Pati­ent Expe­ri­en­ces: Bino­cu­lar Visi­on Dys­func­tion & Prism Glas­ses

On this page, pati­ents share their expe­ri­en­ces with my prism glas­ses. They descri­be how sym­ptoms cau­sed by bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion (BVD) /​ hete­ro­pho­ria — such as hea­da­ches, diz­ziness, neck ten­si­on, light sen­si­ti­vi­ty, rea­ding dif­fi­cul­ties, or visu­al fati­gue — impro­ved signi­fi­cant­ly or even dis­ap­peared com­ple­te­ly after a cor­rect prism cor­rec­tion.

The­se reports are num­e­rous, often moving, and each one shows how pro­found the chan­ge can be when a prism cor­rec­tion is done pre­cis­e­ly and indi­vi­du­al­ly. They pro­vi­de a rea­li­stic impres­si­on of what a pro­per­ly fit­ted pair of prism glas­ses can achie­ve.

Note: The­se pati­ent expe­ri­en­ces were ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man and have been trans­la­ted into Eng­lish for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.

You will also find a sepa­ra­te page with detail­ed pati­ent expe­ri­en­ces spe­ci­fi­cal­ly rela­ted to clus­ter hea­da­ches:
Pati­ent Expe­ri­en­ces: Clus­ter Hea­da­ches & Prism Glas­ses

Expe­ri­ence Report by Alex­an­dra S. from Ber­lin

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man and trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

After recei­ving my prism glas­ses, the dri­ve home in the dark was an abso­lu­te reve­la­ti­on! Pre­vious­ly, dri­ving at night was always extre­me­ly exhaus­ting for me. Sud­den­ly, ever­y­thing was incre­di­bly rela­xed and crys­tal clear. Even per­cei­ving the other cars around me no lon­ger felt over­whel­ming. When I wan­ted to take the glas­ses off, it felt as if my eyes didn’t want to. Of cour­se, I still had to take them off to sleep.

At work, I had always found the elec­tro­nic appoint­ment calen­dar almost unbe­ara­ble. Working with all tho­se tables was hor­ri­ble and extre­me­ly tiring. Now it’s incre­di­bly easy, and I can view ever­y­thing com­ple­te­ly rela­xed. I can read for much lon­ger, see ever­y­thing in full color, and no lon­ger bump into cup­boards or door frames.

Thanks to the prism glas­ses, I have NO more neck or back pain! My hea­da­ches are gone as well. I no lon­ger need to take pain­kil­lers. My right eye also doesn’t hurt any­mo­re — pre­vious­ly, it felt almost like migrai­ne pain throug­hout the enti­re day. When I take the glas­ses off, I imme­dia­te­ly feel the ten­si­on behind the right eye return. So I’m always reli­e­ved to put them back on after clea­ning them. By the way, my heart pal­pi­ta­ti­ons have also dis­ap­peared.

Some­ti­mes I feel over­whel­med by all the things I can sud­den­ly see. Ever­y­thing is tru­ly in 3D now. After 40 years of “flat” visi­on, it’s a com­ple­te­ly dif­fe­rent expe­ri­ence!
Once again, thank you both so much. Your help means ever­y­thing to us!

Expe­ri­ence Report by Heinz H. from Müns­ter

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man and trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

Twen­ty-five years of suf­fe­ring are final­ly over. Over the past 25 years, my health had been so sever­ely affec­ted that a nor­mal life was no lon­ger pos­si­ble. Every day I strug­g­led with visu­al pro­blems when­ever I wore my glas­ses. My dai­ly sym­ptoms can be descri­bed as fol­lows:

  • rapid eye fati­gue and pres­su­re behind the eyes
  • con­stant hea­da­ches, exhaus­ti­on, lack of ener­gy
  • a fee­ling simi­lar to low blood sugar, lea­ding to cra­vings for sweets
  • dif­fi­cul­ty con­cen­t­ra­ting
  • both eyes not working tog­e­ther pro­per­ly

Neither various oph­thal­mo­lo­gists, an eye cli­nic, inter­nists, nor alter­na­ti­ve prac­ti­tio­ners were able to explain — let alo­ne resol­ve — my visu­al pro­blems and the accom­pany­ing phy­si­cal sym­ptoms.

During an online search, I came across your web­site.
Rea­ding your descrip­ti­ons of sym­ptoms cau­sed by bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion (BVD), I imme­dia­te­ly reco­gni­zed par­al­lels to my own situa­ti­on. So I made an appoint­ment for an exami­na­ti­on.

Within a few minu­tes, a bino­cu­lar visi­on mis­a­lignment was iden­ti­fied, and I recei­ved new prism len­ses based on this fin­ding. After a short adjus­t­ment peri­od with the prism glas­ses, my visu­al pro­blems — and with them, near­ly all of my phy­si­cal sym­ptoms — impro­ved dra­ma­ti­cal­ly.

It is fasci­na­ting and has given me a com­ple­te­ly new qua­li­ty of life. Thank you very much for that.

Expe­ri­ence Report by Dr. Wer­ner S.

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man and trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

My first pair of glas­ses with a cor­rec­tion for bino­cu­lar visi­on mis­a­lignment was almost a reve­la­ti­on for me — and I say this after near­ly for­ty years of expe­ri­ence with various other glas­ses. It felt as if I had ente­red ano­ther dimen­si­on. I quite lite­ral­ly saw the world with „dif­fe­rent“ eyes: in true depth.

I can high­ly recom­mend this form of opti­cal cor­rec­tion and have alre­a­dy done so among fri­ends.

Expe­ri­ence Report by Prof. Her­mann G.

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man and trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

I have nee­ded pre­scrip­ti­on glas­ses for more than for­ty years. Yet never befo­re — despi­te num­e­rous exami­na­ti­ons and chan­ges of pre­scrip­ti­on — has my visi­on been tes­ted as tho­rough­ly and com­pre­hen­si­ve­ly as it was by Mr. Pesch­low.
„Bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion“ was a com­ple­te­ly unfa­mi­li­ar term to me until then.

But now, with the pro­gres­si­ve len­ses you fit­ted for me in Octo­ber 2003, I am expe­ri­en­cing enti­re­ly new qua­li­ty of visi­on.
Your pro­gno­sis was abso­lut­e­ly cor­rect, and I am more than satis­fied.

Expe­ri­ence Report from an Oph­thal­mo­lo­gist in Ber­lin

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man and trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

I have been working with Mr. Pesch­low for many years when pati­ents pre­sent with com­plex visu­al dis­or­ders or sym­ptoms. This col­la­bo­ra­ti­on has pro­ven par­ti­cu­lar­ly valuable in cases of bino­cu­lar visi­on mis­a­lignment. Such cor­rec­tions can­not be car­ri­ed out in my oph­thal­mo­lo­gy prac­ti­ce due to time cons­traints.

Loo­king back, I can say that our col­la­bo­ra­ti­on has hel­ped many pati­ents achie­ve sym­ptom-free visi­on.

Expe­ri­ence Report by Andrea W. from Ber­lin

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man and trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

I recei­ved my first pair of glas­ses at the age of 12. From that point on, I suf­fe­r­ed from recur­ring migrai­nes — espe­ci­al­ly at school, when­ever I had to con­cen­tra­te for long peri­ods. At 15, I was fit­ted with my first soft cont­act len­ses, and at 16 with hard len­ses due to con­ge­ni­tal astig­ma­tism and the dif­fe­rent diop­ter values of both eyes. The migrai­nes dis­ap­peared and ever­y­thing see­med fine again, except for my extre­me­ly high light sen­si­ti­vi­ty.

In my ear­ly thir­ties, I began noti­cing a dete­rio­ra­ti­on in my visi­on, dou­ble visi­on, and once again — hea­da­ches and migrai­nes.

By chan­ce, I met Mr. Jür­gen Pesch­low, who sug­gested that I try glas­ses that would allow me, as he put it, to see “rela­xed and wit­hout strain.” He explai­ned that prisms in the len­ses would refract the light dif­fer­ent­ly, hel­ping my eyes relax — which in turn would reli­e­ve my hea­da­ches.
At the time, I didn’t belie­ve it. After all, I had spent years going from one oph­thal­mo­lo­gist and opti­ci­an to ano­ther — wit­hout suc­cess.

I had not­hing to lose, so I let Mr. Pesch­low exami­ne and fit me, and wai­ted to see what would hap­pen. When the new glas­ses were final­ly rea­dy, I remain­ed skep­ti­cal — espe­ci­al­ly becau­se it meant giving up my cont­act len­ses and going back to being a “glas­ses wea­rer.”
But that didn’t bother me for long: the fact that I could final­ly see cle­ar­ly and wit­hout hea­da­ches was not­hing short of a sen­sa­ti­on.

I have now been wea­ring glas­ses again for eight years — and I still see cle­ar­ly and wit­hout migrai­nes. When­ever I meet someone loo­king for a skil­led and dedi­ca­ted opto­me­trist, I recom­mend Mr. Jür­gen Pesch­low.

Expe­ri­ence Report from the Mother of Jakob G. (Baden-Würt­tem­berg)

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man and trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

I visi­ted Mr. Pesch­low with my ele­ven-year-old son Jakob in Sep­tem­ber 2007, becau­se Jakob’s visu­al acui­ty had drop­ped to just 15 per­cent. The let­ters and text on a page see­med to move con­stant­ly, making it impos­si­ble for him to achie­ve the requi­red per­for­mance at school. Neither his tea­cher nor his oph­thal­mo­lo­gist took his com­plaints about poor visi­on and hea­da­ches serious­ly. Even­tual­ly he deve­lo­ped con­stant hea­da­ches and depres­si­on, as he had lost all hope for his future.

I had read that dys­le­xia and ADD/​ADHD can be mimi­cked or inten­si­fied by bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion (hete­ro­pho­ria). Yet most oph­thal­mo­lo­gists rejec­ted prism glas­ses out­right. So I began rese­ar­ching online and found your web­site. You respon­ded to my email imme­dia­te­ly, and after seve­ral pho­ne calls I had real hope that you might be able to help my son.

Jakob recei­ved his new prism glas­ses in Sep­tem­ber 2007, which cor­rec­ted both his far­sigh­ted­ness and his astig­ma­tism. The effect was remar­kab­le. Alt­hough he had alre­a­dy been in psych­ia­tric tre­at­ment at that point, he began reco­ve­ring ste­adi­ly after recei­ving his prism glas­ses. Within only a few weeks he regai­ned con­fi­dence and retur­ned to his old school.

Based on your mea­su­re­ments, you told me that Jakob would reach 45 per­cent visu­al acui­ty with the prism glas­ses, and that his eyes would likely impro­ve to around 65 per­cent within a year. After just eight months, his visu­al acui­ty had alre­a­dy increased to 80 per­cent. He now enjoys play­ing ball games becau­se he can final­ly see in 3D. His hand­wri­ting no lon­ger shakes, the cram­ping in his hand is sub­si­ding, he reads much bet­ter, and his spel­ling errors have signi­fi­cant­ly decreased.

I can­not express how gra­teful we are and how much easier our lives have beco­me thanks to your exper­ti­se. My son’s edu­ca­tio­nal path is pos­si­ble again.

Thank you so much — may you con­ti­nue hel­ping many more child­ren with seve­re visu­al dif­fi­cul­ties so they, too, can have a suc­cessful school care­er and a nor­mal life.

Fol­low-up Report from Jakob’s Mother (16 Sep­tem­ber 2014)

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man and trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

Jakob mana­ged well at school with his prism glas­ses, but they often beca­me bent during rough play, requi­ring repea­ted adjus­t­ments. After a few years, Jakob deci­ded to fol­low the gui­dance of Har­ry Benjamin’s book “Bet­ter Sight Wit­hout Glas­ses” and used his school holi­days to try impro­ving his visi­on with eye exer­ci­s­es. Sur­pri­sin­gly, he suc­cee­ded to a degree — enough to stop wea­ring his prism glas­ses com­ple­te­ly by around age 15.

At 18, Jakob appli­ed for a driver’s licen­se but fai­led the requi­red visi­on test. This made him think of Mr. Pesch­low again, so he revi­si­ted the web­site and rea­li­zed he still had seve­ral sym­ptoms of bino­cu­lar mis­a­lignment: fre­quent hea­da­ches, neck ten­si­on, back pain, and rapid eye fati­gue while rea­ding.

So he tra­ve­led back to Ber­lin to see Mr. Pesch­low. The exami­na­ti­on show­ed that his bino­cu­lar mis­a­lignment had beco­me much wea­k­er over time, but was still pre­sent. Once Jakob recei­ved his new prism glas­ses, he adapt­ed quick­ly and was able to begin dri­ving les­sons after just a few weeks. He now has his driver’s licen­se and enjoys dri­ving enthu­si­a­sti­cal­ly.

Jakob has also made peace with wea­ring glas­ses again. His hea­da­ches are now only occa­sio­nal, his back ten­si­on has dis­ap­peared, and school­work requi­res much less effort. His big­gest fear was that wea­ring glas­ses again would make him depen­dent on them — but this con­cern tur­ned out to be unfoun­ded. Becau­se the prism values are now much lower than befo­re, he can wear the glas­ses as nee­ded and go wit­hout them during lei­su­re time if he wis­hes.

As his mother, I was deep­ly dis­tur­bed that oph­thal­mo­lo­gists con­tin­ued to stron­gly reject Jakob’s first pair of prism glas­ses from Mr. Pesch­low — even when it was clear that he was doing signi­fi­cant­ly bet­ter with them than befo­re.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Prof. Susan­ne B.

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man and trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

As a child, I recei­ved wide­ly dif­fe­ring assess­ments from various oph­thal­mo­lo­gists about whe­ther I nee­ded glas­ses or not. The most recent dia­gno­sis back then was that I saw round objects slight­ly oval — but other­wi­se had no visu­al pro­blems. Deep down I always sen­sed that some­thing wasn’t right with my eyes, but I couldn’t explain it, becau­se none of the eye­glass pre­scrip­ti­ons I was given ever impro­ved my visi­on. Taking a visi­on test beca­me a small trau­ma for me.

About one or two years ago — at age 36/​37 — my eyes could no lon­ger com­pen­sa­te for the bino­cu­lar mis­a­lignment. I had to strain enorm­ously to see cle­ar­ly, deve­lo­ped should­er ten­si­on, migrai­nes, watery eyes, and a con­stant fee­ling that some­thing was “off” in my head. At one point I was clo­se to under­go­ing neu­ro­lo­gi­cal tests to rule out a brain tumor. Then my gene­ral prac­ti­tio­ner poin­ted out that all of the­se sym­ptoms could be cau­sed by a bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion (hete­ro­pho­ria).

Unfort­u­na­te­ly, my first stop on the inter­net led me to an opti­ci­an who clai­med to be a spe­cia­list but fit­ted me with prism len­ses that were far too strong. My sym­ptoms beca­me dra­ma­ti­cal­ly worse, and espe­ci­al­ly while dri­ving at night I beca­me so nau­seous that I had to stop the car. I then went to a lar­ge opti­ci­an chain and asked for ano­ther bino­cu­lar visi­on assess­ment. Their result: prism glas­ses were “not neces­sa­ry.”

For­t­u­na­te­ly, I even­tual­ly found Mr. Pesch­low online. With gre­at pati­ence, he was able to cor­rect­ly dia­gno­se the prism cor­rec­tion I actual­ly nee­ded. For me, the best indi­ca­ti­on that the pre­scrip­ti­on was cor­rect was this: I did not want to take the new glas­ses off again — and for the first time, I was com­ple­te­ly free of sym­ptoms.

Loo­king back, many things final­ly made sen­se: why I beca­me car­sick as a child during long dri­ves, why I was unable to per­cei­ve 3D images for many years, and why my eyes used to burn and water every evening.

All of this is now for­t­u­na­te­ly behind me, and I am deep­ly gra­teful to Mr. Pesch­low. I have sin­ce refer­red seve­ral fami­ly mem­bers to him — and they, too, were dia­gno­sed with bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Clau­dia V. (Ham­burg)

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man and trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

It has only been a litt­le over four weeks sin­ce I recei­ved my new prism glas­ses from Mr. Pesch­low — yet becau­se my “new life” began the very same day, it alre­a­dy feels much lon­ger.

Sin­ce the age of 12 it was known that I nee­ded prism glas­ses, becau­se from one day to the next I could no lon­ger read for hours wit­hout deve­lo­ping hea­da­ches. The inex­pen­si­ve horn-rim­med glas­ses I recei­ved — sin­ce it was “only a rea­ding pair” — were, of cour­se, abso­lut­e­ly gua­ran­teed not to be worn often during puber­ty.

Around ten years later, during my uni­ver­si­ty stu­dies, things didn’t impro­ve — espe­ci­al­ly sin­ce the local opti­ci­an repea­ted­ly, and some­ti­mes imper­cep­ti­bly, mixed up the base direc­tion and ali­gnment of my cylin­der cor­rec­tion.

After moving to ano­ther city, a very atten­ti­ve and expe­ri­en­ced opti­ci­an final­ly mana­ged to fit me with prism len­ses that were some­what cor­rect. I will never for­get my first walk through a pede­stri­an shop­ping street — my mouth lite­ral­ly drop­ped open becau­se the shop signs were sud­den­ly so much more colorful and the buil­dings strikin­gly more three-dimen­sio­nal. Even the infa­mous “shop­ping stress,” which used to exhaust me becau­se con­stant focu­sing at clo­se ran­ge was over­whel­ming, sud­den­ly dis­ap­peared.

Unfort­u­na­te­ly, the impro­ve­ment did not last. The visu­al pro­blems soon retur­ned. What fol­lo­wed were ano­ther ten years of visits and re-mea­su­re­ments by whi­che­ver opti­ci­an I trus­ted at the time. The new prism glas­ses were always good at first — but the pro­blems always came back. And my prism values kept get­ting stron­ger and stron­ger.

I was repea­ted­ly told this was “nor­mal” and sim­ply due to “too much com­pu­ter work.” But the con­stant inner rest­less­ness, espe­ci­al­ly in the evenings after long hours of focu­sing on a screen, led to extre­me exhaus­ti­on and bur­ning eyes. Long con­ver­sa­ti­ons beca­me chal­len­ging becau­se loo­king peo­p­le in the eye requi­red so much effort. My ten­den­cy to avert my gaze was often misun­ders­tood as lack of inte­rest. Over time, the rest­less­ness and the fee­ling that “some­thing still isn’t right” led me to push my glas­ses up onto my head almost every hour.

As my sym­ptoms grew worse, eye rela­xa­ti­on exer­ci­s­es stop­ped hel­ping. I strug­g­led in sports becau­se I could no lon­ger judge distances cor­rect­ly wit­hout pro­per 3‑D visi­on. Swit­ching focus bet­ween near and far distances took almost a full second. I felt incre­asing­ly unwell. With glas­ses it wasn’t good — wit­hout them, it wasn’t eit­her. Migrai­nes, neck ten­si­on, and fee­ling like I was wal­king through the world with “tun­nel visi­on,” espe­ci­al­ly in the evenings, made dai­ly life tru­ly dif­fi­cult.

Instinc­tively, I knew that ano­ther “nor­mal” opti­ci­an visit would not help. Despe­ra­te, I sear­ched online — even­tual­ly stumb­ling across the term bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion (hete­ro­pho­ria). From the­re, it didn’t take long to find Mr. Peschlow’s web­site. I was skep­ti­cal at first, worried that this might be the latest “fashionable dia­gno­sis.”

But a pho­ne call to the prac­ti­ce reassu­red me — and the visit con­vin­ced me: the­se peo­p­le work with genui­ne pas­si­on and tru­ly help others. I could hard­ly wait for my new prism glas­ses. The moment I put them on, ever­y­thing work­ed imme­dia­te­ly: color per­cep­ti­on, 3‑D visi­on, and near-far adapt­a­ti­on. After two hours, ten­si­on in my head and neck dis­sol­ved. After 24 hours, a deep inner calm set in. After about a week, adapt­a­ti­on was com­ple­te — becau­se my right eye, which had bare­ly con­tri­bu­ted to the visu­al pro­cess for 20 years, first had to learn how to “see tog­e­ther” with the left one again.

The fol­lo­wing weekend, I lay on a green mea­dow and loo­ked at blades of grass in 3‑D for the first time — magni­fi­cent. And the migrai­ne attacks that used to strike me in high-stress peri­ods have not occur­red once in the past four weeks.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Bar­ba­ra R. (near Dres­den)

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man and trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

My visi­on pro­blems had made me both phy­si­cal­ly and men­tal­ly ill. How is it pos­si­ble that oph­thal­mo­lo­gists and opti­ci­ans are unable to reco­gni­ze or cor­rect a bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion?

Sin­ce 1992, I had visi­ted count­less eye doc­tors and opti­ci­ans. The con­stant fai­led attempts to deter­mi­ne the cor­rect prism values only made my sym­ptoms worse. Over the years, I deve­lo­ped an almost unbe­ara­ble fee­ling of pres­su­re and tight­ness around my eyes. I also suf­fe­r­ed from hea­da­ches, blur­red visi­on, and seve­re light sen­si­ti­vi­ty.

Even­tual­ly, out of despe­ra­ti­on, I retur­ned to my coll­ec­tion of old, non-prism glas­ses and picked the pair I could tole­ra­te best — even though I had to “retrain” my eyes to use them again. With this pair, I final­ly went to see you in the spring of 2009.

With the prism glas­ses you fit­ted for me, the eye pain began to subs­i­de imme­dia­te­ly. After a short adapt­a­ti­on peri­od, I can now say that I see won­derful­ly — and I no lon­ger have any pain in or behind my eyes.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Frank-Ulrich J. (Leip­zig)

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man and trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

When I picked up my glas­ses from you on Febru­ary 19, 2011, I had an imme­dia­te­ly posi­ti­ve fee­ling. Alre­a­dy at my car — about a 10-minu­te walk from your prac­ti­ce — I noti­ced that I could see ever­y­thing cle­ar­ly, safe­ly, and wit­hout effort. This was a com­ple­te­ly new expe­ri­ence for me, and I felt con­fi­dent enough to dri­ve back from Ber­lin to Leip­zig mys­elf.

This con­fi­dence pro­ved jus­ti­fied during the enti­re dri­ve. In every traf­fic situa­ti­on, I was able to cle­ar­ly over­see the road ahead. Lane mar­kings stay­ed exact­ly whe­re they belon­ged and no lon­ger blur­red into each other. Distances and late­ral spa­cing were easy to judge. It seems that my per­spec­ti­ve visi­on nor­ma­li­zed instant­ly with the new glas­ses.

It was also new to me that my eyes could effort­less­ly switch bet­ween dif­fe­rent distances — near­by traf­fic situa­tions, distant vehic­les in my lane or onco­ming traf­fic, and the car’s dash­board instru­ments. In every case, a sharp image appeared imme­dia­te­ly.

Your recom­men­da­ti­on to avo­id tin­ted len­ses in favor of bet­ter visu­al acui­ty pro­ved abso­lut­e­ly cor­rect. The cor­rec­tion of my bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion also seems to be the reason why my pre­vious sen­si­ti­vi­ty to light has lar­ge­ly dis­ap­peared. And your pro­mi­se that the pro­gres­si­ve len­ses pro­vi­de very wide visu­al fields (upwards, down­wards, and to the sides) has been ful­fil­led 100 per­cent.

I have now been wea­ring my new glas­ses for about two months, and I can say that I enjoy wea­ring them and am com­ple­te­ly satis­fied. I see clear, high-con­trast, visual­ly com­for­ta­ble images. Dou­ble visi­on and diz­ziness — espe­ci­al­ly under strain or when loo­king to the left — no lon­ger occur with the new glas­ses.

Ever­y­thing descri­bed on your web­site has pro­ven true for me. Sin­ce I know from per­so­nal expe­ri­ence that such exper­ti­se and results are not available else­whe­re, I would like to help others with bino­cu­lar visi­on dis­or­ders find their way to your prac­ti­ce.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Alex­an­dra G. (Frank­furt), Sep­tem­ber 2019

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man and trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

I am 24 years old, ori­gi­nal­ly from Munich, and curr­ent­ly com­ple­ting my Master’s degree in Psy­cho­lo­gy. After a long peri­od of suf­fe­ring, I have been get­ting my bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion mea­su­red exclu­si­ve­ly by Mr. Pesch­low for about three years. In a few sen­ten­ces, I will try to sum­ma­ri­ze how much my psy­cho­lo­gi­cal and phy­si­cal well-being has impro­ved thanks to a prism cor­rec­tion by Mr. Pesch­low.

What I noti­ce most is a signi­fi­cant increase in my over­all per­for­mance. My con­cen­tra­ti­on has impro­ved mark­ed­ly. I now have a much lon­ger atten­ti­on span, which helps me with all kinds of tasks — working on the com­pu­ter, rea­ding books, dri­ving, or sim­ply lis­tening during con­ver­sa­ti­ons. In the past, many of the­se acti­vi­ties were extre­me­ly exhaus­ting and usual­ly ended with three days of migrai­ne.

Thanks to my impro­ved visu­al per­cep­ti­on, I can once again expo­se mys­elf to situa­tions with many visu­al sti­mu­li wit­hout expe­ri­en­cing diz­ziness or the resul­ting anxie­ty. I now feel safe in crowds or while shop­ping. My hand-eye coor­di­na­ti­on has also impro­ved noti­ce­ab­ly — some­thing I obser­ve, for exam­p­le, when play­ing vol­ley­ball or the pia­no. In gene­ral, I feel much cal­mer and more balan­ced. Fee­lings of inner ten­si­on and quick irri­ta­bi­li­ty have dis­ap­peared. I have also noti­ced that my exces­si­ve sugar cra­vings have redu­ced. Ever­y­day life now requi­res far less effort, which means my con­stant fati­gue is gone as well.

As an aspi­ring psy­cho­lo­gist, I am con­vin­ced that uncor­rec­ted bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tions are rela­ted to various psy­cho­lo­gi­cal con­di­ti­ons. More spe­ci­fi­cal­ly, I belie­ve that psy­cho­lo­gists, psy­cho­the­ra­pists, and medi­cal pro­fes­sio­nals some­ti­mes make mis­dia­gno­ses due to a lack of rese­arch on bino­cu­lar visi­on dis­or­ders and the resul­ting lack of awa­re­ness.

I the­r­e­fo­re stron­gly advo­ca­te for sci­en­ti­fic stu­dies in this field, as the num­ber of unde­tec­ted cases is likely very high — and many of the­se indi­vi­du­als could be hel­ped with some­thing as simp­le as prism glas­ses. In addi­ti­on, mea­su­re­ment methods urgen­tly need impro­ve­ment, as the MKH approach is ina­de­qua­te for many peo­p­le. I hope to con­duct rese­arch mys­elf on the con­nec­tion bet­ween bino­cu­lar visi­on dis­or­ders and psy­cho­lo­gi­cal dis­or­ders in the future.

My sin­ce­re thanks go to Ms. Psil­le and Mr. Pesch­low for their tire­less efforts.

Expe­ri­ence Report from the Par­ents of Sarah F.

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man and trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

Our daugh­ter Sarah achie­ved excep­tio­nal­ly good results at school up until the age of 12 and even won the school rea­ding com­pe­ti­ti­on.

Unfort­u­na­te­ly, this chan­ged abrupt­ly in the spring of 6th gra­de. She sud­den­ly began to stut­ter while rea­ding, dou­bled or omit­ted let­ters when wri­ting, com­plai­ned fre­quent­ly about hea­da­ches, and could only read the board pro­per­ly when sit­ting in the front row.

A visit to an oph­thal­mo­lo­gist resul­ted in the dia­gno­sis that our daugh­ter was a “stra­bis­mus child” and might even requi­re sur­gery. We were also reproa­ched for not having noti­ced this ear­lier.

Sin­ce the doc­tor could not explain why Sarah had been com­ple­te­ly fine for 12 years — with no dif­fi­cul­ties in rea­ding, wri­ting, or see­ing — we began to search for ans­wers our­sel­ves and came across the web­site richtig-sehen.de. The infor­ma­ti­on pro­vi­ded the­re hel­ped us bet­ter under­stand the topic and show­ed us that alter­na­ti­ves exist.

We visi­ted Mr. Pesch­low, who exami­ned Sarah and dia­gno­sed not stra­bis­mus, but a bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion (BVD).

Sin­ce Sarah has been wea­ring her prism glas­ses, she no lon­ger suf­fers from hea­da­ches, can read very well again, and no lon­ger sees dou­ble — and all of this wit­hout sur­gery. It is com­ple­te­ly incom­pre­hen­si­ble to us why not every oph­thal­mo­lo­gist is awa­re of the­se insights.

Expe­ri­ence Report from the Par­ents of Julia B. (Bran­den­burg)

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man and trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

Our daugh­ter Julia was born in 1998 and is now 13 years old. Alre­a­dy in her ear­ly child­hood we noti­ced that she had dif­fi­cul­ties with her eyes. She strug­g­led with simp­le visu­al tasks such as colo­ring, so she soon recei­ved her first pair of glas­ses. Alt­hough the glas­ses impro­ved her visu­al acui­ty, a new pro­blem appeared: Julia incre­asing­ly suf­fe­r­ed from seve­re hea­da­ches and vomi­ting when­ever she wore them.

An opti­ci­an told us that a bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion (BVD) might be the cau­se of Julia’s com­plaints. We con­sul­ted an oph­thal­mo­lo­gist who spe­cia­li­zed in this con­di­ti­on. He con­firm­ed the dia­gno­sis and pre­scri­bed prism glas­ses.

With the prism glas­ses, Julia’s sym­ptoms impro­ved — but they did not dis­ap­pear. Espe­ci­al­ly in stressful situa­tions, such as after a long school day, she con­tin­ued to expe­ri­ence strong hea­da­ches (migrai­nes) that led to vomi­ting. Neither nau­sea nor vomi­ting could be reli­e­ved even with Vom­ex sup­po­si­to­ries. The only thing that hel­ped in tho­se situa­tions was lying down in a dar­kened room and slee­ping for twel­ve hours.

When the oph­thal­mo­lo­gist began pre­scrib­ing stron­ger prism values every six months, we star­ted rese­ar­ching online and came across Mr. Peschlow’s web­site. After a pho­ne call, we arran­ged an appoint­ment for Julia in autumn 2009.

Mr. Pesch­low was very atten­ti­ve to our daugh­ter and took ple­nty of time to cor­rect her bino­cu­lar visi­on mis­a­lignment. It tur­ned out that her pre­vious prism len­ses had been far too strong and that her eyes requi­red signi­fi­cant­ly wea­k­er prisms.

With the prism glas­ses made by Mr. Pesch­low, Julia’s hea­da­ches, nau­sea, and vomi­ting dis­ap­peared imme­dia­te­ly. She could see much more com­for­ta­b­ly, which great­ly impro­ved her con­cen­tra­ti­on and her per­for­mance in rea­ding and wri­ting.

During a fol­low-up appoint­ment in spring 2011, it beca­me appa­rent that Julia’s bino­cu­lar visi­on dis­or­der had impro­ved fur­ther. Her prism cor­rec­tion could the­r­e­fo­re be redu­ced again.

Sin­ce then, hea­da­ches, migrai­nes, nau­sea, sto­mach pain, and vomi­ting have never retur­ned — Julia has been com­ple­te­ly sym­ptom-free.

Expe­ri­ence Report from the W. Fami­ly (Thu­rin­gia)

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man and trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

Our son Fre­de­rik is now seven years old, and his dif­fi­cul­ties began short­ly after start­ing school. Fre­de­rik has always been a bright, curious, and eager-to-learn child — even in kin­der­gar­ten. But school brought many new chal­lenges: new child­ren, new tea­chers, unfa­mi­li­ar situa­tions, a high noi­se level, stress, and also under-sti­mu­la­ti­on.

Becau­se of Frederik’s dia­gno­ses — ADD, audi­to­ry pro­ces­sing dis­or­der (AVWS), and gifted­ness — I, as his mother, beca­me awa­re of the topic of bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion (Win­kel­fehl­sich­tig­keit). I had to rese­arch on my own, becau­se I felt that pedia­tri­ci­ans, the­ra­pists, tea­chers, and care­gi­vers did not take my obser­va­tions serious­ly. We were quick­ly labe­led as over­ly ambi­tious, hys­te­ri­cal, or over­ly sen­si­ti­ve. And very soon, we were con­fron­ted with the sug­ges­ti­on of medi­ca­ti­on (methyl­phe­ni­da­te).

But Fre­de­rik was not only very rest­less — he also had major dif­fi­cul­ties with rea­ding and wri­ting, and his eyes tired very quick­ly. He often com­plai­ned about nau­sea, sto­mach pain, and light sen­si­ti­vi­ty. Alt­hough we con­sul­ted seve­ral doc­tors, we even­tual­ly wan­ted to have his eyes exami­ned again. At the ophthalmologist’s office, we were rus­hed through, and told that ever­y­thing was fine with Frederik’s eyes. We were told that his rest­less­ness was cau­sed by ADD and his poor hand­wri­ting by dys­le­xia.

Sin­ce we could not accept that expl­ana­ti­on, we visi­ted a local opti­ci­an who clai­med to spe­cia­li­ze in bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tions. Fre­de­rik was given bifo­cal prism glas­ses, but they did not help him.

Then I dis­co­ver­ed Mr. Peschlow’s web­site (richtig-sehen.de) and we deci­ded to tra­vel to Ber­lin. The­re, Fre­de­rik recei­ved new prism glas­ses — and after a few weeks, we began to see clear impro­ve­ments. Fre­de­rik no lon­ger con­fu­sed let­ters (espe­ci­al­ly b and d), and he beca­me much cal­mer. When wri­ting, he no lon­ger pres­sed the pen­cil so hard, and his sto­mach pain dis­ap­peared com­ple­te­ly.

I would also like to share the expe­ri­ence of my hus­band, who also visi­ted Mr. Pesch­low becau­se of his visu­al pro­blems. His main sym­ptoms were line-skip­ping when rea­ding, a “tun­nel visi­on” sen­sa­ti­on during com­pu­ter work, occa­sio­nal dou­ble visi­on, con­cen­tra­ti­on dif­fi­cul­ties, and hea­da­ches.

He visi­ted an oph­thal­mo­lo­gist seve­ral times, who pre­scri­bed new len­ses for visu­al acui­ty on four sepa­ra­te occa­si­ons. When his sym­ptoms and unsta­ble visi­on did not impro­ve, the oph­thal­mo­lo­gist even­tual­ly stop­ped taking him serious­ly.

My hus­band was initi­al­ly very skep­ti­cal about bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tions. But after recei­ving his prism glas­ses from Mr. Pesch­low, his over­all con­di­ti­on impro­ved dra­ma­ti­cal­ly. The rest­less visi­on, the line-skip­ping, the tun­nel visi­on, and the hea­da­ches have not retur­ned sin­ce. He has now been wea­ring his prism glas­ses for eight months and is very satis­fied with them.

The­se are our expe­ri­en­ces — and as a mother and wife, I can only say: Thank God we took this step.

Expe­ri­ence Report from the Par­ents of Finn H.

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man and trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

Even as a todd­ler, we noti­ced Finn’s extre­me cau­ti­on and fear­ful­ness. On the play­ground he always moved very careful­ly, never wan­ted to swing or climb, and he dis­lik­ed crafts or dra­wing. Later, low self-con­fi­dence and an unclear han­ded­ness (pos­si­ble left-han­ded­ness) beca­me noti­ceable.

From the age of four, Finn atten­ded occu­pa­tio­nal the­ra­py for more than two years — wit­hout any meaningful impro­ve­ment. Only when his eyes began to itch sever­ely and he was blin­king con­stant­ly did we visit an oph­thal­mo­lo­gist for the first time. The­re, the pos­si­bi­li­ty of a bino­cu­lar visi­on dis­or­der (Win­kel­fehl­sich­tig­keit) was men­tio­ned, but we were also told that trea­ting such con­di­ti­ons was con­tro­ver­si­al and some­thing to con­sider only if school pro­blems deve­lo­ped.

Becau­se Finn had no aca­de­mic pro­blems at that time (he had just star­ted school), we did not pur­sue the topic fur­ther and ins­tead tried various eye drops and home­opa­thic reme­dies.

A year later, when his eye sym­ptoms wor­sened and his wri­ting at school beca­me noti­ce­ab­ly poor, we con­sul­ted ano­ther oph­thal­mo­lo­gist. This doc­tor dia­gno­sed Finn with a hori­zon­tal bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion and pre­scri­bed prism glas­ses with 4.0 prism diop­ters.

After days of online rese­arch and many well-meant war­nings from fri­ends — inclu­ding oph­thal­mo­lo­gists — we beca­me extre­me­ly inse­cu­re. Seve­ral peo­p­le stron­gly advi­sed against prism glas­ses, clai­ming they would ine­vi­ta­b­ly lead to ever-incre­asing prism strengths and even­tual­ly to eye sur­gery. Our opti­ci­an at the time expres­sed simi­lar con­cerns and was no help at all.

Once again, we sear­ched the inter­net — and this time, we found Mr. Peschlow’s web­site. Becau­se Finn’s eye itching and con­stant blin­king had beco­me unbe­ara­ble, we felt we had to take action. The infor­ma­ti­on on Mr. Peschlow’s web­site gave us hope that try­ing prism glas­ses would not pose a major risk. Finn recei­ved a prism cor­rec­tion from Mr. Pesch­low — this time a ver­ti­cal prism cor­rec­tion — and we wai­ted anxious­ly to see what would hap­pen.

The result was imme­dia­te: the eye itching and blin­king dis­ap­peared right away, and his school dif­fi­cul­ties impro­ved noti­ce­ab­ly over the next six months. Finn is now in third gra­de and brings home only A’s and B’s! He enjoys rea­ding and has beco­me much more con­fi­dent. His hand­wri­ting is still some­what mes­sy, but he essen­ti­al­ly missed out on three years of dra­wing and craf­ting.

We are incre­di­bly gra­teful that we gave prism glas­ses a chan­ce. At a fol­low-up appoint­ment eight months later, we lear­ned that Finn’s prism values had even decreased — from 2.0 to 1.5! Finn wears his prism glas­ses at school but can go wit­hout them in the after­noons, during sports, and when play­ing.

We are very hap­py about this deve­lo­p­ment and can who­le­he­ar­ted­ly recom­mend con­sul­ting Mr. Pesch­low to anyo­ne facing simi­lar issues. His method of cor­rec­tion has com­ple­te­ly con­vin­ced us.

If your child has simi­lar pro­blems, you are wel­co­me to cont­act us direct­ly. Mr. Pesch­low will glad­ly con­nect you with us.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Mar­ga­re­te W. – Writ­ten at the Age of 11

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man and trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

Befo­re I had my prism glas­ses, I prac­ti­ced rea­ding again and again but could never mana­ge to read flu­ent­ly. When copy­ing text, I always got lost in the lines, and when rea­ding aloud from the board, I could never keep up. I also had fre­quent hea­da­ches.

When I first got my glas­ses, I didn’t noti­ce much of a dif­fe­rence. But after a few weeks, rea­ding beca­me much more flu­ent with the glas­ses. When I try to read wit­hout them now, my eyes start to water.

A won­derful expe­ri­ence: after about two weeks, I copied from the board in Eng­lish class and — for the very first time — had zero mista­kes.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Sami­ra L. (Ber­lin)

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man and trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

I am now 23 years old and had been suf­fe­ring sin­ce the age of 15 from con­stant fati­gue, hea­da­ches, nau­sea, and even depres­si­on-like sym­ptoms. When rea­ding, my eyes tired very quick­ly, and on some days even the simp­le walk to school felt almost impos­si­ble. Going to clubs with fri­ends or to the cine­ma late at night was pure tor­tu­re for me.

Becau­se of the­se sym­ptoms, my par­ents took me from doc­tor to doc­tor, but none of them could iden­ti­fy any ill­ness. Psy­cho­lo­gists and neu­ro­lo­gists also found no cau­se. Whe­ther fami­ly, fri­ends, or tea­chers – no one unders­tood why I was always so exhaus­ted and down.

Not even 12 hours of sleep, healt­hy eating, or exer­cise could lift the exhaus­ti­on. I often fell asleep at school and felt com­ple­te­ly over­whel­med with life. I spent every weekend at home becau­se I felt I had to reco­ver from the week.

At 21, I came across the topic of bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tions (BVD) by chan­ce on the inter­net. The sym­ptoms descri­bed by others matched my own. I imme­dia­te­ly visi­ted a local opti­ci­an who clai­med to be spe­cia­li­zed in this area. A week later, I recei­ved my first pair of prism glas­ses. Ama­zing – after just a few weeks my sym­ptoms had almost dis­ap­peared!
I was ener­ge­tic from mor­ning to evening, stu­dy­ing beca­me easier, and the nau­sea was gone. But after around two months, the sym­ptoms gra­du­al­ly came back – and beca­me even worse than befo­re.

My opti­ci­an told me that my eye mus­cles had not ful­ly rela­xed during the initi­al mea­su­re­ment and said I now nee­ded stron­ger prisms. So I was given new len­ses with hig­her prism values. They hel­ped only brief­ly, so I was given even stron­ger len­ses. Unfort­u­na­te­ly, the year 2010 con­tin­ued like this. I spent more than €1,000 on prism len­ses.

When my sym­ptoms did not impro­ve – but ins­tead beca­me more seve­re – I con­tin­ued rese­ar­ching and even­tual­ly found Mr. Peschlow’s prac­ti­ce. He took a gre­at deal of time to mea­su­re my eyes tho­rough­ly and to under­stand my sym­ptoms in detail.

Sin­ce Janu­ary 2011, I have been wea­ring my new prism glas­ses from Mr. Pesch­low – with only two prism diop­ters. And with the­se glas­ses, I have been fee­ling con­sis­t­ent­ly well.

After eight exhaus­ting years, I final­ly have the level of ener­gy and per­for­mance that a 23-year-old woman should have. For the first time in my life, I enjoy going out late and genui­ne­ly feel hap­py. With Mr. Peschlow’s prism glas­ses, all of my sym­ptoms – inclu­ding the depres­si­on-like ones – have dis­ap­peared.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Fio­na R.’s Mother

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man and trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

During the rou­ti­ne U8 check-up at the pediatrician’s office, our daugh­ter Fio­na was given a visi­on test. Becau­se she had dif­fi­cul­ties, we were refer­red to an oph­thal­mo­lo­gist, who dia­gno­sed signi­fi­cant far­sigh­ted­ness. Fio­na wore her glas­ses con­sis­t­ent­ly. What sur­pri­sed us was that she said she didn’t see any dif­fer­ent­ly with glas­ses than wit­hout. She had trou­ble dra­wing shapes — for exam­p­le, she couldn’t draw a tri­ang­le pro­per­ly. Con­nec­ting the base to the tip only work­ed in an unneces­sa­ry cur­ve, and she often missed the tip enti­re­ly. Fio­na also stumb­led fre­quent­ly and was gene­ral­ly rather clum­sy.

After she star­ted school, her tea­cher poin­ted out that Fio­na was unable to place let­ters cor­rect­ly within the lines. She also had trou­ble rea­ding, often con­fu­sing let­ters. The tea­cher sug­gested that Fio­na might have a bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion (BVD). This sus­pi­ci­on was con­firm­ed by Mr. Pesch­low.

When Fio­na first put on her prism glas­ses, she loo­ked as though she had arri­ved in a com­ple­te­ly dif­fe­rent world. She stared around speechl­ess­ly. The glas­ses imme­dia­te­ly chan­ged her visu­al expe­ri­ence — some­thing she show­ed very cle­ar­ly that evening when we took the glas­ses off befo­re bedti­me. She pro­tes­ted: “I can’t see any­thing any­mo­re!”

Once her len­ses were pro­per­ly cor­rec­ted, her hand­wri­ting impro­ved rapidly. Stay­ing within the lines was sud­den­ly no pro­blem. Her hand­wri­ting impro­ved over­all, and the con­stant stumb­ling dis­ap­peared. For us, this was a clear con­fir­ma­ti­on of the suc­cess of the prism cor­rec­tion.

Becau­se it may be rela­ted to her bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion, we would also like to men­ti­on that Fio­na was dia­gno­sed with KISS/​KIDD at age 6. She is under­go­ing INPP the­ra­py and has made addi­tio­nal motor pro­gress — part­ly through the­ra­py, part­ly through the cor­rect glas­ses. Recei­ving both dia­gno­ses so clo­se tog­e­ther final­ly explai­ned many of her ear­lier pro­blems (crying baby, clum­siness, late dra­wing skills, fre­quent infec­tions, etc.).

We still find it very unfort­u­na­te that neither the oph­thal­mo­lo­gist nor the pedia­tri­ci­an ever men­tio­ned the pos­si­bi­li­ty of test­ing for a bino­cu­lar visi­on dis­or­der. Wit­hout Fiona’s tea­cher, we would never have found our way to Mr. Pesch­low, as we had never even heard the term “bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion /​ hete­ro­pho­ria” befo­re.

Fol­low-Up Report from Fio­na R.’s Mother (Sum­mer 2011)

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man and trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

It has now been six years sin­ce Fio­na recei­ved her prism glas­ses from Mr. Pesch­low. Her aca­de­mic per­for­mance has impro­ved so much that she has qua­li­fied for admis­si­on to a grammar school (Gym­na­si­um).

I am con­vin­ced that she would never have recei­ved this qua­li­fi­ca­ti­on wit­hout the cor­rec­tion of her bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion. We still cle­ar­ly remem­ber the dis­as­trous begin­ning of her school years befo­re she had her prism glas­ses — it pushed us as par­ents, and Fio­na even more, to our limits. Hours of prac­ti­cing words with end­less mista­kes and no under­stan­ding of quan­ti­ties in math belong enti­re­ly to the past now that Fio­na can tru­ly see pro­per­ly.

We were repea­ted­ly told before­hand that “prism len­ses only help opti­ci­ans make money and are other­wi­se more harmful than hel­pful.” Based on our expe­ri­ence, we can say with cer­tain­ty that this does not app­ly to prism glas­ses from Mr. Pesch­low.

Befo­re recei­ving her prism glas­ses, Fiona’s visu­al acui­ty had drop­ped to just 50%. With the glas­ses, her visi­on gra­du­al­ly reco­ver­ed to 100% in both eyes. Over the years, not only her far­sigh­ted­ness impro­ved — her bino­cu­lar visi­on dis­or­der gra­du­al­ly decreased as well. Today she no lon­ger needs glas­ses at all and can see per­fect­ly wit­hout them.

A few years later, our son Fabi­an also recei­ved a prism glas­ses pre­scrip­ti­on from Mr. Pesch­low for simi­lar pro­blems. His pro­gress was almost iden­ti­cal. Over the past three years, his values have impro­ved so much that it is likely he will also be able to stop wea­ring glas­ses in the near future.

With this report, we want to encou­ra­ge anyo­ne who is unsu­re to give prism glas­ses from Mr. Pesch­low a chan­ce.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Kon­stan­tin T.’s Father

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man and trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

My son Kon­stan­tin alre­a­dy show­ed lear­ning dif­fi­cul­ties in mathe­ma­tics during the first gra­de. Dys­cal­cu­lia (math disa­bi­li­ty) was suspec­ted. The child psy­cho­lo­gist who later taught the spe­cial trai­ning quick­ly rea­li­zed that our son did inde­ed have a defi­cit — but not dys­cal­cu­lia.

Over the years, we went from one spe­cia­list to the next: school psy­cho­lo­gi­cal ser­vices, child psych­ia­trist, occu­pa­tio­nal the­ra­pist, con­cen­tra­ti­on the­ra­pist, and so on. All of them found Kon­stan­tin to be intel­li­gent, alert, and quick-wit­ted based on their exami­na­ti­ons and tests — yet his poor aca­de­mic per­for­mance and lack of con­cen­tra­ti­on rai­sed doubts.
We con­sul­ted three oph­thal­mo­lo­gists as well, all of whom said Konstantin’s eyes were per­fect­ly fine except for very mild near­sigh­ted­ness.

And yet Kon­stan­tin, for exam­p­le, saw a plus sign as two sepa­ra­te lines — one ver­ti­cal, one hori­zon­tal. It wasn’t just his math per­for­mance that was sho­ckin­gly poor; his hand­wri­ting and spel­ling were bey­ond descrip­ti­on. At home, he recei­ved a gre­at deal of sup­port, but it brought only mini­mal impro­ve­ment. It is hard to put into words how exhaus­ting and demo­ra­li­zing such a pro­lon­ged situa­ti­on can be.

It wasn’t until the 5th gra­de that an osteo­path trea­ting him sug­gested taking our son to Mr. Pesch­low, as a bino­cu­lar visi­on dis­or­der might be the cau­se. On Janu­ary 4, 2008, you imme­dia­te­ly reco­gni­zed that Kon­stan­tin had a bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion (BVD) and that a prism cor­rec­tion could help him. I had heard mixed things about prism glas­ses and was hesi­tant, but after five years of sear­ching, we were rea­dy to try any­thing.

Kon­stan­tin recei­ved his prism glas­ses on Janu­ary 16, 2008 — and imme­dia­te­ly said:
“Dad, things have out­lines! And objects have such smooth sur­faces!”
I was over­whel­med — moved and sho­cked at the same time.

Alre­a­dy on his first day at school with the new glas­ses, his hand­wri­ting impro­ved so noti­ce­ab­ly that his tea­cher spo­ke to me about it. The enti­re tea­ching staff saw a remar­kab­le chan­ge, one I obser­ved dai­ly: Kon­stan­tin stop­ped being rest­less, began doing his home­work on his own, sat down to work vol­un­t­a­ri­ly — and later, as suc­cess star­ted to show, even hap­pi­ly. I was speechl­ess.

At a fol­low-up appoint­ment in Decem­ber 2008, it tur­ned out that his visu­al sys­tem had sta­bi­li­zed so well with the prism glas­ses that he now nee­ded wea­k­er prism cor­rec­tion — an incre­di­ble suc­cess!
I sim­ply can­not under­stand why the simp­le tests nee­ded to detect a bino­cu­lar visi­on dis­or­der are not part of school rea­di­ness exami­na­ti­ons. I don’t want to ima­gi­ne how many child­ren could be hel­ped ear­ly on.

Kon­stan­tin now wri­tes dic­ta­ti­ons wit­hout errors; his hand­wri­ting has gai­ned cha­rac­ter and matu­ri­ty.
Mathe­ma­tics may never beco­me his stron­gest sub­ject — so be it. What mat­ters is this: a calm­ness we had never known has retur­ned to our fami­ly, and Kon­stan­tin — thanks to your dia­gno­sis and his glas­ses — is fin­ding his path.

For that, I want to express my sin­ce­re gra­ti­tu­de.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Andre­as W., Ham­burg

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man and trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

Hel­lo Mr. Pesch­low,

About a week ago, I recei­ved my new prism glas­ses from you. To say it upfront: I now ful­ly under­stand why so many peo­p­le tra­vel long distances to Ber­lin to see you. I am abso­lut­e­ly impres­sed by how much my visi­on has impro­ved.

Even though it still feels unu­su­al for me to wear glas­ses, my visu­al pro­blems — espe­ci­al­ly while dri­ving — have signi­fi­cant­ly decreased. I’m sure this is not the first time you’ve heard such feed­back from a pati­ent.

What I can­not under­stand is why seve­ral oph­thal­mo­lo­gists never once sug­gested try­ing prism glas­ses. Ins­tead, you get pre­scri­bed a “pla­ce­bo pair of glas­ses” (+/-0.25), accom­pa­nied by the state­ment that “there’s not much that can be done.”

This makes me all the more gra­teful — becau­se with the­se prism glas­ses, I have regai­ned a real pie­ce of qua­li­ty of life. The ten­si­on in my neck and should­ers has decreased, and — which is not unim­portant to me as a car enthu­si­ast — I actual­ly enjoy dri­ving again!

Expe­ri­ence Report from Till R.’s Mother

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man and trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

The cor­rec­tion of my son’s bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion tur­ned out to be a real stro­ke of luck. Sin­ce then, he has chan­ged noti­ce­ab­ly. He has beco­me much cal­mer and more balan­ced. His school per­for­mance has also impro­ved signi­fi­cant­ly. We still have to work through some spel­ling defi­ci­ts from the time befo­re the cor­rec­tion, but over­all things have been impro­ving ste­adi­ly.

At the same time as the visi­on cor­rec­tion, Eng­lish les­sons began at school. Thanks to the prism cor­rec­tion, he hard­ly had any spel­ling pro­blems in Eng­lish — the words were stored cor­rect­ly right from the begin­ning.

The dai­ly strugg­le with home­work has chan­ged for the bet­ter. My son now enjoys rea­ding. In the mean­ti­me, he has recei­ved a recom­men­da­ti­on for the grammar school track — some­thing that would cer­tain­ly not have been pos­si­ble wit­hout your exper­ti­se.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Mar­kus G. (05 April 2004)

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man — trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)
(This let­ter was sent in iden­ti­cal form to the public broad­cas­ter RBB – Rund­funk Ber­lin Bran­den­burg.)

Dear Qui­vi­ve Team,
per­haps you can help rai­se awa­re­ness with a report that sup­ports peo­p­le who strugg­le with their glas­ses even though their visu­al acui­ty has been mea­su­red cor­rect­ly. Many are left com­ple­te­ly alo­ne with this pro­blem. I would like to share the expe­ri­ence I had to go through — pain­ful­ly — befo­re the right len­ses were final­ly found.

In ear­ly 2002, I had new glas­ses made, but I could not cope with them becau­se I was plagued by seve­re hea­da­ches and eye pain. I tried to find the cau­se by con­sul­ting two oph­thal­mo­lo­gists and seve­ral opti­ci­ans. Both the doc­tors and the opti­ci­ans repea­ted­ly assu­red me that my len­ses were per­fect­ly cor­rec­ted.

Fol­lo­wing a recom­men­da­ti­on, I con­sul­ted yet ano­ther opti­ci­an (Octo­ber 2003) and had new len­ses made once again. Alt­hough I descri­bed my pro­blems in detail, this opti­ci­an also per­for­med only a stan­dard visu­al acui­ty test — which cost me 25 euros — and again the new len­ses cau­sed the same eye and hea­da­ches.

After seve­ral oph­thal­mo­lo­gists and opti­ci­ans were unable to help me, I began to suspect that the pro­blem might be the Zeiss len­ses, sin­ce I had pre­vious­ly always worn Roden­stock len­ses. So I cal­led the opti­ci­an again and asked him to order new Roden­stock len­ses becau­se I could no lon­ger endu­re the con­stant pain. Only during this con­ver­sa­ti­on did the opti­ci­an final­ly men­ti­on that I might need prism len­ses.

The sub­se­quent exami­na­ti­on reve­a­led that I suf­fer from a bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion (hete­ro­pho­ria /​ mus­cle imba­lan­ce of the eyes) — a term I had never heard befo­re, and I am cer­tain many others affec­ted are just as una­wa­re of it.

But even with this new infor­ma­ti­on, the len­ses were still not pro­per­ly cor­rec­ted. When I told the opti­ci­an that I still could not see com­for­ta­b­ly, his rep­ly was sim­ply: “It can take two months to adjust. If it still doesn’t work, I don’t know what else to do…”

This was unac­cep­ta­ble to me.

By chan­ce, we came across the opto­me­trist Jür­gen Pesch­low on Kur­fürs­ten­damm — his lar­ge let­ters on the shop win­dow caught my atten­ti­on. With a rela­tively simp­le mea­su­re­ment he con­firm­ed my bino­cu­lar visi­on dis­or­der and cor­rec­ted it with new prism len­ses to my com­ple­te satis­fac­tion. Sin­ce then, I have been sym­ptom-free.

I find it incom­pre­hen­si­ble that in such a high­ly deve­lo­ped coun­try, neither oph­thal­mo­lo­gists nor opti­ci­ans rou­ti­ne­ly per­form this mea­su­re­ment — at the very least when a pati­ent cle­ar­ly can­not tole­ra­te their len­ses. Why is the­re no coope­ra­ti­on bet­ween oph­thal­mo­lo­gists and opti­ci­ans when it comes to dia­gno­sing and cor­rec­ting bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion (hete­ro­pho­ria /​ latent stra­bis­mus)?

Had I not found Mr. Pesch­low, I would still be going from one doc­tor to ano­ther in pain — and frank­ly, I con­sider that a scan­dal.

I am hap­py to pro­vi­de fur­ther infor­ma­ti­on if nee­ded.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Dr. Nor­bert S. (Ber­lin)

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man — trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

Dear Mr. Pesch­low,
I am 37 years old and have been wea­ring glas­ses for the past 10 years (mild to mode­ra­te myo­pia). My pro­fes­si­on requi­res dai­ly com­pu­ter work, and over the years I incre­asing­ly suf­fe­r­ed from hea­da­ches and rapid eye fati­gue while working.

A fri­end told me that you spe­cia­li­ze in bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion (BVD). He had expe­ri­en­ced simi­lar pro­blems and was very satis­fied with the results after recei­ving new glas­ses that cor­rec­ted his bino­cu­lar mis­a­lignment.

After you dia­gno­sed the same issue in my case, I recei­ved a new pair of glas­ses with the appro­pria­te prism cor­rec­tion. My eyes adapt­ed to this initi­al­ly unfa­mi­li­ar “way of see­ing” very quick­ly — but unfa­mi­li­ar in a posi­ti­ve sen­se. Rela­xed, fati­gue-free visi­on at the com­pu­ter soon beca­me the norm for me.

I am gra­teful that I found my way to you.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Anke S. (Ber­lin)

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man — trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

I would like to let you know that you suc­cee­ded in making the right len­ses for me. The oph­thal­mo­lo­gists I had seen did not pro­per­ly address my visu­al pro­blems and did not under­stand what “bet­ter visi­on” meant in my case.

My big­gest issues were seve­re light sen­si­ti­vi­ty and migrai­nes. On sun­ny days my day was essen­ti­al­ly over by noon due to pain­ful eyes, migrai­nes, and nau­sea. I felt bet­ter on dark win­ter days.

My oph­thal­mo­lo­gist belie­ved that tin­ted glas­ses would help — but they didn’t.
After recei­ving the len­ses you made for me, I can final­ly see pro­per­ly again, wit­hout having to half-clo­se my eyes in bright light. Even on sun­ny days I can now stay out­side for long peri­ods of time — hea­da­ches, migrai­nes, and nau­sea have com­ple­te­ly dis­ap­peared.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Susan­ne K.

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man — trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

It has been seve­ral years sin­ce I first came to you, and I can no lon­ger recall exact­ly what visu­al pro­blems I had back then. I only remem­ber that I felt I nee­ded new len­ses. You offe­red to check for a pos­si­ble bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion (BVD) as well. I also recall that you pro­vi­ded a gua­ran­tee (a return gua­ran­tee) for the accu­ra­cy of the new len­ses.

Your expl­ana­ti­ons made sen­se to me, so I asked you to check for a bino­cu­lar visi­on mis­a­lignment as well. Inte­res­t­ingly, no oph­thal­mo­lo­gist in Ger­ma­ny had ever offe­red me such an exami­na­ti­on befo­re.

I adapt­ed imme­dia­te­ly to the new len­ses and had no adjus­t­ment dif­fi­cul­ties whatsoe­ver. Today, I would never want to go wit­hout the cor­rec­tion of my bino­cu­lar visi­on dis­or­der. I work exten­si­ve­ly at the com­pu­ter and have no sym­ptoms of visu­al strain, no hea­da­ches, and no simi­lar com­plaints.

I am hap­py to con­firm that no one has ever mea­su­red my eyes as pre­cis­e­ly as you have (and I’ve been wea­ring glas­ses for about 26 years). In the past, I always felt pres­su­red during eye exams — whe­ther at the optician’s or the ophthalmologist’s — and was often unsu­re about whe­ther I was see­ing bet­ter or worse with a given lens. With you, I never had that fee­ling. You gave me enough time, and your comm­ents during the test­ing hel­ped me pro­vi­de con­fi­dent and accu­ra­te respon­ses.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Ingrid von der W. (Bra­zil)

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man — trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

Befo­re recei­ving your len­ses with the cor­rec­tion for my bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion, I had major dif­fi­cul­ties with any­thing that requi­red sus­tained visu­al effort — rea­ding, wat­ching TV, dri­ving, and simi­lar acti­vi­ties.

After only a short time, my eyes would start bur­ning (they were actual­ly red almost all the time), and hea­da­ches would set in. Bright sun­light made ever­y­thing noti­ce­ab­ly worse.

Your prism len­ses cor­rec­ting my bino­cu­lar visi­on dis­or­der have made my life as a tea­cher in a tro­pi­cal coun­try signi­fi­cant­ly easier — espe­ci­al­ly sin­ce more than 80% of my work depends on my eyes (pre­pa­ra­ti­on, gra­ding, rea­ding, etc.), and we recei­ve far more inten­se sun­light here in Bra­zil.

With your glas­ses, I can once again read for hours, dri­ve, watch TV, and car­ry out all my usu­al tasks wit­hout the sym­ptoms I used to strugg­le with. I would like to sin­ce­re­ly thank you for the effort and pati­ence you inves­ted in exami­ning my eyes. Not ever­yo­ne is wil­ling to take that kind of time.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Ursu­la D. (Munich)

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man — trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

The who­le ordeal began when I deci­ded last year to sche­du­le a gene­ral health check-up. As part of that, I had my pre­scrip­ti­on che­cked by an oph­thal­mo­lo­gist for the first time in 30 years. I was sur­pri­sed to learn that, ins­tead of –3.00 diop­ters, my left eye now only nee­ded –1.00, but with 1.25 cylin­der.

When I tried the new glas­ses, my visi­on was shar­per than ever — but very soon my eyes beca­me irri­ta­ted and tired, and I took the glas­ses off again. “Tho­se are just initi­al adjus­t­ment issues,” my opti­ci­an assu­red me. I kept try­ing for seve­ral more days, but my eyes reac­ted more and more stron­gly with irri­ta­ti­on and red­ness.

After­wards I went to two more opti­ci­ans, ano­ther oph­thal­mo­lo­gist, and even an eye cen­ter.
Ever­y­whe­re I was told that the pre­scrip­ti­on of my new glas­ses was cor­rect.

I retur­ned to the opti­ci­an who had made them, explai­ning that I sim­ply could not wear the glas­ses. He had me look at a test image with a cross on it — the hori­zon­tal bar appeared shifted upward — so he sent me to an opto­me­trist spe­cia­li­zing in bino­cu­lar visi­on. That opto­me­trist made me a pair of prism glas­ses for €550, using the MKH/​Haase method. Unfort­u­na­te­ly, I expe­ri­en­ced the exact same pro­blems as befo­re: eye pain, hea­da­ches, and bright red eyes.

A week later, the opto­me­trist re-mea­su­red my eyes and made new prism len­ses for free. But tho­se glas­ses cau­sed the same unbe­ara­ble sym­ptoms. I would pull them off at red traf­fic lights becau­se the strain beca­me too much, only put­ting them back on once the light tur­ned green. By then I was com­ple­te­ly despe­ra­te — my eyes had adapt­ed so much to the prism glas­ses that I could no lon­ger see pro­per­ly with my old glas­ses wit­hout prisms eit­her.

The opto­me­trist even­tual­ly told me that the pro­blem must have ano­ther cau­se — the prism glas­ses were, in his view, “cor­rect­ly mea­su­red.”

With bur­ning, bright-red eyes and aching temp­les, I spent hours sear­ching the inter­net, try­ing to edu­ca­te mys­elf about prism glas­ses. I came across war­nings about prism len­ses mea­su­red using the MKH/​Haase method — name­ly, that they can wor­sen bino­cu­lar visi­on issues over time. This worried me great­ly, espe­ci­al­ly becau­se I had begun see­ing dou­ble with my prism glas­ses.

After that, I stop­ped wea­ring them almost enti­re­ly, except for dri­ving.

I no lon­ger remem­ber exact­ly which search term final­ly led me to Mr. Peschlow’s web­site — but what I do remem­ber is this sen­tence:
“I offer a three-year gua­ran­tee on my prism glas­ses.”

That made me keep rea­ding. I found report after report from peo­p­le with simi­lar pro­blems who had been hel­ped by him.
I boo­ked a flight to Ber­lin.

Mr. Pesch­low exami­ned my eyes tho­rough­ly and quick­ly dis­co­ver­ed that I did not need prism glas­ses at all. My bino­cu­lar devia­ti­on chan­ges depen­ding on gaze direc­tion and the­r­e­fo­re can­not be cor­rec­ted with prisms. What mat­te­red most, he explai­ned, was res­to­ring opti­mal fusi­on of my eyes in all gaze posi­ti­ons. He car­ri­ed out extre­me­ly pre­cise mea­su­re­ments for this.

Not long after, the new glas­ses arri­ved by mail from Ber­lin.
Mr. Pesch­low redu­ced the cylin­der in my left lens becau­se some peo­p­le can­not tole­ra­te cylin­der in only one of the two len­ses — and now I know that I am one of tho­se peo­p­le.

One lens still nee­ded a slight cor­rec­tion, but now — after a long peri­od of suf­fe­ring — I final­ly have glas­ses that I can wear and with which I see well again!

No oph­thal­mo­lo­gist had been able to help me. I tru­ly didn’t know what else to do befo­re coming to Ber­lin.
I am deep­ly, deep­ly gra­teful to Mr. Pesch­low.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Frank L. (Hes­se)

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man — trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

As a soft­ware deve­lo­per, you spend six to nine hours a day in front of a screen. The eyes are under con­stant strain — so in my case, the bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion (BVD) had extre­me con­se­quen­ces. The pro­blems star­ted about eight years ago, slow­ly and almost harm­less­ly at first, but over the fol­lo­wing three years they escala­ted to the point whe­re it was prac­ti­cal­ly cer­tain that I would have to quit my job — becau­se I sim­ply couldn’t func­tion any­mo­re.

Often, after just two hours of work, I was bare­ly able to read text or source code on the screen. When I got up from my desk and wal­ked down the hall­way, ever­y­thing around me see­med to sway. I had stop­ped going to the com­pa­ny cafe­te­ria long befo­re that, becau­se by mid­day I was so ten­se and irri­ta­ble that I could hard­ly sit still. Some after­noons I wasn’t sure whe­ther I could even make it from my desk to the par­king lot — and on seve­ral occa­si­ons I felt I was on the ver­ge of col­lapsing (thank­ful­ly it never actual­ly hap­pen­ed).

This extre­me irri­ta­bi­li­ty and inner rest­less­ness felt like try­ing to thread a need­le over and over — fai­ling repea­ted­ly — and rea­ching the point whe­re you’re rea­dy to snap. That sta­te of “almost snap­ping” best descri­bes how I work­ed for four years. I tried ever­y­thing to calm the sym­ptoms: loo­king out the win­dow for a while, clo­sing my eyes and moving them (which hurt — it felt like mus­cle soreness). Light sen­si­ti­vi­ty, hea­da­ches, and simi­lar issues were just minor side effects.

Of cour­se, I went to doc­tors. First my GP, then an oph­thal­mo­lo­gist with an orthop­tic depart­ment. They pre­scri­bed glas­ses, tried prism foils — not­hing hel­ped. Even­tual­ly I con­vin­ced my GP that some­thing was serious­ly wrong. He dia­gno­sed burn­out — which wasn’t enti­re­ly wrong, but the under­ly­ing cau­se was my visi­on pro­blems, which he didn’t con­sider rele­vant. I stay­ed home for a week, then ever­y­thing con­tin­ued just as befo­re.

Later, I was sent to a neu­ro­lo­gist who all but pres­su­red me into taking psy­cho­tro­pic medi­ca­ti­on and couldn’t under­stand why I refu­sed and kept insis­ting that my eyes were the real pro­blem. After that: ano­ther oph­thal­mo­lo­gist, two visits to a uni­ver­si­ty cli­nic (what I expe­ri­en­ced the­re is inde­scri­ba­ble), a pri­va­te eye cli­nic… count­less iden­ti­cal exami­na­ti­ons, always ending with the same con­clu­si­on: “Your eyes are fine.” An opti­ci­an who put in a gre­at deal of effort also couldn’t help.

I was at the end of my strength, sur­vi­ving from month to month, con­stant­ly won­de­ring what else I could do for a living. I had come across the web­site richtig-sehen.de befo­re, but until then I had avo­ided the long trip to Ber­lin. Befo­re han­ding in my resi­gna­ti­on, I deci­ded to use that final chan­ce.

Even on the pho­ne — and at that point I had no hope left — Mr. Pesch­low was abso­lut­e­ly cer­tain he could help me after hea­ring my sym­ptoms. Not­hing like that had hap­pen­ed befo­re. I told him that more than a dozen spe­cia­lists had fai­led. He sim­ply said I should come in — in a few days, things would be bet­ter.
He was right.

With the first pair of glas­ses, I alre­a­dy noti­ced a clear impro­ve­ment (kee­ping in mind that at my first appoint­ment my eyes were extre­me­ly strai­ned, ten­se, and over­work­ed). After a few weeks, the cor­rec­tion was fine-tun­ed, and from then on ever­y­thing impro­ved rapidly.

I have now been wea­ring the­se glas­ses for about 15 months, working at the same job, but pro­du­cing 50% more than befo­re — and I am almost com­ple­te­ly sym­ptom-free.

Thank you so much!!!

Expe­ri­ence Report from Ste­fan Z. (Ber­lin)

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man — trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

I have been near­sigh­ted sin­ce child­hood. About a year ago, addi­tio­nal pro­blems in the near ran­ge began. Rea­ding beca­me more stre­nuous, and long hours of com­pu­ter work cau­sed hea­da­ches. When I noti­ced that I could no lon­ger pro­per­ly distin­gu­ish red/​blue con­trasts in color video pre­sen­ta­ti­ons, I con­sul­ted an expert in bino­cu­lar visi­on, Prof. Dr. Die­ter Meth­ling. He was the first to point out that a bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion (BVD) might be the cau­se.

Among opti­ci­ans — and even among oph­thal­mo­lo­gists — the­re see­med to be no con­sen­sus on this topic. Some belie­ved that prisms would only make the mis­a­lignment worse and that one should ins­tead attend “eye trai­ning.” Others recom­men­ded prisms becau­se they reli­e­ve the eye mus­cles and allow the visu­al sys­tem to ful­ly bene­fit from the refrac­ti­ve cor­rec­tion of the glas­ses.
In short: I was unde­ci­ded.

After ano­ther dis­cus­sion with an oph­thal­mo­lo­gist, we again tal­ked about cor­rec­ting the bino­cu­lar visi­on dis­or­der. I told him about Prof. Methling’s opi­ni­on, and we agreed that it was worth giving prism cor­rec­tion a try.

As a spe­cia­list in this field, Mr. Pesch­low in Ber­lin — then loca­ted near Ade­nau­er­platz — was recom­men­ded to me. Even during the initi­al sche­du­ling call, it beca­me clear that this was not a “quick sales” envi­ron­ment. I was told that at least an hour would be nee­ded for the exami­na­ti­on. In my opi­ni­on, that hour was very well spent: the cor­rec­tion was car­ri­ed out with gre­at care, and we repea­ted­ly pau­sed to allow the eyes to relax. To ful­ly enjoy the new visu­al expe­ri­ence, I fol­lo­wed the recom­men­da­ti­on to choo­se high-qua­li­ty pla­s­tic len­ses, even though they cost more than con­ven­tio­nal len­ses.

When I picked up the glas­ses, the dif­fe­rence com­pared to befo­re was dra­ma­ti­cal­ly bet­ter. Sin­ce then, I haven’t wan­ted to wear any of my old glas­ses again. Rea­ding and com­pu­ter work have been com­ple­te­ly sym­ptom-free. I haven’t yet had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to test whe­ther the red/​blue con­trast issue has resol­ved, sim­ply becau­se the right situa­ti­on hasn’t ari­sen.

My con­clu­si­on: I am very satis­fied and can high­ly recom­mend cor­rec­ting a bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion using pro­per­ly fit­ted prism len­ses.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Gabi Strack (Spey­er)

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man — trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

Befo­re my bino­cu­lar visi­on mis­a­lignment was cor­rec­ted by Mr. Pesch­low, my eyes were tired and red by mid­day. I fre­quent­ly had hea­da­ches, and my visu­al sharp­ness fluc­tua­ted noti­ce­ab­ly throug­hout the day. Howe­ver, the most unp­lea­sant sym­ptom was my extre­me light sen­si­ti­vi­ty. I even wore sun­glas­ses out­side when it was rai­ning becau­se other­wi­se my eyes would hurt and start to water.

Sin­ce the cor­rec­tion, all of the­se sym­ptoms have dis­ap­peared. My near­sigh­ted­ness has at least stop­ped wor­sening — I belie­ve it has even impro­ved slight­ly. I can who­le­he­ar­ted­ly recom­mend this exami­na­ti­on to ever­yo­ne.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Maria H. (Ber­lin)

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man — trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

Rea­ding glas­ses for my age-rela­ted far­sigh­ted­ness had been pro­ble­ma­tic from the very begin­ning, becau­se I always felt that I couldn’t see pro­per­ly with them. This blur­ry visi­on made me feel inse­cu­re while dri­ving, cau­sed fre­quent hea­da­ches, and signi­fi­cant­ly affec­ted my over­all well-being. End­less visits to opti­ci­ans and oph­thal­mo­lo­gists — whe­re I repea­ted­ly poin­ted out that the glas­ses didn’t feel right and that I con­stant­ly nee­ded to adjust them — even­tual­ly led to the con­clu­si­on that the pro­blem must have psy­cho­lo­gi­cal cau­ses.

After recei­ving my new glas­ses from Mr. Pesch­low five years ago, all of the­se com­plaints dis­ap­peared. I felt as if I had gai­ned a com­ple­te­ly new qua­li­ty of life — some­thing that now feels enti­re­ly natu­ral.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Klaus H. (Autumn 2002)

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man — trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

For me, ever­y­thing pro­ba­b­ly star­ted alre­a­dy in my youth (around 1958), but as so often hap­pens, no one real­ly knew what the cau­se was. “Read a book!” peo­p­le would say. “Yes, yes, I will…” I ans­we­red — but after a short time I would lose inte­rest, and my eyes would begin to clo­se from exhaus­ti­on. This strugg­le con­tin­ued for years, and unfort­u­na­te­ly my desi­re to read was limi­t­ed only to what was abso­lut­e­ly neces­sa­ry for school and work.

Years later, in the 1970s, I heard for the first time about Pola tests and prism glas­ses and deci­ded to try my luck with them. Unfort­u­na­te­ly, my eyes were over­cor­rec­ted back then, making my visi­on not easier, but actual­ly worse. Later, when I tru­ly nee­ded glas­ses for both distance and near visi­on, I tried again — but only with mode­ra­te suc­cess.

Then, as fate would have it, I found my cur­rent opti­ci­an. He advi­sed me well from the begin­ning, and I trus­ted him imme­dia­te­ly. To keep it short: today, I am satis­fied.

I now have a pair of rea­ding glas­ses, a pair for my bel­oved com­pu­ter, and bifo­cal glas­ses for both distance and near visi­on. My over­all well-being has impro­ved dra­ma­ti­cal­ly! I have beco­me cal­mer becau­se the con­stant effort of my eyes to ali­gn bino­cu­lar­ly is now bare­ly noti­ceable. Swit­ching my gaze back and forth to compa­re num­bers or text used to give me hea­da­ches.

Now this has impro­ved signi­fi­cant­ly. I noti­ce that my eyes no lon­ger wan­der rest­less­ly. I can calm­ly fix­a­te on text on eit­her side wit­hout strain. I am extre­me­ly gra­teful to my opti­ci­an and can only recom­mend him and his team.

Fol­low-Up Report from Autumn 2008

It was beco­ming time for new len­ses becau­se I had stop­ped fee­ling com­for­ta­ble with my bifo­cal glas­ses. I con­stant­ly wan­ted to clean the len­ses becau­se I felt as if I were see­ing through a film — even though the len­ses were actual­ly per­fect­ly clean. I also began to feel a pres­sing dis­com­fort in my eyes again, both at distance and near.

So I went to Mr. Pesch­low and descri­bed my sym­ptoms. He mea­su­red my eyes, and I could hard­ly belie­ve the result. Mr. Pesch­low told me that, thanks to con­sis­t­ent­ly wea­ring my prism glas­ses, my visu­al acui­ty had impro­ved so much that now wea­k­er prism values were suf­fi­ci­ent to cor­rect my bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion.

Said and done. With the new len­ses, I can once again see ever­y­thing cle­ar­ly and shar­ply, and the unp­lea­sant pres­su­re in my eyes has dis­ap­peared. Distance visi­on and com­pu­ter work are com­ple­te­ly fine again. Rea­ding feels abso­lut­e­ly com­for­ta­ble, and even long rea­ding ses­si­ons are no lon­ger tiring.

Thank you for ever­y­thing.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Klaus N.

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man — trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

Sud­den Dou­ble Visi­on – Bino­cu­lar Visi­on Dys­func­tion – Suspec­ted Stro­ke

Dear Mr. Pesch­low,

as you know, on Decem­ber 23, 2004, I sud­den­ly began see­ing dou­ble — hori­zon­tal­ly dis­pla­ced dou­ble images, wit­hout any pri­or signs of visu­al dete­rio­ra­ti­on. When the dou­ble visi­on did not dis­ap­pear the fol­lo­wing day, I went to the emer­gen­cy depart­ment at the Ste­glitz Cli­nic.

The­re, I was first exami­ned by an oph­thal­mo­lo­gist, who noted that my eyes were no lon­ger moving in a coor­di­na­ted direc­tion. No other patho­lo­gi­cal fin­dings were detec­ted. Sub­se­quent neu­ro­lo­gi­cal exami­na­ti­ons also reve­a­led no cau­se: CT scan, MRI, long-term EEG, and a spi­nal tap were all unre­mar­kab­le. At the moment, my heart is still being exami­ned.

Becau­se of my long-stan­ding cont­act with you, we con­sul­ted you regar­ding this visu­al pro­blem. You told me that after a tho­rough dia­gno­sis and con­sul­ta­ti­on — and with a pro­fes­sio­nal­ly made pair of prism pro­gres­si­ve len­ses — I would be able to see cle­ar­ly again.

Ever­y­thing hap­pen­ed exact­ly as you pre­dic­ted. Wit­hout any adapt­a­ti­on pro­blems, I was able to see shar­ply again as soon as I recei­ved the new glas­ses, which were made very quick­ly. The diz­ziness stop­ped, and the nau­sea dis­ap­peared com­ple­te­ly. Howe­ver, wit­hout the new glas­ses, I still see dou­ble images. Fol­lo­wing your advice, I will try to streng­then my eye mus­cles through appro­pria­te exer­ci­s­es.

After lear­ning more about bino­cu­lar visi­on dis­or­ders, I rea­li­ze that I have been very for­t­u­na­te. It appears that I did not suf­fer a stro­ke after all. For anyo­ne rea­ding this, I can only stron­gly recom­mend see­king imme­dia­te medi­cal atten­ti­on at a hos­pi­tal with a stro­ke unit at the first sign of sud­den dou­ble visi­on. But if medi­cal exami­na­ti­ons show no neu­ro­lo­gi­cal cau­se, the next step should be to seek your advice wit­hout delay.

I wish you con­tin­ued suc­cess in hel­ping all tho­se who come to you — just as suc­cessful­ly as you hel­ped me.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Edel­traut L. (Ber­lin)

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man — trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

For about 11 years, I had been wea­ring pro­gres­si­ve len­ses. That was when my “dif­fi­cul­ties” began. I could no lon­ger ride an escala­tor down­ward wit­hout dis­com­fort. When rea­ding, I con­stant­ly had to move my head, and rea­ding while lying down beca­me com­ple­te­ly impos­si­ble. Working at the com­pu­ter exhaus­ted my eyes very quick­ly — they began to water, my eyelids were swol­len, and I suf­fe­r­ed from lack of con­cen­tra­ti­on, migrai­nes, visu­al dis­tur­ban­ces, and fli­cke­ring eyes.

For this reason, I kept chan­ging oph­thal­mo­lo­gists, opti­ci­ans, and glas­ses. With every new pair, the same com­plaints retur­ned after a very short time.

In spring 1996, I came to Mr. Pesch­low by chan­ce. After a short con­ver­sa­ti­on and a quick look at my face, he sug­gested per­forming a tho­rough and time-con­sum­ing exami­na­ti­on of my visu­al pro­blems. This exami­na­ti­on reve­a­led a bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion (BVD).

After recei­ving my new prism glas­ses — and a short adjus­t­ment peri­od of about three days — a com­ple­te­ly dif­fe­rent life began for me. All the sym­ptoms men­tio­ned abo­ve dis­ap­peared and have not retur­ned sin­ce. I can now read in any posi­ti­on; I move only my eyes, not my head. For me, the­se impro­ve­ments have signi­fi­cant­ly increased my qua­li­ty of life.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Car­men-Syl­via K. (Ber­lin)

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man — trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

I have nee­ded glas­ses sin­ce the age of 16. I regu­lar­ly visi­ted oph­thal­mo­lo­gists to ensu­re that my len­ses always matched my cur­rent pre­scrip­ti­on. Despi­te the­se regu­lar check-ups and increa­ses in diop­ters, I con­tin­ued to suf­fer from hea­da­ches — for exam­p­le, after only a short time working on the com­pu­ter or rea­ding a book. When dri­ving, espe­ci­al­ly at dusk or at night, I noti­ced that I could not see pro­per­ly.

I could not cle­ar­ly see the edges of the road and felt as if I were dri­ving through a tun­nel. As a result, I even­tual­ly stop­ped dri­ving during tho­se times altog­e­ther.

About five years ago, I met Mr. Pesch­low. He found no dete­rio­ra­ti­on in my visu­al acui­ty, and becau­se of my sym­ptoms, he con­duc­ted a test spe­ci­fi­cal­ly for bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion (BVD). A few days later, I recei­ved my new len­ses, which cor­rec­ted this mis­a­lignment.

The adjus­t­ment peri­od for the­se len­ses was about one day. Sin­ce then, I have been able to read and work wit­hout any pro­blems. When dri­ving at dusk or at night, I can final­ly see ever­y­thing cle­ar­ly again — the “tun­nel visi­on” is gone.

This type of test is appar­ent­ly not per­for­med by oph­thal­mo­lo­gists, likely becau­se it requi­res too much time. After more than 20 years, Mr. Pesch­low was final­ly able to sol­ve my visi­on pro­blems — some­thing that seve­ral oph­thal­mo­lo­gists and opti­ci­ans befo­re him had not achie­ved.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Ursu­la A. (Munich)

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man — trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

As my visi­on pro­blems com­bi­ned with age-rela­ted far­sigh­ted­ness gra­du­al­ly beca­me unbe­ara­ble, eye pres­su­re and con­stant sen­si­ti­vi­ty to light began to domi­na­te my enti­re day. The ten­si­on in my neck and should­ers had long beco­me a real bur­den — get­ting worse day by day.

I have now been wea­ring my new prism glas­ses for ten days, from ear­ly mor­ning until late evening, with gre­at enthu­si­asm. I no lon­ger have any visu­al pro­blems — neither at the lap­top nor in ever­y­day life. Ever­y­thing appears much shar­per and more vibrant than befo­re. Nor­mal light no lon­ger blinds me, I have no eye pres­su­re, and no hea­da­ches at all. I can work com­ple­te­ly wit­hout dis­com­fort, and my eyes still feel fresh even late at night. The ten­si­on — inclu­ding in my jaw — is dis­sol­ving on its own.

Being able to tru­ly see in 3D now is the icing on the cake, alt­hough limi­t­ed 3D visi­on had not bothe­red me too much befo­re. Inte­res­t­ingly, my left eye had always appeared smal­ler than the right. Now that the left eye is final­ly invol­ved in the visu­al pro­cess again, both eyes are the same size!

I never would have belie­ved that two pro­per­ly fit­ted glas­ses could chan­ge my life so pro­found­ly.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Simo­ne G. (Hes­se, Ger­ma­ny)

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man — trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

Sin­ce child­hood, I remem­ber strugg­ling with my visi­on. In pri­ma­ry school, I always wan­ted to sit in the front row becau­se my eyes had gre­at dif­fi­cul­ty adjus­ting from rea­ding to loo­king at distant objects like the chalk­board. The oph­thal­mo­lo­gist insis­ted that my eyes were “per­fect­ly fine” and that I sim­ply wan­ted atten­ti­on.
Later, while pre­pa­ring for my Abitur and spen­ding seve­ral hours each day stu­dy­ing, my visu­al pro­blems wor­sened. My eyes tired quick­ly while rea­ding, and I deve­lo­ped eye pain and hea­da­ches.

I con­sul­ted seve­ral oph­thal­mo­lo­gists, none of whom found a cau­se. I was then refer­red to a uni­ver­si­ty eye cli­nic, whe­re they dia­gno­sed “dry eyes” and recom­men­ded eye drops — which did not help at all. As my sym­ptoms per­sis­ted, I was sent to a neu­ro­lo­gist becau­se it was suspec­ted that I might have a brain tumor. After num­e­rous exami­na­ti­ons, all with nor­mal results, I was again told that my visi­on was “100% fine.” Some doc­tors assu­med psy­cho­lo­gi­cal or hor­mo­n­al cau­ses, but none of that was con­firm­ed.
Even­tual­ly, I gave up and resi­gned mys­elf to the sym­ptoms.

Four years later, near the end of my stu­dies, my visi­on beca­me so poor that wri­ting my the­sis was impos­si­ble. Dri­ving was out of the ques­ti­on — at night I was so sen­si­ti­ve to light that even street­lights or head­lights over­whel­med me. I had beco­me so light-sen­si­ti­ve that I some­ti­mes wore sun­glas­ses at night. Rea­ding was bare­ly pos­si­ble even with 200% font size on my com­pu­ter, and I suf­fe­r­ed from dai­ly eye pain and hea­da­ches.

This time, I did not visit ano­ther oph­thal­mo­lo­gist but went to a spe­cia­li­zed opto­me­trist. He dia­gno­sed a seve­re bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion (BVD) and wan­ted to pre­scri­be prism glas­ses with around 20 prism diop­ters, fol­lo­wed by an imme­dia­te eye mus­cle sur­gery. Sin­ce I abso­lut­e­ly did not want sur­gery, I rese­ar­ched fur­ther online — and that’s when I dis­co­ver­ed Mr. Peschlow’s web­site. For the first time, ever­y­thing I read made sen­se, and the sym­ptoms descri­bed matched mine exact­ly.

When I tra­ve­led to Ber­lin, I imme­dia­te­ly felt unders­tood and taken serious­ly. For the first time, I no lon­ger felt like I had some “mys­te­rious con­di­ti­on” — I felt that someone could actual­ly help me.
Mr. Pesch­low car­ri­ed out a very tho­rough exami­na­ti­on and dia­gno­sed a ver­ti­cal bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion. I could hard­ly wait to recei­ve my first ever pair of glas­ses.

When I final­ly put them on, my eyes adjus­ted within just two minu­tes. Sin­ce then, I can read wit­hout limi­ta­ti­on, work com­for­ta­b­ly at the com­pu­ter, dri­ve at night, and go out­side wit­hout wea­ring sun­glas­ses at night. I am 100% satis­fied, free from eye pain and hea­da­ches, and I would never give up my prism glas­ses again.

The only dis­cou­ra­ging part was having to fight with my oph­thal­mo­lo­gist to get a pre­scrip­ti­on for insu­rance covera­ge. She see­med fun­da­men­tal­ly oppo­sed to prism glas­ses. Only after explai­ning my long histo­ry and the fact that I am now free of sym­ptoms did she final­ly agree.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Luca A.’s Mother (Gum­mers­bach, NRW – Janu­ary 2016)

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man — trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

Our son Luca was a very calm and balan­ced child from birth (2002). The pro­blems only began when he star­ted school. After just four weeks, his tea­cher infor­med me that he had major con­cen­tra­ti­on dif­fi­cul­ties and very poor hand­wri­ting. So we visi­ted our pedia­tri­ci­an. Sin­ce he found not­hing wrong, he refer­red us to an oph­thal­mo­lo­gist. Not­hing was found the­re eit­her; Luca was cer­ti­fied to have full visu­al acui­ty.
Back we went to the pedia­tri­ci­an, who pre­scri­bed occu­pa­tio­nal the­ra­py. Luca atten­ded for about a year — wit­hout any noti­ceable impro­ve­ment. We were then advi­sed to see a child psy­cho­lo­gist. After seve­ral tests, we were sent to the uni­ver­si­ty cli­nic in Colo­gne. Again, not­hing was found, and we were told that Luca did not have a “psych­ia­tri­cal­ly defi­ned atten­ti­on defi­cit dis­or­der.”
We were back to squa­re one.

By 4th gra­de, his con­cen­tra­ti­on pro­blems had not impro­ved — and now he deve­lo­ped seve­re migrai­nes with vomi­ting and was unable to see the chalk­board pro­per­ly. Back to the pedia­tri­ci­an we went, and once again we were sent to an eye doc­tor. This time, far­sigh­ted­ness was dia­gno­sed and Luca got his first pair of glas­ses.

Howe­ver, the glas­ses did not­hing to impro­ve his school per­for­mance. We had to return to the child psy­cho­lo­gist, whe­re Luca was tes­ted for dys­le­xia (LRS) and dia­gno­sed accor­din­gly. We were advi­sed to put him in an occu­pa­tio­nal the­ra­py lear­ning group and to con­sider giving him Rital­in. Neither was an opti­on for us, so we enrol­led Luca in a lear­ning and move­ment the­ra­py prac­ti­ce, which he atten­ded for one and a half years. His spel­ling impro­ved some­what, but the con­cen­tra­ti­on pro­blems remain­ed unch­an­ged.

By the time Luca was in 6th gra­de, his tea­cher told us during a parent-tea­cher mee­ting that his con­cen­tra­ti­on issues were so seve­re that his gra­des were wor­sening. She stres­sed that some­thing had to be done urgen­tly. But what were we sup­po­sed to do? We had alre­a­dy seen every doc­tor and the­ra­pist ima­gi­nable!

I again dis­cus­sed Luca’s dif­fi­cul­ties with his lear­ning the­ra­pist. I don’t know how she came to the idea, but she said she wan­ted to per­form a quick test: she held a pen 30 cm in front of Luca’s face and moved it toward his nose while Luca was sup­po­sed to fol­low it with his eyes. I was speechl­ess at what I saw: his right eye fol­lo­wed the pen as expec­ted — but his left eye remain­ed fixed straight ahead.
We imme­dia­te­ly went back to the oph­thal­mo­lo­gist, espe­ci­al­ly sin­ce Luca’s migrai­nes were beco­ming more fre­quent and we had noti­ced that he blin­ked exces­si­ve­ly with his left eye sin­ce wea­ring glas­ses — espe­ci­al­ly in stressful situa­tions and after school.

The oph­thal­mo­lo­gist found only a mini­mal chan­ge in Luca’s far­sigh­ted­ness and declared the glas­ses to be cor­rect. When I men­tio­ned the therapist’s test result and the sus­pi­ci­on of a bino­cu­lar visi­on dis­or­der, he dis­missed it abrupt­ly: “That’s non­sen­se — such a thing doesn’t exist.”
He pre­scri­bed an oint­ment for Luca’s blin­king, clai­ming it was an eye irri­ta­ti­on. When the oint­ment did not help, I retur­ned once more and asked again whe­ther Luca might have a bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion. He refu­sed to even con­sider it — so I gave up on that rou­te.

But I was not wil­ling to give up for my child. I sear­ched online for ans­wers and found Mr. Peschlow’s web­site. I read ever­y­thing careful­ly and reco­gni­zed Luca’s sym­ptoms in seve­ral of the expe­ri­ence reports. In Janu­ary 2013, we tra­ve­led to Ber­lin — he was our last hope after years of tears and count­less fruit­less appoint­ments.

Mr. Pesch­low imme­dia­te­ly dia­gno­sed a bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion (BVD) and took gre­at care in mea­su­ring Luca’s eyes. About eight days later, Luca recei­ved his prism glas­ses by mail and put them on right away. He couldn’t stop smi­ling — final­ly he could tru­ly see.
He said:
“Ever­y­thing looks com­ple­te­ly dif­fe­rent. The neighbor’s chim­ney — it pops out! It’s like 3D. Mom, I’m never wea­ring the old glas­ses again.”

Sin­ce his Win­kel­fehl­sich­tig­keit was cor­rec­ted, Luca has chan­ged com­ple­te­ly: he is more con­fi­dent, the hea­da­ches and eye twit­ching dis­ap­peared, and his per­for­mance at school impro­ved dra­ma­ti­cal­ly. After repea­ting 6th gra­de, ever­y­thing final­ly star­ted to go well. He now gets good gra­des and the con­cen­tra­ti­on pro­blems are com­ple­te­ly gone.

We can­not express how gra­teful we are to Mr. Pesch­low. He chan­ged our son’s life — and ours as well — in the most posi­ti­ve way ima­gi­nable.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Lau­ra S.’s Mother (Rhi­ne­land-Pala­ti­na­te, Ger­ma­ny)

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man — trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

My daugh­ter Lau­ra is 13 years old and wears glas­ses for visu­al acui­ty. Sin­ce ear­ly child­hood, she fre­quent­ly com­plai­ned about neck ten­si­on and hea­da­ches. After an ortho­pe­dist was only able to pro­vi­de short-term reli­ef through phy­si­cal the­ra­py, we con­sul­ted an osteo­path.

The osteo­path per­for­med a tho­rough exami­na­ti­on and con­cluded that Lau­ra was likely having pro­blems with her eye mus­cles. He stron­gly recom­men­ded that we see a spe­cia­list for bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tions (BVD).

So we sche­du­led an appoint­ment with a local oph­thal­mo­lo­gist. Seve­ral tests were per­for­med, and Lau­ra recei­ved her first pre­scrip­ti­on for prism glas­ses:
5 prism diop­ters base-out for each eye.

The opti­ci­an who made the glas­ses told us that he was also trai­ned in bino­cu­lar visi­on cor­rec­tion. He re-mea­su­red Laura’s visi­on and con­firm­ed the ophthalmologist’s pre­scrip­ti­on.

Lau­ra had always been an excel­lent stu­dent — but once she began wea­ring the prism glas­ses, her real suf­fe­ring star­ted.

Ins­tead of impro­ving her neck pro­blems and hea­da­ches, seve­re diz­ziness sud­den­ly appeared. In addi­ti­on, her over­all beha­vi­or chan­ged dra­ma­ti­cal­ly — and not for the bet­ter. She bare­ly mana­ged to get through the school day, and after­ward she was com­ple­te­ly exhaus­ted.

Lau­ra with­drew more and more, and on every day she wore the prism glas­ses, she was sim­ply mise­ra­ble. Our for­mer “book­worm,” who used to secret­ly read under the covers at night, now only read what was abso­lut­e­ly neces­sa­ry to com­ple­te her home­work.

We went back to the opti­ci­an, who had known Lau­ra sin­ce she was a todd­ler. He dis­missed her sym­ptoms and told her to “push through it,” insis­ting she was just sen­si­ti­ve and nee­ded to adapt. But things did not impro­ve — they got worse. The diz­ziness grew so seve­re that I had to pick her up from school seve­ral times.

So we retur­ned to the oph­thal­mo­lo­gist. He clai­med that Laura’s prism values were still not suf­fi­ci­ent and nee­ded to be signi­fi­cant­ly increased. Accor­ding to his new pre­scrip­ti­on, Laura’s prism cor­rec­tion should be rai­sed to a total of 18 prism diop­ters base-out.

Lau­ra tried to explain that she alre­a­dy couldn’t tole­ra­te the cur­rent prism strength, but her con­cerns were dis­missed enti­re­ly. We knew this could not con­ti­nue.

At this point, I was rea­dy to aban­don prism cor­rec­tion altog­e­ther and have ordi­na­ry glas­ses made for her again. But by chan­ce, I dis­co­ver­ed Mr. Peschlow’s web­site. In hind­sight, I can only say: What incre­di­ble luck.

Sin­ce we had alre­a­dy plan­ned to spend the Eas­ter holi­days of 2009 in Ber­lin, I boo­ked an appoint­ment with Mr. Pesch­low. For the very first time, Lau­ra felt tru­ly heard — that someone was taking her serious­ly and genui­ne­ly wan­ted to find the opti­mal solu­ti­on for her.

The prism glas­ses made by Mr. Pesch­low have com­ple­te­ly chan­ged Laura’s life.

Every mor­ning, the very first thing she does is reach for her glas­ses on the bedside table. She wears them hap­pi­ly and con­sis­t­ent­ly, and I can see her con­fi­dence retur­ning. She now has far fewer hea­da­ches and neck ten­si­on than befo­re.

Thank you, Mr. Pesch­low, for your time, your pati­ence, and the care you gave our daugh­ter.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Timo S.’s Par­ents (Rhi­ne­land-Pala­ti­na­te, Ger­ma­ny)

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man — trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

Our son Timo is 11 years old and has had extre­me­ly mes­sy hand­wri­ting for as long as we can remem­ber. He has ADHD, and by chan­ce we came across an artic­le about bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion (BVD).

We spo­ke to our doc­tor about it, and he told us that bino­cu­lar visi­on dis­or­ders can inde­ed occur tog­e­ther with ADHD. He then refer­red us to an opti­ci­an he had been working with for many years.

This opti­ci­an exami­ned Timo’s eyes and clai­med to have found a rather seve­re bino­cu­lar visi­on dis­or­der. For that reason, both the opti­ci­an and our doc­tor recom­men­ded that we con­sult an oph­thal­mo­lo­gist spe­cia­li­zing in bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion.

After a long wai­ting peri­od, we final­ly recei­ved seve­ral appoint­ments with this spe­cia­list. Timo’s eyes were dila­ted, and mea­su­re­ments were taken using the Pola­test.

The Pola­test results indi­ca­ted that our son had a seve­re bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion and, accor­ding to the oph­thal­mo­lo­gist, urgen­tly nee­ded eye mus­cle sur­gery. In front of Timo, the doc­tor pro­cee­ded to descri­be the sur­gery in gre­at detail.

Until the sur­gery, Timo was given a pre­scrip­ti­on for prism glas­ses — inclu­ding an addi­tio­nal prism foil appli­ed to one of the len­ses.

But with the­se glas­ses, Timo could see not­hing at all, except dou­ble images.

Becau­se of this, I sear­ched online for more infor­ma­ti­on and came across a book on bino­cu­lar visi­on dis­or­ders — which led me to Mr. Peschlow’s web­site. Ever­y­thing I read the­re made sen­se.

We dis­cus­sed it as a fami­ly and, after a very fri­end­ly pho­ne call with Mr. Pesch­low and his assistant, we deci­ded to make the long trip from Rhi­ne­land-Pala­ti­na­te to Ber­lin.

Mr. Pesch­low deter­mi­ned that Timo did not have a bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion. Ins­tead, his glas­ses sim­ply had the wrong refrac­ti­ve cor­rec­tion. Timo recei­ved new len­ses — wit­hout prisms, but with the cor­rect refrac­ti­ve values — and could see per­fect­ly imme­dia­te­ly.

We are extre­me­ly gra­teful to Mr. Pesch­low for his help and reli­e­ved that Timo was spared from under­go­ing com­ple­te­ly unneces­sa­ry eye mus­cle sur­gery.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Pia J. (Bran­den­burg, Ger­ma­ny)

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man — trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

Sep­tem­ber 2019

I didn’t know what bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion (BVD) was. I had never heard the term. I only knew the con­se­quen­ces it brought into my life — con­se­quen­ces that made me afraid of the pre­sent and rob­bed me of my future. I was despe­ra­te, hel­p­less, and exhaus­ted bey­ond mea­su­re, becau­se every sin­gle day I had to push mys­elf far bey­ond my limits just to get through it. Over time, I lost faith in mys­elf. I lost the cou­ra­ge to speak about my sym­ptoms. And I lost trust in doc­tors — trust that anyo­ne could help me at all.

My body suf­fe­r­ed. My mind suf­fe­r­ed. I was at the bot­tom. I felt des­troy­ed. Humi­lia­ted. Cal­led cra­zy. I was pre­scri­bed psy­cho­tro­pic medi­ca­ti­on. I star­ted the­ra­py. I was seda­ted — and still the world kept spin­ning befo­re my eyes. It spun in the mor­ning. It spun at noon. It spun in the evening. And after a while, it even spun at night, becau­se my body was over­sti­mu­la­ted by every sin­gle sen­sa­ti­on. My body danced seven days a week, twen­ty-four hours a day. It felt as if someone had strap­ped me, sick with a hea­vy flu, to the midd­le of a dance flo­or — with the bass poun­ding and the lights flas­hing end­less­ly. My per­cep­ti­on no lon­ger pas­sed through a fil­ter. Ever­y­thing came in ampli­fied. I heard too loud­ly. I first saw dou­ble, then tri­ple. It felt as if I could feel other people’s words on my skin. After a simp­le train ride, I felt as though I had been bea­ten. I stag­ge­red, sway­ed, and fell. Wal­king felt like try­ing to stay upright on a boun­cing cast­le while ever­yo­ne around me jum­ped, and I despera­te­ly tried not to lose my balan­ce.

The ground bul­ged visual­ly, stairs fli­cke­red, and I con­stant­ly felt as though my foot was step­ping into emp­ty space. A deep pain spread from my eyes through my head and into my lim­bs. I often fell to the right side — it didn’t mat­ter whe­ther I was stan­ding or sit­ting. I sim­ply tip­ped over becau­se my world tip­ped over. The room lea­ned side­ways. It col­lap­sed, spun around its axis, and I fell with it — at the super­mar­ket check­out, in a class­room during a parent mee­ting, or in the midd­le of an inter­sec­tion. The world til­ted and drag­ged me down. I lay on the asphalt. I lay among feet. I lay in the dirt. I heard and felt ever­y­thing hap­pe­ning around me — but I was unable to speak.

As long as ever­y­thing spun in front of my eyes, I was para­ly­zed on the insi­de. Words for­med in my head, but I couldn’t get them past my lips. Some­ti­mes this las­ted seconds, some­ti­mes minu­tes — minu­tes in which I was trap­ped insi­de my own body. I tur­ned while ever­y­thing around me sway­ed, my mus­cles pres­sing pain­ful­ly against the flo­or. It was a sen­sa­ti­on more bru­tal than any sea­sick­ness. After­wards, I was weak, drai­ned, ter­ri­fied, and deep­ly shaken by what had just hap­pen­ed. My head throb­bed, my right eye cram­ped, and a bur­ning ache spread through every mus­cle fiber in my body. And despi­te all of this — despi­te the pain, the diz­ziness, the tri­ple images I saw so cle­ar­ly they felt tan­gi­ble, despi­te my eyes rol­ling upward during the attacks and my pupils dis­ap­pearing — every doc­tor tur­ned me away.

At first I thought it was bad luck, so I went to ano­ther eye doc­tor, and then ano­ther, and ano­ther. Months pas­sed, years went by, and my life crum­bled in my hands. I stop­ped working. I stop­ped dri­ving. I missed my children’s dance per­for­man­ces becau­se I was ter­ri­fied of having an attack in the audi­ence and rui­ning their moment. I missed moments of pri­de. I missed see­ing my child­ren play on the play­ground. I missed human con­nec­tion.

On the rare occa­si­ons when I mana­ged to hold my faça­de tog­e­ther enough to go out, I couldn’t fol­low con­ver­sa­ti­ons. I couldn’t hold onto sen­ten­ces long enough to form my own. It felt as if my head were fil­led with fog — a thick, mil­ky lay­er that wrap­ped around my thoughts. Ever­y­thing felt “muf­fled.” My thoughts grew soft, slip­pery, unre­acha­ble. I knew they were the­re, but I could no lon­ger grasp them well enough to shape them into words. Deep down I knew I wasn’t stu­pid, yet I came to belie­ve it any­way.

Even­tual­ly, oph­thal­mo­lo­gists, neu­ro­lo­gists, gene­ral prac­ti­tio­ners, psy­cho­lo­gists, and ortho­pe­dists all assu­red me that not­hing was wrong with me. They told me it was anxie­ty. They told me it was my low weight. They told me it was becau­se I wasn’t working any­mo­re. They told me I wan­ted atten­ti­on. I lis­ten­ed, and I tur­ned against mys­elf. I belie­ved them and forced mys­elf out of the house. Forced mys­elf to take medi­ca­ti­on. Forced mys­elf into the­ra­py. I forced mys­elf until I thought I would die from exhaus­ti­on.

I did ever­y­thing the doc­tors asked — and not­hing impro­ved. Ever­y­thing got worse. They told me to app­ly for disa­bi­li­ty bene­fits, so I did. I was sent to eva­lua­tors — peo­p­le who took me even less serious­ly than the doc­tors had. Eva­lua­tors who insul­ted me, asking why I wan­ted a pen­si­on in my mid-twen­ties. I told them I didn’t want a pen­si­on. I wan­ted my life back. But they didn’t give me a life — they insul­ted me. They sho­ne lights into my eyes, told me to stand on one leg — I fell to the right. Told me to hop — I fell. Told me to walk a straight line — I fell again. They accu­sed me of faking. They insis­ted not­hing was wrong with my eyes. They cal­led me, word for word, “stu­pid, lazy, and use­l­ess.” I cried all the way home. I cried befo­re and after every appoint­ment. I ques­tio­ned what was wrong with me. I was devas­ta­ted that doc­tors didn’t under­stand, and even­tual­ly I didn’t under­stand mys­elf any­mo­re eit­her.

The­re was not­hing I could hold onto — no reason, no expl­ana­ti­on, no way out, no hope. Until my hus­band, despe­ra­te and frigh­ten­ed, won­de­red what else he could do. He bare­ly slept any­mo­re becau­se he was afraid I might stop breathing. And one night, he found Mr. Peschlow’s web­site.

He noti­ced the sym­ptoms matched. He found one word: Win­kel­fehl­sich­tig­keit — bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion.

We were skep­ti­cal after so many set­backs. My mother told me: “Call. We will try — but expect not­hing.”
On the pho­ne, I felt the first reli­ef I had felt in years. I descri­bed my sym­ptoms, expec­ting ano­ther dis­mis­si­ve remark — but ins­tead, a warm voice apo­lo­gi­zed for what I had been going through. She cal­med me. She lis­ten­ed. She asked the right ques­ti­ons. And she gave me an appoint­ment in the same week.

I cried again — from joy. I cried becau­se even over the pho­ne, I final­ly felt unders­tood.

Mr. Pesch­low took his time. He spo­ke with me. Trea­ted me like a human being. He met me at eye level — not with the con­de­s­cen­si­on I had grown used to. He took me serious­ly. He lis­ten­ed. He mea­su­red my bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion, and for the first time in my life I saw how the world was tru­ly sup­po­sed to look.

With the prism cor­rec­tion he deter­mi­ned for me, objects gai­ned clear out­lines. Not­hing danced. The room didn’t tilt. The flo­or didn’t bul­ge toward me. The world beca­me still. Quiet. Peaceful. I rela­xed — I think for the first time in my enti­re life.

On the dri­ve home, sit­ting next to my mother, wea­ring my new prism glas­ses, I couldn’t stop tal­king. And I didn’t even rea­li­ze that I was spea­king in full, coher­ent sen­ten­ces. It was unbe­lie­va­ble. The lane mar­kings stay­ed in place. Pas­sing cars no lon­ger left streaks of light behind them. Even the toi­let in the rest stop bath­room final­ly stood still.

Mr. Pesch­low show­ed me the world.
He taught me how to see, how to hear, how to feel again.
He — and his prac­ti­ce — saved my life.
He gave my child­ren their mother back.
He lifted my fami­ly out of des­pair.
He show­ed me that I was not cra­zy — I was sim­ply bino­cu­lar­ly mis­a­li­gned.

Thank you.

Expe­ri­ence Report from Kat­rin H. (Bran­den­burg, Ger­ma­ny) – July 2022

(Ori­gi­nal­ly writ­ten in Ger­man — trans­la­ted for inter­na­tio­nal rea­ders.)

If I wan­ted to descri­be my life befo­re mee­ting Mr. Pesch­low, I could almost copy and pas­te the expe­ri­ence report of Pia J. – from Bran­den­burg word for word.

Just like her, my world danced in front of my eyes — every sin­gle day, from mor­ning until night.

For more than 20 years, I suf­fe­r­ed from diz­ziness, balan­ce pro­blems, tin­ni­tus, nau­sea, fix­a­ti­on issues, tee­th grin­ding, light sen­si­ti­vi­ty, sound sen­si­ti­vi­ty, dif­fi­cul­ties swit­ching focus, and an ina­bi­li­ty to visual­ly fol­low peo­p­le moving around me. Shop­ping was exhaus­ting — I could bare­ly pro­cess the varie­ty of pro­ducts, and the con­stant move­ment around me over­whel­med me. Cine­ma was impos­si­ble, wat­ching TV only limi­t­ed­ly pos­si­ble, rea­ding and wri­ting were a batt­le. I felt weak, had con­cen­tra­ti­on pro­blems, and beca­me irri­ta­ble becau­se I couldn’t pro­per­ly pro­cess my sur­roun­dings and was con­stant­ly under pres­su­re to per­form. I had seve­re ten­si­on in my neck, should­ers, and back.

More and more often, I fell — hard — some­ti­mes inju­ring mys­elf. I couldn’t explain why I would sud­den­ly stumb­le so vio­lent­ly, fall over wit­hout war­ning, bump into walls, or why ever­y­day tasks took me so long and felt near­ly impos­si­ble. After every move­ment, I had to pains­ta­kin­gly refo­cus on my sur­roun­dings or workspace. Ever­y­thing spun or shifted. After every eye move­ment, I had to wait for the “carou­sel” to stop.

My social and cul­tu­ral life faded away. I beca­me incre­asing­ly iso­la­ted. My child­ren grew up — and I expe­ri­en­ced half of their child­hood as if with the hand­bra­ke pul­led.
I could con­ti­nue this list end­less­ly, but it would go far bey­ond the scope of this report.

I went from doc­tor to doc­tor — but no one could or wan­ted to help me. No one found a cau­se for my sym­ptoms. I was trea­ted with all kinds of medi­ca­ti­ons and sent to the­ra­py becau­se, as they clai­med, it must be psy­cho­lo­gi­cal. They couldn’t see a phy­si­cal cau­se, so I was labe­led as the pro­blem. I could wri­te an enti­re book about the inap­pro­pria­te and hurtful beha­vi­or of doc­tors who think in black and white, who see no con­nec­tions, and who don’t con­sult other spe­cia­lists to search for ans­wers tog­e­ther. (And yes — Mr. Pesch­low is such a spe­cia­list.)

I have now lived with my prism glas­ses for one year. Alt­hough my final cor­rec­tion is not yet com­ple­te­ly finis­hed (due to other medi­cal issues and den­tal tre­at­ment), my life has alre­a­dy trans­for­med com­ple­te­ly. I see the world with new eyes. Expe­ri­en­cing true 3D visi­on was over­whel­ming at first — I had to learn how to under­stand and pro­cess it.

My dai­ly work per­for­mance has impro­ved sur­pri­sin­gly quick­ly — I’m often ama­zed at how fast I can com­ple­te tasks now that once made me des­pair. I can fol­low group con­ver­sa­ti­ons again, walk with a ste­ady step, no lon­ger fall, read and work on the com­pu­ter wit­hout issues, dri­ve a car more easi­ly (high­ways still excluded), and I’m no lon­ger nau­seous. One might say:
The carou­sel has stop­ped — I have step­ped off — and I have begun to redis­co­ver life around me.

I am deep­ly thank­ful to the two angels in Ber­lin: Mr. Pesch­low and his assistant.
For tho­se of us affec­ted by bino­cu­lar visi­on dys­func­tion, they are like win­ning the jack­pot in the “health lot­tery.”

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