

After getting his patient a proper glasses prescription, he retests and finds that the patient is doing better with both balance and peripheral vision integration. Conley mentions that when he has a patient experiencing motion sickness while driving, he tests their balance and how well their peripheral vision is being integrated into their body oftentimes, both are decreased in his patients. Similarly, when you try to read a book in a moving car, your eyes are focusing on the book, which is stationary, while your inner ear is sensing movement. When people experience that dreaded feeling of motion sickness while trying to play a VR game, it’s because your body is physically stationary in the real world, but your brain feels like it’s moving. In simpler terms, your eyes and your inner ear can’t seem to agree on whether or not you’re actually moving. When you experience motion sickness, it’s because there’s a disconnect between three of your sensory systems: visual, proprioception, and vestibular. Motion sickness is something you may be familiar with if you’ve ever played a game using a virtual reality (VR) headset or tried to read a book in a moving car. VR Causes Motion Sickness Scrolling Causes Cyber Sickness Doing so gives your accommodation system a chance to relax. He recommends using the 20/20/20 Rule: Every 20 minutes, look at something that’s 20 feet away for about 20 seconds. And let’s be honest, how many of us are ever on social media for just a short period? He goes on to explain that it’s not necessarily the act of scrolling that’s harmful by itself, but the amount of time you spend on social media, engaging our accommodation system. Alex Conley, a neuro optometrist at Neuro Eye Team, it engages your accommodation system when your eyes are heavily focused on something. He states that “most causes of eye strain are caused by engaging this system for extended periods of time by focusing up close.”
