The doctors and staff of InSight Eyecare of Warrensburg are currently raising money to support Nathan’s Quest, a childhood cancer fund that was established in memory of Nathan Crabtree. The fund provides financial assistance to families of children with cancer or any other life threatening illness. Stop by our office and put money in the collection jar of your favorite InSight Eyecare optometrist. The doctor with the most money will get a pie in the face! Hurry! This fundraiser ends September 10th!
Subway Offers Diabetic Friendlier Meal Choices
February 5, 2010
Kansas City – SUBWAY® restaurants now offer the first of its kind Diabetes Friendlier Meal Choices: Options that fit into a well-balanced diabetic diet in participating stores in the Kansas City market ONLY. The meal choices include a selection of the same fresh bread, vegetables and ingredients SUBWAY® restaurant customers have come to love. The meal choices are geared to help people with diabetes, and all SUBWAY® restaurant customers, make smarter food choices.
Experts agree that obesity has become an epidemic across the country, significantly increasing the incidence of diabetes across the general population. Currently, there are an estimated 24 million diabetics and upwards of 57 million Americans who are considered pre-diabetic. These numbers are expected to continue to rise in coming years.
“At SUBWAY® restaurants we have long offered our customers a variety of options that can meet different dietary needs as well as the nutritional information necessary so they can make more informed choices,” said Subway Dietitian Lanette Kovachi, MS, RD. “With the Diabetes Friendlier Meal Choices, we are responding to a consumer need and providing additional choices that can fit into a well-balanced diabetic diet.”
The menu, deemed “Diabetes Friendlier” by medical experts at the Diabetes Research Institute, a center of excellence at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, consists of a variety of familiar sandwiches and salads except the new sandwich and salad builds feature fewer carbohydrates, sodium, fat and calories.
Each six-inch sandwich on the new menu must be SCOOPED, which means the core of the bread will be removed. This technique helps to decrease the carbohydrate, sodium, fat and calorie content in the sandwich. Additionally, some of the items on the menu, richer in these elements, have been omitted from the recommended sandwich and salad builds.
“Controlling carbohydrate intake may help better control blood sugars for people with diabetes. The Diabetes Friendlier Meal Choices provides a lower carbohydrate, sodium, and fat alternative to individuals with or without diabetes that are conscious about selecting healthier food choices from the SUBWAY® restaurants menu,” says Dr. Luigi Meneghini, Diabetes Research Institute at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.
Also, recommended as part of this meal is VITAZEST® Water, an exciting new beverage offered at SUBWAY® restaurants. VITAZEST® Water comes complete with 10 vitamins and minerals and boasts zero calories, carbohydrates, sugar and sodium. VITAZEST® Water is offered in three flavors: Kiwi- Strawberry, Pomegranate and Acai Blueberry.
A portion of VITAZEST® Water sales will benefit the Diabetes Research Institute Foundation. The Foundation logo appears on each VITAZEST® Water bottle as well as on the menu boards posted at participating SUBWAY® restaurants throughout Kansas City.
“SUBWAY® restaurants, VITAZEST® Water and the Diabetes Research Institute are committed to raising diabetes awareness in the quick service restaurant world. The goal is to make it easier for people with and without diabetes to eat more responsibly. At the same time, consumers become active participants in the effort to slow and eventually reverse the diabetes epidemic,” says Ziv Alcalay, COO VITAZEST® Water.
Visit www.subwayscoopit.com to learn more about the Diabetes Friendlier Meal Choices.
Learning-Related Vision Problems
May 20, 2009
Learning-Related Vision Problems
This article was provided by AllAboutVision.com. Follow the links below for more information on eye health and vision correction.
There’s no question that good vision is important for learning. Experts say more than 80% of what your child is taught in school is presented to them visually.
To make sure your child has the visual skills they need for school, the first step is to make sure your child has 20/20 eyesight and that any nearsightedness, farsightedness and/or astigmatism is fully corrected with glasses or contact lenses. But there are other, less obvious learning-related vision problems you should know about as well.
Good vision is more than 20/20 visual acuity
Your child can have “20/20” eyesight and still have vision problems that can affect their learning and classroom performance. Visual acuity (how well your child can see letters on a wall chart) is just one aspect of good vision, and it’s not even the most important one. Many nearsighted kids may have trouble seeing the board in class, but they read exceptionally well and excel in school.
Other important visual skills needed for learning include:
- Eye movement skills – How smoothly and accurately your child can move their eyes across a printed page in a textbook.
- Eye focusing abilities – How well they can change focus from far to near and back again (for copying information from the board, for example).
- Eye teaming skills – How well your child’s eyes work together as a synchronized team (to converge for proper eye alignment for reading, for example).
- Binocular vision skills – How well your child’s eyes can blend visual images from both eyes into a single, three-dimensional image.
- Visual perceptual skills – How well your child can identify and understand what they see, judge its importance, and associate it with previous visual information stored in their brain.
- Visual-motor integration – The quality of your child’s eye-hand coordination, which is important not only for sports, but also for legible handwriting and the ability to efficiently copy written information from a book or chalkboard.
Deficiencies in any of these important visual skills can significantly affect your child’s learning ability and school performance.
Many kids have vision problems that affect learning
Many kids have undetected learning-related vision problems. According to the College of Optometrists in Vision Development (COVD), one study indicates 13% of children between the ages of 9 and 13 suffer from moderate to severe convergence insufficiency (an eye teaming problem that can affect reading performance), and as many as one in four school-age children may have at least one learning-related vision problem.
Signs and symptoms of learning-related vision problems
There are many signs and symptoms of learning-related vision disorders, including:
- Blurred distance or near vision, particularly after reading or other close work
- Frequent headaches or eye strain
- Difficulty changing focus from distance to near and back
- Double vision, especially during or after reading
- Avoidance of reading
- Easily distracted when reading
- Poor reading comprehension
- Loss of place, repetition, and/or omission of words while reading
- Letter and word reversals
- Poor handwriting
- Hyperactivity or impulsiveness during class
- Poor overall school performance
If your child exhibits one or more of these signs or symptoms and is having problems in school, call us to schedule a comprehensive children’s vision exam.
Comprehensive children’s vision exam
A comprehensive children’s vision exam includes tests performed in a routine eye exam, plus additional tests to detect learning-related vision problems. These extra tests may include an assessment of eye focusing, eye teaming, and eye movement abilities (also called accommodation, binocular vision, and ocular motility testing). Also, depending on the type of problems your child is having, we may recommend other testing, either in our office or with a children’s vision and/or vision development specialist.
Vision therapy
If it turns out your child has a learning-related vision problem that cannot be corrected with regular glasses or contact lenses, then special reading glasses or vision therapy may help. Vision therapy is a program of eye exercises and other activities specifically tailored for each patient to improve their vision skills.
Vision and learning disabilities
A child who is struggling in school could have a learning-related vision problem, a learning disability or both. Vision therapy is a treatment for vision problems; it does not correct a learning disability. However, children with learning disabilities may also have vision problems that are contributing to their difficulties in the classroom.
After your child’s comprehensive vision exam, we will advise you about whether a program of vision therapy would be helpful. If we don’t provide the services we believe your child needs, we will refer you to a children’s vision specialist or education/learning specialist who does.
For more information on children’s vision, visit All About Vision®.
Article ©2009 Access Media Group LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction other than for one-time personal use is strictly prohibited.
This Month's Special Offers
Vision Care Research at InSight Eyecare
InSight Eyecare is on the cutting edge of technology and helps shape the future of vision care by being a large research facility for many new products, including contact lenses, solutions, pharmaceuticals and eyewear lenses. Many of our current patients have participated in studies.
Research patients typically receive complimentary products and vision care. Many studies also pay monetary stipends when the patient finishes the study. If you would like to be considered for an upcoming research study, please call our Warrensburg office at 660-747-7300.
“I have been seeing Dr. Curtis for several years and always appreciate the amount of time he spends to ensure my contacts are as comfortable as possible.”