It takes time before your brain masters interpreting the signals from your eyes. From the time you are born, it takes about five years before you can see clearly as an adult. It takes nearly another seven years before the pathways of vision in your brain can fully develop. If anything affects the images your eyes display during brain development, you will experience disruption of signals. As a result, your brain begins to ignore poorly formed vision, leading to you having a Beverly Hills, CA lazy eye. When you have the condition, your brain relies more on one of the eyes working correctly. That makes your lazy eye even weaker.
There is a difference between a lazy eye and crossed eye. Medically referred to as strabismus, crossed eyes is a condition that involves the eyes looking in different directions simultaneously. When your eyes are normal and healthy, the six muscles that control their movement function together, making them point in the same area.
Causes of lazy eye
- Imbalance of muscles
The extrinsic and intrinsic eye muscles are vital in controlling eye movement and position, near-focusing, and the amount of light entering the eyes.
However, one or a few muscles of your eyes may be too weak to maintain eye alignment and balance. The imbalance of the eye muscles may cause the crossing in or turning out of your eyes, which prevents harmonious functioning.
- Differences in vision quality
The difference in vision quality between your eyes may make you farsighted or nearsighted, triggering your lazy eye. Other times, you may have an imperfection in the eye’s curvature, which causes blurred distance and near vision. The condition is called astigmatism.
- Stimulus deprivation amblyopia
When you have this condition, there is an inefficient passage of light, which prevents precise image creation on the retina. Congenital cataracts and the drooping of the upper eyelid are the leading causes of stimulus deprivation amblyopia.
Various factors put you at a higher risk of lazy eyes. Some potential risk factors include premature birth, family history of the condition, and disorders of a developing nervous system.
Lazy eye treatment
If you have a lazy eye, your doctor often recommends using glasses or contacts, especially if you or your kid is nearsighted or farsighted. And if you have cataracts, also called cloudy lenses, surgery may be the best treatment.
Then you will be required to retrain your brain, forcing it to start using and relying on the weaker or lazy eye. Thus, your weaker eye will become stronger the more your brain uses it. Consequently, below are some treatment options that may help you.
- Wear an eye patch on your dominant or normal eye to push the brain to rely on the weaker one. Initially, you will have difficulty seeing, which gets better with time. Once your vision improves, you will no longer require an eye patch.
- Apply special eye drops to your stronger eye. You may have to apply the medication once or twice a day as your doctor recommends. The application of eye drops enables the blurring of the healthy eye, and thus, your brain has to rely more on your weaker eye.
Contact Beverly Hills Optometry: Advanced Dry Eye Center today for professional diagnosis and treatment of the lazy eye.
