Diagnosing Macular Degeneration

Today, I’m going to give you a bird’s eye view of a session I gave recently with somebody who was diagnosed with macular degeneration. Macular degeneration is the number one cause of blindness today. And it is increasing by epidemic proportions. And in this session, I lay out the cause and the treatments for Macular Degeneration. Enjoy the show. If you want more, sign up for my newsletter at: www.drsamberne.com.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

macula, eyes, retina, macular degeneration, prescription, called, vision, vitamin, glasses, patients, support, doctor, progressive lenses, reduced, important, blur, zeaxanthin, wearing, omega, brain

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’d like to welcome you to another EyeClarity podcast. So today, I’m going to give you a bird’s eye view of a session I gave recently with somebody who was diagnosed with macular degeneration. You know, macular degeneration is the number one cause of blindness today. And it is increasing by epidemic proportions. And in this session, I lay out the cause and the treatments. So enjoy the show. And thanks for tuning in. So, in macular degeneration, the macula is the part of the retina where we see pinpoint acuity clarity, it’s also a place where we have color vision, and it makes up less than 1% of the real estate of the retina does a very, very tiny part of the the entire picture of the retina. And yet it’s very important because it helps us with the detail. The other interesting thing about the macula is that it it’s a part of the eye that doesn’t have blood vessels that run directly through it. And what that means is is that it relies on its nutrient support indirectly. So if there is a reduced circulation in the retina, or just you know, because of aging, what happens is the macula because it’s not getting the nutrients that it needs. It begins to develop free radical accumulation or another term for that would be oxidative stress, that could be coupled with inflammation. And then when you’ve got the drusen hanging around, those are fatty deposits that also create a sluggishness in the macula is ability or the retinas ability to absorb nutrients. So the retina has one of the highest metabolic needs in the in the body. Because of the massive concentration of blood vessels.

We call them micro capillaries. And because the macula is supported by the retina, the macula has the highest metabolic need in the retina. And macular degeneration is probably the fastest growing eye disease today. And it’s partly due to how we use our eyes. So that’s the function of the eyes. And so that’s the screen time close up stuff. And then the other piece of that is it seems like we’re having more difficulty in absorbing the nutrients that are necessary as antioxidants to feed the eyes. And so people are getting these conditions like macular degeneration, cataracts, glaucoma, in epidemic proportions. I mean, it’s like more and more people are getting these, you know, these kinds of AI anomalies. And the way the Western medical approaches, we treat it in a disease based way you got it, you only it’s only gonna get worse. It’s not really related to your body. And that’s kind of the story. And in my own evolution, I was trained on the East Coast and I, I was always interested in a more, let’s say, integrative approach, I, I always thought that the body was interrelated and interconnected. And even though I went to a very medically oriented school, I questioned the model as the only answer. And so in my internships and my mentors, and I realized that our eyes are very connected to our brain that’s been proven in neuroscience. In fact, there was a study that came out at the University of Rochester which said 60% of seeing in the eyes is in the brain, the visual cortex. And, and, you know, when I was trained, I was trained to just treat the eyeball, you know, do the scans do the analysis? And then basically it was either Drugs surgery or watch it.

And I didn’t think that that was the full picture. So I began studying things like acupuncture. And I learned early in my acupuncture training that the liver rules, eye health. Now we’re talking more on an kind of a meridian, the body is has 12 meridians, major meridians. And so when I started to use acupuncture on different eye conditions, it created a more balanced distribution of energy in the body, and the eyes and the eyesight got better. Then I studied head trauma, because I worked with a lot of athletes, and some NFL players, some college soccer players. And I saw that they had a lot of soft tissue problems in the eyes, if they had had any trauma, not only in the head, but in the brain and in the body. So I went back to massage school, and I studied bio dynamic cranial sacral therapy. So what Melinda does, and I saw the SIRT the relationship between the cerebral spinal fluid in the brain, and how that affected the optic nerve and the retina.

And when I would start, this is what I would do when I had my conventional office, a person would come in for an exam like Dr Mark, whereas mucin, but instead of just giving them the prescription, I would take him into another room, and I would do about a half hour of cranial sacral therapy on them. And then I bring them back into the exam room, and I’d re measure their eyes. And I could easily reduce the prescription by 30 to 40% after the cranial sacral treatment, and it showed me the relationship of body tension body posture, and I prescriptions. Then I was very interested in how the gut affected the brain. And since the eyes originate from the brain, in functional medicine, in my training, I realized that gut health and eye health especially it was almost like the gut, the internal lining of the gut, and the internal lining of the eye, the retina, were simpatico with each other, especially the macula. Then when we had a macular issue, what I learned in functional medicine is that there was either dietary absorption issues, there was either Candida, or even more serious things like heavy metal toxicity, mold, and so on. And I would lecture to the eye doctors, and they would Yank me off the stage. They said, What does this have to do with the scans we’re doing in the laser surgery we’re doing? And I said, it has everything to do with it. And even if I showed them the research, you know, they would say okay, okay, so the arid study will kind of go with that you can take the pills, it’s probably not going to do much, but you know, it’ll saw a swage the patient they’ll, you know, they’ll have something, but they weren’t really believers in certain nutrients that that NIH study, really spotlight, spotlighted, like vitamin A and zinc and lutein and Omega three and things like that.

And in one of my functional medicine courses, I was blown away by this because I had a number of patients at that time who were developing macular degeneration. And I was giving them some really, really high nutrients. I’m a chemist. So I studied a lot of chemistry undergrad. And when I got into practice, I started to look at different combinations of herbs and nutraceuticals and even eyedrops that were more natural based. And so I was giving people you know, the vitamin A that we need to help the retina. And then I realized in my functional medicine courses that we need a healthy gallbladder, liver gallbladder, and if we’re not producing enough bile, the bile is what breaks those fat soluble vitamins down like vitamin A, and then the ones you mentioned, lutein and zeaxanthin. Those are also fat soluble vitamins. And so if you’re, if your gallbladder is the bile is stored in the gallbladder, it’s produced in Liver. But if the bile is not produced properly, then you could take all the vitamin A in the world carrots, you know, all that, but you’re not absorbing the lutein and zeaxanthin. So once we identified that, and we started to do things like give bile salts are support the gallbladder with with acupuncture, then people’s eyes got better.

So again, I brought this up to the eye doctors. They’re like, that’s crazy. We’re not we’re not going to go that’s too too involved in something else.

And I say no, no, no, really. You’re you’re promoting these vitamins. Your patient tries. Yeah, right. But as you see it, Dr. Rasmussen, he’s got all the fancy equipment. And he’s great at diagnosing. But then what do you do you know, what’s I remember giving a lecture about five years ago to group of optometry students in Philly, Philadelphia. And I said to them, they’re like, 250, white coats in the room. I wasn’t wearing a white coat, though. I was kind of past that. I said, So what happens if your patient gets macular degeneration? And the all the responses were, we just watch it. That’s all we’re gonna do. We’re just gonna watch it. And I said, Well, here’s the acupuncture model 1000s of years of proof. And they’re like, no, no, it’s too much. We’re not acupuncturist. I said, you don’t have to be but to know that if you say gave milk thistle, as a as a liver herb to detox the liver, you could actually improve a person’s eyesight. No, no, it’s, where’s the recent? No, no, we just can’t do it. And so I’ve left traditional eye care behind, because they’re great at diagnosing. But they’re limited and what they can do to help. So what I want to give you is I want to give you a roadmap. Step 123. Keep it simple. Maybe we follow you follow me for a little bit. And, you know, we talk again, sometime in the future, maybe even some time, you can come to my home office. I don’t see a lot of patients, but maybe for you, I would I see Melinda. But the point of the story is, is that there are many things that you could do to up your health, even with this, and even this episode that you had, the what they’re calling the migraine, because I want to share a riveting point right now, which you may not know. And you may need to digest this for a while, and you may not even believe it. But I know it to be true because I’ve seen it in five to 10,000 patients. So I I’m fairly confident and what I’m going to show you.

So on the screen here is a diagram of your bifocal glasses. And when you look at the glasses, the only part of the lens that you’re able to use is right in the middle here, right down the center. It’s a very, it’s a very small part. All of this squiggly stuff is unusable. The point of this is that whoever gave you that prescription has said to you, the only part of your eyeball that you can really use to see is your macula. So your macula is doing almost all of your seeing because of the progressive lens. It is probably the worst optical system for you to be using. And now with his Macula situation with the drusen. It’s putting even more pressure and stress on your brain and your maquilas to do all the work. So that there is a you can feel that and that’s then the other thing is and I’m gonna send you a podcast that I just did on prisms. And when you listen to that show, you’re gonna go, Oh, I’m wearing a One Direction on one eye and another opposite direction on the other eye. What is this guy thinking what what you know, and he’s probably some crackerjack, you know guy in Chicago. Oh, and they all do this, they do the prisms, they have no idea that it’s weakening your vision even more. So you’ve got the prisms and you got the progressive lenses. And then the third piece of this is you’ve got nearsightedness, and nearsightedness is a mental psychological, physical tunneling of your vision.

And when you’re wearing six layers of lens, that is a lot of mental tension that you’re using to tunnel. And if you could start to engage 1% More of your peripheral vision, you would get out of this rabbit hole, I’m just saying 1%. And the eyes have a plasticity to them. I don’t care what the other doctors say. Because the research clearly says that we have a neuroplasticity of being able to regenerate or create new pathways in the eyes. That’s why they now have stem cell replacement. That’s why they’re doing all these alternative therapies. But you don’t even have to do all that you can just change the mapping of the brain by doing some physical therapy on your eyes. That creates a new experience. And it opens your vision up. And I can speak from a first order experience. Because when I was a kid, I was very nearsighted. Like you I was really nearsighted. And I met a holistic eye doctor, very early in my career, and he helped me dissolve my entire eyeglass prescription 100%. You see, now I’m not wearing any glasses. And I completely dissolve that. And when I went back to my school and told them what they did, they said, kid, that’s an anecdotal thing Shut up. We’re not interested in that idea. So we’re going to do it in stages, so that it’s not going to shock the hell out of you. And you’ll do something and go, Oh, I see improvement already. So let’s start with the ingredients that your your macula and retina need to improve its circulation. And there’s a there’s a term that’s thrown around in neuroscience. I don’t hear about it much in IKEA. I wish they talked about it more. And it has to do with the energy producers called mitochondria. Have you ever heard of mitochondria?

So they’re the Liddy little energy cells, energy producers, and the retina has one of the highest concentration of mitochondria. And when we develop these conditions, like what you have, there’s an impediment in the mitochondria function. So they can’t produce enough energy. And this is what creates this accumulation of the you know, the oxidative stress. And you can coexist with drusen as long as you’re doing some things to support systemic and metabolic health and reducing stress and stimulating a lot more of your, your retina in your vision. So there are ways to neutralize that. Okay, so the doctor you are working with he’s giving you some some ideas, you know, the lutein and the Xiaxanthan sound like it’s in a formulation. And that that’s the first step. Now the one thing that I am going to kind of aim you towards, is to consider that there’s some other things that are missing. And what is in that formula, because I’m looking at the cutting edge research. I’m looking at the newest research out there, and what is improving microcapillary circulation. So I’m going to reference the arid study which was done in 2001. And then the 2006

Vitamin D, Vitamin D was what said, Okay, that’s really important for macular health. But then, lately, there’s a new form of vitamin E that comes from a plant that’s called an A natto A N N A T to vitamin D. And I started to use it with my patients about three years ago and really accelerated their macular degeneration to get better. In other words, it reduced that. And I was able to formulate it now in a on my webstore. So that would be number one and natto vitamin D, I would add that to what the other doctor has recommended, you can go on my website, you can look at the science, it’s very easy, it’s in a liquid form that you you actually put it in water and you drink it. So it’s not something you put directly on the on. The second ingredient that I have found to be super helpful for the macula is a spice that you probably know called saffron.

Saffron has one of the highest and concentration of antioxidants. That’s really beneficial for macular health. Studies have shown that saffron is really great. Now what I was able to do was again, as a chemist formulate that into a supplement at a reasonable price because saffron can be very expensive. And so those would be two add ons that I would I would get for me. And then the third one would be I’d start using my natural eyedrops called MSM drops, and I would get the 5%, MSM and the 5% MSM. MSM is a sulfur molecule is the third leading trace mineral found in the body. And it supports collagen in the eye. It’s an anti inflammatory agent. And it will lubricate and moisturize your eyes, which neutralizes drusen production because drusen likes to grow in a dry environment. And the other thing it will do is it will lubricate your macula. So when you’ve got dry macular degeneration, the macula is basically drying out. And that’s where you start getting these distortions. So you would use this 5%, MSM, maybe about four times a day, it’s very gentle, it’s very soothing, I have a second percentage that much higher, but it burns when it goes in the eyes. And I don’t want to do that with you right now I want to see if we can get some stable improvement.

So you’re gonna take the, you know, the supplementation that the other doctor said, and then add the saffron, add the annatto II and add the MSM 5%. And then in terms of diet, now I’m bringing in the things I’ve learned in functional medicine, you’re probably already doing this. You want to make sure you’re taking some type of probiotics, or you’re getting some kind of probiotics in your gut. Because probiotics is the healthy microbiome, the healthy bacteria, and it’ll help in the absorption. Okay, so whether you do some kind of a supplementation, or you’re doing a little bit of fermented foods like kefir, sauerkraut, or whatever, you want to think about supporting your microbiome that’s really important in the absorption. Number two, you want to make sure you’re getting enough healthy fats in your diet like Omega three, in fact, Omega three, the retinas made up of about 50% fatty acids, it’s very, very fatty tissue. And so if you’re not doing it already, I would get a really good Omega three supplement to companies that I trust would be metagenics. And they sell something called omega Genex 1000 1000 milligrams, and you want to be taking between two and 3000 milligrams a day of your Omega three that could help in this proactive practice in reducing this migraine or whatever happened to you. Because one of the things that the Omega threes do is they improve your brain circulation, they reduce inflammation. And it’s really an important ingredient for Macula health, brain health, neurological health nervous system.

We can’t produce Omega three. So the other sources of it would be in a plant based or vegan based would be like walnuts or chia seeds you can make chia pudding. Flax is okay as well you can grind up the seeds although that doesn’t give you the same amount. But you could certainly use that. And then you can get things like wild caught salmon, the pink seafood and you’re also Getting something else called Astra Xanthan, which is the marine Corrado toy. That’s also very important for macular health. So you want to get about 12 milligrams of Astra Xanthine a day, I sell it on my website, so you can look at it as well. But in any case, the healthy fats and oils are really important, we tend to get more of the Omega six, and not enough of the Omega three. So omega six would be like olive oil. And, and certainly you can, you know, have those things. But it’s the Omega threes that for many people are deficient in. So then in terms of the rainbow diet, red, orange, yellow, are those plant pigments that are really feeding the macula. So you can think about those vegetables that are red, orange, yellow, and then the greens, those would be great for you. And then maybe, you know, on a fruit level, the berries are really good for circulation like in my vitamin, I put some berries in there. It’s called bilberry. And it’s really good for retina circulation. But for now, you know, you can look at my vitamin, maybe eventually, when you use up what you have, you can move to mine because I’ve got gingko in it, which is also very good for vascular health of the retina. taurine, which is an amino acid, which is also very important for optic nerve health and macular health. But in any case, if you do the red, orange, yellow, green veggies, you’re getting those plant pigments and considering, okay, probiotics and enzymes, those are really important.

You know, we stopped producing enzymes at about age 3035. I mean, we just don’t have the same pancreatic juice. And so making sure you’re, you know, like HCl or, you know, biotics as a company, I like that. He has a good betaine HCl, hydrochloric. So taking that after a meal. So things like avocados are really great, asparagus is really great. You know, organic, caged cage free eggs is really good. Those are really good for your eyes, they’ve got like lutein in them, which is, you know, part of what you’re looking at. And, you know, it’s okay if you’re a meat eater, but just do you know, free range organic if you can. And another thing that seems to affect the retina health is too much glucose in the blood. So in other words, a lot of carbs can be detrimental, we want to lower the carbohydrates and increase the fats and the proteins. And that’s just kind of a tweak. So you know, if you’re doing long grain, carbs, that’s fine. But be careful about, you know, too many carbs, because it’s the glucose levels that starve the retina because the sugar component creates more inflammation and just more depletion. So that’s kind of a general broad brush that I would take a look at adding those supplements, the eyedrops the dietary thing, focusing on the fats and oils, that’s the beginning.

You know, you can also things that are really great for the macula would be curcumin, so cooking with some Indian spice. Ginger root is also very good, anti inflammatory. So those are those are some things I would, you know, make sure just checking off the box. And then some other things to consider. We may need to we may need to, you know, address this a little differently. But so a really interesting concept is this idea of the bigger the window you look through, the more peripheral vision you have, which means that right now I wouldn’t throw away the progressive lenses, but what I would consider is getting a pair of single vision glasses to use, maybe around the house, an indoor prescription, something that works for your screen, and I’d get a blue blocker in it.

Because blue light is another thing that can damage the macula that comes from our screens, LED lights. And maybe you already have that in your prescription I don’t know. But we what we do is that we take the the distance and the reason And I probably would split it. And the other thing I might consider doing is reducing, or taking away the astigmatism because the astigmatism is another tension creating situation in the eyeball that maybe you don’t need. And at the very least, what I would suggest is like you’re at 6.5. Right now, I would maybe consider bringing you down to like a minus 450, or 475. And it’ll probably work really great for your screen time. But if you start wearing that indoors, your eyes are gonna start improving, you’ll have less tension, and eventually that could become your distance prescription. And there’s a there’s a huge influence when you start wearing less powerful nearsighted glasses, in terms of how much tension your eyes release. And I know this firsthand, because it happened in my own case, and again, with 1000s of patients, when they start wearing a reduced prescription, they’ll say, immediately, My eyes feel more relaxed, and some of that wonkiness and some of that, you know, this is not quite right.

And, you know, you get to start to back off from what that prescription is doing to you that strong one, which is locking down your energy flow, and circulation. And it can also be one of the trigger points of this whole episode that you went into where you’re wearing something that’s too strong and too, too tunnelling for you. So there’s a couple of ways we could do the the reduced prescription one way would be, if you’re locally in Santa Fe, you could come for an appointment, and I could actually, you know, really fine tune, some something reduced. And then maybe even giving you some other eye therapy, very powerful myopia reducing exercises, that could really open up your vision. And by doing that, it will start to change mental, psychological, and physically, how you are seeing through your eyeballs. And it’s going to engage much more of your vision than the maquilas right now. And that in itself could reverse some of this deterioration because you are putting an incredible amount of your vision through your maquilas exclusively, and you’re leaving 99% of your vision behind. In the meantime, between you know that when you might come and see me, I would like you to start going without your glasses in non demanding and non threatening situations. And notice what comes up for you emotionally psychologically around your blur.

Now I’m gonna, I’m gonna jump forward here. And this is kind of advanced, what I’m going to say but and this is a hypothesis that I have with nearsighted people. And I’ve proven it enough where I feel confident in saying it, that when we are nearsighted, there’s a mental hypervigilance that we are mentally putting through our eyeballs. Because we do not want any blurry vision. Because that could mean something bad could happen to us. And right eye you get well, I know you can resonate with that, because it was resonating with me when I did that with my doctor. And so when I just started to take the lenses off and interact with my mental fear around what that meant, and I relaxed into it. This is kind of what would Bates talked about, around the tension that we carried in our eyes. Now, there’s a very specific requirements in this practice.

So you have to sign the dotted line and blood to really follow this agreement and the agreement is this. You only do this in non demanding non threatening situations. And if you at all start feeling uncomfortable or frustrated or whatever you put your glasses on, and you’d never or we’ll do this like driving or writing a check, or you know, whatever. But you’ll notice that eventually, mentally, there’s going to be a relaxation, because blur is about relaxing, it’s about receiving the world, it’s about much more peripheral vision, it’s about being more intuitive. There are many positive things to the blur. And in fact, in some of my advanced workshops, I give people the opposite prescription to where. So like, let’s say you’re minus six, I give them a plus six, and then have them interact with that level of blur for a minute. And then they take those off, and they go, Oh, my goodness, I’m, I’m seeing much clearer, because I allowed myself to relax into the blur. And so the dirty secret here is the way you heal your vision is by relaxing mentally into the blur when you’re in a safe situation. Because there’s, there’s a connection with myopia and fear. myopia, and I don’t trust what I see.

Myopia intention, myopia and hypervigilance. And I know this, because 1000s of patients have told me this as they feel their myopia. This is what their Well I went through, when I was eight years old, I couldn’t see the board and the teacher came down on me with it, and I felt shame. And so I got these glasses, and they tightened me up, but I could, you know, memorize my way, whatever the story is. But that’s a historical part of you. That’s feeding into this whole tunneling Macula centric situation. And the thing is, is if you can get rid of a lot of the stress, then you coexist with the drusen, it’s not going to affect you drusen likes stress, it grows in stress. And it also grows, when there aren’t enough nutrients to support the retina. That’s a simplistic way of saying it. But I’ve observed drusen over the years with the scanning and the things that I’ve done. And when my patients start to improve their vision, I noticed the Druze and starts to recede, it’s not even part of the equation anymore. And what I learned in school like the doctor, you went to, oh, my god, Drew’s and that’s it, that’s the killer on. And it doesn’t have to be, you know, there’s a natural remedy to bring the cholesterol down that you could look at, and it’s called red yeast rice. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it. And so sometimes that can help. I mean, I’ve even seen the Mayo Clinic support it, web M and D is supported. So it’s, again the statins That’s rough you know that there’s a lot of controversy in the in that, but I’m glad you know about red yeast rice and you know, maybe that’s that’s a way that you can manage it. But in any case,

that can be an indicator and then liver health as well. So then it comes down to in these vitamin A lutein and zeaxanthin. What is the state of your liver health gallbladder health? Do you have a history of something going on there. If you do, then one of the supplements I would suggest to help you absorb your vitamin A and fat soluble vitamins more would be just to get some bile salts and take take them after a meal. And that will help you be able to absorb vitamin A, and lutein and zeaxanthin better. So that’s just something to note. And maybe we can talk about that in further sessions, if you’re not sure about that. But that could also be a game changer for you in terms of getting more of those fat soluble nutrients into the retina. The other thing that the vitamin A needs and hopefully this supplement you’re taking you should look is that zinc is in it because zinc is another very important trace mineral that helps in the vitamin ace absorption. And I’m assuming that if somebody is promoting supplementation, that zinc is in there, that’s that’s very important. But in any case, so we’re coming down, it’s about their hours is gone. What I’m going to say is this, that take a look at those recommendations that I made and I’ll send some links for you so you can easily find them.

And then I’m gonna I’m gonna send you my podcasts I just did on prisms, so you can understand that and then start Taking your glasses off. In the non demanding non threatening situations, I’m also going to give you an AI exercise to do, which is a baits exercise, but it’s even much more effective. Because I’ve added another piece to it, you’ll see the exercise need to go, this is familiar. But even just doing it once a day can really be beneficial in clearing up your eyesight. And then in terms of this progressive lens situation, I would, I would consider coming at some point with your glasses to my office. And we’ll calculate some kind of a reduced prescription for you. That again, could be a game changer. You know, I remember my doctor gave me a reduced prescription. And so I was in my office and I was working. And my staff said to me, are you on antidepressants, you see much lighter, much happier. And I said, No, I’m wearing a reduced prescription. And I realized that just by wearing that reduced prescription, I was less anxious, I was more relaxed, because any lens you put on is affecting the light coming into the eyes, that’s affecting your nerves, your muscles, your brain, your endocrine system. And that was really blew me away when I so I know that just getting into some kind of reduced single vision lens would be really helpful just in being able to see better. So before I end the podcast, I want all the listeners to know that there are things that you can do systemically metabolically with herbs nutraceuticals your diet and then functionally with different prescriptions that you might wear where you’re not using progressive lenses or making sure you’re getting blue blockers on the lenses to improve your Macula health. So we’ll leave it there. Thanks for tuning in today. 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.