On this segment of Ask Dr. Julie, I’m going to talk about a question that comes up with some regularity in the clinic. What can I expect with using these photo-syntonic or light therapy goggles? Well, there’s a lot of things. Most of the things that you can expect to have happen when you’re using the goggles, is something amazing. Many of our patients report, “I had no idea. I didn’t see that much information before, but wow, my world’s really expanded all the way around me.” Which can help out with a lot of things. It can help out with reading. It can help out with driving. It can help out with walking around in crowded locations. It can help out with just awareness of surroundings, even with the comfort of feeling like you’re still and calm and comfortable with yourself, right? Maybe even feeling safe is another thing that comes up sometimes.
Those are all really amazing things, and we see these things really fast with using the photo-syntonics. Also, we might see something like they start having less double vision almost right away. Maybe we see alignment of their eyes change almost right away within the first eight to 10 weeks, maybe dizziness and nausea kind of goes away or decreases a lot. So, there’s so many different things that we can potentially have happen with syntonics.
Every now and then, though, we do have some negative things that come up. And we’re super cautious about this in terms of how much we use the filters, the amount of time that’s spent on each filter, or the order in which the filters are utilized is super important for this as well.
If we get any kind of a negative response… A negative response would be like, “Wow, he got super energized. I mean, he was bouncing off of the walls after using this filter.” Or maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe it’s “He’s so lethargic after using this filter.” One fo the things we do is have our patients or our patient’s parent check a pulse. They will check a pulse during the first couple of times they’re using a filter to make sure that we don’t get some sort of an erratic change in level of the heart. This is temporary; it’s not something that lasts. But we do want to monitor that. If someone uses a filter, and all of a sudden they have a huge spike in their pulse or a huge drop in their pulse, that could tell us why the bouncing off the walls or the lethargic thing has happened. And in that case it doesn’t mean the filter’s not for them, but it may mean that we need to alter their time. So they might be super sensitive just even to two minutes’ worth of time using the filter.
Some colleagues of mine will use them for 10 to 20 minutes sometimes. We’re very sensitive about that. We like to use the filters for lesser amounts of time for that reason. If it’s something that changes immediately once we change the filter, then it’s not anything to be worried or concerned about once we make an alteration.
Other things that we might notice that would be a negative symptom or a negative sign that’s outward maybe to the family is, if you notice that you or your child is frustrated more than usual or even feeling angry or maybe feeling depressed, like this is just not their normal behavior. “I’m not normally an angry person. I don’t know what’s wrong, but the last week and a half I’ve been really angry.” If that’s what somebody says, then it’s very important that we look at “Where are they with their filters?” Maybe they need to actually change filters. Or again, maybe it’s not the need of changing filters, but maybe what it is, is that we need to alter the time.
Once your brain is kind of done with a level of electrical stimulation to it, after a while it gets kind of bored, and then after another while it gets kind of mad and doesn’t really like being stimulated and poked by the same kind of stimulus, then we don’t necessarily want to keep using that same stimulus if the brain is done with it, therefore it’s time to move to something new.
So, those are some of the things that we see. And it’s just time to alter something, either the filter or the amount of time that we use it. None of these things are lasting. None of these things are super serious. But we do need to alter them, so that you can have your best outcome and we can continue to expand the field and continue to get the brain to do what it needs to do to re-process vision accurately.
If you have questions, you can certainly contact our office. You can go to our website, VisionForLifeWorks.com, or call us at 618-288-1489.