5 Myths About Vision That Are Ruining Your Eyes (and Your Brain)

Introduction to vision myths 0:00

Most of what you've heard about vision is unfortunately wrong. Today, I'm gonna talk about five myths about your eyes and specifically the eye-brain connection that could be ruining your vision and really holding you back from your true potential in way more ways than you may realize. Hi, am Dr. Bryce Applebaum and I am a functional eye doctor and my passion, my specialty is optimizing the eyebrow connection with a revolutionary form of treatment called vision performance training. And I truly believe that there is so much more to vision than just 20-20 eyesight.

Myth 1: 20/20 eyesight is not perfect vision 0:31

All right, myth number one, 20 20 eyesight equaling perfect vision. Eye charts measure clarity, but not how the brain processes vision eyesight is just a symptom. It's how well we can see a certain symbol at a distance. So that's, how we see letters on a letter chart or street signs or for a child with a teacher writes on the board in the classroom. Vision, though, is so much more complex. Vision is how our eyes move together and converge and track and focus and process information and how we derive meaning from the world around us and then direct the appropriate action.

So someone can have 20-20 eyesight, but still struggle with reading, with depth perception, and with focus, or even just navigating through space. Myth number two, glasses or contact lenses fix your vision. Glasses and contacts in reality correct clarity.

Myth 2: Glasses and contacts only correct clarity 1:24

They correct the symptom of something being blurry. but they don't solve the underlying eye condition and the coordination issues or the inefficiencies with the eye brain connection. It's kind of like putting a stronger bandaid on a wound without actually healing the wound. We got to get to the root cause to figure out why the symptom of poor eyesight is occurring. Myth number three. Kids struggling to read must have dyslexia. Dyslexic by definition means difficulty reading words, but there can be so many reasons why it's difficult to.

Read in reality, functional vision problems that are often hidden can mimic symptoms of dysluxia, skipping words mixing up letters struggles with reading.

Myth 3: Reading struggles are not always dyslexia 2:06

One in five children has a vision problem significant enough to impact reading. And there's so much more that goes into reading in terms of how the eyes work together as a team, how inside and outside muscles of the eye are working in synergy, How the brain is processing that information, which ultimately dramatically influence reading ability. Myth number four. Concussions only affect memory, but not vision. Reality is head injuries often disrupt the visual system, even when the eyes look normal.

The National Institutes of Health right down the road from one of my offices in Bethesda, Maryland says that 28% of Americans have had at least one head injury, one concussion in their lifetime. And so often the symptoms that we're dealing with can often be related to a prior head, but we don't even know about it. There's more areas of our brain dedicated to processing vision, not eyesight, than all of the other senses combined.

Myth 4: Concussions can affect vision 2:56

And two thirds of neurons entering our brains actually come from our eyes. So it's kind of impossible to have a head injury and not have vision be impacted. It's just a matter of at what level. So an example of this could be an athlete who is suffering from headaches, blurred vision, light sensitivity, sensory overload going through the hallways of school or going to a mall or grocery store. It's the vision that's impacted, not the eyesight. And unless you're looking at the eye-brain connection, that is going be a missed massive opportunity to returning back to previous level of function.

Myth number five, a lazy eye can only be treated with patching or with surgery. The reality is the issue is how the brain is using the eyes, often not having to do with weak muscles or eye muscle strength or muscle length. A lazy eye often is not what you think. It's not about weak muscle, it's about the brains coordination of the two eyes together as a team. So amblyopia, which is a medical term for lazy and strabismus, the medical terms for an eye turn, There are often two eye problems that are showing up

Myth 5: Lazy eye treatment goes beyond patching 4:04

as a symptom in just one eye, and that's why treatment really needs to be addressed on a two-eye basis. We see patients every day who've been told that their only options are surgery or patching, but those approaches often miss the root cause, which is that breakdown of how the brain is coordinating the eyes together as team. And patching is a hundred plus year old protocol that in many cases can actually make the eye coordination worse by preventing the eyes from working together by covering up one eye.

And it's taken this mindset of that there's a good eye and there is bad eye, so we have to cover up the good eyes so the bad has to work. Ultimately, we need to teach the lesser seeing eye how to function in the presence of the better eye And surgery often may alter the appearance of how the eyes look, but it definitely does not guarantee that the brain will use them together as a team. With vision performance training, we not only see cosmetic improvements, with that, But we see functional improvements with the actual rewiring of the Brain required to restore proper function.

So that means improved depth perception, clearer vision, steadier focus, less fatigue, functional vision training can use the eyes to rewire the brain to change how we're using vision so that both eyes can work together. All right. To tie all this together and to summarize, there is so much more to vision than just 2020 eyesight. It's about how your eyes and your brain work together in harmony. At My Vision First, we don't just help people see, We help them see what's possible.

Conclusion and call to action 5:47

If you're ready to unlock your potential through vision, take the free quiz at myvisionfirst.com forward slash quiz, or get my top five natural ways to improve vision at screenfit. com forward, slash guide to start your journey today. Links are also in the description below this video. Thank you so much for watching.