Four Reasons Poor Vision Puts Your Mental Health At Risk
Proper vision care can change your life and help keep your mental health intact. In fact, poor vision resulting from the wrong type of eyeglasses prescription may even lead to brain dysfunction.
The connection between your eyes and your brain is more profound than you may think. Focusing on your vision is vital (no pun intended), and knowing whom to trust with your eyesight is just as important.
1. Adults and Children Are at High Risk for Vision Problems
Vision problems are common in society. Recent CDC statistics found that 61 million American adults are at risk for vision loss. Surprisingly, only half have consulted with an optometrist or ophthalmologist in the past 12 months.
The statistics are even more startling for children. Proper brain development throughout childhood is essential, yet less than 15 percent of preschool children get an eye exam, according to the CDC, and fewer than 22 percent receive professional vision screening.
2. The Wrong Prescription Can Cause Vision and Mental Health Issues
At this very moment, your eyes and brain are working together. You are reading this informative post with your eyes, and your brain is processing everything. Your brain may even be multitasking if you have the TV on or music playing.
The connection between poor vision and brain dysfunction, including acquired brain injury, is essential to understand. Often, the best place to begin is with your prescription. If you have the wrong prescription for your eyeglasses, your mental health may be at risk.
Do you get frequent headaches after reading, web browsing, or wearing your prescription eyeglasses in general? Interestingly, the number one cause of vision-related headaches is vision prescription changes. Contact lens prescriptions are also a factor.
Correcting your vision’s refractive errors can cause double vision, eyestrain, squinting, and subsequent headaches. These symptoms may occur especially if you have the wrong prescription contacts. Headaches caused by poor vision can even turn into migraines.
3. A Vision Snowball Effect Leading to Brain Dysfunction
The vision-related headaches you may be experiencing could turn into debilitating migraines, and that is bad news for your brain. Migraines are a serious medical condition that can lead to strokes and white lesions in the brain, which in turn lead to more migraines.
Research from Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands found a connection between migraines and mental debilitation. The study, published in Headache (2008), found that migraines can cause “silent brain damage.”
Stopping your headaches, migraines, and potential brain dysfunction could be as simple as receiving Triad Of Health Family Healing Center therapies and obtaining the proper prescription eyeglasses to support normal, healthy vision. Finding the right optometrist or ophthalmologist is vital to getting the correct prescription. The best type of optometrist is a behavioral optometrist who has the proper skills and training to help patients with complex visual disturbances. They can teach patients eye exercises and are sometimes called neural optometrists.
These specialized optometrists help patients with ADD, ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorders, and learning disabilities such as dyslexia. It would be advisable to visit this website for a list of qualified optometrists. There are other specialists you can turn to as well.
4. Get Professional Vision Care the First Time for Better Physical and Mental Health
The best way to ensure quality vision care for you and your family is to find a board-certified optometrist or ophthalmologist. Both of these eye professionals perform routine eye exams, diagnose, and treat vision problems and eye diseases.
It’s important to understand that an optician is not the same as an optometrist or ophthalmologist. Opticians are not doctors, and in some states, they are allowed to fit contact lenses. Some states don’t even require certification or licensure.
At Triad Of Health Family Healing Center, we check prescription and reading glasses and contact lenses for every new patient during their initial exam. In this way, you won’t have to suffer from acquired brain injury due to an incorrect eyeglass prescription, which can interfere with your ability to think clearly, make good decisions, and function normally.
As mentioned above, other vision care specialists like behavioral or neural optometrists could be the right choice for you. Behavioral optometrists combine eye exercises with lenses, while neural optometrists focus on the vital connection between your eyes and brain.
Understanding the role your eyes play in mental health is the first step to a happier and healthier you. Don’t let something so simple put your mental health at risk. Finding a board-certified optometrist who can get your prescription right the first time is essential. The world is truly a beautiful place when in focus.
This blog post was primarily written by Tara Heath. Tara Heath is a 37-year-old health professional who works as a freelance writer in the evenings. Her writing focuses on health topics such as skincare, eye care, and how to live a healthy lifestyle. She lives in Burbank, CA with her husband and two beautiful daughters, ages eight and twelve. She is also affiliated with Campus Eye Group on the East Coast.
