How Vision Therapy Can Help with Focusing Problems
Do you frequently notice blurry or double vision, eyestrain, headaches, or fatigue when reading? You may have a focusing problem. Focusing problems aren't uncommon, even in people who wear glasses or have 20/20 vision. Fortunately, many focusing problems can be improved through vision therapy.
What Are Focusing Problems?
Focusing on the words on a page or objects nearby or in the distance requires a complex interaction between your eyes, muscles, nerves, and brain. Eye focusing problems can be related to:
- Weak Eye Muscles. Eye muscles coordinate the movement of your eyes and turn the eyes inward when you read or look at close objects. Focus can suffer if the muscles are too weak to move normally. In some cases, weak eye muscles can be caused by a problem with the nerves that tell the muscles to move.
- Brain/Eye Communication. Poor communication between the brain and eyes can cause a variety of vision problems, including focusing issues.
- A Sluggish Lens. The lens is a clear, convex disk inside your eye behind your iris and pupil. Small ciliary muscles attached to the lens change its shape to accommodate near, far, and intermediate vision. When the ciliary muscles don't work well, your lens may struggle to keep up as you shift your focus from an object in the distance to one nearby.
Focusing problems affect people of all ages. Children can be born with problems or focusing issues can develop as a result of an injury, head trauma, aging, disease, or stroke. Unfortunately, focusing problems aren't always detected during childhood and can continue through adulthood.
Conditions that may affect your ability to focus include:
- Accommodative Insufficiency. Accommodative insufficiency happens when the eyes can't maintain their focus for very long.
- Accommodative Excess. Overfocusing is the problem if you suffer from accommodative excess.
- Accommodative Spasm. Accommodative spasm occurs when the ciliary muscle constantly contracts and can't relax.
- Accommodative Infacility. Accommodative infacility affects the ability of the lens to shift and maintain focus.
- Convergence Insufficiency. Convergence insufficiency occurs when one of your eyes doesn't turn as far inward when you focus on a close object.
- Convergence Excess. Convergence excess happens when the eyes turn inward too much when focusing on close objects.
More than one of these problems can occur at the same time. Researchers who surveyed school students in grades three through eight noted that accommodative insufficiency was more common in students with convergence insufficiency. Their work appeared in the Journal of Ophthalmology in 2016.
How Can I Tell if I Have a Focusing Problem?
Symptoms of focusing problems include:
- Blurry or Double Vision When Focusing
- Words That Appear to Jump or Move on the Page When Reading
- Eyestrain
- Fatigue
- Headache
- Slow Reading Speed
- Losing Your Place When Reading
Improving Focusing Problems with Vision Therapy
Vision therapy improves coordination and communication between the eyes, brain, nerves, and eye muscles. During vision therapy, you'll participate in activities and games that slowly improve your ability to focus your eyes. Your therapy plan might include a few of these activities:
- Brock String Exercises. Brock string exercises improve focus, convergence, and binocular vision (the ability to use both eyes together). The Brock string includes several colorful beads attached to a string. You'll slowly move the beads close to your face and note when you experience blurry or double vision. With practice, you'll be able to move the beads closer to your eyes without any focusing problems.
- Puzzles and Mazes. Following the twists and turns of a maze with a pencil helps strengthen accommodative skills and visual memory.
- Marsden Ball. Batting at specific numbers, letters, or colors on a swinging Marsden ball could help you control eye movements, enhance visual coordination and tracking, and improve your ability to switch your focus between near and far distances.
- Computer and Virtual Reality Games. Computer and virtual reality games are ideal for vision therapy as they often require quick changes in focus, precise eye movements, and the ability to remain focused on objects as they move on the screen. After 12 weeks of vision therapy, young adults with convergence insufficiency or accommodative dysfunction significantly improved their binocular vision, according to a research study published in BMC Ophthalmology in 2022.
Ready to improve your focusing ability with vision therapy? Contact our office to schedule an appointment with the vision therapist.
Sources:
PubMed: BMC Ophthalmology: Virtual Reality-Based Vision Therapy versus OBVAT in the Treatment of Convergency Insufficiency, Accommodative Dysfunction: a Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial, 4/21/2022
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35448970/
National Eye Institute: Convergence Insufficiency, 12/4/2024
https://www.nei.nih.gov/learn-about-eye-health/eye-conditions-and-diseases/convergence-insufficiency
American Optometric Association: Accommodative Dysfunction
https://www.aoa.org/healthy-eyes/eye-and-vision-conditions/accommodative-dysfunction?sso=y
PubMed: Journal of Ophthalmology: Convergence Insufficiency, Accommodative Insufficiency, Visual Symptoms, and Astigmatism in Tohono O'odham Students, 7/20/2016
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4971328/
NCBI: Stat Pearls: Accommodative Insufficiency, 5/31/2023
