The Surprising Link Between Vision, Anxiety & Brain Fog

Vision, Anxiety, and Brain Fog 0:00

The surprising link between vision, anxiety, and brain fog. If you are struggling with headaches, or anxiety or brainfog, decreased productivity throughout the work day, tired eyes by the end of the day avoiding reading or even using reading as a sleeping pill to help you fall asleep. faster because it's so tiring and so taxing on you. The real problem could actually be your vision and the eye brain connection rather than something else. Hi, I'm Dr. Bryce Applebaum. I am a functional eye doctor and my passion, my specialty is optimizing the Eye Brain Connection with a revolutionary form of treatment called Vision Performance Training.

Hidden Vision Problems Behind Daily Struggles 0:34

People usually blame stress, diet, sleep, an overpacked schedule, being stressed out with too much in life with friends, with family, and with work. But so often hidden functional vision problems are a massively overlooked cause of these symptoms, of all of this unnecessary struggling. Your eyes very well may be overworking in ways that you cannot see. If our eyes don't work well together as a unit, that can cause constant strain and difficulty understanding where things are located in space. that can impact reading and learning and driving and sports and even just navigating through life.

Poor Visual Processing and Mental Fog 1:19

So many symptoms of this can include headaches, difficulty concentrating and fatigue, and really feeling lost in space. The mid-afternoon headache that you're experiencing at your computer or trying to schedule calls or meetings earlier in the day when you are not as taxed, not exhausted, that may be your eyes failing to coordinate and have nothing to do with the caffeine withdrawal or the need for that extra cup of coffee. Hidden issue number two, poor visual processing. Our eyes need to work together as a team, but also need the send information to our brain that our brains can filter, organize, store, and make sense of.

our eyes may be seen clearly, But the brain can still be struggling to process all of that visual input coming in through the eyes. This can cause mental fog. It can slow decision making, it can decrease productivity, even our thinking, our attention and our behavior that's kind of locked in and very often completely overwhelmed.

Focus Flexibility and Screen Strain 2:12

Mental health plays a big role here as well. When we're under stress, when we are under this fight or flight response, Visually what that looks like is our pupils get bigger, but our visual system and our processing gets locked in really centrally, really vocally. Which means a lot could be going on around us, But we're trying to control the uncontrollable and pull everything in here. That can cause so much unnecessary struggling and not allow you to operate or function at your potential. Hidden issue number three, focus flexibility.

The inside muscles of our eyes, our focusing system, the accommodative system. That's a system that is under tension and locked in when we are on screens for too long. So when you are endlessly scrolling or on back-to-back Zoom calls, those muscles are working with how to break. If everybody were to squeeze your hands right now and make a fist, after a few seconds, your hand gets pretty tired. But if you were let go and come back and let and go back, you can actually function better for much longer.

That same strain that happens with our focusing system when we are locked in on a screen, that's what causes eye strain and headaches and a visual system

Modern Screen Time and Visual Stress 3:13

that so often feels locked up. This creates low level tension or higher level attention, but it contributes to anxiety and constant stress from our environment and from background. Screen time can literally be a stressor to your autonomic nervous system and especially to you visual systems, which is a very intimate piece of that system. Modern lifestyle, staring at screens all day long. The average American spends 7 hours and 4 minutes a day on a screen. And the average child, 8 to 10 year olds, spends 6 hours a days on screen, that's way too much even for the AVERAGE level, and a lot of people are way more than that.

You're then locked in and under visual stress all day long and then you're asking yourself to be a normal person after and try and drive and exercise and read and even converse with friends, family and loved ones. That can make it so you are working so much harder than you supposed to just to do simple tasks of daily life.

Finding the Root Cause in Vision 4:03

If you feel like you've been going to all of these different doctors, all these specialists, chasing solutions for your headaches, for anxiety, brain fog, reading challenges, and nothing's working, you're chasing symptoms without addressing the root cause. And very often, vision could be that missing link. Do not overlook your vision. Share this with somebody who's struggling. Or visit MyVisionFirst.com to learn more about vision performance training. Subscribe for more insights into the iBrain connection.