Why Head Tilt Could Indicate a Vision Problem (2024)
Severe neck pain can make day-to-day life very difficult. The ongoing stiffness and soreness is bad enough, but when the neck’s range of motion starts to become affected, the daily tasks you perform without thinking become much more difficult.
Many people seek treatment for their neck pain through the traditional channels, yet are frustrated and disappointed when they don’t see results. They may frequently be seen by a chiropractor for chronic neck pain because the adjustments just don't seem to last. Surprisingly, the reason none of these methods are helping an aching neck could actually be due to a condition called Binocular Vision Dysfunction (BVD).
Severe neck pain is the most common symptom to result from head tilt, which is a mechanism the body uses to try and fix the vertical misalignment caused by BVD. Of the many people with neck pain we’ve helped at Vision Specialists of Michigan, almost all of them had a head tilt – yet only 25 percent of patients realized it beforehand! In retrospect, the tilt can be seen in their driver’s license pictures and in old photographs.
In order for your eyes to see clearly and work together effectively, they must be able to work in sync with each other, and for complete synchronization the eyes must be perfectly aligned. When the eyes are out of alignment, this synchronization is disrupted. Patients compensate by tilting their head to one side in order to vertically realign the images they’re seeing. While this often-unconscious response may help realign images, it can easily result in chronic neck pain.
How Binocular Vision Dysfunction Affects Neck Pain
Neck pain symptoms also may be due to certain conditions including:
Neck muscle spasm. The sudden, involuntary tightening of the neck muscles can cause sharp, jabbing pains, a condition which is referred to as a muscle spasm. They’re usually the result of overworked muscles and can last minutes, hours or days. The continuous tilting of the head by patients with BVD to realign their vision is just such an action that leads to overuse of the neck muscles and neck muscle spasm. Once the vision misalignment is correctly treated, however, the head tilt resolves and the pressure on the neck muscles will quickly decrease or disappear entirely.
Neck strain. Just as the eye muscles can become strained when overworked, the neck muscles and tendons can also become strained or injured when they’re overused. When BVD patients repeatedly tilt their heads, it puts additional stress on the neck muscles, which exacerbates the problem if the neck is already strained. The customized aligning prismatic lenses we prescribe to our patients work in a way that brings the eyes back into sync, which in turn realigns the images, eliminates the need for the head tilt and provides neck pain relief.
Scoliosis. While scoliosis is characterized by a misalignment of the spine, it can also have an effect on other parts of the body. Depending on the severity of the sideways curvature, scoliosis can sometimes cause the head and neck to tilt, resulting in neck pain. At times, this can also be accompanied by a vision misalignment. If you’re experiencing scoliosis neck pain and traditional treatments don’t seem to be working, it would be helpful to consult a NeuroVisual specialist at Vision Specialists of Michigan to see if aligning lenses will help reduce your neck pain by eliminating the need to tilt your head.
Torticollis (wry neck). Wry neck is the sudden onset of severe neck pain that limits range of motion and causes neck stiffness and neck muscle soreness. While painful, it is usually of short duration. If this pain and discomfort becomes chronic, lasting longer than a few days, a vision misalignment may be a contributing factor to your ongoing neck pain. Our specialized aligning lenses can relieve this chronic pain by eliminating the need for the head to tilt.
Find Relief at Vision Specialists of Michigan
If you have a head tilt, chronic neck pain or are experiencing other symptoms of BVD such asdizziness and nausea,we want to help. Contact Vision Specialists of Michigan at [company_phone] to find out if we can relieve your neck pain by treating your BVD,or fill out our quick and easyscreening questionnaire.
Crossed eyes (strabismus): When a child has crossed eye(s), how much the eye crosses will change when the child is looking in different directions. ...
Shaky eyes (nystagmus): Sometimes a child's eyes can shake.
Torticollis, sometimes called wry neck or twisted neck, is the medical name for a rare condition that causes involuntary head tilting, frequently due to tightened neck muscles or another underlying condition. Torticollis has a variety of causes. In most cases, it is a muscular problem that can easily be corrected.
Ocular torticollis is an abnormal head posture adopted in order to optimize vision and/or maintain binocularity. The incidence is approximately 3% in pediatric ophthalmology practice. It may consist of any combination of head tilt, face turn, or chin elevation or depression.
There are many different ways cervical ligament injury, especially upper cervical instability and cervical dysstructure can affect the eye and cause eye conditions.
People with astigmatism tend to tilt their heads in one direction or another to see. The cornea's unevenness creates an inaccurate perception of what looking straight ahead is. One natural way to treat astigmatism is to be aware of your head tilting.
Anxiety tics can manifest as physical movements, such as rapid eye blinking or head tilting, or as vocalizations, like throat clearing or grunting. Whatever form they take, anxiety tics are typically a response to overwhelming stress and usually go away on their own.
In fact, poor posture can result in many health issues, including slowed circulation, shallow breathing, and blurred vision. But the relationship also goes the other way. If you have poor eyesight, you may squint, lean forward, or tilt your head into an unnatural position to see more clearly.
The causes of eye misalignment are various, and sometimes unknown. Potential causes include high farsightedness, thyroid eye disease, cataract, eye injuries, myasthenia gravis, cranial nerve palsies, and in some patients it may be caused by brain or birth problems.
Abnormal head positions are adopted in order to improve visual acuity, to avoid diplopia or to obtain a more comfortable binocular vision. The head can be turned or tilted toward right or left, with the chin rotated up or downwards or combination of these positions.
Definition. A neurologic syndrome following injury of the spinal sympathetic nerves of the neck. The injury usually results from arthritis or pinching by the adjacent vertebrae. Symptoms include facial pain, chronic allergies, dizziness, neck pain, ear pain and vertigo. [
Posture and vision are intimately related. Since the eyes are extensions of the brain, they constitute a central nervous system component. Over time, poor posture can cause physical exhaustion, slowed lymph flow, shallow breathing, reduced circulation, and clouded eyesight.
Most cases of head tilt are associated with a condition called torticollis, although in rare instances a head tilt can be due to other causes such as hearing loss, misalignment of the eyes, reflux (a flowing back of stomach acid into the esophagus), a throat or lymph node infection, or, very uncommonly, a brain tumor.
Fourth cranial nerve palsies can affect patients of any age or gender. They can present with vertical diplopia, torsional diplopia, head tilt, and ipsilateral hypertropia. Determining the onset, severity, and chronicity of symptoms can be vital in delineating between the various etiologies of a CN 4 palsy.
Skew deviation and ocular tilt reaction are most commonly caused by ischemia, infarction, multiple sclerosis, tumor, trauma, abscess, hemorrhage, syringobulbia, and neurosurgical procedures. They can also be a finding in the setting of raised intracranial pressure.
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