Motion Sickness - Neuro Vision Performance Institute

Preventive Measures for Motion Sickness

Motion sickness can be a disruptive and uncomfortable experience, especially for those prone to nausea, dizziness, and headaches during travel. It’s more than a simple inconvenience; it’s a condition that affects not only leisure activities such as driving or reading in motion but also essential daily life tasks. While many might associate motion sickness with inner ear disturbances, vision-related issues can also play a significant role. For children and adults facing recurrent motion sickness, understanding and addressing these visual factors can be crucial. Our local vision center is dedicated to helping patients and their families find relief from motion sickness by offering specialized insights and solutions.

Relaxation and Breathing Techniques

Taking a proactive approach can significantly help in preventing or minimizing the symptoms of motion sickness. For immediate relief during a motion-sickness episode, consider relaxation and breathing techniques. Deep and focused breathing helps to calm the nervous system’s response to conflicting sensory messages, reducing the feeling of dizziness and nausea.

Deep Breathing: Encourage your child to take slow, deep breaths. This can help ease anxiety and calm the body’s response to the mismatch between what the eyes see and what the inner ear senses.
Progressive Relaxation: Gently tightening and releasing muscle groups one at a time can help manage the symptoms. This approach is particularly beneficial for children who might feel too overwhelmed to focus solely on breathing.

Optimal Seating and External Focus

Sitting in the right position can make a world of difference. For those with vision-related motion sickness, aligning what the body feels with what the eyes see can help mitigate symptoms effectively.

Face Forward: Always face the direction of travel. This cues the eyes and inner ear to the same motion, reducing conflicting sensory input.
View a Stable Horizon: Encourage your child to look outside at a stable object on the horizon rather than at moving landscapes or digital screens. This can help synchronize visual cues with the body’s sense of motion.
Choose Optimal Seats: When traveling in a vehicle, sit in the front seat. For boats and planes, choose a seat near the center of motion to reduce instability.

Use of Medication

Medication can be an effective preventive measure for severe cases where behavioral techniques might not suffice. It’s essential to consult with a healthcare professional to find the right medication and dosage for each patient, especially children, to prevent unwanted side effects.

Consult with a Doctor: A healthcare provider can recommend over-the-counter medications like antihistamines, which must be administered before traveling to prevent symptoms effectively.
Prescription Options: In more acute cases, prescription medications might be necessary. Local specialists can guide you toward the best options suited to a child’s unique biochemical needs.

Struggling with motion sickness can be daunting, but with the right strategies, significant improvements are possible. Our local center is here to support both individual patients and referrals in this journey towards better, more comfortable travel experiences.

Treatment Options for Motion Sickness Induced by BVD

Motion sickness can be an unsettling and frustrating experience, especially when it’s caused by underlying vision problems. For anyone who frequently experiences discomfort, dizziness, or nausea while traveling, reading, or simply moving around, the connection might be your eyes. This becomes particularly relevant for parents noticing these symptoms in their children. The good news is, there’s hope—comprehensive, tailored treatments are available to address these issues effectively.

Role of Prism Lenses

When it comes to motion sickness related to binocular vision dysfunction (BVD), one of the most powerful treatment options we offer is prism lenses. These specialized lenses work by altering the way light enters the eyes before it reaches the brain. By adjusting the perceived alignment of images, prisms can help synchronize your eyes’ movements and eliminate the brain’s confusion over mixed visual signals.

Prisms create the illusion of alignment, helping both eyes focus on the same visual plane.
This modification often leads to a reduction or complete alleviation of dizziness and nausea related to motion sickness.
Patients typically begin experiencing relief shortly after wearing their personalized prism glasses.

These lenses are particularly beneficial for individuals whose motion sickness is exacerbated by visual activities such as reading in motion or viewing digital screens while traveling. For many patients, prism lenses prove transformative, providing clarity and greatly enhancing daily comfort and productivity.

Other Optical Corrections

Aside from prisms, other optical corrections can also greatly assist those suffering from motion sickness due to BVD. Specialized glasses and contact lenses tailored to individual visual needs are vital components of a comprehensive treatment plan.

Customized Glasses: Tailored to correct specific visual misalignments or convergence issues, these glasses can ease the strain on eye muscles, reducing symptoms of motion sickness.
Vision Therapy: This optometrist-supervised program offers exercises designed to strengthen the connection between your eyes and brain. Therapy focuses on improving eye muscle coordination, enhancing depth perception, and correcting convergence insufficiency, which are critical in reducing motion-related discomfort.

For healthcare professionals referring patients who exhibit signs of motion sickness linked to vision, understanding the available treatments can greatly benefit patient outcomes. Optical corrections, whether through lenses or therapy, offer a non-invasive and effective approach, enhancing overall patient well-being.

Vision Therapy for Addressing BVD

If you or your child experience frequent symptoms of motion sickness, such as dizziness or nausea, it might be more than just a temporary inconvenience. Often, these symptoms can signal an underlying condition known as binocular vision dysfunction (BVD), where your eyes don’t work together effectively. This lack of coordination can lead to stress on the eye muscles and confusion in the brain, resulting in the discomfort you feel. As a local eye care provider, we offer specialized vision therapy designed to correct these misalignments and relieve the symptoms associated with BVD, improving both quality of life and visual comfort.

Strengthening Eye Muscles

One of the primary goals of vision therapy in treating BVD is to strengthen the eye muscles. This is particularly crucial as weak eye muscles can make it challenging to focus and maintain clear vision, especially during movement. Through targeted exercises, we can enhance the strength and flexibility of the muscles responsible for eye movement and coordination. This leads to an improved ability to focus visually, reducing strain and discomfort during activities like reading or viewing moving objects.

Improving Eye-Body Coordination

Many patients with BVD experience challenges with synchronizing their visual perception with actual physical motion, often leading to motion sickness while in transit. Vision therapy addresses this issue by reinforcing the connection between the eyes and the body’s movements. By engaging in activities that boost this coordination, individuals learn to adapt more effectively to changes in their environment, significantly reducing the likelihood of motion sickness. This can be particularly beneficial for children who are often in motion and exploring their surroundings.

Enhancing Depth Perception

Depth perception difficulties are common among those with conditions that affect how the eyes work together, such as strabismus. When depth perception is compromised, it becomes challenging to accurately judge distances, which can be disorienting. Our vision therapy program includes exercises specifically designed to improve depth perception. By focusing on helping the eyes work together more cohesively, these exercises enhance one’s ability to perceive distances accurately, thereby reducing the confusion and discomfort caused by conflicting visual signals.

At the Neuro-Visual Performance Institute in Versailles and Somerset, Kentucky, Dr. Rick Graebe, FCOVD, and his dedicated team are a leading children’s eye care specialty center, and are referred to from across Central and Southern Kentucky, including Lexington, Frankfort, Danville, and Nicholasville.

How Vision Therapy Works

Experiencing frequent dizziness, headaches, or motion sickness can be incredibly frustrating, especially when these symptoms impact your daily life and activities. As an eye care specialist dedicated to the well-being of our community, I want to shed light on how our optometrist-supervised vision therapy programs offer a comprehensive solution for these challenges. Our approach is designed not only for individuals experiencing visual discomfort but also for the healthcare professionals referring patients who struggle with persistent vision-related issues.

Optometrist-Supervised Programs

Vision therapy is more than just a set of eye exercises; it’s a personalized treatment plan developed and supervised by experienced optometrists. Our programs are tailored to address specific visual dysfunctions that contribute to symptoms such as motion sickness and binocular vision dysfunction, a common culprit where the eyes fail to work in harmony.

During the initial assessment, we work closely with patients to identify the root causes of their discomfort. This might include issues like convergence insufficiency or vertical heterophoria, which disrupt the coordination between the eyes and the brain, leading to symptoms like dizziness and nausea. For our young patients, vision therapy is particularly beneficial in addressing learning-related visual problems, ensuring they can focus more effectively on reading and schoolwork.

For healthcare professionals, understanding that vision therapy can address underlying visual problems may offer an additional avenue for patient referrals, especially for those presenting with unexplained motion sickness or balance issues.

In-Office and At-Home Exercises

Our vision therapy programs consist of both in-office sessions and at-home exercises, creating a holistic approach that empowers patients to actively participate in their own vision improvement journey. In-office sessions utilize advanced tools like specialized lenses, prisms, and filters to engage the visual system in ways that enhance eye coordination and brain-eye communication.

At-home exercises are equally crucial, as they reinforce and extend the benefits of in-office treatments. These exercises are designed to address specific issues such as poor depth perception and eye-body coordination, vital for reducing motion sickness symptoms. Engaging the eye muscles and improving tracking can significantly reduce visual strain and discomfort when performing everyday tasks like reading or working on a computer.

Our goal is to equip patients with the skills they need to overcome visual challenges and lead more comfortable lives. For those in the medical community, offering vision therapy as a resource can enhance patient care by addressing visual components that traditional treatments may overlook.

If motion sickness has been a persistent issue for you or your patients, consider the benefits of vision therapy. Contacting our team can be the first step toward a personalized, effective solution that improves quality of life and visual performance.

Case Study: Karen’s Journey with Motion Sickness | Frankfort

Initial Symptoms and Diagnosis

Karen, a lively 10-year-old from Frankfort, had always enjoyed long road trips and spinning rides at the local fair. However, her joy turned into discomfort as she began experiencing nausea, dizziness, and severe headaches during these activities. Like many parents, Karen’s mother initially thought these were just typical signs of motion sickness. However, Karen also complained of these symptoms while reading or using digital devices, which raised concerns.

Upon visiting our office, a detailed examination revealed that Karen was not just experiencing traditional motion sickness. Instead, it was linked to a binocular vision dysfunction (BVD), a condition where her eyes failed to coordinate correctly. This misalignment in Karen’s visual system was contributing to her symptoms, creating stress on her eye muscles and brain.

Vision Therapy and Progress

Karen’s treatment journey began with a personalized vision therapy program designed to address the underlying cause of her symptoms. Central to this treatment was the use of prism lenses. These specialized lenses helped manipulate the light entering Karen’s eyes, facilitating proper alignment and reducing the conflicting sensory signals that led to her discomfort.

Strengthening Eye Muscles: Specific exercises enhanced the muscle coordination needed for smoother and more effective eye movement.
Improving Eye-Body Coordination: Tailored activities that combined eye movements with physical movements helped Karen adapt better to motion, reducing her susceptibility to motion sickness.
Enhancing Depth Perception: Vision therapy exercises improved Karen’s ability to judge distances accurately, an essential factor for coordinated movement and reading.
Correcting Convergence Insufficiency: Exercises targeted the eye ‘teaming’ issues, reducing eye strain while reading and focusing on nearby objects.

Through these structured exercises, Karen gradually regained visual control, reducing her symptoms significantly and invigorating her daily activities with comfort and confidence.

Signs Your Child May Have Motion Sickness

Identifying Early Symptoms

As parents or caregivers, it’s vital to recognize the early warning signs that your child may be experiencing motion sickness. Often, motion sickness presents itself during car trips or other forms of travel, manifesting in symptoms that range from mild to severe. These symptoms can include nausea, dizziness, headaches, and excessive dribbling. Your child might also feel unusually tired or uneasy, exhibit a change in breathing patterns, or display an increase in saliva production.

It’s important to consider that these symptoms could be indicative of an underlying visual issue rather than just solely motion-induced discomfort. Research shows that a misalignment, even a slight one, in your child’s eyes could be responsible for their discomfort. This lack of proper coordination between the eyes may lead to binocular vision dysfunction (BVD), a condition where the small misalignment causes significant stress on both the visual and nervous systems.

Symptoms of BVD can sometimes overlap with those of motion sickness, such as dizziness, light sensitivity, or feelings of anxiety in open spaces. If your child frequently experiences these symptoms during reading or traveling, this may suggest a deeper visual issue requiring evaluation by an eye care professional.

Impact on Learning and Play

Motion sickness can greatly affect a child’s ability to engage in everyday activities both at school and at home. For a young student, the struggle with motion sickness could lead to an aversion to reading or participating in classroom activities that involve motion, such as certain sports. This discomfort can stem from binocular vision dysfunction, which might make words appear as though they are floating or merging on the page, causing your child to skip lines or lose their place while reading. This not only impacts their ability to focus on educational tasks but can also contribute to decreased academic performance and increased frustration with learning.

On the playground or during physical activities, BVD may make it difficult for your child to judge distances accurately, which can lead to an avoidance of play activities like ball games due to coordination troubles. The misalignment of their visual perception may be misleading them about the true position and motion of objects around them, making these activities less enjoyable and often uneasy.

As local eye care providers, our priority is to address these potential underlying visual problems that contribute to motion sickness. Through specific treatments like vision therapy and prism lenses, we aim to correct the misalignments affecting your child’s visual coordination. By enhancing their eye-body coordination and improving depth perception, we can help your child find comfort in their environment. With professional guidance and tailored treatment plans, your child can overcome the challenges of motion sickness, enhancing their daily comfort and overall quality of life.

For local healthcare professionals referring young patients, understanding the potential link between visual issues and motion sickness ensures that comprehensive care is provided. Collaborating with us allows for the development of shared care plans to best address these concerns, supporting the child’s wellbeing both academically and socially.

Dr. Rick Graebe, FCOVD: Leading Children’s Eye Doctor in Central and Southern Kentucky

Dr. Rick Graebe, FCOVD, has devoted over 35 years to pediatric eye care, serving families across Central and Southern Kentucky. As a Behavioral and Neuro Rehabilitation Optometrist, he holds international certifications in Vision Therapy, Pediatric Developmental Vision Care, and Vision Rehabilitation. His unique, personalized approach helps children overcome vision challenges that affect learning, sports performance, and overall development. Families from Lexington, Somerset, Danville, and beyond trust Dr. Graebe’s dedication to enhancing children’s vision and quality of life.

Advice for Parents: Supporting a Child with Motion Sickness

Strategies at Home and School

If your child battles motion sickness, it can make daily life and school activities challenging. Understanding that this discomfort often stems from a sensory mismatch can help you address its root cause. When the brain receives conflicting signals from the eyes and inner ear, symptoms like nausea, dizziness, and headaches can appear. For some children, these symptoms are further complicated by undiagnosed vision problems such as binocular vision dysfunction (BVD).

At home, you can implement strategies to minimize these conflicts:

Allow your child to sit in a position where they can see the moving scenery, like sitting by a window in a car or classroom.
Encourage periodic breaks when reading or using screens to reduce eye strain.
Incorporate activities that involve gentle motion, allowing your child’s body and vision to sync better with movement.
Try simple exercises to gently strengthen the eye muscles, if guided by a vision therapy professional.

In school settings, communication with your child’s teachers can be pivotal. Explain the situation to them and request small accommodations, such as preferential seating near windows or opportunities to move around where practical. These actions should not disrupt your child’s routine long-term but can offer significant relief. By understanding and managing motion sickness proactively, you can help your child maintain focus and participation in school activities.

When to Seek Professional Help

While some cases of motion sickness can be managed with at-home strategies, others may require professional intervention. Consider consulting a specialist if:

Your child shows persistent symptoms that interfere with daily activities even after making environmental adjustments.
Symptoms are accompanied by signs of visual disturbances like blurry vision, frequent headaches, or difficulty with depth perception.
Reading causes discomfort or distress, potentially linked to conditions such as convergence insufficiency or vertical heterophoria.

Vision therapy can be transformative in such situations. It involves targeted exercises to improve eye coordination and the connection between visual input and brain processing. By strengthening these areas, professionals can help manage the root causes of motion sickness, reducing or even eliminating symptoms entirely.

If you are a healthcare provider or educator working with children, understanding the potential visual causes of motion sickness is crucial. Such insights can guide you in making timely referrals to vision specialists. By collaborating with optometrists who specialize in pediatric vision therapy, you can ensure comprehensive care for your patients or students, aiding them in overcoming motion-sickness-related challenges.

If your child or someone in your care struggles with motion sickness and related symptoms, consider reaching out to a local eye care professional specializing in vision therapy. Early intervention can significantly improve the individual’s quality of life, enabling them to confidently engage in school and social activities.

Collaborating with Healthcare Professionals

Motion sickness is more than just an inconvenience; it’s a condition that can significantly impact one’s quality of life and ability to perform daily activities. Often misunderstood, the root causes of motion sickness can include complex interactions between various sensory systems. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach, local eye doctors can collaborate effectively with other healthcare professionals to identify vision-related causes and improve patient outcomes.

Motion sickness can arise from a disconnect between visual input and signals from the inner ear and other sensory systems, leading to symptoms like nausea, dizziness, and headaches. This sensory mismatch can be exacerbated by underlying vision issues, such as binocular vision dysfunction (BVD). BVD occurs when there is poor coordination between the eyes, often leading to a range of symptoms that can mimic or contribute to motion sickness. An interdisciplinary approach allows us to leverage expertise from various fields to address the multifaceted nature of this condition.

By working alongside neurologists, audiologists, and physical therapists, we can provide comprehensive evaluations to determine whether a patient’s visual system is contributing to their motion sickness. Sharing insights and combining our efforts helps ensure that patients receive a holistic diagnosis and an integrated treatment plan tailored to their unique needs.

Advancements in Visual Therapy

Recent Research and Innovations

Vision therapy has been at the forefront of alleviating the life-disrupting effects of motion sickness, offering promising solutions through a deep dive into the interplay between the eyes and the brain. Many individuals, especially children, are frustrated with their inability to enjoy simple activities such as reading in a moving car or enjoying a ride at an amusement park without feeling nauseous or dizzy. These discomforts are often linked to a disrupt in the visual communication between the eyes and the brain, an area where motion and vision therapy can make a significant impact.

Recent studies highlight that discrepancies in visual input can confuse the brain, leading to motion sickness symptoms like dizziness, nausea, and headaches. It often starts subtly but can have profound effects on daily life. For instance, a child struggling with visual misalignment may not only feel motion sickness on a road trip but may also face issues with reading and focus, impacting academic performance and overall well-being. Specialized conditions such as binocular vision dysfunction (BVD), convergence insufficiency, and vertical heterophoria play a significant role here, affecting how eyes collaborate to produce a single, seamless visual image.

Research has indicated that vision therapy, which includes prescribing prism lenses and structured eye exercises, can correct these visual discrepancies. These prisms aid in aligning vision signals before they reach the brain, reducing strain and confusion. The therapy helps strengthen the neuromuscular connection of the eyes, fostering better coordination and reducing the symptoms of motion sickness. Vision therapy programs are increasingly tailored to individual needs and can involve in-office sessions or home-based exercises, making them accessible and effective for both pediatric and adult patients.

Case Study: Mike’s Road to Recovery

It can be especially challenging for young patients like Mike to experience motion sickness, often due to underlying vision problems. These issues can disrupt not just travel experiences but daily activities, causing symptoms such as nausea, dizziness, and headaches that may seem bewildering to children and their parents. For parents, noticing these discomforts in their children can be both stressful and puzzling, as they might not immediately connect these issues to vision. This is where a specialized approach in pediatric eye care becomes crucial. Many times, conditions like binocular vision dysfunction (BVD), convergence insufficiency, or vertical heterophoria are the hidden culprits. These conditions can cause a sensory mismatch, where the eyes send conflicting information to the brain, leading to the unpleasant symptoms of motion sickness.

Mike’s Improved Abilities and Confidence

After undergoing a tailored vision therapy plan, Mike experienced a remarkable transformation. His symptoms of motion sickness gradually decreased, allowing him to travel comfortably and engage more fully in his day-to-day activities. He also noted improvements in reading and schoolwork, as words no longer seemed to float or overlap. The increase in his confidence was apparent, not only in his academic performance but also in his willingness to participate in activities he previously avoided due to discomfort. Mike’s story exemplifies the powerful impact that targeted vision therapy can have on a young patient’s life. For families and healthcare professionals dealing with similar challenges, Mike’s journey to recovery offers a compelling narrative of hope and effective intervention.

The Bluegrass Regions Leading Pediatric Eye Care & Vision Therapy Experts

At Neuro-Visual Performance Institute, Dr. Rick Graebe FCOVD brings over 35 years of experience in pediatric eye care and neuro-optometric rehabilitation. Our team provides comprehensive and customized care to enhance each child’s visual skills, supporting academic and developmental success. From treating amblyopia and binocular vision dysfunction to addressing visual processing concerns, we’re here for families throughout the greater Lexington area and beyond. Experience the difference with expert, compassionate pediatric vision care at our Versailles and Somerset locations. Schedule your child’s exam today by calling 859-879-0089.