Anew Chiropractic

New series! - Party trick or pathology?

Hint: all of them will be wild things your eyeballs should not do, unless you have crazy voluntary control over them... in that case, it's your creepy party trick 😵‍💫

Today, we have the Internuclear Ophthalmoplegia (INO).

Your horizontal/lateral eye movements should be linked. You should not be seeing the eyes moving "separately" from one another in different directions. As you can see in the video, this patient is struggling to keep their left eye moving with their right eye when they look quickly to the right 👀

This means that there is damage to the pathway that links the eye muscles together. This pathway is called the Medial Longitudinal Fasciculus. We have two of them, for looking left and looking right, in the brainstem.

For whatever reason, autoimmune processes in Multiple Sclerosis tend to attack THIS pathway first! For board exams, we all had to learn this as the first sign of Multiple Sclerosis.

Fun fact - I have helped patients rule out MS by spinning them in a chair in the dark and observing whether their eyes remained yoked! I receive mixed reviews for this test, as I'm sure you can imagine... 🤢

Using different types of eye and vestibular exercises, we can actually improve the integrity of the MLF and reduce symptoms associated with the eyes not being yoked, like dizziness, eye pain and neck pain! Even if the patient has an autoimmune condition, their nervous systems are still willing to adapt with new exercises.

If this was helpful, please share with someone who might be struggling with dizziness from eye movements! 📬

Do you have any visual issues that you'd like to be covered in this series? Drop them below! 👇 Let's educate and spread awareness about these important issues!