Posts Tagged ‘vision’

If you have tried to get an appointment recently, you may have noticed that August is a very busy month for us. And rightfully so. August is National Children’s Vision & Learning Month. I spend much of this month – and every month – helping children develop the visual skills they need to read and write. I routinely hear how after appropriate glasses and/or vision therapy, patients are reading better than ever, not fighting over homework, checking out books for fun, doing better in sports, and so many other achievements.

Here is one:

And you can find many more videos like this one at on YouTube.

If I’m not convincing enough, read these quotes from more well-known people and organizations.

• “25% of students in grades K-6 have visual problems that are serious enough to impede learning.” - American Public Health Association
• “When vision problems go undetected, children almost invariably have trouble reading and doing their schoolwork. They often display fatigue, fidgeting, and frustrations in the classroom—traits that can lead to a misdiagnosis of dyslexia or other learning disabilities.” - American Optometric Association
• “It is estimated that 80% of children with a learning disability have an undiagnosed vision problem.” - Vision Council of America
• “Early diagnosis and treatment of children’s vision problems is a necessary component to school readiness and academic learning; and that vision screening is not a substitute for a complete eye and vision evaluation by an eye doctor. Comprehensive eye and vision examinations … are important for all children first entering school and regularly throughout their school-aged years to ensure healthy eyes and adequate visual skills essential for successful academic achievement.” - National PTA Policy Statement 2005,
• “Early testing for vision problems is key to preventing learning disabilities or, in some cases, significant visual impairment in children.” - Ned Calonge, MD, MPH, Task Force Chairman, Chief Medical Officer and State Epidemiologist at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
• “A three year study of 540 children found that those children who had visual perceptual and eye movement difficulties did poorly on standardized tests.” - Dr. Lynn Hellerstein, FAAO, FCOVD,

You can find tons of information on vision and learning on COVD.org. I wholeheartedly encourage you to take part in Vision and Learning Month by  reading and sharing your success stories on COVD’s Facebook page! And, of course, if your kids haven’t had their back to school exam yet, schedule one here or call us at 813-792-0637.

Nathan Bonilla-Warford, OD
Bright Eyes Family Vision Care
Located in the Westchase area of Tampa.

Although this article by the American Optometric Association was released in 2009, its message is still pertinent and important, especially during this time of the year. While parents are getting their kids prepared for a new school year by purchasing supplies and meeting new teachers, it might be easy to overlook their child’s vision. In fact, a shocking 86% of children start school without ever having an eye examination. This is an alarmingly high figure given the strong correlation between vision and learning.

At Bright Eyes, we advise the eye exam schedule that is recommended by the AOA: first eye exam at 6 months,  3 years, and right before school.  This allows your eye doctor to identify and treat any vision related problems before they start to adversely affect your child’s learning and development.

Another important thing to keep in mind is that the screenings used at school are not designed to replace a full, comprehensive eye exam. These screenings offer very little beyond determining clarity of vision. A full eye examination will further test how well the eyes work together in unison at tasks such as reading and computer work, as well as assess the health of the entire eye, inside and out.

The article also suggests signs for parents to look for in their child’s vision between eye exams. The AOA recommends that parents contact their eye doctor if their child frequently:

1. Loses place while reading
2. Avoids close work
3. Tends to rub eyes
4. Has headaches
5. Turns or tilts head
6. Makes frequent reversals when reading or writing
7. Uses finger to maintain place when reading
8. Omits or confuses small words when reading
9. Consistently performs below potential
10. Struggles to complete homework
11. Squints while reading or watching television
12. Has behavioral problems
13. Holds reading material closer than normal

So as the school year begins, if you have any questions or concerns about your child’s vision, do not hesitate to call our office and schedule an appointment.

All the best,

Justin Schoonover

Bright Eyes Family Vision Care
Located in the Westchase area of Tampa.

This new video from VSP is great! Not only is it pretty fun and entertaining, but it also makes a great point about the importance of vision and activities like sports. I’ll be honest I don’t know who  Tyreke Evans is, because I don’t follow basketball, but I do know that vision is very important for sports! Not only do you need to see clearly, you and have to have  good peripheral vision and good visual reaction time; all of these things are necessary to win. The great thing is that if there are problems with any of these things, they can be fixed with corrective lenses or vision therapy!

This video shows that protecting your eyes on the court or on the field is very important. Regular glasses are not designed for sports and are actually less safe than sports glasses. And don ‘t worry,  the modern sports glasses are way cooler than the ones I had when I was a kid! Stop by Bright Eyes to check out some of the new models.

The VSP video also does a great job of highlighting the American Optometric Association’s recommendation that the  first eye exam should occur at six months, then three years, then before kindergarten, assuming nothing is wrong.

If you have any questions about your little one’s vision,  have concerns that vision may be interfering with sports, or whether or not they are protecting their eyes sufficiently during sports, ask us!

Nathan Bonilla-Warford, OD
Bright Eyes Family Vision Care
Located in the Westchase area of Tampa.

The American Optometric Association recently held a School Readiness Summit: Focus on Vision in which doctors, nurses, educators and advocates for children’s health gathered to examine learning-related vision issues that are keeping children from achieving in the classroom. This summit was created to address the concerns that our current system is flawed and a policy shift is needed. The problem is that currently, the U.S. educational system and some health care providers rely heavily on vision screenings to discover the kids that need comprehensive exams. These screenings do catch some types of vision problems but they can miss about 75% of those children that have learning-related vision problems. Detecting these vision problems is very important as “studies show that much of what children learn comes though vision, and undetected and untreated eye and vision disorders in children, such as amblyopia and strabismus, can result in vision loss, additional costly treatments, delayed reading and poorer outcomes in school.”

The take-home statement that the summit produced is that comprehensive eye exams must serve as the foundation to determine school readiness in school-aged children. Another important point established at this meeting is the establishment of the link between healthy vision and classroom learning.

This historic summit is an important step in ensuring that children receive the proper detection and treatment of vision problems before they become detrimental to their learning. Here at Bright Eyes Family Vision Care, we are excited to see these changes being made, since it has been our goal from the beginning to not only catch vision problems at an early stage, evidenced by the InfantSEE program that we offer that provides free eye exams to infants between the age of 6 months and 1 year of age, but to also treat certain types of problems through our extensive one-on-one vision therapy program.

If you have any questions regarding the InfantSEE program, vision therapy program, or would like to schedule a comprehensive eye exam for your child before they start school, give our office a call or come in to schedule.

All the best,

Justin Schoonover, CPO

Bright Eyes Family Vision Care
Located in the Westchase area of Tampa.

It’s true! According to several recent entertainment stories such as this one from Engadget,  Johnny Depp is unable to see the 3-D effects in the very movies that he stars in. Specifically the upcoming  Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, which is to be released May 20th.

They way Depp described it, “I’m unable to see in 3D. My eyes don’t see in 3D. I have a weird eye… It just doesn’t work.”

While  all this may seem like a small bit of movie trivia to many people, this may remind a lot of folks of themselves… or their children.  We don’t know exactly what is weird about his “eye”, whether it is amblyopia (often called “lazy eye”) or some other condition. But we do know that many of the types of problems can be detected at a very early age. It is recommended that babies have their first eye exam at six months old. Treatment such as glasses or contacts or medical procedures to prevent further problems may allow the patient to have as normal vision as possible…. even normal 3-D vision. Also, vision therapy may be an option to give 3-D vision to patients,  young or old. The book “Fixing My Gaze”  by Dr. Susan Barry is an excellent example of this.

The recent news about Johnny Depp is just one more reminder that if you or anyone you know has trouble with 3-D movies you should see an optometrist.

Nathan Bonilla-Warford, OD
Bright Eyes Family Vision Care
Located in the Westchase area of Tampa.

Recently the Star Tribune of Minneapolis-St.Paul ran a story on Tampa Bay Lightning goalie, Dwayne Roloson. Part of the story explains how he uses sports-vision, to keep him at the top of game at age 41.

Says Dr. Mark Gordon, Roloson’s optometrist:

“We take a look at eye-hand coordination, reaction time, processing speeds, peripheral awareness,” Gordon said. “Do we know where our teammates are? Do we know where the opponents are? Do we know where the puck is? Do we know how fast the puck is moving? Can we make sense of not only where the puck is at this moment but where it’s going to be a half-second from now?”

Sports vision is a type of vision therapy. Sometimes vision therapy is used to help someone develop skills they did not develop on their own. For example, vision therapy could be used to help a patient with autism develop control of their eye movements. Sometimes vision therapy is used to help people cope with visual stress, like the high-school student who gets double vision while studying. In sports vision, the goal is to help people who already have average or better than average visual skills have even better skills so that they perform at their maximum potential.

This exemplifies a great point. Vision therapy isn’t “a procedure.” It is the application of any of a number of procedures and concepts to increase a patient’s visual skill. And this in turn can help them reach their goals, whether they are passing the FCAT or blocking the next hockey goal.

If you have questions about vision therapy, please do not hesitate to come in or contact us!

Nathan Bonilla-Warford, OD
Bright Eyes Family Vision Care
Located in the Westchase area of Tampa.

Don’t forget!! Many vision insurance plans and flexible spending accounts(FSAs) expire at the end of the year.  Expenses for eye exams, contacts lenses and prescription eyewear are all eligible for reimbursement under FSA.  If you haven’t used your benefits or you still have money in your FSA, you may want to consider getting those computer glasses, sports goggles or a funky new pair of glasses to update your look!

UPDATE: I was just emailed this link with official FSA info: http://www.irs.gov/publications/p969/ar02.html#en_US_publink1000204190.

Image “Expired” via ®ian

Nathan Bonilla-Warford, OD
Bright Eyes Family Vision Care
Located in the Westchase area of Tampa.

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