Living with Vision Loss
Certainly, no one ever wants to lose eyesight. But living with low vision does not have to mean the loss of independence and quality of life. Simple and surprising adjustments can often create dramatic changes in the life of a person with vision loss. People who are blind or visually impaired can travel, cook, clean, study, work, and lead full lives. Some individuals with vision loss may even be to drive.
Biofeedback
Biofeedback uses an instrument to make the user aware of biological functions that are otherwise automatic and unnoticed. You may have heard of some people learning to control their heartbeats through biofeedback. While it may sound a bit far out in that context, the same process can be used to help some people with eye movement disorders such as nystagmus and strabismus gain some control over previously involuntary eye movements.
Bioptics
Bioptics are small telescopes mounted on glasses. They may look like a circular piece of glass on the lens itself, or a small box mounted just above the glasses. Bioptics can do wonders for people who are not able to obtain good vision through glasses or contacts alone. In fact, many people who are prescribed bioptics are able to drive using them.
Filters
Sometimes, rose-colored glasses can be just what the doctor ordered. Yellow, blue, and other colored filters, added to a lens, can improve day or night vision, help with glare problems, including those specific to conditions such as achromatopsia or macular degeneration, and reduce eyestrain.
Lighting
Simple changes in lighting can often prove to be revolutionary for people with vision loss. Options including lamps, ott lighting, and specialty bulbs such as blue bulbs and flourescent 5000K bulbs are available. Your REKINDLE™ Vision care team can discuss which options may be best for you.
Magnification
There are lots of ways to make the world appear larger, from high-power hand-held and stand magnifiers to electronic magnifiers such as CCTVs to microscopes and telescopes. Choosing the right magnification tools is a highly individualized process, and the skilled professionals at REKINDLE™ Vision are happy to demonstrate a wide array of magnification options to find the ones that are just right for you.
Minification
Not everyone with vision loss needs to see objects or text magnified. In fact, some people with certain forms of vision loss benefit from just the opposite. If you or your loved one fit into this category, we're happy to help you too.
Prisms
Perhaps you've seen a prism in grade-school science glass. It may have looked like a triangular piece of glass that, if held up to a white light, could produce a rainbow. Prisms can do a lot more than that. At REKINDLE™ Vision, in addition to Dr. Gottlieb's Visual Field Awareness System™, we can prescribe prisms for visual field loss, double vision, posture problems, toe-walking caused by spatial disruptions in autism, microprisms, prismatic microscopes, telescopes, bioptics, and more.
Vision Rehabilitation and Neuro-optometric rehabilitation
Vision rehabilitation is a bit like physical therapy for the eyes. A vision therapist uses exercises to train the eyes in order to improve areas such as hand-eye coordination, focusing, eye-teaming, bionocular vision, eye alignment, and more.
Neuro-optometric rehabilitation is a form of vision rehabilitation that focuses on visual problems caused by the brain, and uses the brain's property of neuroplasticity to re-train the brain to see.
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