Can Vision Therapy Slow the Progression of Myopia (Nearsightedness)?
More people than ever before, many of them children, are being diagnosed with myopia, also known as nearsightedness. Just over 41% of Americans have myopia today compared to 21% in 1971, according to the National Eye Institute. Those numbers are expected to rise even higher in the next few decades. Although there's no cure for myopia, it may be possible to slow the progression of the refractive error with vision therapy.
What Causes Myopia?
Nearsightedness happens when your eyeball is too long or the clear cornea covering the iris and pupil is curved more than normal. Both of these things prevent light from focusing on the retina precisely. The retina changes light into electrical signals that the brain interprets and processes into images. If you have myopia, light focuses in front of the retina, causing your distance vision to look blurry.
You may be more likely to develop myopia if someone else in your family is nearsighted. Scientists believe that the recent increase in myopia cases in children may be related to the lack of time spent playing outdoors and increased reliance on digital devices and video games.
Eye doctors also think that problems with binocular vision, accommodation, and convergence insufficiency might play a part in myopia development. Accommodation refers to the ability of the clear lens inside the eye to easily change shape when your focus shifts between near, middle, and far distances. Convergence, an ability necessary for good vision, involves both eyes moving together when focusing. When both eyes fail to shift inward to the same degree when focusing on near objects, the problem is called convergence insufficiency. Good binocular vision relies on both eyes working together as a team.
The Benefits of Vision Therapy
Vision involves complex, split-second interactions between the brain and the eyes. Delays or difficulties in this crucial communication system can result in issues that make it harder to see. For example, binocular vision problems may mean that your brain doesn't receive identical information from each eye, which makes it difficult to produce a single image that's crisp or clear.
In some cases, problems with distance vision can be caused by pseudo myopia, or accommodative spasm. This problem happens when the eyes have difficulty switching their focus from near to far objects. In this case, the eyeball and cornea are normal, but the lens struggles to keep up with visual demands.
Vision therapy strengthens and improves the connection between the eyes and brain and is helpful for accommodation, convergence insufficiency, binocular vision problems, pseudo myopia and many other types of vision problems.
Therapy significantly improved accommodation in children after just 12 weeks of vision therapy in a Chinese study. The children received office-based accommodative/vergency therapy and participated in home vision therapy activities during the study, which was published in the Journal of Ophthalmology in 2016.
Vision Therapy Activities Helpful for Myopia
Vision therapy is custom-designed for each person based on the results of a comprehensive vision examination. Vision therapists use a variety of exercises, activities, devices, and games to improve and enhance the brain-eye connection. A child or adult with myopia might use a Brock string, a long string with three colored beads, to improve convergence insufficiency. One end of the string is held against the nose while the beads are moved back and forth. Moving the beads brings them in and out of focus. As the eyes improve their focusing ability, it will be possible to move the beads closer to the eyes without experiencing blurriness.
Video and virtual reality games offer another way to improve binocular vision and focusing issues. Binocular accommodative and vergence abilities improved after participants played a virtual reality game for 25 minutes in a research study published in the Journal of Optometry in 2020.
Your vision therapy plan might also involve reading words on a chart using accommodative flippers. Flippers are handheld devices that contain lenses that magnify words on one side and minimize them on the other. As you switch back and forth between sides, you'll strengthen your focusing abilities.
Looking for a way to slow myopia in yourself or your child? Contact our office to schedule an appointment with the vision therapist.
Sources:
National Eye Institute: Myopia: A Close Look at Efforts to Turn Back a Growing Problem, 10/3/2017
Journal of Ophthalmology: Effect of Vision Therapy on Accommodation in Myopic Chinese Children, 12/2016
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5209616/
NCBI: Journal of Optometry: The effect of gaming on accommodative and vergence facilities after exposure to virtual reality head-mounted display, July-September, 2020
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7301196/
Review of Myopia Management: How One Optometrist Bridged Vision Therapy and Myopia Control, 8/15/2023
https://reviewofmm.com/how-one-optometrist-bridged-vision-therapy-and-myopia-control/
Harvard Health Publishing: Curbing Nearsightedness in Children: Can Outdoor Time Help?, 12/15/2022