Q&A from Listeners

I had some really great questions from listeners during my Facebook Live the other week, so I wanted to share this with you. Enjoy the show. If you want more, sign up for my newsletter at: www.drsamberne.com.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

essential oils, msm, eyes, circulation, called, terms, retinal, eyedrops, question, important, cornea, vitamin, visual, oils, optic nerve, inflammation, drops, eyelids, fennel, mist

Hello, everyone, it’s Dr. Sam, I’d like to welcome you to my EyeClarity podcast. This is a show that offers cutting-edge information on how to improve your vision and overall wellness through holistic methods. I so appreciate you spending part of your day with me. If you have questions, you can send them to hello@drsamberene.com. Now to the latest EyeClarity episode.

Hey, everybody, it’s Dr. Sam. And I want to welcome you to Facebook live tonight. It’s an honor and a pleasure to be here. And I hope everybody is doing well out there. So before I begin, I want to share given announcement that I’m going to be teaching a three day online workshop in October. And this is called the vision sanctuary retreat. I’ve done this before. And it’s an online retreat, we’re going to be meeting for the weekend, I believe it’s the weekend of October 9 10th, and 11th. In any case, we’ll be putting that up on my web store in the next couple of weeks. So we’ll take early registration, if you want to sign up, we had a big group, the last time I taught this type of workshop.

And, you know, one of the things I like to do in the workshops like this, this is more of an advanced intensive, I call it an immersion is that we want to create enough momentum to create the change that is necessary for you to transform, expand, he’ll get better. And once you make that breakthrough, then your eyes and body know what to do in terms of healing and getting better. So the intensity, the amount of hours we spend, and especially in this immersion, really is effective. I’ve been doing it a long time. And so I hope you can join me, we’ll be putting that out through the newsletter and other sources. So we’ve got a number of questions today. And I want to start in with a very interesting question. Something called the Charles Bonet syndrome. And this is a condition where you actually start getting visual hallucinations. And basically, you know, when you start getting these kinds of short things that, you know, you’ll look, you’ll look out there, and you see things like geometric shapes or different I mean, it’s kind of weird, you see all kinds of, you know, things that are not normally there. And you go What the heck is this? Well, it is a visual impairment. And there may be reasons why you could get this kind of visual hallucination. Basically, it could be changes in the retina itself, for example, macular degeneration, you know, whenever you get macular changes, you start seeing distortions. And in fact, one of the tests that is used by doctors is called an Amsler grid.

It’s basically a grid that you look at. And by doing that, you can see if there’s any distortion going on, and if there is, it could be the macula. Another reason why you might get these weird visual hallucinations could be because cataracts are forming. And over the years, I’ve seen people who’ve developed different types of cataracts. And of course, I’ve talked about the many different types, and they start to configure on the lens of the eye. And so this creates a distortion in the light actually reaching the retina. And so you can get all kinds of weird ways to see the world distortions and warping and things like that. Some other things could be glaucoma, so you know, glaucoma is called the silent disease, you don’t really know you have it, but you start losing your peripheral vision, the glaucoma syndrome, attacks the the optic nerve and the optic nerve helps us in terms of retinal circulation, and also the ability to maintain a healthy peripheral vision. So sometimes in glaucoma, as your visual field starts to reduce and this will also go for a condition called retinitis pigmentosa, which is a genetic retinal disorder which also affects the periphery. You can start again getting some hallucinations and things like that. Some other conditions would be diabetic retinopathy optic neuritis, retinal vein occlusion.

Even things like visual migraines and stroke. So this Charles Binay syndrome is very common. And in the sense that, basically, you start seeing things that are unfamiliar. And you’re basically seeing through a distortion in the structure of your eyes, which creates this so called hallucination. So the thing about it is, is that you want to get it checked out by an eye doctor and make sure there are no tumors. Or in fact, you don’t have, you know, a stroke going on. You don’t have active diabetes, which could affect the retina. And once you find out, you know, from a disease standpoint, what you have, this is where my content comes in, because then you can start doing some integrative holistic things, whether it’s natural eyedrops like MSM, or, you know, maybe doing some kind of a detoxification program, or boosting some nutrients or making sure you’re absorbing the nutrients that you’re taking in, whether it’s through foods or supplements, if there’s trauma involved, getting some kind of cranial sacral, or body work, getting acupuncture can also be helpful in terms of opening up, you know, the the meridians that support and innervate the eye tissue. So there’s definitely a lot of holistic things that you can do.

And I just want to assure you that if you’ve been diagnosed with this, Charles Benet syndrome, you’re basically going to, you’re going to treat it the same way if you start plugging into many of my contents. So. So that’s basically what the Charles Binay syndrome is. And best of luck to you. Thank you for the question. All right. Another question I’m getting this is on tick tock. This is about frankincense, the essential oil, frankincense, and the listener has followed me around my lectures with aromatherapy. And he asks asked me about frankincense in the context of what three essential oils do I use to improve eye circulation and eye health, and I call it the eye protocol. And what it is, is use three essential oils. The first is phenol, or sweet fennel, depending on the company you get it from. The second one is carrot seed. And the third essential oil is frankincense. Now, depending on the company that you work within, you know, the aromatherapy industry is huge. In my experience, in my research and working with different companies, I tend to go with companies that are not involved in multi level marketing. However, I would say that the essential oils of doTERRA and even Young Living are pretty consistent. And if you like those essential oils, and they work for you. I think they’re you know, I think they’re definitely fine to use.

But I tend to look for smaller boutique companies, where the the owner of the earth aromatherapy company has personal relationships with farmers. And that in terms of getting the essential oil, harvesting it growing it that the farmers take a look at things like biodynamic farming, the cycles of you know, the sun and the moon, the soil and based on climate change, you know, essential oils are coming out differently than they did even two or three years ago. And you know, they’re live, they’re basically alive form of the plant based on, you know what the harvest is, for example, you could use flower essences of flower essential oils like rose or jasmine, and they have a very different energetic signature and function than say something like vetiver, which is from most of edivert comes from the grasses of Haiti, that’s a very grounding, calming essential oil,

but it’s very thick. And so you kind of paste it on you painted on you, where something like rose essential oil, you know, comes out in the liquid form and of course, it’s much more expensive, because you need a lot of a lot more of rose petals to make, you know a little bit of rose essential oil. So all that being said, two companies that I like are Stillpoint aromatics and Lotus garden botanicals, I like both of them. They are very solid, they test their oils. I’ve used both of them personally and with my family and myself and also with my patients. But let’s get to the protocol. So remember the three oils I like to use are fennel, carrot, seed and frankincense. And so that’s where the frankincense question comes in. The first thing to do before you apply the essential oil to the to your skin, is to do a test patch. And I like to use this area right here, this part of my skin is, you know, it’s not that vulnerable. So I might take a drop of the fennel and just, you know, massage it in here and watch to see if I have any kind of, you know, reaction or if it’s burning or anything like that.

Again, there are different schools of thought about application, some aroma therapists would say, Never apply essential oil to your skin directly. In my experience, if you’re able to handle it, actually, you can apply the oil, the essential oil to your skin, you can also use a carrier oil if your skin is very sensitive. So by doing that test patch, that’s going to tell you whether or not you can apply it directly to the skin, you know, you can always use a diffuser and broadcasted in your space through vaporization type of situation. And so there are other ways that you can apply the essential oils. But for now, the one that I’m going to talk about is the one where you apply right directly to your face. So you what I like to do with the essential oils, as I’d like to smell them first, that gives me an olfactory connection. And then intuitively I can decide, is this a yes or no, maybe I get a no go, I don’t like the smell of this or you go, you know this, this smells pretty good. Let’s let’s go for, then you take a drop or two, and you can put it this is where I’d like you to put it at the hairline here, over here at the hairline. And then down here. So it’s a way from the eyes, you don’t want to get

around the eyes too closely because they’ll burn. So you do sweet fennel, and then you smell the carrot seed, you can do a test patch, carrot seed can be a little warmer, and you layer the carrot seed right on top of the sweet fennel or the fennel. And then the third is the frankincense. Okay, now once you put those three oils on, what I like to do is I like to close my eyes and just kind of go into a quiet time for maybe 10 or 15 seconds. And I noticed immediately that there’s more circulation, I might feel a temperature change, I might feel a spreading of the tissue, I might feel relaxation, my breathing might be deeper. And so what this is doing is the essential oils, because they’re so oxygenating. Again, if you buy it from a company, where the essential oil is pure and organic, that is going to start penetrating in and it will start to impact the eye tissue indirectly. And I’ve had hundreds of people say to me, when they do this treatment, their peripheral vision opens up, their eyesight gets clearer. And you know, over time, their eyesight actually gets to a higher level of seeing just by using these three essential oils regularly now, what’s the dosage one drop of each layering it on top. And maybe once a day, I would start it there. And if you really want to go, you know full on then you could do twice a day, morning and evening.

But if you do this for a month, you would definitely see you know, a change. Now, with some people, I would have them do it every other day or every third day, that would be a way that you could titrate it a little more. So you get you know a little more adjustment period because you know, there’s going to be probably some trigger of detoxification going on the essential oils. Again, if they’re pure because of their oxygenating nature, they tend to push toxins out to the skin, you may get a little irritation in your around your face. So that would be another thing to watch for. If you do get some burning, you can use coconut oil and just apply it directly to the essential oils. And that will take the burning away immediately. Make sure not to put your oils, you know on your eyes or in your eyes or around your mouth or any other private areas because it will sting and burn and they usually only lasts for maybe a minute or two. But again, you can use coconut oil as a way to completely just neutralize any stinging and burning. But the eye protocol is something I’ve been using since 2016 and it is really effective.

So again, fennel, carrot seed frankincense, they work really well together as a way to open up your vision. So there you go. Now there’s some people that are asking me webstore questions and what I would say He is contact Hello at Dr. Sam berne.com. And you know, my team is usually pretty responsive. So ask your question to them. If you haven’t received your order yet, we were overwhelmed with the MSM mist. And so I know we’ve we’ve been putting it out in waves and I think we just put the last wave out. So your patience is appreciated. By the way, the MSM mist is really fabulous because it’s at that 15% marker. So unlike the MSM drops, when you put them in your eyes, you get this stinging for about five to seven seconds. With the MSM mist, you might get it for a second or two, but you’re getting the same benefits you just spray a couple right around the eyelids. So it’s going to really impact the eyelids which the eyelids are the source of you know, the

the tear production and so, by putting that MSM mist on the outside part it will absorb and penetrate into the eyes, but at a slower rate so you won’t have the same stinging or burning. Do that a few times a day. It’s very therapeutic. You can definitely use the MSM mist with contacts. So that’s totally okay to do. Remember, however that when you put the MSM mist on your eyelids, you want to keep your eyes closed, but definitely you know, you can even use the MSM drops with contacts as well. Obviously, I like using the MSM mist and the eyedrops without any lenses I don’t wear contacts but that that would be my preference at least if you can do that once or twice a day because you’re dealing with you know, a lens between you and and the eyeball but you certainly can use them. Alright, so somebody is asking Nicole’s asking a question, I believe what is nasal steppin? Okay. Well, there’s there’s a couple possible questions here around nasal stepping. You know, one of the things that I use is something called by nasal tapes. But I don’t think I don’t think that’s what you You mean, I think what you’re talking about is the visual field. So in nasal steppin, what happens in the visual field is you start to develop different a kind of a different layering of what you’re able to see. So for example, you know, let’s say somebody has glaucoma, and you get the visual fields test. And you find that in certain areas of your vision, based on where the circulation is challenged, that the nerve fiber layer, that’s the layer where you’re really accessing, you know, vision, that depending on the damage, or the lack of circulation in that part of the retina or that layer of the retina, you get a gradient of change in what you’re able to see.

So it could affect things like contrast, it could affect light versus dark. You know, of course, when we go into total blindness, or total loss, the vision becomes black. But in nasal steppin, what happens is we lose some of our, say, visual responsiveness in a way where it’s not completely dark, but maybe there’s a discoloration or depending on if we’re in a light space or a dark space, the contrast is going to be different. So it all comes down to the circulation. And there are some really great things that I suggest. If you’ve got any kind of eye circulation problems number one would be gingko gingko is really good for vascular health somewhere between 100 120 milligrams a day of gingko would be really good. taurine is an amino acid. It’s one of my ingredients in my eye vitamin along with gingko that helps with retinal and optic nerve circulation. The third would be bilberry. That’s a famous one we know the bill Berry is really helpful in terms of the retinal capillaries, retinal circulation oxygenation. I also liked the Indian spice saffron so that’s another really great ingredient that helps retinal circulation. And then curcumin curcumin has been shown to be able to help improve retinal circulation and so if you’ve got nasal steppin my suggest John would be to really help in terms of reversing some of the degeneration that’s going on. You know, one of my terms I like to use is retinal regeneration instead of retinal degeneration or macular regeneration instead of macular degeneration, and the eyes do have a capability of regenerating. One of the new studies that I posted on one of my video blogs was the therapeutic value of red light therapy. And there was a study that I talked about. Bye bye deck Dec. Dr. Glen Jeffries is from the UK. And then that study, he found that just a short interval of being exposed to 670 nanometer red light from a red light box or red light machine, that this would actually

could regenerate the retina. And in the study that he did, he found that there was a percentage of people who were exposed to this red light that actually regenerated their eyes and they had better contrast sensitivity. So the bottom line is light therapy can also help with your retinal degeneration. Red light therapy is something you can take a look at, you can find it I did a written blog. I think the healing hue of red, you could find that that’s something I wrote out. Or you could look at some of my video blogs and even some of my podcasts. I think I just recently did a podcast on the value of red light. Alright, Kimberly is going to ask a question about MSM drops the dog and cataracts. So I’m not a veterinarian. And so I wanted to do a disclaimer here. But what I will say a couple things. There is a homeopathic eyedrop called cinerary mer cineraria Maritima cineraria Maritima, you can Google it, and it’s a homeopathic eyedrop that sometimes can work to improve lens health. So you can take a look at that and see if you want to use that for your dog. MSM drops by themselves do not reverse cataracts. MSM drops are collagen creators, they help in the moisturization and moisturization and lubrication of the eyes. But they don’t necessarily help in lens health. Now what MSM does do is it creates more absorbability of the cornea. So when you use that second eye drop, whether it’s cineraria Maritima. And another one is can see these would be possible protocols.

Another important ingredient is glutathione. So glutathione and vitamin C are really important for lens health. You know, there’s a really great colleague of mine holistic veterinarian. Her name is Dr. DE Blonko Dr. de blanca.com. Check her out. She is one of my friends and she is cutting edge in terms of Holistic Veterinary Medicine. She teaches courses, she’s got great products. So Kimberly check her out Dr. DE Blonko bln co she could definitely help you. Alright, Nadia is at Nattie is asking a question about Graves disease. So whenever we’re dealing with the thyroid, it’s going to affect our our eyes especially in terms of eye lubrication. When we get a bulging of the eyes like X up thalamus or just a swollen this in the eyelids. Or we can get just dry the cornea is drying out. You know the thing with Graves disease is that there there are two things that I think that are very important for you. Number one would be your overall body inflammation and how that impacts your eyes. Because body inflammation gut inflammation is going to affect eye inflammation. So working with a functional medicine doctor or naturopath. It really starts with the gut. And even though you know I would say I’m probably more of a naturopathic eye doctor, I tend to look at the systemic and metabolic reasons why we develop eye conditions and eye symptoms. A second factor involved is in terms of what we’re eating, going more to an anti inflammatory diet. You know, one of my go twos is just doing a week of celery juice, just celery juice with lemon in the morning you can put it in your Vitamix that is a very alkalinizing drink that actually can help reduce dry ice seen it, I’ve used it. And so that would be another thing. Now, natural eyedrops are critical so you don’t want to go to the pharmacy. And you know use their eyedrops because they’re going to dry your eyes out even more. I like using the homeopathic uptick. Optique, eyedrops by boron, coupled with the 5% MSM eyedrops, that’s during the day, and I would be liberal using those four to six times a day. And then in the evening, you could do a castor oil,

I massage just on the eyelids that can be very beneficial, you could do an eyebright tea compress. As another option, you could use a Helichrysum essential oil hydrosol, or you could spray it, you could also use my MSM mist, so you need to keep your eyes really hydrated, so they don’t get dry, it’s like you have to do a loading dose of that, I would make sure you’re getting enough Omega three and healthy fats and oils. Studies have shown how healthy fats and oils may reduce some of the symptoms of dry estrogen levels, high or low can also be a contributing factor, staring at your screen all day, getting some blue light protection either with a screen on your your digital device, or blue blocking glasses, and maybe some of my eye exercises. I think it’s a combination of doing some of these natural holistic things with your eyes, and then working with a naturopath to see if if you can begin to support the thyroid better. And so when you’re feeling pressure in the back of the eye, it may or may not be related to the Graves disease, it could be but it also could be muscular. Usually when you feel pressure, it’s more of a muscular situation. So then you’re looking at the if you were prescription or you straining with your eyes, and this is where my physical therapy exercises come in, the one I would suggest for you would be the palm home, you can find that readily. If you Google it palm home, Dr. Byrne and start doing that maybe four to five times a day.

You’ll do it once and you go oh my eyes feel less less pressurized, and they’ll feel moister. So it’s a it’s a stress reducer. And one of the things that our eyes are really good at good or bad or indifferent is we absorb stress in our eyes. But we don’t know how to discharge the stress and muscularly when we start absorbing so much stress in the muscles, we start getting pains. We start getting, you know, weird sensations there. And we think there’s some eye disease or something. It’s good to get that checked out. But usually it’s nothing more than muscular problems. Okay, so Laurie is asking about cupping. This is around the optic nerve. Yeah, I understand. Yeah. Laurie. So the thing with cupping is, in terms of diagnosing glaucoma, there’s three main things First of all, you look at the eye pressure. Second of all, you look at the visual fields. And third of all, you look at the optic nerve. And when the doctor is saying cupping, what’s happening is the optic nerve is enlarging, it’s getting bigger. And so what’s happening is that as it gets abnormally larger, it starts to impinge on the the nerve fibers that are running from the nerve in the eye back to the brain, so it’s impinging on the circulation.

And this is what creates a reduction in the you know, the peripheral vision. So, you know, just because you do have cupping doesn’t necessarily mean you have glaucoma. But what it means is that it’s a wake up call, that you need to bring much more circulation to your optic nerve in your eyes. So, optic nerves need omega three fatty acids that’s so important to healthy fats and oils. As I said before gingko and taurine, you can get this from my vitamin, lutein, zeaxanthin and asters answer. So those are would be some things I would suggest any inflammation that you have in your body you need to get rid of you need to somehow reduce inflammation, maybe getting some acupuncture could be helpful. If you’ve had any head traumas, I would suggest some cranial sacral therapy.

On my many of my blogs, I talk about color therapy. So again, there’s the red light therapy, but there’s also doing regular color therapy on your eyes where you’re looking at more of the cooling colors, which can also open up the circulation. Lymphatic health is another thing that you can do lymph drainage, jumping on a rebounder, walking regularly every day. So lymphatic health is very important. Also, you’re going to have to go outside I to alternative practitioners to help you with the circulation because what the ophthalmologist is really good at is measuring and taking the picture of the data. But in terms of treatment, it’s it’s if it’s not lined up with you, then you have to go to these alternative practitioners who can help you with the circulation and then just keep consuming my stuff. So if you do that, and can the optic nerve regenerate? Well, it depends on the state of the tissue, you know, you can regenerate it, we do talk about neuroplasticity, that action. And even as we get older, there is a neuroplasticity capability that we all fall under. But we have to keep feeding our eyes with with nutrients and new experiences and new visual, you know, visual things that we’re doing. Because if we do the same visual thing over and over again, that’s called a closed system, that’s definitely going to create deterioration. So keep in touch with me about it. It’s a really good question. Alright. Brittany is asking what do I know about EBV? And what do I know about CMV? Well

so it sounds like you’re talking about Epstein Barr and there’s a retinal vascular, or retinal we’ll call it retinal inflammation. And then the CMV is another retinas situation. So you know, you’re talking a lot about, again, circulation. And one of the things that I’ve discovered over the years is vitamin D, and vitamin D is more than a vitamin, it’s actually a pro hormone. And it’s really important in terms of our immune health. And I think in some cases, it’s been underestimated in terms of the value of vitamin D. And in fact, I did a couple of video blogs, on people who suffer autoimmune disease based on you know, being exposed to different viruses and things like that. And one of the techniques is using higher levels as Vitamin D, to start to reduce the auto immune experience or the immune response.

And so this started to really take take form, after COVID came in because, you know, some of the doctors started looking at, well, what are some of the immune boosting things that we can do? And vitamin D was one of those things that came on the radar, especially more in the functional medicine, holistic physician arena, the some of the study groups I’m in that vitamin DS is super important. Now the thing with floaters, again, this is a collagen issue in the vitreous gel sack. So you’ve got to think collagen creation. The first thing that comes to mind the MSM eyedrops, definitely, I might even do some MSM systemically, if you’re dealing with body inflammation, your trace mineral levels are really critical. So things like magnesium and selenium, then the master antioxidant glutathione, which is also very important for immune health, as well as eye health. But the MSM eyedrops can work very well supporting vitreous health. And you know, I think maybe contact me and I can give you some more ideas, but just generally speaking, I think that those are some of the things you could do both topically with the MSM drops, and then systemically to support your immune health more. Alright with keratoconus? This is a corneal dystrophy the cornea begins to bulge out like a cone.

There is in many cases a genetic predisposition, but whatever’s going on the cornea is made up of collagen and it needs hydration. And so if you are suffering keratoconus, first of all you want to get diagnosed and make sure it is what you have. And then at that point, you know if you can get a correction either through glasses or contacts as best as you can, especially if you wear contact lenses, sometimes you can slow down the progression of keratoconus and then start using more of the natural eye drops because the cornea needs hydration. So, this would be things like MSM eyedrops, Optique eyedrops the homeopathic, possibly the castor oil I massage in the evening. Vitamin B is very important for the cornea as well as vitamin A. And then you have to take a look at our You absorbing the fat soluble vitamins like vitamin A. So if you have challenges in your liver or gallbladder, the liver produces bile, it’s stored in the gallbladder. But if you’re not producing enough Bile or storing it, Bile is what helps you absorb the vitamin A. So you may need to do a supplement a bile salts to help you absorb the vitamin A. So that’s another thing. You could do vitamin A eyedrops, you could do vitamin A ointment.

These are things that can also feed the cornea. And then visual stress is another issue probably, I would say in the keratoconus case, if you’re light sensitive, definitely use sunglasses outdoors, make sure you use blue blocking glasses for all your screen time, and then doing some of my eye exercises that help reduce visual stress. So some of you are, it looks like I don’t know if you’re having difficulty hearing me. On my end. Everything looks looks good. But this will be recorded, and you can play it back. So hopefully, hopefully this is coming through. I think it is. All right, everybody. I’m going to need to go but I want to thank you so much for your contributions and, and the participation. I’m going to be off for the next two weeks. I’m doing some traveling, but I will be back in mid June,

probably I guess, June 22. But I’ll send you announcements on that. So in the meantime, I really am grateful to all of you for your participation. Spread the word if you can, and I wish everybody good vision. Take care.

Thank you for listening. I hope you learned something from the EyeClarity podcast show today. If you enjoyed the episode, make sure to subscribe on iTunes or Spotify and leave a review. See you here next time.