Dr. Juanita Collier: Welcome to the It Could Be Your Eyes podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Juanita Collier. Through my decades of work in the field of vision, I have met thousands of patients, parents, educators, therapists, and doctors searching for solutions to the seemingly unsolvable. Challenging traditional medicine's new normal?
We'll uncover that the root cause isn't necessarily what you thought it might be. It could be your eyes.
Hello and welcome back to are It Could Be Your Eyes podcast. Today I'm writing solo as your host where normally I'm the co host, but I am Jessica Liedke and I am a certified optometric vision therapist working with Dr. Juanita Collier at 4D Vision Gym. We've been doing vision therapy for 10 years for me and over 15 for Dr. Collier. And a question that we get a lot and something that we see pop up online is something that we've seen lots of bait surrounding, a lot of back and forth, very strong opinions on. is why doesn't vision therapy work?
Ooh, it's a heavy one. It's a big one. When you think about what vision therapy promises to do for you or your child, there are some very big promises that come out. We've heard people report increased reading stamina, reading comprehension, the ability to see clearer, up close, far away, back and forth.
We've heard people say they can track across a page and not lose their place. We hear people talk about improved sports performance and comfort in bright lights or ability to drive more. safely and more confidently and without anxiety. We've seen people talk about increased confidence overall, increased social awareness, and just ability to be social.
We've heard Concussion sufferers and traumatic brain injury sufferers and stroke sufferers and people with chronic illness talk about what sorts of freedom and what sorts of more ease there is in their life due to doing vision therapy. And all of these great stories are amazing. They are why we do what we do.
We have some beautiful reviews that we've seen our patients post on our behalf. We've seen amazing stories come out from all corners of the world and the country talking about the amazing, beautiful things that vision therapy has given them and their families. We've seen research showing that doing vision training has improved quality of life.
It's improved incidences of juvenile delinquency remittance or reoccurrence. We've seen research showing that vision therapy has massive effect on amblyopia and strabismus, which are typically and traditionally treated by other sources like via patching or penalization or surgery and that vision therapy is able to create changes that those sorts of interventions just can't.
We've seen research on how sports training helps prevent future concussions in athletes who would otherwise be at risk. All of the, the literature. And current literature and research points to the benefits of neurological training and how neuroplasticity is actually a thing and is an exciting thing and that we can actually retrain the brain and get the cortical columns of the brain that use the eyes to be processing more efficiently and and with accuracy.
And still, even after all of that research, we hear vision therapy doesn't work. Vision therapy is snake oil. It makes false promises. It makes promises that no one can actually keep. And even if they do what they promise, it doesn't really matter because vision doesn't have anything to do with learning.
Or, vision, uh, your ability to converge has nothing to do with your ability to see double. And even if you are seeing double, who cares, lots of people see double and they make their lives work just fine. We've heard these places, these vision therapy places are only out for your money. And that's all they care about and they just, they cost a lot and they aren't accepting insurance because it doesn't even work.
And they're just trying to give you hibbity dibbity and unscientific stuff that doesn't actually do anything for anybody. So, doing vision therapy is a waste of your time. It's a waste of your money. It's some have actually come out to say it's downright harmful. And there's all this criticism and whole different corners.
So I wanted to take a moment and discuss why doesn't vision therapy work? If you talk to somebody who says that they tried vision therapy and it didn't work, I want you to dig in a little deeper. I want you to figure out why they say it didn't work and what that means. For one thing, what does working mean?
What does success mean to that person? Sometimes people start vision therapy with this idea that they are going to get benefits that may not be what they want. are aligned for their treatment providers. For example, someone with strabismus, their success may mean cosmetic alignment. To have cured strabismus or an eye turn, they want their eyes to be pointing straight ahead no matter what.
If they are looking far away, if they are looking up close, if they are sick, if they are tired, if they are upset, if they're happy, if they're reading for 18 hours straight, if they're on the computer or cell phone for many hours, it doesn't matter. They want their eyes to be both pointing forward straight all the time.
To us, success in strabismus or eye turn therapy does not necessarily mean alignment all the time. I know that might sound crazy, but hang in there with me. Success to us is being able to utilize both eyes as a team a majority of the time. A lot of times that also results in a cosmetic alignment of the eyes.
But what it also results in is actual cohesive depth perception. It is actual ability to use the right and the left eye at the same time to really understand and interpret one's world. So, we're not having double vision or in the avoidance of double vision, trying to suppress or shut down or ignore one eye.
We want to be able to organize and Align central and peripheral awareness. So what is going on right in front of you with what's going on around you and utilizing our tools where appropriate. So for example, some very successful athletes are actually exotropes because their eyes turning out allow them to really understand the field more appropriately.
They have a pranorama viewing and then they're able to make use of that information when it really counts. So that is success. What is success to you? If you are going under a vision therapy or your child is going under vision therapy, what are your concrete goals? In our office, when someone starts, we now make our patients really clearly define three SMART goals.
And if you have heard the term SMART goals, you know that it means something that is specific. So, it's not, I just want to see better, it's, I want to have clear visual acuity at distance. They are measurable. So as I said, measurable is a actual number or something that is quantifiable rather than just a concept of better because you could be chasing better forever.
If you are a sufferer of an injury or a chronic disease, if you say that you want to be as you were before the incident or before your disease, that may not be attainable. If you say you want to be normal. That may not be attainable. Everyone has specific concerns and differences, and so we want things to be actually measurable.
And with that, we want them to be attainable. That's the A of the SMART. Attainable because you want to be realistic. You do not want to expect a child who is starting at a first grade reading level when they are in fourth grade to then be at a sixth grade level of reading, right? We want to be aware of what is real, and we want to have it be achievable.
And then we want it to be relevant. Okay, so if, you know, you are happening to experience headaches, it is entirely possible that if you have a visual developmental delay or a visual condition, your vision may be significantly impacting your headaches. At the same time, neurological processing and epilepsy or chronic migraine or other sorts of neurological conditions may still remain after the visual conditions are taken care of.
So, you have to have some sort of, um, awareness of if we eliminate the visual conditions, these sorts of concerns may still apply. However, at that point, we know that the eyes are not the reason. Let's also look at what is timely. Okay, so we want to have some sort of end goal in sight, or we want to have goal posts at least toward our ultimate goal, so that at least we're not at the point where we can be like, someday I'd like to X, Y, Z.
No, by three months from now, we should expect that our visual attention and our tracking should be under control. That kind of timely awareness helps bring the urgency into what we are doing, and it also has some awareness of what is possible and attainable within a certain time frame. Again, we're looking at SMART goals for our patients on their behalf, but we're also creating SMART goals that are quantifiable or quantitative based off of our actual exam findings and off of what is normative for our patient that we're looking at.
No matter the age, um, we want to make sure that we're hitting certain standards and we are looking at those things compared to the patient's neurological, developmental, and all sorts of other ways of processing. That's what we mean when we're talking about what is working, what is success. Why doesn't vision therapy work?
Maybe your awareness of what is possible or what you're looking for may not be what vision therapy can actually provide. So that is something that we can suss out a little bit more.
If you or someone you love has suffered a concussion and are still feeling its effects, don't accept that this is your new normal. Join Behavioral Optometrists. Dr. Juanita Collier and Vision therapist, Jessica Liedke for a free online workshop to learn how concussions impact your vision and what the key to full recovery from your symptoms actually is. Click the link in the show notes to register for the free online workshop today. You don't want to have to wait to get your life back.
The other question that I really want you to ask, if someone comes up to you and says, you know, I tried vision therapy. It didn't work, coming from a therapist standpoint. I can tell you that I have seen some of our prior patients say online or in different spaces.
I tried vision therapy and it didn't work and I also happen to know those particular patients did not put in the work. If you are looking for a magic wand. Pop some glasses on and all of a sudden life is better and the world is clearer and you're jumping higher, running faster, uh, because you put on the right pair of Nikes.
This is not for you. If you are looking for an easy solution, if you are looking for someone to do work for you, if you are looking for your therapist to hold your hand and pull you along, making the changes for you. This will not. If you want to come in once a week to vision therapy and not practice every day, vision therapy will not work.
If you want your therapist to make magic happen for a person who does not want to do vision therapy, vision therapy will not work. If you want to just pay your money and show up once or twice a week, but maybe once or twice a week, three times a month or once a month, twice a month, every other week, vision therapy will not work.
And I hate to be this blunt about it. But this is the reality, okay? You cannot make neurological changes without your consent. And in some ways you can, right? I have been able to make some changes in our therapy room. I have been able to pull people along, but it is the consistency, it is the Absolute commitment to the process that makes the most amount of changes in the shortest amount of time.
Sometimes we have patients who are with us for years and years and years and years and years and I love them, but maybe their goals have changed and maybe what they're looking for isn't necessarily what we're here for. Maybe they've been committed to the process, but somewhere inside the goal has been fuzzed.
The goalpost has moved. We've had patients where everything is great and everything looks fantastic and they tell us that they're seeing so much better and that their original goals have been met and things are wonderful and their quality of life has changed. But now I'm noticing that when I'm looking at the TV and the Hulu symbol comes on, the edge of the H is kind of blurry for like half a second, and then they tell us that it's not, they're not done.
Or we get them better and we get them well and we get the balance all coordinated and we're walking without holding on to walls and we feel more comfortable and confident. And then we get into a social situation in an unfamiliar place and we look at the floor and it's got a crazy pattern and our anxiety ramps up and all of a sudden we're off balance again.
So that's where it kind of becomes into a mental game. of being afraid to be okay again. And again, I know this sounds crazy. I know this can sound really funny from the outside, but I'm telling you, we have seen it. People get better. Their quantifiable, scientific numbers say that their visual system is Um, working appropriately and something emotionally, something mentally feels off and people are afraid to live their life without limitations because they have been trapped for so long.
It is nothing against them and it's not a quality, like a character flaw. It is you have been suffering for so long that it is hard to believe that there is a better way. And we see that a lot and that's when we have to do some inner work, that's when we have to do some journaling, that's when we have to do some mindfulness, that's when we have to really unpack what is going on.
And we've actually been lucky enough to find a couple of mental health providers and counselors who've been wonderful at helping people get through that portion of it. We are not qualified mental health providers, we're qualified visual health. providers, but health is holistic. You are a whole person.
Your eyes and your brain have so much to do with so much of your life. And this is a lot of what it means to say vision therapy doesn't work. So to recap, number one, define what working means. Number two, did you put in the work? And number three. If you did put in the work, are you afraid to be well? It feels blunt.
It sounds blunt, but it's true. And I hope that this helps you wrap your brain around a little bit more of what it means when you see this sort of criticism. And until next time, I hope you are well. I hope you stay well. Please reach out to us if we can help answer any questions about visual health, vision therapy, what is possible, and how we might be able to help you on your journey to full wellness through optimal vision performance. Take care.
Jessica Liedke: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the It Could Be Your Eyes Podcast.To schedule an appointment with Dr. Collier, visit us@4dvisiongym.com. To train your vision at home, visit us at 4D vision therapy@home.com. Rate and review our podcast and email a screenshot to receive 10% off a new evaluation or any of our digital programs. Subscribe to join us for more eye-opening episodes as we dive deep into all the ways that it could be your eyes.