Hi, I’m Dr. Julie Steinhauer, and in this segment of Ask Dr. Julie, we have a great question that came in from multiple sources online. How successful is syntonics light therapy? Well, I have a bunch of filters right here. There are tons of different photo-syntonics or light therapy filters. We don’t believe as a clinic, and as a doctor, in just using what’s called stand-alone syntonics, which means that I don’t think that prescribing only syntonics is the best method, at least for my mode of practice. So we’re going to combine syntonics with a vision therapy course of treatment, which means that we’re generally going to ask people, “What’s going on with your vision?” We’re going to evaluate them to find out what it is that’s happening with their vision and how we can help them.
So I’ve been using light therapy for approximately 10 years, as a clinician. I’ve been a doctor for 19 years, but a good portion of my time then, half of my time or better, has been using photo-syntonic light therapy. I wouldn’t see any patients without it these days. I do believe that it definitely enhances the program and it’s really, in many cases, the thing that’s kind of the most important part of the therapy program; like we can’t do it without syntonic light therapy. I mean, we could, but our results wouldn’t be as good.
Do we have any cases of failed stories with syntonics? No, not really. There are many things that we are trying to achieve with syntonics. It might be that we’re trying to open up a visual field, maybe we’re trying to restore a field of someone who had a stroke or lost vision. Maybe what we’re trying to do is just signal the muscles to align the eyes better. Maybe what we’re trying to do is improve binocularity. Maybe what we’re trying to do is reduce a lens prescription. Maybe what we’re trying to do is turn on an amblyopic eye. There are so many things that you can do with syntonic light therapy. Again, I wouldn’t really treat anyone these days without it.
Is it 100% successful? Well, I suppose it depends on who you talk to. Some clinics only do stand-alone syntonics, and some clinics just believe that it’s kind of a small fraction of their practice, and they do a lot of other things. Or maybe they dabble in it, and it’s not really the thing that they do most often in their practice and they’re not as comfortable. So I can’t speak for everyone else in the world who uses it. I can only speak for me. But as for me, and as for our clinic, we really wouldn’t go without utilizing it. It’s so powerful and it has such an amazing result for all of our patients. It’s widely successful. We just use it for every single patient encounter that we can.
Again, I wouldn’t really practice without it. So for the multiple people who asked this and they ask this question regularly, we thank you for it. I hope this is somewhat of an answer for you, that satisfies what you’re looking for. If you’re wondering, “Hey, could this stuff work for me,” contact our clinic. If you happen to be local, call us at 618 288-1489. Or obviously, you can go to our website at visionforlifeworks.com and you can fill out information for us there. What will happen is it will kick over to us and then we’ll be able to connect with you to find out how we might be able to help you, and maybe help you obviously with photo-syntonic light therapy goggles, which we use for everybody.