Let’s talk about binocular vision disorder and neck pain. And I want to show you a quick test on how can you begin identifying the possibility that your clients have binocular visual dysfunction. If you’re not familiar with BVD and you are a movement professional, there are some problems. Whenever we look at movement, when we look at posture, when we look at balance, it should be really clear to every movement pro under the sun, that the eyes play a very big role in that.
Unfortunately, it’s not a typical part of the classical education model that movement professionals, still are, being,, subjected to. So one of the things we’ve been talking about for the last 25 years in our company is the importance of understanding the visual system from a licensure specific way, as well as how can I assess and train the visual system?
So what is binocular visual disorder binocular visual dysfunction? Basically, it means that your eyes or your client’s eyes are not working as a team. Moving symmetrically, whether that is in convergence where I’m looking at something up close, in divergence where I’m looking at something far away, or as my eyes are having to team to look at different objects in my visual field.
So a BVD, right, binocular visual dysfunction, can be inclusive of many different problems. The issue is that whenever we have it, it will often impact movement, tension and pain for a wide variety of reasons. And we now have research showing BVD can cause problems with education, meaning it can make reading more difficult.
If you fall asleep while reading, you can’t concentrate very well. It is well associated now with jaw pain, neck pain, neck pain. eye pain, shoulder pain, spinal issues. And now there’s even some interesting research coming out showing pretty conclusively that people with binocular visual dysfunction carry weight differently in their body all the way down to their feet.
So we will see alterations in gait and we will see increased complaints of foot pain, stuff like plantar fasciitis, et cetera, all being driven by visual dysfunction. So if you are a movement professional and you go, hey, my client has foot problems that does not give you permission to only look at the feet. You have to look at everything and the eyes are going to be a big driver.
So what can we do? A lot of different tests that come into this. So if you are completely unfamiliar, but you’re interested in this, number one, start taking our courses. If you’re a movement professional, doctor, therapist, or coach, we are a brain-based education company. We’ve been doing this for 25 plus years. we have, I think five or 600 videos on here for free. Check those out. We have a free mini course. Check that out. Subscribe to the channel. If this is something you want to do or interested in, contact us because we love working with high level professionals. If you are just an interested person who has pain or wants to be a better athlete, same applies.
We have free courses. We have the, all the YouTube stuff. So you subscribe, watch it and try these things on your own. I try to make it really simple because that’s my primary job. Good starting point. Go to your eye doctor. Get your eyes tested. One cause of binocular visual dysfunction is my right eye is 20 20, my left eye is 20 40 or 20 50.
Your brain has to process the image from each camera and join them together. And if one’s blurry and one’s not, your brain will often ignore the blurry one. That’s called visual suppression. That’s one example of something that can happen. So begin with the basics. Make sure the eyes are healthy. Make sure that you’re getting visual correction if necessary.
But then we want to go deeper and go how are we is the brain doing and controlling the musculature of the eye. And so one of the tests that you can do is called the cover uncover test. All right. And you can do this with somebody or with your phone, right? You can video yourself. It’s a really, really simple test.
Now imagine this, imagine that I’m staring at the camera. And my eyes are perfectly balanced. We have six extraocular muscles, muscles that try to stabilize the eye based off information coming from the brainstem. So if my eyes are perfectly balanced, if I stare at the camera lens and then I cover one eye so that if I were to close the other one, I can’t see anything except my little lollipop here.
If my eyes are perfectly balanced, This eye should not move when I cover this one, and this one that’s hidden should also not move even though we’re not seeing the same thing right now. So, when I uncover that eye, I should not see that eye move either. outward or inward to reacquire the target. But what will happen in many people, if they have disruptions in the coordination of their eye muscles, let’s say this is the left eye and this is the right eye. And I come in and I cover the right eye when the right eye is no longer able to fixate on the target because it can’t see it. The muscle imbalances will take over and maybe the eye will drift in or maybe the eye will drift out. Let’s say the eye has drifted out. When I then remove the cover, the eye will have to shoot back to the central line to reacquire the target.
If it’s drifted in. I move the cover, it has to shoot outward. So this is a test for called phorias. These are called horizontal phorias. I can also do this and this when it’s covered. So if you want to begin looking at the possibility of binocular visual dysfunction, you take a history, you go, Hey, do you have these different issues?
You watch their eyes and then you do this very simple test. You can do it for 30 seconds to a minute and you just go back and forth every couple of seconds. It is important that you don’t do this just once or twice because we also need to make sure that your eyes have endurance because a lot of people, the first couple of times you test them, their eyes will be fine, but then about a minute in, you’ll start to really begin to pick up that discoordination. If you see that, that’s going to tell you that we have some work to do. And that may involve some vision training exercises, referral to their optometrists, perhaps a lot of brainstem work. There are a lot of solutions, but it all begins with understanding that you need to look for it and being able to find it.
All right. So cover uncover test, make sure to add it to your coaching arsenal.
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