What are the symptoms of eye-teaming difficulties?

• Blurred Vision

• The need for frequent posture and viewing distance adjustments

• Difficulty maintaining clear vision

• Difficulty shifting focus from one distance to another

• Visual fatigue with sustained near tasks

• Headaches

• Occasional double vision, especially when you are more tired or emotional.

Eye-Teaming difficulties explained:

Eye teaming refers to the natural posture or alignment of the eyes. The eyes appear straight and aligned when you look in the mirror but the two eyes naturally align or deviate outwardly (exophoria) or in an inward direction (esophoria). A certain amount of deviation is normal for all eyes and depends on the anatomy of the eye muscles and the eye socket, the mechanical forces of the muscles as well as the nerve connections and impulses to the muscles.

An abnormal balance between all these factors results in problems with eye teaming or binocular eye posture. When the eye posture is more extreme and outside of the expected range, the eyes and brain must constantly coordinate to keep the eyes aligned. When too much effort is needed, headaches, blurriness, frequent posture adjustment and fatigue are common. In more extreme cases, when alignment is lost, double vision is a result.

What can we do?

Your optometrist may prescribe prism spectacles to relieve the strain of keeping your eyes aligned. Visual Therapy may be prescribed to improve visual comfort and visual endurance.