What is scientifically proven to treat VSS? ONLY 3 Things.
There are only 3 studies that have shown high enough statistical significance as a treatment for VSS.
The 3 studies.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36545398/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37967050/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1097/OPX.0000000000002019
These studies sometimes cause drama over pseudoscience claims, but these are real researchers, real science, and real evidence. Bigger studies would probably need to be done to confirm the results, but these are still pretty decent results.
This DOES NOT mean they will help everyone, but they are results.
There are many other treatments that could work, for example rTMS, but as of now those are mostly case studies with overall mixed results. There are also drug related treatments that have been self reported to work, but they are hit or miss to a degree that they are not statistically significant treatments. For example, clonazepam and lamotrigine.
So, so far, there are only 3 scientifically supported “treatments” for VSS.
The three treatments are colored lenses, a type of vision therapy known as NORT, and mindfulness.
Colored lenses range in hue and tint. The best recommendation is usually to start with FL41, but test other lenses if those do not work.
Vision therapy helps the eyes team together better. NORT is the version that has been studied for VSS, but it is easily arguable that regular vision therapy may have similar overlap in results.
Mindfulness gets a bad rap as a treatment because it sounds like saying, “just think your way out of having a brain disorder.”
I want you to think about it differently. First, the science.
"Week 20 (4 [3–6], P < 0.001), respectively. Self-rated impact of symptoms on daily life (0–10) improved: baseline (6 [5–8]) vs Week 9 (4 [2–5], P = 0.003) and Week 20 (2 [1–3], P < 0.001),"
Symptoms and impact on daily life were reduced with very high statistical significance. .05 is considered significant, and lower is better. Here it is below .001. You can think of that as randomness causing the results in less than 1 out of 1,000 studies.
That alone might not be enough for some people. Maybe the researchers influenced the data somehow, or maybe having someone listen to your symptoms and help you work through them is beneficial. Fair enough.
But there were brain changes too, measured on fMRI.
"Within-subject fMRI analysis found reductions between baseline and Week 20, within VN-related FC in the i) left lateral occipital cortex (size = 82 mL, familywise error [FWE]-corrected P value = 0.006) and ii) left cerebellar lobules VIIb/VIII (size = 65 mL, FWE-corrected P value = 0.02), and increases within VN-related FC in the precuneus/posterior cingulate cortex (size = 69 mL, cluster-level FWE-corrected P value = 0.02)."
I’m sure many of you have heard that VSS is a network disorder. One of those networks specifically involves attention. Vision gets too much attention.
In fact, this has sparked another well known treatment, the “ignore it” method. It sounds like BS, but it may be doing the same thing as mindfulness. It is getting your attention off of vision. I believe that is the major factor involved.
None of these have been reported to cure you, but they are valid, scientifically supported, statistically significant treatments.