Fall 2023 Newsletter

Vision Therapy and Rehabilitation News

Meet Rachel

Rachel Brodin wears many hats at Eyecare Associates. She is one of our office’s Chief Encouragement Officers (CEOs) in addition to being our Vision Therapy Coordinator. Rachel has worked at Eyecare Associates for six years after graduating from University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls.

Rachel enjoys being involved in vision therapy. After observing her first vision therapy session, Rachel was excited to learn more about vision therapy and is always amazed at how the process works. Her favorite part is hearing the success stories and seeing patients improve and build their confidence.

Rachel lives in Marshalltown with her husband, Matt, who works as a realtor at Premier Real Estate. Their family also includes two dogs, a cat, and their adorable baby, Theo. Rachel loves to travel, especially anywhere related to Disney.

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Vision Therapy not Just for Kids

Many people think that vision therapy is only for children. However, adults have as much need for this type of vision care as children. Vision therapy is often effective for adults because they are motivated to improve their visual abilities.

When people have trouble using both eyes together or can’t focus for great lengths of time, they do not simply grow out of these problems. Children with visual problems often become adults with visual problems.

Adults will figure out many ways to compensate for their visual problems so that they can continue with any strenuous visual work they need to do. Often, adults come home from work extremely tired when all they did was sit at a desk and do paperwork. Some people will feel as if they had just run a 10K race! Children, on the other hand, will tend to avoid tasks that are difficult or make them feel inadequate.

A developmental optometrist can help to reduce the strain of near work as well as work with any other kinds of visual problems. The proper lenses along with vision therapy make a tremendous difference in an adult’s ability to function at work or sports, just as with children of school age. Clinical results have shown that in-office vision therapy produces statistically significant improvement in vision symptoms for adults.

*This article was taken from the College of Optometrists in Vision Development. The original article and references can be found at covd.org

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Success Story

According to the mother of one of our recent vision therapy graduates, “Her headaches have improved. Reading has improved significantly. Her confidence has increased. Definitely recommend.” This 4th grader says, “Vision therapy has helped me improve my reading and my reading stamina. Also vision therapy has helped me have not that much of blurry vision.”

Before vision therapy, this recent graduate had trouble accurately moving her eyes together. Using our RightEye infrared eye tracking device, we compared her eye movement abilities to other kids her age. Before vision therapy, her performance was significantly below average, in the 19th percentile. After vision therapy, her eye movement skills improved to the 72nd percentile! No wonder she is becoming a confident reader! Congratulations!

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If you or someone you know isn’t performing up to their potential, take the symptom quiz by or schedule an appointment. Vision might be the key to unlocking their full potential!

Visit bit.ly/symptomquiz to take the symptom quiz.