Understanding the Dyslexia Syndrome

Encompassing 100's of symptoms and differently named but related disorder—including a highly reliably diagnostic "Self-Test" abstracted from Smart But Feeling Dumb — Revised Edition 2009, pages XV–XXI.

Many experts erroneously view dyslexia as merely a severe reading disorder often characterized by letter and word reversals. My research—encompassing the treatment of more than thirty five thousand dyslexics over the past three decades—has clearly shown that dyslexia is a syndrome of many and varied symptoms that coexist in all combinations and severities. In other words, some dyslexics may compensate and even overcompensate for their reading impairment and only manifest problems with typical dyslexic writing, spelling, and math difficulties. And many a dyslexic does not reverse letters and words while reading. However, the vast majority will lose their place if reading symptoms are present. And there are many “normal reading score” dyslexics who experience reading reversals, tracking difficulties, and related reading symptoms such as blurring, word movement, and fatigue. In other words, dyslexics may evidence normal and even superior reading scores despite manifesting underlying difficulties with their reading mechanisms.

Unwittingly, many, so-called authorities have traditionally defined dyslexia in a manner similar to the way we must have viewed diabetes many years ago: as a comatose state. Now we all know that the number of mild and compensated diabetics far exceeds those who lapse into coma. And the same holds true for dyslexics. In clinical reality, the number of mild and reading-score-compensated dyslexics far exceeds those traditionally viewed as having the severe or “comatose” disorder characterized by reversals and severely impaired reading abilities and scores.

To familiarize the reader with the many and varied symptoms characterizing dyslexia, as well as to provide crucial diagnostic insights, the following self-test is provided.

Does your child, student, or patient have a learning problem? Is he or she smart but feeling dumb? Do you?

If one or more of the following symptoms are evident, dyslexia may be present:

Reading

Memory instability for letters, words, or numbers
A tendency to skip over or scramble letters, words, and sentences
A poor, slow, fatiguing reading ability prone to compensatory head tilting, near-far focusing, and finger pointing
Reversal of letters such as b and d, words such as saw and was, and numbers such as 6 and 9, or 16 and 61
Word blurring or movement or double images
Headaches, vertigo, or nausea brought on by reading

Writing

Messy, poorly angulated, or drifting handwriting prone to size, spacing, and letter-sequencing errors similar to those characterizing Karen's poem on page xiii.

Spelling, Math, Memory, and Grammar

Memory instability for spelling, grammar, math, names, dates, and lists; for sequences such as the alphabet, the days of the week, and the months of the year; and for following directions

Speech

Speech disorders such as slurring, stuttering, minor articulation errors, poor word recall, and auditory-input and motor-output speech time lags, rendering speech perception and enunciation more slowly than desired; and a tendency to word scrambling, slips of the tongue, or misperception of the ear

Direction

Right/left and related directional uncertainty, such as difficulty knowing or remembering east or west, north or south

Time

Delay in learning to tell time as well as a host of time-related symptoms, including lateness, compulsive scheduling, and even procrastination or difficulty starting things on time

Concentration and Activity (ADD or ADHD)

Impaired concentration, distractibility, hyperactivity, or overactivity
Behavior, temper, or impulse disturbances

Balance and Coordination

Difficulties with balance and coordination functions, e.g., walking, running, skipping, hopping, tying shoelaces, and buttoning buttons; accident proneness

Phobias and Related Mental Disorders

Fears of the dark, heights, getting lost, going to school
Fear or the avoidance of various balance, coordination, sports, and motion-related activities
Mood disturbances
Obsessions and compulsions

Did you have academic problems or dyslexia as a child? Do you have phobias and related psychological and physical symptoms that have thus far defied a clear understanding and successful treatment?

Are you frightened by heights, cars, planes, bridges, elevators, subways, tunnels, open spaces, crowds, department stores, getting lost, losing control, and/or going crazy?
Do irresistible, repetitive thoughts and actions—obsessions and compulsions—harass you and rigidify your ability to relax freely?
Are you compelled to touch and retouch, check and recheck, think and rethink, and forever make lists of what must be done to avoid memory uncertainty and related anxiety?
Are you prone to indecisiveness and feelings of inferiority, stupidity, ugliness, and clumsiness?
Have headaches, stomachaches, nausea, excessive fatigue, concentration and memory difficulties, or related “psychosomatic” symptoms sent you from medical pillar to post, to no avail?
Are you prone to dizziness or motion sickness?

If any of the above symptoms is present, your phobias and related emotional and physical disturbances may be due to the same inner-ear dysfunction as that which I have discovered to cause symptoms of dyslexia in children.

As a result of a series of major medical breakthroughs or insights resulting from over three decades, of my research, dyslexia and its related neurotic and psychosomatic symptoms may now in most instances be successfully diagnosed and medically treated, And with treatment, the inevitable emotional scarring resulting from the dyslexic disorder and its wide-ranging symptomatic fallout can now be prevented or dramatically lessened, At the very least; complex, lengthy, and frustrating psychiatric, neurological, educational, optometric, auditory, and occupational therapies have been rendered significantly more successful—once a simple and safe medical treatment restores functioning within the inner ear and its supercomputer, the cerebellum, to more normal levels.

Variations of Dyslexia

My research has shown that a dysfunctioning inner-ear/cerebellar system may also result in a wide range of dyslexia-related disorders, albeit called by different names, i.e., LD (poor learning), dysgraphia (poor writing), dyscalculia (poor math), dysphasia (poor speech), ADD or ADHD (poor concentration and attention), dyspraxia (poor coordination), anxiety and mood disorders (phobias, depression), Asperger syndrome (social dyslexia), pervasive developmental delay, and pseudoautism, as well as pseudomental retardation (severe forms of dyslexic or cerebellar-vestibular dysfunctioning), etc. As will be evident within this book, all these differently named disorders, including cerebellar ataxia, often respond favorably to inner-ear-enhancing medications and nutrients.

Major Neurological Disorders and Dyslexia—Mixed Dyslexia.

Even more surprising and important, a group of severe neurological disorders (i.e., mental retardation, Down’s syndrome, autism, cerebral palsy, brain injury due to trauma, tumors, surgery, or infections, mononucleuosis and Lymes disease and autoimmune disorders [multiple sclerosis], etc.) resulting from thinking brain and other noncerebellar-vestibular (CV) impairments were discovered in my research to frequently manifest dyslexia-related symptoms and thus CV dysfunctioning, These mixed-neurological cases, as I call them, can and do show improvements with CV-enhancing medical treatment, albeit the major disorder remains unchanged.

A Simple Explanation

The hundreds of diverse symptoms characterizing the dyslexic syndrome result when normal thinking brain and related nervous system processors experience secondary difficulties upon receiving scrambled signals from a dysfunctioning “inner-ear” or CV system. The quality and intensity of the symptoms are determined by (1) the specific CV signals scrambled and the degree of scrambling, (2) the normal brain centers receiving these scrambled signals, and (3) the brain's capacity for descrambling or compensation.

In mixed-neurological disorders, the higher brain and other nervous system processors are primarily impaired and so experience even greater difficulties upon receiving scrambled “dyslexic” signals for interpretation and/or action.

By analogy, medical and even nonmedical conditioning therapies help by decreasing signal-scrambling and increasing processing capacity, With this simple explanation, readers will easily be able to fully comprehend all the symptoms and variations characterizing all dyslexics, as well as their improvements via maturation, medical and nonmedical therapies, and even the medically triggered improvements in mixed dyslexia.

Toward the dissemination of this unique, “therapeutically helpful” information and understanding—and the early implementation of new and invaluable lifesaving medical diagnostic/treatment methods for all dyslexics and all their signal-scrambling variations—Smart but Feeling Dumb was written.

Harold N, Levinson, M.D.
Director, Medical Dyslexic Treatment Center
Great Neck, New York
516-482-2888
www.dyslexiaonline.com