Anxiety, Unexplained Dizziness, and Vertical Heterophoria

Which came first? The anxiety or the dizziness? Unexplained dizziness can cause anxiety. If the world is not stable and you constantly feel that you are about to fall down, of course you will feel anxious. There are so many people suffering with anxiety due to their dizziness who take multiple medications to combat their symptoms. What if the anxiety was coming from the eyes? These medications can make the ability of the eye muscle to function properly even worse. A cycle of dizziness and anxiety gets created.

If you have undiagnosed dizziness leading to anxiety, please go to my website www.nvcofny.com and take the questionnaire. Your symptoms may be coming from a binocular vision dysfunction, such as Vertical Heterophoria, which can not be detected on a routine eye exam.

Vertical Heterophoria and Mal de Debarquement Syndrome

Mal de Debarquement Syndrome (MdDS) is a rare condition that can occur when a person gets off a ship or plane.  Basically, the person still feels a rocking, swaying, or bobbing motion even after a length of time. This feeling can persist and never go away.  When the patient is in a moving vehicle or riding in a car, they actually feel better. It is usually diagnosed by an ENT when all vestibular testing proves to be negative. Until recently, there has been no treatment for this condition. Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York has made some great strides in a new kind of treatment which retrains the vestibular system and eye muscles to work together. They are doing great work but a portion of these patients do not get better.  This was the case of one young lady I treated last week.

There was also a binocular vision dysfunction occurring at the same time. She had vertical heterophoria. In vertical heterophoria, typically the patient feels worse in a car or with movement. This is in contrast to Mal de Debarquement. However, these two conditions can occur at the same time. I believe this young lady always had vertical heterophoria but she was not showing symptoms until something happened to her vestibular system causing the MdDS. With the proper prism correction in her glasses, her symptoms decreased significantly. The visual component to her symptoms was resolved.

I find it very interesting how two conditions that affect the balance system can be related and so often be misdiagnosed. For more information about Vertical Heterophoria please visit my website www.nvcofny.com

Sinus pain or Vertical Heterophoria

As I was reading some questionnaire results today, I was struck at the number of people who report that they have sinus problems. Many folks have had numerous sinus procedures and still complain of sinus pain, especially under the eyes and above the eyes. This pain can be originating from your eye muscles constantly straining to keep your eyes aligned. The aching pain from the straining eye muscles can feel just like sinus pain and pressure. A simple way to determine if your "sinus" pain is in fact from Vertical Heterophoria, or another binocular vision dysfunction is the five minute cover test.  First, rate your pain on a scale of 0 to 10. 0 being nothing and 10 being the worst you ever felt. Set a timer for 5 minutes next and cover one eye. It doesn't matter which eye you cover. When the 5 minutes are up, rate your pain again. If you feel significantly better after the 5 minutes with one eye covered, then you know it is coming from your eyes!

Log onto our website www.nvcofny.com and take the questionnaire if the 5 minutes cover test works for you!