Beyond Central Vision: Improving Periphery with Binasal Tapes

The Berne Podcast with Dr. Sam Berne

Keywords

binasal tapes, vision therapy, eye health, neuroplasticity, peripheral vision, double vision, lazy eye, visual coordination, stress relief, alternative therapies

Summary

In this conversation, Dr. Sam Berne discusses the concept and application of binasal tapes, a technique used in vision therapy. He shares his experiences and the origins of this method, highlighting its benefits for various visual issues such as double vision and lazy eye. The discussion emphasizes the importance of peripheral vision and how binaural tapes can help in enhancing visual coordination and relaxation, especially under stress.

Takeaways
• Binasal tapes are used to enhance peripheral vision.
• The technique was taught to Dr. Sam by Dr. Ellis Edelman.
• Binasal tapes can help with double vision and lazy eye.
• The eyes are connected to the brain’s mapping through visual input.
• Using these tapes can lead to profound visual relaxation.
• Stress affects vision and can lead to tunneling of sight.
• Binasal tapes provide a reference point for better vision.
• The technique is beneficial for patients with TBI.
• Neuroplasticity plays a role in how we perceive vision.
• The method is a gentle nudge to engage peripheral vision.

Sound Bites
• “These tapes help you in that process.”

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Binasal Tapes
02:48 The Technique and Its Origins
06:12 Applications and Benefits of Binasal Tapes

Sam Berne (00:02.222)
Hey everybody, welcome to the program today. I’m on my morning walk here in the forest and I thought I’d bring you along. I received a question from a listener on what are binasal tapes and how do they work?

So think about a pair of glasses and on the inside part of the glasses like on the we call it the nasal part or the nose part. We actually apply about one inch of tape on either side of the lenses. So you’ve got it on your right and the left and you have this tape in the middle.

So it’s by the nose, it’s by the nasal, it’s by the sinus. We call these bi-nasal tapes.

What are these and how do they work? Well, I have to rewind and I want to give many of my mentors kudos for sharing this with me. One of my former partners, Dr. Ellis Edelman. I was in practice with him for five years in Newtown square, Pennsylvania near Philadelphia. And when I started working with Dr. Edelman, I had just graduated the gazelle Institute and

Dr. Edelman was a graduate of the Gazelle Institute, except he had graduated about 40 years before I did. So he had a lot of experience and I thought this would be a good place to apprentice. so I began my practice in his office. I started renting space from him and it’s kind of hard to get patients. took a while. We were in a very conservative area of the main line of Philadelphia.

Sam Berne (01:51.598)
And people were not open at that time to alternative therapies. This was in the mid 1980s, but I hung out, hung in there with it and slowly and surely I began to attract my practice, my patients, and I built it up quite successfully, which I sold at the end of 1989 and moved out here to New Mexico.

in 1990 and started a practice in 1992. Just to give you some orientation. One of the techniques that dr. Edelman taught me was how to work with people either who over focused or tunneled their vision. And you know, when you tunnel your vision, you exclude your peripheral vision. One of that has to do with myopia.

where you just tighten up your vision and you you narrow it. So that would be one place where you might want to say, okay, how can we enhance your peripheral vision? Another application that we would see is double vision. So with the two eyes weren’t working together how to work with this and then of course the third situation would be if somebody had a crossed eye or a

even a wandering eye or they had lazy eye. So one I saw more clearly than the other. So he showed me this technique where you put black tape on the inside part of both lenses. And what it did immediately for most people is that gave them a reference point on where they needed to look and where they needed to look is where they weren’t looking.

Meaning that when you put something right in front of your eyes like this, you start opening up your peripheral vision. And if you want to reduce double vision, the way to do that is to enhance your peripheral vision on both sides. You know, the bigger the visual field, the more chance you have for the two eyes to overlap, especially if they’re separating.

Sam Berne (04:13.9)
And so these binasal tapes would get in the way of people’s habits of either tunneling crossing wandering double vision and it also would help wake up the eye that maybe wasn’t seeing as well. we do testing in the area of what we call visual coordination how well the two eyes work together and by putting these tapes on the inside part of the glasses.

First of all, you would feel a lot of eye relaxation and relief and second of all, it would get your two eyes to start to work together with the brain. So by wearing it over time because of the neuroplasticity capability in the visual system. Remember the eyes are the only part of the brain that sit outside the cranial vault. And what you’re doing is you’re creating a new mapping in the brain by changing

how the eyes are inputting the information. So these binasal tapes became a tool in my toolbox. And to this day, if somebody has double vision or a lazy eye or you know, they’re just tunneling their vision and they’re under a lot of stress. We use scotch tape. Now. We don’t use the the black electrical tape. So it kind of gives them the idea that okay, I need to use my peripheral a little more.

And it’s it’s quite a winner of an effective treatment that over a few weeks you can remove the tapes and your vision goes back to homeostasis. It goes back to normal where the double vision reduces in some cases even goes away and you have this really profound visual relaxation because the name of the game is opening up your peripheral vision.

And when you’re under stress, we say the sympathetic nervous system is overworking. You’re either traumatized. You’re in a fight flight freeze response. The eyes reflect what’s going on in your nervous system and your emotions your psychological reactions. And so the binaural tapes give you a gentle nudge to say, a minute. 90 % of my vision is in the periphery, which I’m not using.

Sam Berne (06:41.866)
What if what if I start engaging that so these tapes help you in that process. So I want to give a special thank you to Dr. Edelman. He’s not alive anymore. lot of the older behavioral developmental optometrists use that technique. I also used it in the hospitals with people with TBI who had double vision instead of trying to correct them with prisms. We use the binasal tapes and that kind of helped give them

the necessary stability to start to use their vision with their brain in a better way.

Book Mark this subject. All right. That’s our show for today. I want to thank you so much for coming along on this trip until next time everyone. See ya.