June 22, 2023 - EyeClarity Podcast
In this episode, I am going to talk about Vision Motion Sickness. This is actually a pretty common condition that gets triggered when you are moving quickly or if you move your head quickly and you start to feel nauseas, dizzy or lightheaded. So let’s jump in. Enjoy the show!
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
vision, visual, sensitivity, eye, podcast, vestibular, motion sickness, triggered, works, talk, prisms, vertigo, peripheral vision, traumatic brain injury, occurs, vestibular system, trauma, concussion, brain, cerebral spinal fluid
00:06
Hey everybody, its Dr. Sam, I’d like to welcome you to my EyeClarity podcast. If you want to get in touch with me with questions, you can email me at hello@drsamberne.com. And you can always text me your questions at 1-844-932-1291.
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01:36
Morning, everybody, it’s Dr. Sam, and I’d like to welcome you to my podcast today. So I’m going to talk about a condition called Vision motion sickness.
01:48
Now I’m going to preface this by saying that in this condition, it falls under the umbrella of vertigo. And I would check out on my website, my three videos I did on vertigo, which will give you some insight and basis as I talk about vision motion sickness. So this is actually a pretty common condition. And it occurs it gets triggered when you are moving quickly, either in a car, or if you move your head quickly, you start to feel nauseas or dizzy, lightheaded. So I want to talk about this condition. Because most eye doctors and neurologists, in my opinion,
02:40
could do a better job in diagnosing it. And of course, in my field, the rehabilitation of it is pretty awesome.
02:51
So if you suffer this set of symptoms,
2:56
what I have found over the years is that there’s some connection to either some concussion
03:04
trauma could be a head trauma could be emotional trauma. So those are the things that kind of trigger the initial hypersensitivity. And today, so many people are suffering, either concussion experiences car accidents, or just plain trauma that this creates a hypersensitivity in the relationship between our eyes and our inner ear.
03:36
And in other podcasts and video blogs, I talked about the relationship between our eyeballs and our inner ears, the visual vestibular system. And both of them are important in helping us deal with orientation and balance. And in this vote mode of vision motion sickness there is either an overacting visual component overacting vestibular component. And if this is a chronic issue, it can actually turn into
04:14
a chronic situation where you have low responsiveness.
04:20
Now another symptom that I’ll bring into this is the light sensitivity. And this occurs quite frequently, you know, when you go into one of the big box stores like Walmart, or target
04:37
and you’re dealing with those really troublesome fluorescent lights that are blinking and so you have an over sensitivity to this flickering.
04:49
Another factor in this is that your energetic resources and reserves are usually pretty low and
05:00
We can test this visually, by seeing how well you can sustain your visual focus, or how flexible you are in making changes in your focus. This is part of the vision exam that goes beyond reading the eye chart. But these are very simple tests that can really tell the doctor, okay, there’s a issue between the brain eye ear connection, and being able to filter out different sensory stimuli. And that’s really what it comes down to. Because if we’re working and playing optimally, we have a natural and organic filtering system in the brain that helps our eyes and our ears
05:51
regulate how much sensory information we get in. And once we start getting into a moving situation.
06:00
This amplifies this sensory stimulation. So if you’re not
6:08
working at a high level in terms of resource and resiliency, then you’re gonna get triggered by this vision, motion sensitivity. And it’s partly vestibular and partly visual.
06:24
So what can you do about it?
06:26
Well, what I have found is that, first of all, in terms of the light sensitivity, sometimes some filters or tints can work well. So I would either do a blue or purple tint, that can be very calming for the visual system. Sometimes there’s a filter that you can use, which is a combination of orange in yellow.
06:49
And that also has been found some times to help people with the light sensitivity and also reduce some of the over sensitivity in the peripheral vision because it’s the peripheral vision that’s really triggering this, and it basically creates a shutdown.
07:11
Sometimes,
7:14
another technique that works really well is certain types of what we call yoked prisms. Now I’ve talked about your prisms, in many other podcasts. Most doctors don’t know what your prisms are, it’s a very different prism, than trying to fit a prism on one eye to force the eye to straighten or to eliminate double vision.
07:35
But in yoke prisms, both prisms are the same power in each eye. And they create a spatial change that either can narrow the peripheral vision or widen the peripheral vision. And it works quite well, for people that have had traumatic brain injury, double vision, or this vote, Vision motion. Sickness that that occurs. Again, you have to find a trained eye doctor who knows about your prisms. And you could certainly incorporate those in your regular prescription.
08:11
Some other basic things is that if you were progressive lenses, it’s going to make the problem worse. And so I would definitely reduce the progressive lens you utilization, especially in high focusing situations like computer driving, extensive reading, because in a progressive lens, as you know, it tends to narrow your field too much. And it just puts too much stress on the brain to try to figure out where are you going to focus.
08:44
Okay, and then the last thing, of course, is physical vision therapy. And the type of physical vision therapy that I have found that works really well is combining doing some things like visual tracking or visual focusing visual coordination things while you’re stimulating the vestibular system.
09:03
So you might be doing some movement, you might be listening to some kind of an auditory timing device while you’re moving your body and using your eyes. So in other words, it’s integrating the sensory motor systems in a more efficient way. And over time, the brain goes, Ah, I can start filtering out when I feel overstimulated. And this really occurs a lot. When you’re in a car, you’re driving, and you get that anxiety, feeling you don’t know what’s going on. This is a visual vestibular imbalance.
09:39
I also think there’s some biochemistry, things that you can do, obviously eating an anti inflammatory diet, reducing your sugars, increasing your healthy fats, including omega-3’s.
09:52
Maybe working with a functional medicine doctor and seeing you know, what’s the right diet for you? Is it a Mediterranean diet? Is it a good
10:00
keto diet? Should you eat more vegetarian or vegan? That’s kind of beyond the scope of this video. But what I want to emphasize is diet is so important, because it feeds the brain, and it feeds the eyes and the brain in the eyes have one of the highest metabolic needs of the body. And so if your resiliency is low to begin with, then you
10:24
you’re not going to be able to make the improvements as quickly.
10:29
If you don’t address the nutrition,
10:33
obviously, as a cranial sacral therapist, I feel cranial work is really helpful in just increasing the circulation in the cerebral spinal fluid, which is going to affect the eyes and the ears. And that’s going to balance the nervous system.
10:47
And also the fluid system. So that’s the lymph and the cerebral spinal fluid, and any fluid in the connective tissue or the tissue around the eyes. So those would be the the high points of what you need to do to correct this visual motion sensitivity. It’s a growing problem. I’ve seen so many patients with this and it’s very much attributed to either traumatic brain injury or some kind of concussion, or some kind of trauma. So there you have it, and I’m gonna get back on the trail. I want to thank you so much for coming along with me today. And until next time, take care.
11:42
Thank you for listening. I hope you learned something from the EyeClarity podcast show today. If you enjoyed the episode, make sure to subscribe on iTunes or Spotify and leave a review. See you here next time.
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