If Your Vision is Changing, Your Eyes May Not Be The Issue
Happy Sunday, everyone! I hope you’re ready for a great week ahead. Thank you to everyone reading, commenting, and sharing my work.
If you’re new to The Power of Change, welcome, and thanks for spending a few minutes of your day with me.
This week on Soulful Sunday:
How neurological conditions can affect your vision
Laugh like a 6-year-old
Celebrating Change
Welcome Remy
I. If Your Vision is Changing, Your Eyes May Not Be The Issue
Numerous neurological conditions can affect vision
As you age, it’s common to experience vision changes. Even if you never wore glasses as a child, at a certain age, you may notice difficulty reading the fine print in a book. For some, reading glasses are all that’s needed.
But if you’ve experienced more dramatic changes in your vision, it’s important to understand why.
Within the Lyme community, it’s known that tick-borne infections can affect one’s vision. Outside of the community, optometrists and ophthalmologists are typically unaware.
Knowing the link between tick-borne infections and other neurological conditions and vision is critical and can help patients who experience deteriorating vision uncover the root cause.
Unfortunately, the US medical system is not based on finding root causes. It treats symptoms instead, often leading to a higher incidence of chronic disease.
As patients go from one specialist to another looking for answers, both the symptoms and the underlying condition worsen.
My son was an avid reader who began experiencing blurriness and other visual issues when he was 11. He didn’t wear glasses or have any previous problems with his vision, but he began to lose his place on a page when reading and told me words appeared in double.
When playing baseball, it became harder to track the ball, and bright lights were bothersome too.
I made an appointment to have his vision checked.
An optometrist and ophthalmologist evaluated him several times, but each time, they said his eyes were fine, and his vision was perfect.
We were stumped.
His vision deteriorated further and more quickly.
Other mysterious symptoms followed.
As you know by reading his story, eighteen months later, he was diagnosed with multiple tick-borne infections, including Lyme, Babesia, and Bartonellosis. He started treatment immediately for the bacterial infections, but after more than a year, his visual issues did not improve.
The neurologist treating him recommended a specialist.
Dr. William Padula is a pioneer in understanding how neurological conditions affect vision.
In addition to being an expert on the visual consequences of tick-borne disease, Padula lectures internationally on processing dysfunction caused by neurological events such as concussion, TBI, stroke, Parkinson’s disease, and developmental learning difficulties.
Patients worldwide visit the Padula Institute of Vision Rehabilitation in Connecticut for help. Most have no idea what’s causing their visual changes.
We didn’t.
But we soon began to understand.
How do Lyme and other neurological conditions affect vision?
In the early stages of Lyme and tick-borne infections, visual symptoms such as blurring, visual fatigue, headaches associated with visual activities, losing place when reading, and seeing words appear to double when reading are common.
More obscure problems often not associated with vision, such as difficulty with balance, spatial orientation, memory, comprehension, feeling overwhelmed in a busy-crowded environment, and sensitivity to sound, are also symptoms of tick-borne infections.
My son was experiencing many of these, yet his eye exams found normal vision.
It turns out these symptoms were not due to a defect of the eyes which is why by all accounts, my son’s eyes were ‘fine’ when examined.
Instead, he was experiencing a neurological impairment that impacted the brain’s ability to process the signals his eyes sent.
Spatial-visual processing dysfunction
During our many appointments with Dr. Padula, we learned that spatial-visual processing dysfunction was the cause of my son’s visual symptoms.
Dr. Padula explained people with a compromised spatial-visual process might also have difficulty in crowded environments or seeing things moving in their peripheral vision.
Much like people who have suffered concussions, many patients with Lyme must avoid busy supermarkets, other congested places, and bright lights.
“We see people not just with Lyme dysfunction and infection, but also concussion, traumatic brain injury, Parkinson’s, Friedreich’s ataxia — quite a variety of neurological conditions that affect the visual process.” -Dr. William Padula
What optometrists and ophthalmologists should know
A biomarker is something that can be found by testing that indicates the presence of a particular disease or condition.
In an article in Healio, Padula reported:
“My colleagues and I have demonstrated that the presence of a hazy, white ring of peri-papillary ischemia around the optic nerve — especially in children or adults younger than 60 years who would not be expected to have ischemic changes — is associated with tick-borne infection. One way that spirochetes hide from the immune system is by building up protective biofilms. We believe that these biofilms clog the narrow capillary vessels just around the perimeter of the optic nerve, blocking blood flow.”
-Dr. William Padula
Had the eye specialists known this biomarker, my son may have been diagnosed faster and experienced less spatial-visual processing dysfunction.
When tick-borne infections are not treated, they cause a wide range of persistent, systemic, and neurological symptoms, including compromising the brain’s spatial-visual process.
Anyone in the Lyme community knows it takes a long time for people to get properly diagnosed with tick-borne infections, but the finding of this biomarker may help change that.
“Awareness of the new biomarkers will help speed that process for early detection by the optometrist and ophthalmologist.”
-Dr. William Padula
Treatment
While medical treatment for tick-borne infections is necessary and often lengthy, it does not always resolve visual problems completely.
We learned the visual process may remain compromised following the completion of treatment. It’s often the case with children.
Dr. Padula explained:
“Tick-borne disease will interrupt the critical cycles of development, causing not only visual symptoms but also the possibility of developmental delays and interference in learning. It is important to provide an in-depth visual evaluation not only of eyesight but of visual processing…..to re-establish balance in visual processing as soon as possible to avoid compensatory behaviors.”
When visual processing issues remain after treatment of the infections ends, patients may find success with Neuro-Optometric Rehabilitation using lenses, prisms, and Neuro-Visual Postural Therapy™, a rehabilitative intervention for those who have had a neurological event affecting vision.
These rehabilitative techniques help the brain “reset” how it processes information and change the compensatory behaviors that may have developed.
My son has worked with Dr. Padula for nearly three years to restore his spatial visual processing. Like most Lyme treatments, improvements can be painstakingly slow, but they have been considerable.
Padula began his practice 20 years ago because he knew of no other place that offered help for children and adults with neurological challenges affecting vision.
I’m so thankful he did!
While tick-borne infections may not always cause visual symptoms, it’s essential to know that many neurological issues can and do affect vision.
If your vision is changing and no one can understand why, consider a visual processing evaluation.
It may lead to the answers you need.
II. Master Your Monday - A mindful tip to help you start the week.
III. Celebrating change
If you’ve been reading for the past few months, you know we lost our beloved dog Gracie on April 15th at 13. She was an integral part of our family, and we miss her every day. As someone who believes in signs, I had a few recently that let me know Gracie was happily on the other side and at peace, knowing how much she was loved. I also felt she was pushing me to welcome a new member to the family.
Last week, we did just that. This time a sweet, mini bernedoodle, who we named Remy after Boston Red Sox 2nd baseman and NESN broadcaster Jerry Remy (AKA Remdawg). known for his humor and knowledge of the game, Remy entertained Red Sox fans for nearly four decades. Remy knew how to make people laugh, as Gracie did during her 13 years with us.
After just one week, I’m certain this Remy will continue the tradition.
Welcome, Remy!
If you’re an animal lover and want to see Remy grow, you can follow him on Instagram at @remy_mini_bernedoodle.
Until next week, laugh like a six-year-old and celebrate the change that is a part of life.