10 Strategies to Fix Strabismus and Lazy Eye

Hi, my name is Melissa Daniels and I have strabismus

Strabismus is when your eyes don't point in the same direction. It's commonly referred to as lazy eye

Your eyes could be crossed in, they could be turning out. The idea is that they're not working together

And a lot of people think there's nothing you can do about it

They think that this is just their curse and that they have to live with it. And I am here to tell you that that is not the case

are so many things that you can try and experiment with to try to fix your strabismus now of course

there's like the methods that you're going to use with a doctor but there's also a lot of other

options so in this video i just want to quickly give you 10 different strategies that you could try

in order to fix your strabismus or lazy eye now if you go through this and you're like how do you

you know which one to choose that is a great question to ask your eye doctor if

you would like to schedule a call with me you can definitely do that at

strabismus solutions comm slash consult you can also go to learn dot strabismus

solutions comm and I have a lot of free resources there and different options

and you can kind of I can kind of help you know what direction to go now let's

get started these are not in any particular order I'm probably gonna start

with the more common and then go to the less common approaches that you could try for strabismus

So the first and probably most popular solution for fixing strabismus is surgery. Basically what

the doctor does is if your eyes are pointing like this, he cuts and moves muscles around to either

tighten or loosen muscles so that your eyes are straight. It has about a 70% success rate

A lot of people end up needing more surgeries throughout life. It doesn't necessarily teach your brain

to use your eyes together, but cosmetically definitely makes a difference. Second option, Botox

Botox is, it's not similar to surgery, but it's done by an ophthalmologist

Basically, they just inject the Botox into your muscles, which gives me the cringes

And what happens is it causes that muscle to relax, which can help with the alignment

Now, Botox usually only lasts maybe like three to six months. I think in like one trial

the longest lasting was like 411 days. So it's not a permanent solution

A lot of times they'll use this to kind of see if you end up with double vision

or how you handle having your eyes more aligned. So it definitely can work for every case of strabismus It like not gonna work if you have a nerve palsy and those kinds of things And so but it something to talk to your ophthalmologist about if you want something that isn as invasive

as surgery, but could maybe help with the alignment if it's something minor, give it a try

Okay, that is number two. Number three, vision therapy. Vision therapy is performed by optometrists

You go into an office once a week for, if you have strabismus, probably a year

And you do a lot of different types of eye exercises with lenses and prisms and all sorts of different things

to teach your brain to use your eyes together. If your brain is using both of your eyes together

it's gonna want them to be straight so that when it combines the images from both eyes

it's 3D and amazing and they're looking at the same thing. So vision therapy teaches your brain exactly how to do that

Great option. I've done one and three. Now I've never tried Botox

Okay, four, another fun one is virtual reality. Now, is this gonna fix it completely

No, but it's a strategy, right? Virtual reality is done on a headset like this

And what happens is it's an environment where it's a lot easier for your brain

to combine what your eyes are seeing and put that together into a 3D image

It's just, it's kinda like it's like setting it up and like spoon feeding it to you

instead of you having to do it in the real world. and it's a great stepping stool to get to you know the 3d vision with the vision therapy and

in office things the real life using both eyes so i have some great videos about different apps

that you can get that i recommend you can check that out at learn.stervismusolutions.com as well

virtual reality is really fun and really effective for vision therapy or sorry for

helping with strabismus. Okay, another one. This is really simple. Now, you might not want all of

these strategies. I just want to share these different strategies because I want you to see

there's a lot of different things you can do. One strategy for dealing with strabismus is just to

tilt your head. You have a vertical strabismus. A lot of people can tilt their head and it makes

their double vision go away. That can solve the problem, right? They might end up with neck

problems and lots of problems on the road but that can fix the double vision

and with horizontal strabismus you can tilt your head like this and it makes

the strabismus less obvious so if you're worried about the cosmetic side of

side of strabismus you can learn how to move your head in the right direction

that helps make the strabismus less obvious and can actually help with a lot

with the double vision may not be for everybody but it kind of help in the

process and I have a full article about that on the website of exactly how to move your head to help with strabismus It feels silly but if you have strabismus you know any help is good help right Okay another one and this probably should have gone first

because everybody with strabismus has tried this. Glasses with prism. Glasses with prism, I should have had them out and ready

but such is life. Almost there, okay. Prism is when you have your glasses and it's thicker on one side and thinner on the other side

And what happens is it bends what you're seeing and can help make it so both of your eyes

what they're looking at is the same. It can actually be similar to what is done in virtual reality

but you can put it in your actual glasses so that instead of this eye looking forward

and seeing the computer and then the other eye looking to the side and seeing some water bottle

it's making it so they're both looking at the computer screen. And so it helps your brain use both eyes together

Definitely, I don't know of a surgeon out there that doesn't try glasses with prism before trying surgery

to see if they can get the brain to fuse those images. So glasses with prism are amazing

They can help if you have double vision so much. They make a huge difference

And if the surgery gets you close, the glasses with prism can get you the rest of the way

Are there problems with them? Yeah, sometimes. Are they ideal? Maybe not

but they are a strategy you can use to deal with strabismus. Next, let's talk about peripheral vision

If you have been watching this channel for a while, you know I'm obsessed with peripheral and it's not just because I have a course

that I'm trying to sell. I made the course because peripheral is so important

and I thought, what is the most important key that I can give people to help them improve strabismus

It's peripheral vision. That is the key. So why? okay right now imagine you've got one eye that's seeing 90 percent right it's like you it's

accounts for 90 percent of what your brain is taking in the other eye is blocking out let's

say this eye is blocking out this whole area right this whole central and only seeing the very

outskirts of my peripheral right so the very outskirts of that peripheral is meshed together

from both eyes. Well that is going to make for really poor depth perception right? The ideal

would be to get both eyes working 100% all the time and completely meshing that central vision

and peripheral vision. So not just this but like closing that off so that you're both seeing the

exact same. With strabismus it might not be possible okay. We've got a lot of crazy stuff

that happened with all the patching and surgeries our vision doesn just work normally but one thing that we can do is take that weak eye and instead of blocking out this much make it so that it seen more and more So at some point it maybe only blocking the very central

but the most of the peripheral, it can mesh with the other eye

That is gonna change your depth perception significantly. I am here to tell you

I do not have great central stereopsis at all. It's actually terrible

I can't, even still after years, I'm not able to get those perfect things lined up because I've got arc and other problems, right

But because I've worked so hard on my peripheral, I still have crazy improvements in my depth

perception. Even like my stereo, my peripheral stereo, it's so much better. So I'm telling you

it's a really good strategy. You should try improving your peripheral. Okay, next is syntonics

Syntonix is a light therapy. You wear glasses. They don't look like this

but they would both be like red or green or blue or yellow

There's a million colors and they're basically light filters and they are signaling to your brain to like reboot

This is what I think of it as. It's like, okay, reboot. It can help a ton with amblyopia

and just some things where you've got these like ground in brain issues

and the Syntonix can help it on this other level. It's a little bit more out there, but you can hear crazy success stories with strabismus and the Syntonix photo light therapy

Another option that I've heard tons people have success with not tons

Okay, that was an exaggeration but is natural vision improvement Like the Bates method with relaxation

Learning to relax your eyes learning to react with your whole brain there's a lot of different vision teachers out there and you can hear success stories of people

who had strabismus who had double vision and they were able to fix it with these natural vision

techniques and the last thing would be to train your brain just to be okay with having strabismus

this is a strategy right for improving strabismus if you can just accept it and stop fighting it

and just be like, this is what it is and be curious about what you're seeing

instead of resisting it. It's gonna be amazing to you how much less it's gonna impact you

and how much more you are able to live with it and find solutions for helping

So I hope that you are able to pick one thing off of that list and try something new

If you want my help, definitely schedule a consult with me or check out learn.strabismissolutions.com

for some free resources. And if you have a solution for strabismus

I didn't mention, put it in the comments and I'll see you in the next video