Vision and the elderly

If you read the most recent Z-Health Newsletter, then you saw the Ask Dr. Cobb question about vision. The super-cool thing about the Z-Health approach to vision is that it’s trainable. Much of seeing well is actually a skill. The ability to move your eye musculature to the end ranges of motion, or quickly change between focusing near and focusing far, is all trainable.

An article recently published in Science News talks about vision and the elderly, and how the elderly need to start giving up their car keys as their vision goes. I think it’s great that these seniors are able to identify that their skills have declined and have voluntarily taken themselves off the road. What I think would be more cool is if more of them could stay on the roads — safely.

Vision training can often help with that. The reason I think this is because there is a hierarchy of information processing that starts with the visual system, goes to vestibular (inner ear/balance), and ends with proprioception (the body’s awareness of itself in time and space). If the visual information is challenged, then the body is going to start shutting down how fast and how well or fast it can move in order to protect itself. Of course, this whole idea backfires once you introduce a car in to it — because the body wasn’t designed to handle situations where we aren’t self-propelled!

So now:

• By improving the visual system, you have “taken the brakes” off the overall body. This will allow the reflexes to respond faster.
• By practicing near/far drills, you can quickly move from seeing the odometer to the road to the rear view mirror and back to the road.
• By practicing drills that extend the end ranges of motion of the eyes, the peripheral field is improved, allowing drivers to better see things on the shoulder (deer, cyclists, etc)

If you want to learn more about Vision training, Dr. Cobb has some great suggestions and references in the January newsletter. Or, drop me a note!