Learning lenses or performance lenses help activate the relaxation response in your nervous system. They activate the parasympathetic nervous system allowing us to begin to come back to balance. Learn more about these lenses for kids in this episode. Enjoy the show. If you want more, sign up for my newsletter at: www.drsamberne.com.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

lenses, learning, eye, gazelle, lens, stress, parasympathetic nervous system, child, institute, magnification, vision, focus, nervous system, doctor, visual, cranial sacral therapy, work, peripheral vision, eye exam, late 1940s

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Hey everybody, its Dr. Sam. Welcome to my EyeClarity podcast today I want to talk about learning lenses. These are glasses, and the nickname is called Learning lens or performance lens. What does this mean? Well, when you go for your eye exam, I'm talking about adults here. And you're sitting in the chair and the doctor is flipping lenses for distance. And he gives you a prescription because you've got blurred vision, whether you're nearsighted, farsighted, or have a stigmatism, what the lens is doing is it's reinforcing the imbalance that you're coming in with. Now up close, let's say you're over 40. And you're having some blurred vision there, the doctor is going to give you a lens to get rid of the blur.

So we call these lenses, compensating lenses. These are compensating you for the adaptive response that you're making. So what I want to spotlight here is what is a learning lens? I get that question so much, and adults want it. But this is made mostly for kids. So let me give you a little backstory. When I graduated from my optometry education, I enrolled in a postdoctoral program at the gazelle Institute. Now many of you have never heard of the gazelle Institute. Some of you that have maybe live on the east coast, and you live around New Haven, Connecticut, or you've gone to Yale because Gazelle Institute was on the Yale campus, for a time it was part of the Yale study center. And it was started in the late 1940s by a physician named Arnold Gizelle. He's not really talked about much anymore, but if you google him, you could find some information. Because he's a he's a developmental minded physician. And he started this institute in the late 1940s, where he was studying in his research, children, their learning, and their development. And one of the things that Gazelle had an awareness about was the difference between eyesight and vision.

Remember, I talked about eye sight seeing something clearly at 20 feet like 2020. And vision is how the eyes brain and body come together? Well, that's what Gazelle was interested in. He was interested in vision. And he was interested in it as it related to the child's reading and learning. So he had some holistic optometrists that he brought on staff. And there was research that was done. And many things came out of the research. But one of the things that came out of the research was this idea of being able to reduce a child's visual stress as they were learning to read. So if you think about your upclose vision as a child, well, first of all, you go through many developmental stages as a way to develop not only your eyes, but your hearing, your proprioception, your vestibular system. So there's a developmental curve that all kids go through. And it really starts right after birth. When they start learning to motor, they lay on their tummy, they begin to creep and crawl. Eventually, they're walking and hopping and jumping and skipping. You know, these are all things that I did as a kid, you probably did, too. And it's a shame because today, I see this a lot where these very young, young infant toddlers are already on their electronics. And it's the sign of the times.