Reduce Myopia, Floaters, and Eye Stress

Today I am sharing a telehealth session I sis with a young man who works on his computer all day. He’s made some progress so far, so today, we are covering the next steps to reduce myopia, floaters, and eye stress. Enjoy the show. If you want more, sign up for my newsletter at: www.drsamberne.com.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

eyes, prescription, floaters, dries, drugstore, screen, halos, reduce, salads, healthier, eat, light, astigmatism, msm, seafood, problems, wearing, day, blue, collagen

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 another EyeClarity podcast. This is a peek into patient that I gave a telemedicine session. So a little backstory, he’s a young man. And he works on screens all day. And I first saw him a few months ago, and he was having eye strain floaters, red eyes irritation, and I was able to reduce his myopia through his contact lenses basically took the astigmatism out of the prescription, and I balanced his eyes. And the report is, is that he actually is doing better, his eyes feel more relaxed. But there’s more, he wants more. So I hope you enjoy the show. Thanks for tuning in. So I think that’s quite a big jump in the contact lenses, I just want to say that at the beginning, when you go from a minus 650, and a minus six, down to a minus 550 in each eye. And you’re the only difference you’re seeing is your eyes are more relaxed. But it’s equally as clear. Couple things come to mind that we could actually go even lower with the contacts or with a prescription when you’re on your screen. So let me explain most prescriptions that we get when we go to the eye doctor, or based on sitting in the room where you’re 20 feet away, and you look at the eye chart, that’s kind of how it is. But that prescription is usually too strong. When you’re looking at your screen, like 22 inches, 20 inches, or even your phone at 14 inches. So I think we may, we may need to make an additional adjustment here. And your prescription, since you’re spending primarily most of the day, up close, so that 550 is still too strong for you. Now there’s two ways we can approach this. So I’ll give you both, and then we could kind of massage it see which one is better. One, one option would be for you to go to the drugstore, and get yourself a pair of glasses that you would wear over the contacts.

That would reduce the 550 even more. And the minimum prescription you could buy is a plus 1.25. And you could get that or what you could do is you could take your phone and go to the drugstore and try that on. And it’s probably going to be clearer and more relaxing. And if that’s the prescription that that works for you. Then the next thing we need to do is we need to get you into a pair of blue blocking glasses. And what happens with the screen is it’s emitting this blue light all the time. And blue light wreaks havoc on the eyes. First of all, it makes the eyes irritated. It cuts down on the circulation, it dries the eyes out. It would be like you go into a tanning salon. And usually you you’re under the tanning light for five minutes. And if you were under it longer you would burn your skin. Well when you look at a screen, that’s like being under a tanning salon light. And so the idea is what you want to do is you want to protect yourself and your eyes from that bombardment of the blue light. And the only way you can do that is really through the glasses. Or the other thing you could do is there’s a company that sells a specific shield that you could put over your phone and the name of that company is called hockey shield. I actually worked with them. But I actually think the glasses. The blue blocking glasses would work better than the shield. But we have to figure out what the reduced prescription is for you to wear over the contacts to protect your eyes. You see, I

think that the the blue light is still affecting the production of the floaters, even though they might be a little less. And I also think it’s putting a lot of stress on your eyes, which is creating that grainy experience that you talk about when you look at, you know, a white ceiling or you know, something that’s lighter. And they think there’s some stress going on here. In your eyes, because of the amount of exposure, you’re getting to the blue light from the blue light. And so two things need to happen here, number one, we need to somehow get you into even more of a reduced prescription for your screen time. And then once that’s calculated, then adding the the blue blocker so that you’re protecting your eyes from the blue light. So that’s, that’s kind of my diagnosis right now. So one of the questions that they had was, what is the process of going into the drugstore, and trying the farsighted prescription over the contacts? See, the strategy is that he’s wearing too strong of a lens for his screen time, even though we’ve reduced the distance prescription.

Now we’re going to bring the prescription down even more. And I’m talking about how to go to the drugstore and do that. So you take your digital device with you, and you can try on different lenses. So we’re talking about, well, what if the one and a quarter doesn’t work? Then what does he do and see which one of those feels the best, and gives him the best clarity. So if the 1.25 doesn’t work, then he could try the 1.5 or the 1.75. My opinion is that the 1.25 is gonna like be in his zone of that’s like, that’s the sweet spot. I don’t think if we went any less, I don’t think he would see any difference, I think we have to give him that much of a magnification for him to go, oh, this actually is a little brighter, clearer, bigger, My eyes feel a little better. Like we could do like a point five or point seven, five, or point one, now they don’t sell this in the drugstore. So that’s where, you know, he would either have to come to me or go somewhere that have a made up. And in certain instances, you know, I would make that call. But I think that even at 5.5 I actually think his true prescription is somewhere around the 4.25 or 4.5 range. I think that part of the problem was is that he was initially way over corrected. And then they tried to correct him for this astigmatism situation, which totally failed.

And this is the way the AI field is, is they tend to make the prescriptions too strong. I mean, I can tell you that 90% of the people that walk into my office, I have to reduce their prescription on them. And not only do I reduce their prescription, but they immediately say I see things more clearly. So it’s the way the exam is done. And the machinery and the way they how quickly it started. So back to your question. I think the 1.25 is going to be the sweet spot for him. I’m confident, like I was like the 550 was going to be good for him for distance. I think that the 550 with the plus 1.25, it’s going to make it a net of A minus 4.25. That’s going to work well for him. Now the other option, the other option would be for him to get some contact lenses, say at that power minus 4.25. But he would still need a blue blocker over the contacts, which he could just go buy over the counter or whatever there would be no prescription in it. But he might have a little difficulty seeing things farther away. Maybe maybe not.

He is in a process of reducing his nearsightedness and astigmatism. If that’s part of what’s going on here, and the more he’s able to reduce it, the better his circulation in his eyes, the less graininess the less redness, and the less floaters and the less halos. So that’s kind of a method that I’m giving him to keep reducing. And if he comes back, and he says, Yeah, this works 515 And I had the plus one and a quarter, well, then what I would do is I would email him a pair of minus four and a quarter contacts, and you can use those. And there’s a big difference between a four and a SIX. Huge, I mean, that is a huge difference. And I think that the more we can bring him down in his nearsightedness, his eyes are gonna get healthier and healthier. But it’s like wearing a straight jacket, on your vision, or a very tight shirt or very tight pair of pants, or a tight pair of shoes. It’s just the wrong size for him. So what happens if you’re wearing a shoe that’s too small for you, it’s gonna hurt after a while.

And that, you know, the person says, Hey, don’t worry, you’ll get used to it or, but meanwhile, you’re getting circulation problems in your feed, and you don’t want to walk and it’s the same metaphor. In this next segment, I talk about how to get rid of floaters. And this person is also having issues with halos. So here we go. So address the floaters, those would be two things that are on my list. So let’s start with the floaters. floaters occur because there is a problem with the gel sack in the back of the eye. So we all have a gel sack which sits in the back of the eye, and it’s made up of a protein material called collagen. And collagen is it helps keep the eye in a certain shape. And it also is important in the hydration of the eye. So when we start developing floaters, the collagen begins to dry out. And once it dries out, it can begin to shrink, or it can get bigger, it can, some of the collagen flakes can break off. And it’s all it’s all a game of hydration and oxygenation in the eye itself.

So the MSM drops, which I recommended for you. First of all, I would recommend those four times a day, I’m you know, maybe perhaps, since you do so much screen time, I would make sure you might be using eyedrops every couple of hours during the day. So that you keep the eyes hydrated. And you’ve got the 5% You’ve got the 15%. My my patient reviews on my webstore say that the 15% and MSM can reduce floaters. People write that. And I’m not allowed to say that because I don’t want the FDA to get mad at me. But that speaks for itself. So you might up the frequency that you’re using the 15% MSM. I also have a mist, a spray that you can spray on your eyelids, that might be good for you to have as well, because you’re doing so much screentime which is going to dry your eyes out anyway. Some other things that you might consider would be increasing or taking a vitamin C supplement, maybe a buffered vitamin C, I probably do about 2000 milligrams a day. Vitamin C is also helpful in reducing floaters. I would make sure you’re getting enough omega three fatty acids because the eye is made up of fatty acids, especially the retina 50% of the retina is made up of fatty acids, and we can’t produce that kind of Omega three. So you get that from seafood or you get and get a supplement. A good supplement out there. It’s called metagenics is the company and and I would recommend the Omega Genex 1000. And you would want to take about 2000 milligrams a day of the Omega three.

And then some other things to consider would be, and this may be hard for you, but lower the sugar, lower the inflammatory foods and try to eat healthier if you can get some exercise every day. Make sure your sleep is going well if you can. These are other factors that create obstacles in your ability to get the 15% MSM to work. It’s like you’re doing something really good with those drops. But if your diet is poor, if your stress is high, if your lymph system because you’re not exercising, you’re not getting some natural sunlight. You’re not protecting yourself from the blue light. This is where the floaters come in. And then with the halos, the halos are another symptom that your eyes are drying out. And so again, the hydration part of this is really important. I can’t underestimate or overestimate or estimate the effects of looking at a screen and what it does to your your eyes.

If you’re on that screen all day, it really dries you out. And then with the blue light, it really dries you out. And part of the floater situation in your your case, I think is that you’re dealing with a lot of chronic dryness, and you’re coming out of it. It’s getting better. But I still think you have maybe 60% ago and part of his graininess and halos and floaters are due to the fact that your eyes are congested. You know, it’d be really interesting. If you spent even a weekend away from your screen time. I bet your eyes would get better. I’ve seen this over and over again. So the screens, definitely, yes, I you know, and I’m not advocating that for you. Because I know it’s you know, you’re you have to do it. But everybody that I recommend, take a day off from the screen, go out to a park go out to nature, get away from that close, confined, focusing distance, because you’re dealing with artificial light. You get away from that for a day or two that will prove to you that your eyes will feel better and get better. It’s like you’re trying to run a marathon every day, when you’re doing that level of intense work. I mean, it isn’t even like an hour a day, you’re on it several hours a day. We’re not made like that, you know, our ancestors were everything was in the distance.

You know, this is before technology. They didn’t have all these problems. And you know, don’t get me wrong. Technology is really great. I love it. I use it a lot. But there’s a balance that your eyes need, which is you need a break from all that close focusing. Because it does. It’s like we’re running a marathon all the time. So in this last segment, the question is what do we do about diet? Here we go. Simple and mainstream that we make it, the easier it’s going to be for you to access. So I’ll answer it this way. On a scientific basis, there has been enough research that says that a Mediterranean type diet is really helpful in reducing the risks of AI problems. This has been published in mainstream journals. And you can’t really argue it. So if you think about a Mediterranean diet, Mediterranean diet, what’s that like? Well, it’s eating seafood, certain meats if you want getting some healthy fats and oils, and vegetables, salads, and those kinds of things. So that would be something that you could look up well, what’s in a Mediterranean diet. What can I eat there and probably Probably,

you would enjoy it, it tastes really good. And it would probably be fairly easy for you to access it. But the health benefits are really high. And the reason is, is because they’re combining fats and oils, with good healthy vegetables and salads with seafood, and maybe a little meat. That’s pretty easy. And so that would be the one that I would suggest. Another guideline that you could look at would be get the colorful vegetables, you know, the red, the orange, the yellow. So what’s a, what’s a red vegetable, bell peppers, what’s an orange vegetable, carrots, got beets. And then yellow? Well, yellow, could be like a yellow bell pepper. Or, you know, as we move into the fall in winter, sweet potato, that’s got great nutrients for the eyes. Eggs have good nutrients for the eyes, avocados have really good nutrients for the eyes. So you’re doing the red, orange, yellow, green veggies. And then berries. So in the summertime strawberries, blueberries, they’re really good for your retina, really good for your circulation. Okay, so those would be, you know, some simple things you can do. I’m not a vegetarian. So, you know, I will have a piece of seafood once in a while, I would say this, this time in my life, I’m more plant based, for sure. Eat more salads and fresh foods. But when I was your age, you know, it was harder to do. So I looked for salads and stuff like that. And you know, you just do the best you can I think that even if you made a little bit of a change, and tried to eat more live food, fresh food when you can, even once a day, you know, maybe your mom can buy a Vitamix, that’s a great tool to be able to make smoothies. So you could you know, add a little ginger Tumeric coconut water, little kale, cucumber, celery, maybe a date, a little fruit, grind that up, you could do medicinal mushrooms, or a whey protein powder or something like that. So you drink your breakfast. And that’s a that’s a great thing to do, because you’re getting good enzymes for your, for your gut.

And the other thing you might consider is supplementing with a probiotics. So probiotics are the good bacteria and the gut Garden of Life puts out a very good probiotics take that on an empty, empty stomach in the morning, when you wake up, maybe drink a little lemon water alkalinize your body. And, you know, then, you know, you can do your your fish oil or whatever you’re doing. And again, you know, if you got into being able to make yourself a smoothie in the morning, I mean, that’s a game changer, if you’re going to do that kind of, you know, that kind of morning meal, it’s incredible, you get so many great nutrients that way into your system through a blender or a Vitamix. That, you know, even if he did it two or three days a week, you know, it’s a lifestyle thing. So it just kind of depends.

One other thing I would say about the floaters in the halos is make sure you’re drinking enough water, I would do eight to 10 glasses of water every day. And again, the type of water, you know is important. At the very least, I would see if you could get some kind of reverse osmosis, or you know, some kind of filtered water has a little higher quality than usually, you know, city water. So I mean, these are all things I don’t know lifestyle wise, where whether you can do these things, but they all make a difference. And they’re all really helpful to you. And it’s kind of what is needed for you to make deep changes. Because your nearsightedness is reflecting a deep tension in your eyeballs. When you’re wearing a six or a five, there’s a lot of tension. You may not even be aware of the tension that you’re carrying, but you are. And so if you start bringing that down and then feeding your body with really good nutrients, then you are empowering yourself to be healthy. So one of the things I love to do is inspire people and empower people to take back their vision and take back their health and you can do it too. So that’s our show for today thanks for tuning in.

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