How to ease symptoms of heterophoria

In this article I will describe various ways which I use in order to ease the negative symptoms of heterophoria when working with new display technology and which might also help you when adopted.

All the listed advice is health related approach, for tech related advice like apps and various device settings that can help as well please see the following article.

Vision therapy

Vision therapy is the biggest help I have had with this issue. If you're not sure whether heterophoria might be your problem, try a home test here. Prismatic glasses combined with a vision therapy can get you a long way. For me the change has been from feeling headaches and eventually migraines after 10 min exposure to new display technology to being able to work with new computers for hours at a time.

If you don't know which specialist could help you, try asking whether they know about and test for heterophoria, convergence, divergence, accommodation, fixation disparity and binocular fusion. If they don't but know these terms, they might be able to help you find someone who does.

Peripheral vision

If you have done vision therapy you will know how big of a role peripheral vision plays in the ability to fixate your gaze. In many of the tranaglyph exercises there are images placed where your peripheral vision is and you use those in order to stabilize the whole image. This same knowledge can help you when working with new technology.

Ideally you should never have the screen of the computer or phone display as the only source of light in the room. If daylight is not an option, make sure that you have some other light (ideally old school light bulb that doesn't flicker like modern LEDs) on in the room. Your peripheral vision will be able to fixate on the surroundings of your computer display, therefore making it easier to handle the unstable (flickering) nature of what's going on on your computer or smartphone display.

Hydration

I have noticed that when I am dehydrated, the headaches from new displays get worse. This might be a minor improvement in the whole of this problem, but making sure you stay hydrated in order to avoid a typical dehydration headache combining with the heterophoria type of one can really only help in this case.

20/20/20 rule

Every 20 minutes, take a 20 seconds break and look at something 20 meters or further in distance. I never liked this rule when I was trying to find a solution to this problem, because I did not understand why I should take breaks on new display technology, when I could work on the old one for hours on end with no issues at all.

However, this rule can help greatly in reducing the negative symptoms, as your eyes are naturally most relaxed (both in accommodation and vergence) when you are staring into the distance. There are also good apps that you can use, which will automatically lock your screen in these intervals in order to remind you to relax (I use IRIS).

This is also a good way to get relief from heterophoria type of headache. Since the issue is eyes being strained, just sitting outside and looking into the distance or looking out from the window for extended period of time can help your eyes get relaxed and for the headache to subside.

Using one eye at a time

This is an approach that I do not recommend as a complete solution, but can help greatly in diagnosing this condition as well as a specific and short term form of visual therapy. One of my friends even managed to greatly reduce binocular vision strain simply by alternating one eye at a time when working with new smartphone for a few weeks.

The idea is simple - cover one of your eyes so no light gets in and then use the other to work with new smartphone or computer. Try that for half an hour and then use the other eye in the same fashion. It might even be that you will notice no issues at all when using only one eye, pointing to a clear case of binocular vision dysfunction and some form of heterophoria.

Breathing exercises and cold water exposure

This option might sound uncomfortable, but can really help in this case. I personally use the now world famous Wim Hof Method, but I suppose any other approach might work as well.

The breathing exercises help you get relaxed, meaning your strained eye muscles can also relax and get in better balance.

In my case my inner eye muscles (the ones near the nose) were and still are a lot tighter than the outer muscles (ones that go around the temples), which is the specific case of my esophoria. The breathing exercises can help to get these eye muscles relaxed and therefore reset them in proper balance again. This will not last, but can improve the situation when done regularly.

As for the cold showers, a lot of headaches and migraines are caused by improper blood flow to various parts of the head. Training cold water exposure can help your vascular system to be more responsive, pump more blood and therefore improve the overall blood flow. I have read by various people and also tested by myself, that when I had a bad migraine-like headache, sometimes dipping my head under icy water helped ease the pain.

Conclusion

We can probably all agree that we would rather have a technological solution at hand, one that makes all these issues disappear overnight and enables us to use new technology as if it was like the old.

I have waited for this solution, but it never came. Taking care of my health first, treating heterophoria as best as I can and following these rules has enabled me to at least use modern tech with some limitations, instead of not being able to use it at all. I hope some of these advices can help you too, and until there is a solve-all and work-for-all technological solution at hand, I wish you the best of luck while dealing with this issue.

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If you would like to discuss this matter in person, feel free to book a consulting session with me. I will also be grateful for any donation to help me run this blog and my future research in this field.