5/01
Reading difficulties can hold you back in school--and in light of. But a Cookeville optometrist and innovative Engineer have teamed up to develop special' blinking' glasses that appear to be the remedy for a low-known eye disorder, all with the help of the Noonday Lions Club.

A group of about a dozen children at Algood School are really learning to see their studies a little differently.

That's because the're participating in a new and experimental visual therapy, sponsored by the Cookeville Noonday Lions Club, to treat a sight disorder that can contribute to reading problems in both children and adults.

Developed by Cookeville optometrist Jim Miller and inventor Ted Haselton, the treatment uses varying frequencies of electrical "Blinking" glasses to correct a disorder called Intermittent Central Suppression.

ICS results when two pathways to the visual cortex don't work together as they should, causing people who suffer from the condition to see sequences of letters and words incorrectly--and it may very well be the disorder that causes the condition called Dyslexia.

"In order for our eyes to be able to properly read what's on a page, there are two visual pathways that must work together. As long as those pathways are synchronized, a person can read normally. But if they are not synchronized, then the words seem to run together," Miller said.

Simple visual test using a device called a cheiroscope have revealed that as many as 88% of students with reading difficulties may have ICS.

"But the good news is that initial studies show that treatment with our therapy greatly improves the condition of most ICS patients and may even cure it for others," Haselton said.

In fact, it usually takes no more than an hour of treatment each day for 30 days to see impressive results, he said.

"Two days after we implemented the six weeks program at Algood school, some of the teachers called us and said they'd seen such a drastic improvements in some of the students, they asked if they couldn't recruit even more students to participate in the program," Miller said

First grade teacher Melody Brewington said her 10 year-old son, Matt, is one of the Algood students whose reading comprehension and grades have made significant improvements since the therapy started.

"Until he was tested for this condition, it wasn't a problem I would have even considered. I just thought my son was not applying himself," Brewington said.
"It was like he would avoid reading at all cost. And I would get frustrated that he would make mistakes and just guess at the right answers when all we had to do was open a book and look it up," she said.

The week before Matt's therapy started, Brewington said, he brought home seven grades that were 70 or below.

But when Miller tested him, the optometrist discovered that Matt indeed has ICS in addition to colorblindness and severe astigmatism.

After the boy had been prescribed bifocal eyeglasses and underwent a week of therapy with Miller and Haselton's glasses, his number of grades below 70 dropped to only one. "And after the second week of his therapy, he didn't bring home a single grade below 70. And that's a trend that seems to be continuing, so I'm very pleased with his progress," Brewington said.

Cookeville resident Beverly Good said the therapy has also been an asset to her 13 year-old son, David.

Dissatisfied with his progress in public school, she taught David at home for three years--only to find that he seemed to learn no more quickly in a home environment.

"Somehow, I knew that what I was seeing and what David was seeing were two totally different things. He can read as easily upside down or sideways as he can right side up. The best explanation I can give is that when he looks at a printed page, he sees it in 3-D with constant movement," Good wrote in a letter to Putnam schools director Michael Martin.

After hearing about Miller's and Haselton's blinking glasses experiments, however, she quickly made an appointment to have her son tested for ICS.
"The first test Dr. Miller did on David had me crying," writes the boy's mother. "David was asked what he was seeing, which was two circles--a red one over a green one. What did I see when I looked? One purple circle. "

After completing a month of treatment for ICS, she said, her son was reading with comprehension, and enjoyment and amazing progression.

"Will this program work for every child with reading problems? Probably not. Is this program worth implementing in our public schools? Absolutely! If this program can save even a single child from going through what David has been through, it is worth it!" said Beverly Good.

And individuals older than David have also successfully completed the treatment.
For instance, 17 year-old Michael Wright recently concluded the month-long therapy, although test from only four or five years ago had revealed him as severely dyslexic.

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"He was tested at the Center for Dyslexia at Middle Tennessee State University, and they said he got the poorest score of anyone they ever tested up to that point. We were given absolutely no hope that he would ever read," said Dan Wright, Michael's father.

Not only did the month-long treatment improve Michaels reading comprehension, but there seems to have been no decline since it was completed.
"He was reading The Great Gatsby to me last week, and that book's written on something like a 12th grade level," his father continued.

Miller's and Haselton's work is based on the 1990 findings of Dr. Eric Hussey, an optometrist from Spokane, Washington, who first developed the concept of blinking eye glasses as a treatment for exotropia-a condition opposite to crossed eyes.

Hussey created his blinking glasses using a simple pair of shop glasses covered with a white material that, he found in his research, would turn "Crystal clear" when an electric current was passed through each lens.

That electric current could then be used to make the glasses flicker intermittently.

Coincidentally, Hussey later found that the glasses also eliminated ICS and wrote several articles about that discovery, one of which was titled, "Intermittent Central Suppression: A missing link in reading problems."

"When I read that article, it all just made sense to me," Jim Miller said.

That's when Miller teamed up with Haselton to try to recreate the glasses.
"I'm an optometrist--I didn't know anything about electronics. But I knew Ted did, so I decided to get together with him," he said.

Haselton is a retired Navy commander who was assigned for several years to the Office of Naval Research in Washington; he holds degrees in engineering and electronics and holds patents on a number of inventions.

Their first attempt proved to be neither affordable nor successful but they persisted in their efforts.

ing through the rest of your life," he said.

When Haselton read about 3-D computer glasses in a magazine, they decided to try modifying a pair of those glasses to create the tool they needed.

Available at almost any computer or technology store for about $50 per pair, the glasses are typically used to play video games.

But by attaching a control box to them, Haselton was able to recreate Hussey's glasses with a designated rate of blinking, the frequency of which can be changed on a weekly basis as the wearer's condition improves.

After developing their equipment, however, Miller's and Haselton's next step was testing it and keeping records and statistical analysis on their findings.

In an experiment with 41 Tennessee Tech Developmental Reading Students, the two found that 73 percent of students treated were still in school a year after completing the therapy. Only 53.7% of the students in the control group were still in school year later.

Grade point averages for the two groups were also very different, with the average GPA for the study group and 3.34 on a 4.0 scale but only 2.94 for those in the control group.

It is important to start ICS testing and treatment early in a child's educational process, Miller said, because the earlier a child is treated for the problem, the less likely he/she is to fall behind in academics.

That's part of their reason for teaming up with the Cookeville Noonday Lions Club to offer the experimental therapy at Algood school.

But their efforts in combating ICS don't stop there.

In addition to advocating a national program to screen for the disorder, Miller and Haselton have recently teamed up with computer specialist Randy Robbins to create N2Reading, Inc. which will offer a variation of the electronic blinking therapy via the Internet.

The Internet program that uses similar technology will eventually be offered on a franchise basis to optometrist who want to offer the service for treatment of their own ICS patients.

The three partners are now awaiting a Research Grant and that, if awarded, will allow them to try out first on a number of Jackson County students with reading difficulties.

"We're very enthusiastic about this venture. We expect the results to be identical to the results we've had with the glasses," Haselton said.

But why Jackson County?

"The number of children nationally who are designated as Title 1 students (students with learning and/or reading difficulties) is 17%. Putnam is just above the national average with 20%. But in Jackson County, a higher percentage of students have been classified as Title 1," Miller said.

That averages out to about 400 students the therapy has the potential to help.
And anyone who's successfully completed the treatment knows how beneficial it can be, says Dan Wright.

"If you have difficulty reading, you have difficulty just getting through the rest of your life," he said.


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