the form of therapy where they patch, the so called good eye for seven to nine hours a day, again, really doesn’t work. And the reason why it doesn’t work is because our brain has to learn how to use our two eyes together, as it relates to our body. I remember one of my teachers used to say, a vision problem was more than in the eye, it’s in the whole person.
We certainly got this philosophy, when we were learning at the Gizelle Institute. And many of my mentors really hammer that point, in that you have to look at the whole person, and not just the eyeball. And so in lazy eye, that’s where an eye is, can maybe underdeveloped or it’s not stimulated as much as the other I that just that term lazy, you know, you think about this, if you’re called lazy, what happens you start absorbing that, that negative connotation. And then you start thinking, well, maybe I am lazy, maybe that’s the reason why my life is a certain way or my eye is a certain way or how I am at school. And so this is kind of out there, but I call that instead of lazy, I called the eye that sees in a different way, in a different perspective. And in another dimension. As many times that lazy eye, as the doctors call it is a more sensitive eye, maybe it’s, you know, we know vision is very connected to the brain. And depending on our developmental arc, things like I know this, again, with some of the conventional doctors, they have no idea that this could even be an influence but in utero, birth, and bonding, those experiences can profoundly affect our sensory motor development, our bilateral integration, how well are two sides of our brain, our eyes and our body work together. And as an infant, there’s a plasticity in the infant’s system, again, sensory motor system. So if there are traumas, if there are, you know, things that are out of the norm, in terms of mom being able to bond, you know, I remember a case recently where the child came to the mother brought the child to see me was five years old. And they’re getting all these diagnoses like a lazy eye and farsightedness and astigmatism.
And then the evaluation, he had a developmental delay in his vision. his left eye was focused very far in the distance and his right eye was focused very close up, you know it near and his eyes were split, he wasn’t able to use his eyes together. And it showed up in his body movement. It showed up in his very early infant reflexes, they weren’t integrated. And the mom shared with me that at birth, she was trying to do a natural birth and she had had a back injury. And at the very last minute, the doctor decided to do a general anesthesia on her and perform a C section. So this created a birth trauma in mom and her son, and also because of the general anesthesia, she was knocked out. She wasn’t able to get the the initial immediate bonding, that’s so important when a newborn comes out. And, you know, the hormones that are created in the bonding energetically, that’s created was disrupted. And there were some other incidences early on, which created this sensory motor confusion. And all the eye doctors were measuring was, what was, you know, what was the ihr reading distance and the eye health? And they would just say, well, you failed the eye exam.
09:51
Let’s put you into some glasses. So when you put a youngster in glasses when they have a visual developmental delay, You’re actually blocking or creating more of an obstacle for that child to learn how to hook their eyes up with their brain. That’s why the physical eye therapy is critical for helping the child connect to the brain and the brain to the eyes and the eyes to the body. And once that happens, then the development takes off. And any prescriptions that are in the eye tends you go away, because the prescriptions are just a symptom approach, I call it a an adaptive response that the child is making, because the demands on the child is Oh, no, I’ve got to learn to read, I’ve got to read the Learn, I’ve got to do all these fine detail visual things. And I’m not prepared to do that visually. So we look at the chronological age versus the performance age. And a lot of times there’s a discrepancy, like in this child. And so this creates a misdiagnosis mistreatment. And the last thing you want to do is induce more trauma where you’re saying, Okay, let’s let’s patch, the better seeing eye, it doesn’t work.
And all it does is create trauma in the family in the child. And that’s why the, the physical therapy that’s very body centered, coupled with things like cranial sacral, therapy, nutritional support, and so on, are great ways to help the child bridge the gap of the developmental delay, which in this case, was showing up in the visual system. So, you know, if you know, people, you know, family members, friends, and they go to the conventional AI doctor, and they get these diagnoses, and it’s a five or 10 minute exam, you might want to look elsewhere. And look for somebody who has additional training in the area of child development, holistic vision, the understanding of the physical therapy is a reeducation of the brain, in the eyes and the body. And so it’s the research is there that we can improve lazy eye, way into adulthood. I’ve seen it in my practice. And in my workshops for many, many years. And then on a on a practical level, be very careful about slapping glasses on kids at a young age, because in most cases, it’s going to stunt their visual development growth. And it’s going to create a dependency and a weakness that is not going to serve the child in their perceptual learning in their movement in their decision making in their sports. And it goes on and on. So that’s my hot take on lazy AI. And I want to thank you again for tuning in today. Until next time, take care.
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