Making All The Puzzle Pieces Fit Together

As a doctor, I feel it is my job to look at each patient as a whole person. In our health care system, often a patient goes to each specialist and no one ever takes the time to evaluate the person as a whole.  I always strive to take in the total picture with each patient. Working together with other health professionals should always be the goal to help heal the patient.

 Dizziness can be caused by many factors.  The eyes, the inner ear, blood pressure, blood sugar levels all can contribute to dizziness. In fact, the visual system and the inner ear work together to keep us balanced and moving correctly in space. Unfortunately, this link between or inner ears, the vestibular system, and vision is too often overlooked.

If you or a loved one has been suffering from dizziness or headache and has not found relief from the neurologist, ENT, or vestibular therapist, consider the problem may be your eyes. Vertical Heterophoria is a binocular vision dysfunction where the images fall on non-corresponding points on your retinas. This causes the eye muscles to strain to keep the images together. Typical symptoms are headache and dizziness. Vertical Heterophoria will not be found on a routine eye exam. A simple online questionnaire can be found on my website www.nvcofny.com. This test can help determine if a binocular vision dysfunction is the missing puzzle piece in the treatment of your dizziness.

Control Your Headaches, Don't Let Them Control You.

Yesterday, a patient said to me, "Dr. Cheryl these prism glasses are doing something! My headaches are getting better.". This young woman has been suffering from extreme headaches her whole life. She was taking various medications everyday to control them. When it was 'that time of the month', the headaches would be unbearable. She had to stay in a dark room at those times for often days. These headaches were destroying her life. Work, school, social life, all were suffering.

I explained to her that many factors contributing to her headaches we could not control, especially the hormonal swings every month, but we could control many triggers. First, she stopped  all caffeine and caffeine containing medications, cold turkey. This was not an easy task. She suffered from a terrible rebound headache the first week. Unfortunately, this is the only way to get out of the caffeine- headache cycle.  The caffeine may make the headache better but it is only a temporary fix. The headaches will only be that much worse when they return.

Second, I corrected the vertical imbalance in her visual system. Vertical Heterophoria was causing a constant strain and stress on her visual system. This constant stress was a major headache trigger for this patient. The prisms in her new glasses made an immediate impact on her vision and her symptoms.

Now, she is working on controlling other dietary triggers. It is tough to give up caffeine and chocolate! I am very proud of all her hard work and I truly believe she will soon be completely headache free.

A Wow Moment

Today I got a wow. Not really one wow, but a series of wows. This young woman who has been suffering from dizziness most of her life found relief. She just kept saying wow, wow, wow, this is a miracle.  These moments keep me pushing forward and working even harder to get the word out about vertical heterophoria. If you suffer from dizziness or a feeling of being off balance and every doctor tells you that nothing is wrong... It just may be your eyes!

Do You Believe in Destiiny?

The yiddish word for destiny is “ Besherit”. I am not sure if I am spelling that correctly, but I have been thinking a lot about destiny lately. My destiny or fate changed about a year and a half ago while reading one of my optometry journals on a plane trip. This particular article caught my eye since it mentioned University of Michigan. My daughter is a student at Michigan, so I decided to read the article. It was about a doctor’s speciality practice and how she was helping people with an often misdiagnosed binocular vision disorder, vertical heterophoria. Patients from all over the country and even out of the country, travel to Michigan to be treated by this doctor. Her name is Dr. Debby Feinberg of Vision Specialists of Michigan.

I found her work so interesting and different, I decided to reach out to Dr. Debby. We spoke on the phone a number of times and each time I became more and more intrigued with her work. Binocular vision was not even on my radar before I read this journal article. I was trained very medically and started my career in glaucoma research. I was a good general optometrist with a young growing practice but I was never satisfied with my mode of practice. A speciality practice in binocular vision was not even a thought in my head.

I decided to go visit Vision Specialists of Michigan on a trip to see my daughter. From that visit onwards, I knew that this was my fate. I walked into Dr. Debby’s office and said to myself, “ I want to do this!”. So my journey began. A few months later I went out to train with Dr. Debby Feinberg. It was an intense week of training, observing, and examining patients. Dr. Debby’s technique of treatment with prisms is very exact and I had almost no experience with prisms at all. Prisms scared me! I had a lot to learn, it was overwhelming at times.

I found this work so exciting, because these patients are sick, suffering, and searching for answers. They have been told by many doctors that nothing is wrong with them. They have headaches, are dizzy and sensitive to the light, plus many other symptoms. They have had many tests and treatments, with little or no relief. They are told it is in their heads. It is not. No one looked in the right place.

My goal is to spread the word about vertical heterophoria. If you or someone you know suffers from dizziness, headaches, neck ache, anxiety, motion sickness, have them look up vertical heterophoria. This condition can not be detected on a routine eye exam. You must be tested by a doctor specially trained to diagnosis this condition and treat it. The treatment is a visual orthotic device, prism glasses. These glasses look like regular glasses but to a patient with vertical heterophoria these glasses are their medicine. These patients feel a substantial improvement in their symptoms during the first visit. They often can not believe how much better they feel!

I am proud to say that I am one of the first doctors in the country to be trained by Dr. Debby Feinberg. I look forward to opening my new practice, The Neuro Visual Center of New York, later this summer. This is the next chapter of my professional life. This is my destiny, besherit.

Glasses Are Your Medicine

           It is almost miraculous that a simple pair of glasses with prismatic correction, or as we like to call them visual orthotic devices, can be the solution to so many problems. Vertical Heterophoria can cause headaches, neck aches, anxiety, balance issues, dizziness, reading comprehension problems, to name a few. When the eye muscles are under constant strain to keep the retinal images aligned, all of these symptoms can present.  However, this condition is so often not even looked for because it is not well known, even to most eye doctors. It is just something not taught in school, though the condition was described as early as the 1800's.
          My mission is to spread the word about vertical heterophoria and other binocular vision dysfunctions (BVD). If we can identify patients with BVD early on, so much suffering can be alleviated. In the learning disabled population this is paramount. It is well documented that children with learning difficulties, often have BVD.
           If you have unexplained headache, dizziness, anxiety in big spaces (malls, supermarkets). If you have seen many doctors, had many tests, tried many treatments with no relief.... please think of your eyes. Log on to my website and take the questionnaire. A pair of glasses with prismatic correction may be the medicine you need!
www.neurovisualcenterofny.com
         

Let's talk about ADHD and Vision

Last week there was a person on the local New York City news talking about vision exercises and ADHD.  They stated that most children are misdiagnosed and can be cured with vision exercises. Now, I do think there is a place for vision therapy with children with ADHD but, I don't think that this is a cure all.  Many children and adults, are misdiagnosed with ADHD or ADD because the binocular system was never tested.  However, there are equally as many people that truly have ADHD/ADD plus binocular dysfunction (BVD). This is an important distinction.  One group is misdiagnosed and one group is properly diagnosed. Both patients in these groups can have BVD.  A full comprehensive binocular vision examination is so important for both of these groups and it is often overlooked.

We also know the medications that are used to treat these conditions also affects the visual system. People have difficulty maintaining focus, tracking from one line to another, or keeping both eyes pointing to the same place in space. Appropriate prismatic correction can help all of these difficulties.     While vision therapy can take months and be very expensive, we can see results very quickly with Dr. Feinberg's technique of prismatic correction.

It is troubling that so many of these children fall through the cracks in the system because they are not evaluated properly. In our ever increasing visual and stressful world, this has become a huge problem. These children are working so hard to learn and not having a stable visual system makes it so much harder.

Please spread the word, binocular  vision dysfunction is not found on a routine eye exam.  You must go to a doctor, ( usually an OD, Optometrist) who is specially trained in binocular vision.