What To Know About Chronic Headaches And Their Relationship To BVD

Headaches are very common, but when you suffer from them regularly, they can have a particularly debilitating effect on your quality of life. However, you may be surprised to learn that fixing the problem could be easier than you might think. Chronic headaches are regularly misdiagnosed when actually, they can often be a result of a condition called binocular vision dysfunction, or BVD for short.

 

What Is Binocular Vision Dysfunction?

Binocular vision dysfunction is an extremely common but often overlooked visual condition that occurs when the line of sight from one eye is subtly out of alignment with the line of sight from the other eye. The eyes and the brain typically work in perfect synchronization to create a single clear image from both eyes, but this is much harder when the eyes aren't aligned in the same plane. As the eyes work harder, it places much more strain on the muscles around them as they continually work to try and correct the alignment to achieve a single focus. It is this strain and stress that normally causes the symptoms associated with BVD.
 

What Are The Symptoms Of BVD?

There are a large range of symptoms that have been associated with BVD, which can make it particularly tricky to diagnose, especially since it can easily masquerade as one of many other conditions.

Some of the many symptoms of BVD include:
 

• Reading difficulties, including losing your place, becoming tired easily, skipping words or lines, or words running together

• Light sensitivity, glare, halos around lights

• Poor depth perception, hand-eye coordination, and maintaining eye contact

• Restless sleep, insomnia

• Dizziness, vertigo-type symptoms including nausea and disorientation

• Generalized anxiety, agoraphobia, being stressed in large or crowded environments

• Eye strain, blurred vision, eye pain

• Difficulty with driving, including high levels of stress or nausea

• Headaches, neck pain, and upper back pain
  
   

How Does BVD Cause Headaches?

Any sort of visual problem has the potential to cause headaches. This is because the complete visual system includes the brain, which, as we all know, is located inside your head. When your eyes and brain have to work abnormally hard to create a clear image, the pressure that it places on the muscles around the eyes can travel to the head, causing a headache to develop. If you are performing visually demanding tasks, such as using a computer or driving, the constant and hyper-focused attention that you need to exert will only compound this pressure. This can make a headache and other symptoms of BVD develop much more quickly than, say, if you were relaxing and listening to music.
 

In addition to head pain, many people with BVD find that they naturally tilt their head or hold stress in their neck and shoulders when they try and concentrate on a visual task, which can also contribute towards headaches developing.

If you have been suffering from chronic headaches, a quick self test could determine if you are actually suffering from BVD. If you are, we have a headache treatment that can help. Take our 5 minute self test and contact The Dizziness and Headache Optometry Center in Santa Barbara, California at (805) 626-3400 today to find out more.  

 

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