Living With Parkinson's Disease: Four Ways the Condition Can Affect Your Eyes

More than 10 million people worldwide, including nearly one million Americans, live with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Classified as both a neurodegenerative and movement disorder, PD can impact many aspects of your health and wellness — including your eyes.

Understanding the connection between Parkinson’s disease and eye health is crucial. As neuro-optometrists, our specialized team at DeyeNAMICS recognizes this unique challenge and addresses it through targeted eye and vision care. 

We also aim to empower you with knowledge that can support your well-being. Read on to discover four ways PD can impact your eyes and how to safeguard your all-important vision. 

Four Ways Parkinson’s Disease Affects Your Eyes

PD can cause four potential ocular complications, and our team treats each one.

1. Eye Movement Issues

As a movement disorder, PD affects various parts of your body that move — such as your eyes which can impact your vision. Under normal circumstances, your eyes work together in different ways:

• They track moving objects (pursuit eye movements)
• They perform quick movements from one target to the next (saccadic movements)
• They draw inward together as an object gets closer (vergence movements)

With PD, you may encounter issues with pursuit or saccadic movements. For example, your eyes might not be able to follow a car driving down the road or be able to jump as quickly from one line of text to the next when reading.

Your eyes might also struggle with vergence movements, preventing you from focusing on objects that are close to you. You might also end up with double vision, which can affect how well you read.

If we find you have an eye movement disorder related to PD, we can help by using specialized lenses, including prism lenses. We’ve also found great success with vision therapies that strengthen your eye muscles, as well as Neuro-Visual Postural Therapy™ to address spatial visual processing dysfunction caused by dysfunctional motor movement as a result of PD.

2. Dry Eyes

Normally, you should blink about 16-18 times per minute to keep your eyes well-hydrated and protected but this becomes difficult with PD. In some instances, PD slows down your blink rate which can result in dry eyes.

A straightforward solution for dry eyes involves artificial tears.  However, there are other forms of treatment for dry eye that we can explore during examination depending on the severity of your symptoms. 

3. Blinking too much (Blepharospasm)

Alternately, some people with PD blink too much, which is a condition we call blepharospasm. This can significantly impact quality of life resulting in discomfort, light sensitivity, and eyelid closure for minutes at a time. Certain medications can affect blink rate, occasionally Botox® injections, administered every 3-4 months, can also treat this PD side effect.

4. Loss of Color Contrast

PD can make it hard for you to differentiate between objects of similar color. If you have trouble with certain colors, we can outfit you with tinted lenses to help re-establish contrast.

If you have PD and it affects your eyes or your vision, schedule a visit with one of our neuro-optometry specialists in Sacramento, Bellflower, or Valencia, California; Guildford, Connecticut; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; or Plano, Texas.