On Super Bowl Sunday you will miss the special effects in the “Monstrous 3D” commercial if you don’t have 3D vision. The College of Optometrists in Vision Development (COVD) has a special message for those who won’t be able to see the full depth of the special three dimensional (3D) images that will premiere in the highly promoted “Monstrous” 3D Super Bowl commercials.

Thanks to DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc., PepsiCo’s SoBe Lifewater, Intel Corporation and NBC, a first-of-its kind, nationwide ‘Monstrous’ 3D event for Super Bowl XLIII will be among the most highly anticipated Super Bowl commercials. But many viewers may be disappointed when they don’t see the dazzling 3D effects.

You can read the entire press-release here.

Be Well!

Dr. Bonilla-Warford
Bright Eyes Family Vision Care
Westchase, Tampa, FL
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Interesting info from around the web:

• 101 year old comments on vision therapy
• Feline Contact Lenses
• Blinkers!
• Galileo may get eyes checked posthumously
• Explanation of Orthoptics
• Color vision deficit demonstration

Be Well!

Dr. Bonilla-Warford
Bright Eyes Family Vision Care
Westchase, Tampa, FL
Connect with Us:  YelpFacebookTwitter

I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t read the sports page.  In fact, I didn’t realize that Tampa is home to the 2009 Super Bowl until relatively recently.  So I most likely would have missed an article in the Wall Street Journal if it wasn’t emailed to me by a colleague. It is a story about the Arizona Cardinals’ wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald.

Here is an interesting snippet about Mr. Fitzgerald:

When he was young, his grandfather, Robert Johnson, the founder of a optometry clinic in Chicago, set out to make sure his grandson had “visual dominance” — at first because he was having trouble in school. From the time Mr. Fitzgerald was in first grade, during summer visits, Mr. Johnson would take him to the clinic and have him stand on balance beams and wobbly boards while doing complicated hand-eye drills. By the time his grandson was 12 and emerging as an athlete, Dr. Johnson tailored many of these exercises to athletics. To improve the boy’s precision, control, spatial judgment and rhythm, for instance, Dr. Johnson would hang a painted ball from the ceiling and have him try to hit the colored dots on the ball with the matching colored stripes on a rolling pin.

Although the WSJ doesn’t use the term, the article is describing Sports Vision – the improvement of a variety of visual skills to improve performance on the field. It goes on to discuss the benefits of such experience. Sports Vision can benefit anyone from children to professional athletes,  whether or not they have a vision problem.

If you are interested, you can read the entire article here.

Be Well!

Dr. Bonilla-Warford
Bright Eyes Family Vision Care
Westchase, Tampa, FL
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The Bright Eyes Staff had to bundle up this week! Stay warm everyone and bring the plants and pets inside at night!

Dr. Bonilla-Warford
Bright Eyes Family Vision Care
Westchase, Tampa, FL
Connect with Us:  YelpFacebookTwitter

Pamela Spiro Wagner, published poet and writer, maintains the fascinating WAGblog. She has recently been writing about her amazing discoveries as she continues a program of vision therapy.  As a writer, she is able to explain the subtleties of her new-found visual skills extremely well.

In her post “Vision Therapy, Stereopsis and Seeing At Night“,  Pamela discusses that she had previously given up driving at night because she could not see well. She then described the first time driving at night after vision therapy:

“Immediately, I could tell the difference. For one thing the whole world seemed better lit now. I could see, well, details where before there had been only darkness, and confusing chiaroscuro. Streetlights defined things, rather than merely casting shadows onto them, and assisted my vision rather than merely making matters worse. I could see into bushes, could see branches and inside the hollows. Dark recesses, doorways became just that: recesses, doorways, and not just patches of darkness, black blurs to stump and confuse me.”

In the post “Vision Therapy: Seeing Inside the Snow“, she described what it is like to observe something as simple as snow falling:

“It was immediately and stunningly obvious to me that this was something I had “never” seen before, or not in any retrievable memory. What I remembered was that always before snow had fallen in a kind of whitish mass, a jumble of flakes more or less undistinguished from one another, because indistinguishable from one another. I can’t emphasize this enough, how if you cannot perceive depth, you lose detail and even the ability to perceive certain structures because of it.”

Anyone who has any question about the potential benefits of vision therapy should spend some time reading Pamela’s blog. As a doctor,  it is extremely exciting and heart-warming to read her words.

Be Well!

Dr. Bonilla-Warford
Bright Eyes Family Vision Care
Westchase, Tampa, FL
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2009 is shaping up to be an exiting year indeed! In addition to implementing some exciting changes at Bright Eyes and many projects I have planned for home,  I have been elected President of the Hillsborough Society of Optometrists. It is an honor to lead this group, and it will certainly will be a challenge, but I am looking forward to the opportunity to devote time to the profession that I love.

The Hillsborough Society of Optometrists (HSO) is a county-wide organization that is composed of approximately 85 eye doctors who live and work in Hillsborough County. The members practice in all types of settings and have diverse specialty interests such as contact lenses, low vision, and vision therapy.

HSO has had a long tradition of providing services for members, patients, and the local community. I am proud to be working with local doctors, as well as the the societies of the surrounding counties, to  continue this work.

The local societies together compose the Florida Optometric Association. The mission of the Florida Optometric Association is to advance and promote the quality, availability, accessibility of primary eye care and related health care of Florida’s citizens; to represent the profession of optometry; to enhance and promote the independent and ethical decision-making of its members; and to assist and enable optometric physicians to practice their profession so as to ensure the highest standards of patient care.

My first official duty as HSO President  is to attend a leadership meeting this weekend in Miami. From then on, the activities will be much closer to home!

Be Well!

Dr. Bonilla-Warford
Bright Eyes Family Vision Care
Westchase, Tampa, FL
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As an eye doctor who provides vision therapy to treat amblyopia and an avid NPR fan, I was heartened to hear this story in the shower this morning:

www.npr.org – Learning To See In Stereo

There has indeed been much progress in the visual sciences and specifically in the area of amblyopia. Rigorous, well-controlled clinical studies done at institutions such as UC Berkeley have shown us that amblyopia can be treated in ways that are less burdensome, can be treated at later ages than previously thought, and with far-reaching quality of life benefits.

Certainly it will take more effort for someone like Joe or Sue to see these benefits than it would for a 4 year old who has tremendous neuroplasticity.

One element that this story gets exactly right is that vision problems like amblyopia truly are issues of neurophysiology not ocular physiology. When we when treat a patient who has amblyopia, we really are changing how their brain functions.

I am so excited to get the word out on the science behind vision therapy!

Be Well!

Dr. Bonilla-Warford
Bright Eyes Family Vision Care
Westchase, Tampa, FL
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Sometimes patients will ask me what type of contacts I wear. The answer is Focus Dailies. There are two reasons for this.

First, they are incredibly healthy. When contact lenses are worn repeatedly, their characteristics change. Even when cleaned properly, they are more likely to attract bacteria. My friend, Dr. Justin Bazan, posted about this here. Also, tiny oily and protein deposits will  make the re-worn lens less breathable and the vision less clear. This is especially true for people who have allergies or dry eyes. Additionally, some people are sensitive to the contact lens solutions. The best way to deal with this is simply stop using them. For all the above reasons, I call Daily Disposable contact lenses “the great problem solver” for troubled contact lens patients.

The second reason I personally wear Focus Dailies is that they are extremely convenient. I don’t wear lenses everyday, so I don’t really like to keep track of how long it has been since I have opened them. Also, I travel a lot to go to eye care meetings and it is much easier to toss a few extra lenses in my suitcase than to bring solutions and contacts.

There are certain categories of patients who do extremely well in Daily Disposable  contact lenses.  They frequently are the best choice for children who are getting their first contacts. It simplifies the process and ensures that they have have a clean lens at all times.  College students tend to love the convenience.  People who do specific activities, such as camping find it extremely useful.

When I first mention that Dailies would be a good choice for patients because they are healthier and more convenient,  they sometimes ask me if they are significantly more expensive. I tell them them that these benefits cost less than a dollar a day and once you factor in that fact that you don’t have to

buy solutions and cases, it works out to about 6 cents more per eye:

Because Daily Disposable lenses have become so popular among doctors and patients, they now are made for almost every type of visual need: patients who are nearsighted or farsighted, patients with astigmatism, and even patients who need bifocal contacts. You can read about these options at www.dailies.com.

So to celebrate Focus Dailies being the Feature of the Month, when you order your Focus Dailies, mention that you saw the Feature of the Month on the Internet and you will receive $5 off per box that you order in January. That is an additional 10% savings!

Be Well!

Dr. Bonilla-Warford
Bright Eyes Family Vision Care
Westchase, Tampa, FL
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