• Concussion Recovery

    Eye Exercises That Can Advance Your Concussion Recovery

Concussion is a complex, yet to be fully understood brain injury. One study showed that visual symptoms recover 4x faster with vision therapy.

When someone has a concussion they always ask:

1) Am I getting better?

2) How do I know I am getting better?

3) What can I do to help myself get better?

Using the C-Rod will address each of these questions.

Doing eye exercises at home can help you return to a life without concussion symptoms.

For most healthy people, the eyes work together as a team - they focus in, turn in and rotate in, in a coordinated manner so you can read, enjoy the visual world and be active.  A functional visual system can change the focus from one target to another - it can track objects and hold a focus in one place without distress.

Anyone with a concussion knows how we take this activity for granted and how distressful using our eyes can be after having a brain injury.

Brain damage from a concussion causes eye coordination to break down and this contributes to the visual symptoms we experience with a concussion - headache, foggy vision, double vision, nausea, light sensitivity, confusion, an inability to read, think, concentrate and process both visual and auditory information.

Eye coordination is a developmental skill that initially develops during the first eight years of life.  The part of the brain that controls both the voluntary and involuntary eye movements are at the front of your head and on the brain stem.  After a brain injury, therapy can often help visual function recover.  Controlled activity helps your brain relearn its eye movements and the visual symptoms you experience with a concussion can resolve to help you to return to a symptom free lifestyle.

It takes a healthy person 5 minutes a day to complete the C-Rod's 6 eye exercises.  Someone with a concussion will not be able to do the exercises without distress.  But, over time as the exercises become easier you will discover that the C-Rod gives you feedback during your recovery and you will know you are getting better.

Doing eye movement training will help your eye coordination recover four times faster compared to not doing any eye exercises at all.  When you can do the C-Rod's 6 eye exercises in 5 minutes without distress you will have reasonable assurance that you have made a functional recovery.

The C-Rod is a lightweight, portable vision therapy / vision rehabilitation tool for home and clinic use to help restore eye movements that are compromised as a result of having a concussion.

The C-Rod was developed by an optometrist who understands how the visual system becomes dysfunctional when you have a concussion and how you can help yourself through your recovery. The C-Rod is held at Harmon Distance and has six eye exercises. The benefit of a C-Rod is that its targets are at a fixed distance on a fixed plane to work selected neural pathways and muscle systems. The advantage of the C-Rod compared to holding pencils or fingers as saccadic targets is that persons with a visual/perceptual disorder will not likely work on a plane at a standardized distance thereby triggering more complex brain/muscle activity which could compound oculomotor training. The goal is to isolate cranial nerve activity, extra ocular muscle activity, and the associated voluntary trigger centers in the frontal fields and superior colliculus.

Used in Physical Therapy, Optometry and Concussion Clinics in Canada and the USA

Endorsed by www.jumbledbrain.com

Help Yourself Get Better

Oculomotor dysfunction after a concussion recovers 4x faster with therapy compared to rest alone.

Ciuffereda et al, J. Behav Optometry 1996;7(2):3138

www.postconcussioninc.com

Concussion Recovery Podcasts

The C-Rod

The C-Rod uses standardized protocols and working distances on fixed planes: 1) Saccadic Eye Movements on a horizontal plane - first slow then fast. 2) Slow Saccadic Eye Movements on the vertical and oblique planes. 3) Fixation and Tracking on a horizontal plane. 4) Dynamic Near Point of Convergence Exercises; Near - Far Jumps. 5) Accommodation / Convergence training. All this in five minutes a day.