Why Behavioural Optometry?

Our ancestors had hunter’s eyes for survival in the wilderness: their vision was designed for spotting game and enemies at a distance.

In the last 100 years we have been forced to deal with sustained, near visual tasks and the resulting stress on the visual system has produced many symptoms and problems.

If you experience headaches, blurred vision, tired, itchy or watery eyes or other vision linked problems, you may already know how uncomfortable sustained visual stress can feel. Your discomfort may be related to the heavy vision load of working at near distances.

If you are a student, you may read almost three times the number of textbooks your grandparents did. If you are employed in an office, you probably use your visual system for hours of close work. If you work with computers you may spend much of your day looking at a computer screen. These tasks can all contribute to visual stress.

Even if you have 20/20 eyesight you may have difficulty working at close tasks. The term 20/20 means you see well at distances of 20 feet or more, it does not usually refer to how well you see at 12-16 inches, the distance at which you do most of your close work.