This video is a general overview of cervical oculopathy -ocular diseases caused by cervical spine instability, and how structural neck issues can cause visual disorders.
About 70% of the people who come to the Hauser Neck Center have eye symptoms. The most common symptoms are visual distortion, the symptoms include:
- blurry vision
- oscillopsia
- Mal de Debarquement Syndrome (MdDS) / gaze instability
- light sensitivity
The many potential eye conditions are caused by ligamentous cervical instability and dysstructure.
Ligamentous cervical instability, especially ligamentous upper cervical instability, can be the missing structural cause and/or co-morbidity for many chronic disabling brain and systemic body symptoms. In vision these can include:
- Dry eyes
- Retinopathy
- Optic neuropathy
- Excessive tearing
- Mydriasis
- Vitritis papiliadema
- Retinal detachment
- Cataracts
- Eye pain
- Ocular hypertension
- Macular degeneration
- Sclerites
We see young people diagnosed with glaucoma and nobody knows the reason why.
We see young people diagnosed with glaucoma and nobody knows the reason why. They see flashing lights, eye floaters, visual snow. The youngest person I ever saw with visual snow was a 9-year-old who said her migraine headaches and her visual snow started when she was in kindergarten. Vision distortions and eye problems are typically the normal risk factors in aging people and people who have poor nutrition and diabetes. But the patient population that I typically see are younger people who have very little risk factors for these conditions but yet they have them. They’ve seen an ophthalmologist or a neuro-ophthalmologist and they say that structurally with the eye there’s nothing wrong and I’m agreeing with them, for many it is not a structural eye issue.
For example, the retinal image gets chemically and electrically transported to various parts of the brain then your brain interprets it. If those impulses are distorted by nerve herniation, an ophthalmologist or an optometrist can see a normal eye, retina and pupil in patients with blurry vision. The optic nerve is related to the neck so cervical oculopathy is when there’s a problem with vision that’s related to the neck
A normal amount of light is transmitted through the pupil; lens and their fluids, landing on the retina and turning into electrical impulse. A person sees when this impulse is then transmitted to the occipital lobe of the brain by the optical nerve. For the eye to function properly, the eye ecosystem must allow proper nutrients to come into the eye and waste products to be removed from the eye, which entails an appropriate arterial blood supply and venous blood flow out.
Comparison of normal lateral c-spine x-rays to cervical dysstructure and the effect it has on contents of the carotid sheath. In an abnormal curve caused by weakened and damaged cervical spine ligaments, the jugular veins are narrowed, impeding fluid flow.
The jugular vein
How much fluid is around your the optic nerve is determined by how freely the fluid can get out of your eye and the cerebral spinal fluid can get off of the eye nerve ultimately into the jugular vein which drains back to the heart. If the jugular vein is compressed the cerebral spinal fluid accumulates behind the eye and it can be worse on one side than the other. So imagine if there’s more fluid around your right eye nerve your optic nerve than your left the image will get to your brain at different times and that of course would give gaze inability because your brain on the two hemispheres is seeing things that are slightly different. This is not going to show up on a routine ophthalmology exam or optometrist exam.
If the jugular vein can’t drain, the fluid that’s trying to get out of the eye and there will be a block in the drainage and back up. If the eye can’t drain you get a double squish of the eyes and it basically comes from a neck problem decreasing the fluid flow out of the eye out of the brain and you can get basically almost every eye condition.
If the jugular vein is compressed the cerebral spinal fluid accumulates behind the eye. It can be worse on one side than the other. Imagine if there’s more fluid around your right eye optic nerve than your left. The image will get to your brain at different times and that of course would give gaze inability because your brain on the two hemispheres is seeing things that are slightly different.
Normal vs. abnormal neck curve
When you have a good neck curve there’s none or little tension on the jugular vein. The jugular veins are the main drainage of the brain. The vagus nerve is the main nerve that innervates the inner organs, If both the jugular vein and the vagus nerve are stretched and compressed, the jugular vein can’t drain. The fluid that’s trying to get out of the eye, out of the brain, can’t and it will create backflow. If the eye can’t drain so you end up getting double squish.
With increased head pressure you can get eye pain, you can get visual snow, you can get distorted vision and the most common disease that people get diagnosed with visual snow is migraine headaches. But migraine headaches in my opinion occur because of increased brain pressure. Neck curve correction treatment should be explored including addressing the ligamentous cervical instability with Prolotherapy.
Visual snow, blurred vision- eye problems associated with ligamentous cervical instability
Ross Hauser, MD presents some of the visual problems that many patients with cervical instability report. In many instances, the patients have been to multiple eye doctors and are told their eyes are “fine” and no problem can be found. He explains why this can be the case when the underlying cause has nothing to do with the globe of the eye itself.