Understanding Visual Dominance: It's Affect on Balance and Brain Fog and Why It Should Matter To You

We just got back from the Parker Seminars in Las Vegas and boy was there a lot that I learned! Of everything, I think there were two big takeaways that I want to share with you. First is about neurological impact of visual dominance and balance, and the second is about food science as it relates to stem cells, cancer prevention and longevity.

Let's go over visual dominance first, because it's really important when understanding balance and the brain. Balance is essential to our everyday life because it's the coordination of navigating ourselves through space. If we couldn't do that well, we'd fall... a lot. Why does that matter? Guess what's the second leading cause of unintentional injury deaths worldwide? FALLS. So when you put it in that context, maintaining our balance at any age becomes really important.

There are 3 main systems that work together to maintain our balance and allow us to navigate our environment with ease. These systems are:

1. Visual- the information our eyes gather for us.

2. Vestibular-if you ever heard about rocks in your ears, it's true. Basically this is the structure behind our ears that help us with equilibrium, sensing gravity, and acceleration.

3. Proprioception- our body's awareness in space.

When this trio is working well together, we have good sensory integration, and our balance and coordination is accurate and all is good. =)

Now, here's where visual dominance comes in. Remember when I said that if all 3 are working together all is good? This triune can get out of balance. We could have reduced proprioception, increased or decreased vestibular signals, etc. Chiropractic has long demonstrated its' efficacy with boosting proprioception in the body. The one I want to focus on in this article is the one I didn't know much about, and that I didn't know had such a big impact on our everyday lives- Visual Dominance.

Our eyes are really important for accurately perceiving our environment. It was a really important evolutionary advantage as our eyes can scan for threat detection. So the part of our brains that handles threats (i.e. stress) has evolved with our eyes. This means that the more we depend on our eyes, the higher our threat detection, the higher our stress. How does visual dominance occur you may be wondering? Well, when we bombard our eyes with visual stimulus (i.e. screens), we are flooding our eyes with more visual input that causes them to become more dominant. A great example the lecturer, Dr. Jake Cook gave was "when you want to relax after a day of work, you lay on the couch and start scrolling your phone for an hour. Well you aren't actually relaxing. In that hour, in fact you are training your eyes to become more dominant. As your eyes scan through social media, they are also searching for threats and your cortisol and stress goes up." Now imagine doing that every night to "unwind" for weeks, months, years. It can creep up on you! He also said that visual dominance with override the other 2 systems.

What effect does that have on us? You may be thinking "That doesn't sound that bad... maybe if I am good at detecting threats I will have cat-like reflexes and if I'm always on alert then I'm ready for anything and invincible!" I hate to burst your bubble, but it's quite the opposite. Here is the list of symptoms of visual dependency that he listed:

• Unsteady in visually busy spaces (supermarkets, airports, shopping centers)

• Brain fog - 7 slots of working memory to get through date, used up when vestibular system fails, less space for input leads to brain fog and decrease in focus

• Fatigue

• Symptoms worse with stress, better when focusing on something else

• Tunnel vision- hyperfocused

• Auditory exclusion - if presented with visual and auditory at the same time, may not hear auditory at all (my husband), vision primary sense, auditory secondary sense

• Increased muscle tone - reduced pain pressure threshold (less pressure to increase pain sensation). leg stiffness

• Increased sway with visual stimulation and reduced balance with eyes closed

• Persistent Postural Perceptual Dependency (PPPD)

  • Migraine

  • Dizziness

  • Stress

If any of this sounds like you, you might be in visual dominance. So what do we do about it?

At this point, I do want to say that if you are suffering from any of these things on this laundry list, that you should get checked by a professional. There are a lot of different reasons why we may exhibit any of these symptoms and I want to make sure that you are properly tested so nothing is missed. For example you might have a metabolic or cardiovascular issue that may be contributing to these as well. That being said, can we have a systemic diagnosis and visual dominance? Sure. Just that there's more to take into consideration. So this definitely isn't meant to diagnose anything or take the place of anything you already are doing. It's merely an exploration of an area that can often be overlooked that can help in understanding and recovering/restoring our sensory integration.

So NOW, here's some simple things you can do.

Education- the more you understand the intricacies of how our sensory integration works, you can better understand which "leg" needs the most assistance. And again, consulting a professional will only help inform you!

Get adjusted!- Adjustments have long been shown in literature to boost and improve proprioception. More and more research has been finding that the adjustment has an incredible positive effect on the brain, it's wild! Chiropractic alone may not be the end all be all answer, but I think it is one of the "best kept secrets" that shouldn't really be a secret anymore. =)

Vestibular retraining - there are exercises called VOR I, VOR II, and VOR 0.

VOR I you stare at an object (paper on a wall with an x, arm out with your thumb up, or holding a stick with dot at the tip etc). Keep that object fixed and turn your head 20-30 degrees on either side while allowing eyes to keep fixed on the object.

VOR II move the object 20-30 degrees with head still while eyes focus on object

VOR 0 move the object and head 20-30 degrees in opposing directions with eyes focused on the object.

** for both of those, if your eyes fatigue or object gets blurry, just stop and rest. If you push through eye fatigue, you are instead reinforcing visual dominance.

Another way to re-balance is with tandem stance balance. Stand next to a chair or wall, have feet staggered 1 step apart and try to balance with your eyes closed. Then switch feet.

I have started to teach and practice these with some patients, my family and myself. If you haven't had the pleasure of going over it with me, feel free to let me know you're interested on your next visit and I'll be happy to show you!

Happy Balancing!