Vision problems can make it challenging to maintain proper balance. When someone has troubled vision and the eye muscles work harder to compensate for the decreased visual clarity, eyestrain, headaches, and balance disorders can occur.
This is called oscillopsia and will frequently cause dizziness and balance problems. As always, treatment is first aimed at correcting (if possible) the underlying cause for the nystagmus, or other eye movement disorder. Concurrently, the following neuro-optometric rehabilitation approaches may be helpful.
Can Eye Strain Cause Vertigo? Yes, eye strain can easily cause vertigo. When our eye muscles are repeatedly working to align and correct themselves, this can lead to not only vertigo but also feeling nauseous and off-balance.
Experts know that poor vision is a risk factor for poor balance, especially when an older adult is doing complex balancing tasks like standing on one foot.
This strong connection between the eyes and the vestibular system means that issues with your eyes can cause problems with your balance, including dizziness and motion sickness. Often, issues with the vestibular system that are connected to the eyes result from a misalignment of the eyes known as vertical heterophoria.
Impaired vision and dizziness
When a person's eyes are misaligned, the eye muscles strain to focus and provide the brain with unified and clear images. This may lead to eye strain, which causes dizziness, disorientation, and headaches. Conditions that may cause vision-related dizziness include: eye misalignment.
Losing your balance while walking, or feeling imbalanced, can result from: Vestibular problems. Abnormalities in your inner ear can cause a sensation of a floating or heavy head and unsteadiness in the dark. Nerve damage to your legs (peripheral neuropathy).
Certain conditions, such as diabetes, heart disease, stroke, or problems with your vision, thyroid, nerves, or blood vessels can cause dizziness and other balance problems.
The most common causes of imbalance without dizziness are related to dysfunction of the muscles, joints and peripheral nerves (proprioceptive system), or the central nervous system (brain). People with bilateral vestibulopathy have balance issues but no dizziness if the damage affects both ears at the same time.
However, when you suffer from a vision misalignment, it impacts your entire body's alignment, which could be causing your inability to balance effectively. This can be treated with aligning lenses, which will bring your vision and your body into alignment, giving you balance and clumsiness relief.
Inner ear and balance
Dizziness has many possible causes, including inner ear disturbance, motion sickness and medication effects. Sometimes it's caused by an underlying health condition, such as poor circulation, infection or injury. The way dizziness makes you feel and your triggers provide clues for possible causes.
Absolutely. While dizziness can be caused by a number of factors, poor eyesight and eye strain are two of the most common catalysts for the disorienting sensation. Anything that requires the eye muscles to strain in order to accurately aim at an object can lead to dizziness.
Vertigo is a sudden feeling of imbalance and spinning that occurs even while a person is sitting or standing still. Blurred vision often occurs with the dizziness of a vertigo spell. Some common causes of vertigo include dehydration, migraine headaches and sudden head movement.
Your neurologist or movement disorder specialist will perform a history and physical examination of your eye movements, cranial nerves, speech, coordination, gait, and sensation. They may order imaging including MRIs or CT scans to determine a neurological cause of your balance symptoms.
Our neurologists and neurosurgeons diagnose and treat balance dysfunction that is the result of neurologic disorders or neurologic impairment. While the vast majority of balance problems are caused by problems with the inner ear, there may be neurological causes for balance disorders which require neurological care.
Unsteadiness, dizziness, feeling dizzy or light-headed are common symptoms of stress, including the stress anxiety causes.
But you should seek medical attention if imbalance isn't a fleeting sensation, if it's debilitating and disrupting your life or if it's putting your safety at risk. The signs you might have a balance disorder include: Prolonged or extreme dizziness. A spinning sensation when you're not actually moving (vertigo)
Researchers have found that balance begins to decline in midlife, starting at about age 50. In one recent study, adults in their 30s and 40s could stand on one foot for a minute or more. At age 50, the time decreased to 45 seconds. At 70, study participants managed 28 seconds.
It is also essential to our sense of balance: the organ of balance (the vestibular system) is found inside the inner ear. It is made up of three semicircular canals and two otolith organs, known as the utricle and the saccule. The semicircular canals and the otolith organs are filled with fluid.
Our eyes and ears work together more than we realize, and the decline of one can adversely affect the other. Studies have shown a strong association between age-related eye conditions and hearing loss, which suggests common risk factors or biological aging markers for the onset of both.
Cataracts have been linked to episodes of dizziness. Feeling lightheaded, off-balance, and like the room is spinning or moving are symptoms of dizziness. This experience happens to everyone at some point, but if you experience dizzy spells very often, it could mean you have an underlying condition.
Astigmatism Symptoms
The main symptom of astigmatism is blurred vision. This blurriness can lead to squinting, headaches, and even lightheadedness. Most people notice that the blurriness is worse at night.