VISUAL STRESS: THE CURE

A simple test and tinited glasses can help cure visual stress

Tuesday January 19,2010

By Kim Jones

Comment Speech Bubble Have your say(1)

THROUGHOUT her schooldays Julie Titmuss wondered why she could not read as well as her classmates. To her the words and lines appeared blurred and seemed to jump around the page, making it almost impossible for her to focus on textbooks.

“I learned to read OK at a young age: large letters in single lines weren’t a problem,” the trainee veterinary nurse explains. “However, when I progressed to books with lines of text close together, I began to struggle.

“Not only would words dart around the page but my eyes would skip from the beginning of a line to the end of a line lower down or further up the page. It took a lot of effort to read just a few lines and I’d inevitably find my mind wandering because it was so difficult to make sense of what I was reading.

“It was a source of huge frustration to see other pupils in my class doing so much better. I grew up thinking I wasn’t as clever as everyone else.”

It wasn’t until Julie was 50 that she was given an explanation for her lifelong reading problems. She was diagnosed with visual stress (or Meares-Irlen syndrome), a condition thought to affect up to one in five people.

Optometrist Gavin Rebello, who spotted Julie’s problem, says: “It’s a visual sensitivity triggered by certain patterns, normally black and white stripes, found in text or stripy shirts. The pattern will be uncomfortable or almost impossible for the sufferer to focus on.”

Visual stress can mimic dyslexia and often accompanies it. However it regularly goes undiagnosed. “Sufferers may be labelled as ‘thick’ and suffer low self-esteem,” he adds. “There is some evidence to suggest a lot of the prison population have visual stress.

“It is more prevalent in people who suffer from fluorescent light-sensitive migraines. My research also indicates that people with a familial history of migraine and left-handed people are more prone to it.”

Yet the condition can be fairly easily rectified with professional help. Research at Essex University has shown that using coloured acetate sheet overlays on texts or prescribing precision-tinted lenses in glasses or contact lenses can help alleviate the symptoms of visual stress. It reduces discomfort, headaches and improves reading skills and concentration.

“Some children come in to see me with reading problems and by prescribing coloured overlays their reading age improves by a year-and-a-half in a matter of months,” says Gavin.

For Julie, now 52, from Mersea Island, Essex, her diagnosis and treatment may have come rather later in life but they have brought her constant feelings of inadequacy to an end.

“I spent most of my school life in a state of fear of being shouted at for not keeping up,” she recalls. “Some teachers thought I was just stupid. Others saw my potential but became frustrated with me for not applying myself.

“I never explained my problem to any of them because I thought that’s just how reading was. So I grew up feeling pretty worthless.”

Julie, who is married to David, 63, and has four grown-up children, left school with no qualifications, foiling her chances of achieving her dream of working as a veterinary nurse.

“I took on jobs that didn’t require much reading, such as working in a bank and then as a staff trainer in retail, all the while flying by the seat of my pants for fear of it being discovered that I had this difficulty,” she recalls.

“My husband would check my work and I’d write any notes I needed for presentations in large text so I could read it easily. Every day was a struggle.”

J ulie’s condition is diagnosed using a simple “pattern glare” test. The patient is shown three plates with stripes of differing intensity, one of which triggers sensitivity in people with visual stress.

Then, using a machine called an intuitive colorimeter, the patient is shown text and colours in varying shades, saturation and contrasts before finding the exact tint that stops visual stress. It takes just 25 minutes to determine patients’ requirements from more than 100,000 possible combinations.

Julie was prescribed a tint in three shades of blue and when her new glasses arrived, life changed dramatically. “For the first time ever, the text stayed still. Reading was effortless. I couldn’t get enough of it.”

As a result, Julie enrolled on a veterinary nursing course and is now well on her way to achieving her childhood dream.

“That hour-long appointment changed my life for the better,” she says. “I just wish I’d been diagnosed years ago.”

For more information visit www.patrickandmenzies.co.uk

For your nearest optometrist specialising in visual stress visit www.ceriumoptical.com/vistech

Amazon.co.uk Widgets

MAGIC GLASSES!!!!

19.01.10, 7:58pm

My 12 year old daughter has been prescribed with these glasses. According to the school there was nothing wrong with her despite her suicidal thoughts (and accusing me of allsorts!)
In the 12 weeks she has been wearing them she has grown in confidence at a rate I find astonishing,,,her learning has improved fabulously & for the first time she is seeing the world & enjoying her place in it. The specialist, Ian Jordan in Scotland described it as she has been looking at the world like a 3D picture but without the 3D glasses...so wonder it didnt make sense to her.
What a shame this lady missed out on so much..I truly hope you are finding the same enjoyment in the world now too.

• Posted by: 1Lizzi • Report Comment