Interview with Margaret Romero

I had a great chat with Margaret Romero that I wanted to share. She’s a functional medicine consultant specializing in things like lupus, thyroid, and GI issues. So we have a nice discussion about some of the things I’m doing especially in holistic vision care. Enjoy the show. If you want more, sign up for my newsletter at: www.drsamberne.com.

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Learn more about Margaret Romero Instagram | Podcast

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

eyes, people, pinkeye, compresses, floaters, red light, microbiome, retina, health, vitreous, eyedrops, msm, inflammation, castor oil, reduce, called, ocular, age, helpful, study

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@drsamberne.com.

Hey everybody, its Dr. Sam and I’d like to welcome you to another EyeCarity podcast. So today I want to share an interview with Margaret Romero. She actually interviewed me on Instagram Live recently. And Margaret. She’s a really cool person. She was Columbia trained as a nurse practitioner. She’s a functional medicine consultant, specializing in things like lupus, thyroid, GI issues, she’s got a podcast called The sacred medicine podcast. So we have a nice discussion about some of the things I’m doing especially in holistic vision care. So I hope you enjoy it. Enjoy the show. Thanks for tuning in.

So I’m excited to talk about some of these AI issues. I see them constantly, constantly at the urgent care and I worked there when one day a week so why don’t you just give us a quick, like, snippet on who you are and what you do.

Okay, so my name is Dr. Sam Berne, and I’m a Holistic optometrist. I’ve been in practice over 35 years, and have a lot of great methods to help people improve their vision, especially as we get older, I work with infants, elders, everybody in between. And my belief is you don’t have to live out your doctor’s diagnosis. And you can improve your vision at any age. I love it. So we’ll leave it at that

so much for being here and sharing your wisdom with us today. So one of the things that I see so much of and tell me why this is, is pinkeye. Every, every week that I’m at the urgent care, people come in with pinkeye. And I know, you know, conventional medicine, you know, it’s just a bacterial infection, and you give tobramycin or whatever bacterial drops for it. And that’s it. And I want to know why I see this so much more in the winter. And it what can we do to prevent it? Is there something we can do that does not require antibacterial drops?

Sure, so pinkeye, or better known as conjunctivitis is super contagious, and especially with kids, you know, you just rub your your eye a little bit, and all of a sudden, if you’ve got a bacteria, and you know, this is this is related to something which I call the ocular microbiome. So we have a microbiome in the body, but we also have an eye microbiome. And so when our eyes dry out, yeah, there’s I did a, a, an article in mind body green about ocular microbiome and I can send you the link. Anyway. So if your contact lens where if you use like eyedrops that have a lot of preservatives and chemicals in them, or you’ve had eye surgeries that reduces your immune health in the eyes. You know, if in Chinese medicine, the upper eyelid represents your spleen Health, and the lower eyelid represents your stomach health. So that’s more from an energetic point of view. So I like to go for herbs and compresses and natural eyedrops as a way to, you know, treat the cause. And so for example, you could do compresses like burdock or golden seal or akinesia or eyebright. Those are great to do a few times a day for able to do that. Finding eyedrops like homeopathic eyedrops are really good.

So symbolizing Optique by boron, those are Homeopathics that keep the eyes more hydrated, symbolized and actually has a little eyebright in it. So that would be something to do say four times a day. My MSM eyedrops work really well that’s a sulfur molecule, and that reduces inflammation. And also things like Colloidal Silver, if you can get a really good organic Colloidal Silver, that works really well at nipping pinkeye in the bud. If you’re open to that, and also organic castor oil, if you massage a little bit on the eyelids, that’s a great anti inflammatory agent and a little commercial here I just created a certified organic castor oil I drop and it’s great as a lubricator moisturizer anti inflammatory agent, you know and for people out there they use makeup a lot of times they have to check what’s in their makeup skin deep as a website we use to to analyze well what’s actually Leanne I make up, that can be an issue, if your contact lens where you know.

And you know, being on the computer all day I stressed the blue light dries your eyes out. And the thing is, is that with pinkeye, there’s some low level of inflammation going on. And so again, there could be systemic and metabolic and endocrine reasons why that it starts to affect the eyes and their functional reasons how you use your eyes together, are you focusing? Well, this is why exercises that I recommend could also help. So there’s a functional perspective in this as well. And the bad news is when you use antibiotics, it reduces your ocular microbiome, it treats the symptoms for a little bit, but usually, it doesn’t get rid of the cause. And that’s the conundrum that people get into. When it’s a staph infection and they start taking a lot of antibiotics, I would definitely do some secondary things to boost your immune system and including your ocular microbiome, with natural eyedrops and things like that.

So the eyedrops that you just mentioned like the eye Brite, for example, can that help restore the I microbiome, someone has been on tobramycin? Like, often?

Yes, exactly. You need, you can use those pharmaceuticals, you know, initially for a few days to help with the symptoms. But you got to take it further than that if you’re on tobramycin for anything longer than a week, it really does have effects the pH in the eyes, and that reduces the ocular microbiome, that’s where the homeopathic eyedrops are really important. And then doing something in the evening like castor oil eye drop or doing some of these compresses, you know, goldenseal or eyebright, or akinesia, as as I compresses are wonderful as a way to restore the ocular microbiome and reduce inflammation. And when you do that, then then a lot of times the the bug goes away. And during the period, you have to be careful from a contagious standpoint, don’t share wash cloths or towels or, you know, I’m sure you counsel people on that. But unfortunately, the pharmaceutical world is a symptom based and it drives the cause further in so it doesn’t it’s not really the answer. Yes,

I wholeheartedly agree. So with something like golden seal, when you say compresses, are you saying like open up the capsule in in warm water? And then

yeah, so you you can either Sure. So you can either do a capsule form or if you have an herbalist, or you can get, you know, some some tea either way, but yes, you put it’s a warm compress, and you place it over the eyes, it’s very soothing, you know, red raspberry leaf is another one. So whatever you can get in your local herbal store, you know, I brights pretty array available, you can even drink the eyebright as a tea and also you can use it as a compress. That’s wonderful for pinkeye. And, you know, if it’s still not going away, I would look into getting some kind of inorganic Colloidal Silver formula, and then you can use that as a compress as well. So there are a lot of different directions, you can go pick your favorite herb, camera meals, another nice one, you could use your kimberbell tea bags over the eyes. Over the eye. Yeah, so

that sounds great. So that was all of this. So styes Okay, same thing, like is that like inflammatory process is, you know, there’s the upper and lower lid also is did you say the upper lid is spleen in the lower stomach? Correct?

Right, so you can get some acupuncture, and a lot of times that will redistribute the congested energy in the eyes. But his style is a little different because usually that’s on the eyelid. And if our you know, our eyelashes get clogged up, because there are meibomian glands that are those are the glands that produce the oily part of the tears. So then that can lead to things like meibomian gland dysfunction and dry eye. So that’s more of a condition where it’s affecting the outer part of the eye. And then if it’s away from the eyelashes and you start to get bumps, that’s called a chalet. Zijn and so that’s, that’s like a lumpy congested formula condition, but it’s similar there, you know, there’s usually there’s could be some antibiotic, anti bacterial, bacterial and viral and sometimes even allergic reactions. That’s another one or the makeup contact lenses. Those are all issues that can cause the meibomian In glands to get irritated and again, finding ways to reduce the inflammation. I find the castor oil is really good for my Bohmian gland dysfunction. And you can either put it in the eyes or massage it on the eyelids. MSM eyedrops symbolise and eyedrops. So I tried to get people away from what’s in the, you know, the regular pharmacies because those eyedrops have a lot of preservatives, they have a lot of chemicals in them. And we’re back to the ocular microbiome again. But it’s similar, you use the same kind of compresses and minnows, so it’s a similar situation as the the pinkeye. But it’s more external. And it’s more on the eyelashes, or the pinkeye is more internal, it’s more on the inside part of the eyelids. But, you know, if you’ve got conditions like auto immune Rosacea is an issue, I see a lot of ocular rosacea, UV itis, those conditions, where there’s an auto immune situation, and you know what to do there. You you talk to people about improving that part, the gut health and the eye health are very related in my, what I’ve seen sound surprising. Yeah. So. So there, those two are pretty similar in how you would treat it.

Okay. And, I mean, so basically, I mean, there are some people who gets dies, often, they get them several times a year, and there are people that don’t get it at all. Would you say that the reason being mostly is either low level inflammation, gut issues, microbiome issues?

Yes, I would say those things. And I would probably add things like visual stress, their contact lens, where what’s their eye makeup? Like? Those kinds of things? What is their eye history? Have they had eye surgeries? Have they taken a lot of pharmaceuticals in the eyes, you know, those are all secondary factors that reduce the resistance in the eyes. Because we need the good bacteria and the healthy pH if we don’t have that, and there’s dryness and inflammation, then it’s a Petri dish for, you know, viruses and bacteria to get into the eyes, we don’t have the immune health and our eyes to to, you know, reduce the causes of it. So you have to be a detective there. I would ask them about their, you know, their visual stress, you know, do you get eyestrain? Do you get eye fatigue? How many hours a day are you on the screens? You know, those those are factors that we’re seeing more and more computer related visual stress, because kids because of homeschooling, and then adults that are on their phone and screen 1012 hours a day. And you know, we could talk about the nutrients that are really important, like vitamin A. That’s, that’s super important. But if people have a challenge with their liver and gallbladder, they’re not producing enough bile and they’re not storing it. Bile helps us absorb the fat soluble vitamins like vitamin A, lutein and zeaxanthin. And those are critical for eye health and many other things. So supplementing with bile salts after a meal can be helpful. So I’m always asking about liver gallbladder health. That’s a big one and more and more people either have their gallbladder taken out or they have toxicity levels, a toxicity issues in the liver.

And then Chinese medicine the liver rules the eyes. So that’s another factor. But vitamin A, lutein, zeaxanthin, hydrating your eyes getting enough healthy fats and oils, especially omega threes. And you know, there are other things as well. But those are the those are the main ones. I mean, if people are under such high stress and they’re getting chronic styes or conjunctivitis, I would put them on a comprehensive eye vitamin for a few months and you know, really check in with their diet around getting enough antioxidants and stuff. Because the nutrients in the eyes have one of the highest metabolic needs in the body. And the retinas especially. And right now we’re discovering red light therapy, if you look through red light three minutes in the morning, that has been shown to regenerate certain eye conditions. So that’s at 670 nanometers. This was a study published in the UK University College of London, Dr. Jeffrey’s team did a study on red light and people over 40 and three minutes in the morning. I did it over 12 weeks once a week. And they found that a 22% improvement in visual acuity is doing the red lights and non invasive so the red light is it Addressing the mitochondria in the retina, and ATP, so the ATP goes up the RLs, the reactive oxygen species goes down, because that gets higher when your eyes are aging and you’re getting more inflammation and oxidative stress, it also works great for Drew’s and anybody out there who’s been to their eye doctor and those cholesterol vessels that are growing in the retina, the red light has been shown to shrink the drusen as well. And you might read this study and make your own determination. But there’s so many great things out there that are that are helping us and we need to get away from just treating the symptoms. And I know you’re doing that, too. So it’s exciting to

see other three minutes once a week. And that’s, well,

that’s what the studies show now it has to be in the morning, my protocols, I have people do it three days a week. And it’s about three minutes in that you want to do it in the morning, at least three hours after, you know, I mean, no more than three hours after you waking up. But the the great thing about it is is that this red light seems to be affecting the mitochondria health and the ATP out. So that’s Yeah, but it’s, it’s, it’s pretty phenomenal to have that kind of an improvement in a study. And what they found is that between 40 and 70, those age ranges, they actually got more benefits than the people under 40 years old, which was kind of fascinating. I didn’t I didn’t quite get that. But that’s that’s what they found in their study. So

okay, that’s, that’s a really cool study. I’m, I’m happy that they did that with the red light. Because yes, I feel like red light therapy is is becoming more and more popular thing, which is

very accessible to people can figure it out how to get that kind of red light in their eyes, I’m putting out a new pair of glasses, that’s going to be red light. So it’s just a pair of glasses that you wear that will have that read in it. And so, because I want to make it available to people and and yeah, so that’ll be coming out soon.

So let’s talk a little bit about floaters. Yes. It can start as early as like and correct me if I’m wrong, but I read this somewhere and then it can start as early as like in your 20s or even I don’t know if any sooner. Okay, these floaters and and I always thought there was something that like people that were older got, but that is not true.

Well, age related is certainly one one factor but also if you’re nearsighted if you’ve had cataract surgery or another kind of surgery called vitrectomy, which are used to reduce high pressure. Lasik surgery, laser surgery can also trigger floaters. Even certain medications non inflammatory steroids, steroids, Na is the like ibuprofen, those kinds of things can trigger floaters. So the bit yes. And so the big the big thing here is that the vitreous is the gel sack that sits in front of the retina. And it’s made up of mostly water and collagen proteins. And as we age, it tends to shrink a little bit. So if if you’re in a situation eye wise where you’re dehydrating the eyes, then what happens is the vitreous starts to pull away from the retina. And that’s called a posterior vitreous detachment. and a high percentage of people will get that over 50 60% of people over the age of 60 will have that PVD and some other reasons why you might get the PVD or vitreous floaters could be again too much screen time exposure to blue light. And just a general low grade inflammation also could be heavy metal toxicities, liver issues can also create the floaters. But the good news from my perspective is there are things you can do to at the very least neutralize the floater. So I’ll go through my list, one of the top ones and this was a study that was done, people that that a pineapple, the bromelain and reduced floaters. So you can either take a bromelain a supplement or you know you can have your daily dose of pineapple. Another thing that you could do is make sure you up your vitamin C. So looking to get maybe 2000 milligrams a day of a good vitamin C. Hyaluronic Acid is another two large molecule that helps kind of with the collagen levels of the college and health of the vitreous There’s an eye drop called Hyla tears. And it’s called, it’s from a company called Hyo logic and that has highly erotic acid and and it’s made for the eyes. MSM eyedrops also work well. So you can do either a lower or higher percentage of MSM. And that’s helpful, you can do some kind of a liver cleanse, that can also be helpful.

And another interesting connection is the lymphatic health. So, if we’re sitting a lot if we’ve got a sluggish lymph system, and we start activating our lymphatic health, and we do certain eye exercises where we’re moving the eyes, this helps also get rid of the floater. So limb fell, and reducing floaters kind of go together. And, you know, if you’re, if you’re scheduled for something like cataract surgery, there’s a little bit of higher risk that you might be getting might get some floaters after the surgery, diabetes, eye trauma, so, concussions or you know, car accidents, food allergies, yeast infections, these are all things and then from a Chinese medicine model, what we’ve learned is it’s kidney congestion. So if you get some acupuncture and you get more chi into your kidneys, that can also be helpful. And so those are the, those are some of the main things that can be frustrating. And I counseled people to be patient, because, you know, they may do something like highly erotic acid or MSM, and it gets rid of some of them, but then okay, they need to do a liver cleanse, or they need to, you know, protect their blue from the blue light blue blockers. So there’s a lot of detective work again, that needs to be done about eye floaters. You don’t want to do any kind of surgery or laser with the floaters. I’ve had too many car accidents with that where people have had those laser surgeries, and then it’s creating a cloud or more blurred vision. Oh my god. So you don’t want to do that. I think the red light is also helpful. So you bring back the red light therapy would be something I would I would do. And again, visual stress, you know, what kind of prescription are you wearing? Do you wear progressive bifocals. Maybe you need to wear a single vision lens for your screen time, so you have more peripheral vision. And so those are the main things I’ll add one more poor dentistry. So if you’ve had a lot of mercury amalgams, or got TMJ, or root canals, these are things that can again, because it’s right near where the eye is, seek out a biological dentist and get better teeth, dental health from a more holistic perspective. Yeah, I’m sure you do. That.

Totally makes sense. Yeah. So can floaters you know, doing a lot of these things? Candy? Have you seen people really get rid of majority if not all of them?

Sure. Of course. Yeah. I mean, if you go on my website, my web store, look at MSM. I’m not allowed to write these things, because of the FDA. But people will write in and say, you know, I’ve been using these MSM drops, and within three days my floaters are gone. And so, you know, I’ve had a lot of success stories with it. And for others, it’s just been a slow improvement. And for others, they get better, and then they come back a little and so there’s a stress component in it, you know, adrenals thyroid, but definitely, you know, adding all of these things and more nutrients to your eyes, better antioxidants, you have a good chance of neutralizing and in some cases, reversing the floaters. Yeah, absolutely. And improving vitreous health. Yeah. Yeah, that’s definitely

taking oral and then antibiotics taking oral probiotics can then help with the eye microbiome.

I would say a little bit indirectly. You know, there’s the school’s out on how much oral probiotics work, you know, are you doing fermented foods? You know, there’s lots of conversation about where we get our probiotics and so on. But I would say that, here’s, here’s a statistic, the eyes and the brain make up 2% of the body weight and use 25% of the food intake. So 25% of what we eat is going into this area. So whatever you’re doing to reduce inflammation, improve dietary absorption is going to have an impact on your eyes. I mean, I I read this statistic that the retina has the highest energy and metabolic need in the body because of the concentration of blood vessels. And it makes sense to me because we can look in the eyes and we can see early stages of hypertension, diabetes and so on all these conditions. So I would say that you know, whatever you’re going to do to improve your digestive health your GI health. I know you do this a lot. Yes, I think it can clear up your eyes doing a liver cleanse could clear up your eyes to kidney taking a break from screen time can clear up your eyes. So there’s there’s a lot of connection and collaboration between your gut health and your eye health.

I love that. I mean, you just you gave us so much today. Because really the only thing we ever do for pinkeye incises antibacterial you know medication. So I love all of these recommendations and using some castor oil and the castor oil, can you you said that you can put it inside the IV you can also massage it on the lids as well.

Definitely, that’s a great thing to do before bed to just take a little bit of castor oil, and very lightly just massage it over the eyes it will penetrate and absorb during the night. And people that have excruciating dry in the morning. When they do that castor oil massage before bed. It is really moisturizing and hydrating. And then you’ve got your symbolizing or MSM or uptake, eyedrops by your nightstand put a couple of those in, you know, you just have to feed your eyes more hydration, until you get to a loading dose where the eyes then revert back to producing enough tears and they’re not evaporating. And there’s not that inflammation or infection that’s affecting the tear production. But absolutely the castor oil massages, it feels good and it works. So it’s I highly recommend it.

So someone just asked, Can someone use red light therapy with or without glasses,

you can do it without glasses, I would actually recommend without glasses, you don’t have to see anything, it’s basically you want to receive the red into the eyes. So you sit in the chair, you don’t need a bright light source either. So you don’t have to look into the sun or bright light, just just a mellow light. That was what showed in the study, they didn’t use a bright red light, it was more dim. And you know that it’s too bright. If you start squinting or straining, then that’s the you’re either too close to the light source or it’s too bright. So follow that response if it’s if you’re getting that kind of reaction. But do it without contacts and glasses. So there’s more of a chance for the red to get come into the eyes. This is where we want to receive the food this way coming in. So we don’t need to see clearly or need lenses. So take them off and just use the red lens during the treatment.

Is there a red light therapy that you company that you like or that you personally use,

or that there’s a full there’s a full body light panel, I have no business relationship with this company. It’s called Red rush 360. And I like this company because it’s also it’s a red light box and also near infrared, near infrared. And that’s also very helpful for your body and your eyes. And so the other thing is it’s low EMF. And with that light box, it’s pretty bright. So again, you want to be maybe two feet away, if you’re going to be keeping your eyes open. I start with the eyes closed because the eyelids, which are like window shades, so some of the light is still going to get in but you’re not going to have that brightness. But red light on the body is great for inflammation, immune health, cardiovascular health, and many other things. I mean, you can look at the literature. So that’s a whole body light box that that works well that people have responded to and it runs somewhere six to $700. So that that would be, you know, an option if you want to get the whole body into the red light.

Okay, I do have a question here. Someone that’s had MS has blurry vision, any recommendations?

Well, one thing is on my YouTube channel, I did a very extensive video blog on the relationship between Ms and vision. And so you might check that out. But just simply stating, there are some things that you can do. And it’s related to that Don’t want to get too into this, the relationship to your vitamin D levels. And Ms. And there have been some studies that show that high. If you do a high dosages of vitamin D, that you can actually start reducing some of the MS symptoms and, and things like that. On an eye level, color therapy, light therapy is very helpful. eye exercises are also really good. And the first thing to do is get an assessment of the optic nerve because many times MS affects the optic nerve, which is related to how well our peripheral vision is. So getting a baseline of that and then you can do either some you know nutrient support, things like taurine and gingko and Omega three as a great for the optic nerve. And then some eye exercises can be helpful. But check out this video blog I did I think it’s about 10 minutes long. So I really delve deeply into, you know, the biochemical aspects of MS and how it relates to the eyes and the body.

Very cool. And then for our last question, can these recommendations help an 80 year old woman or eight year old sorry, doesn’t say women with diabetes? Oh, it says in her eyes. So eight year old woman with diabetes can tell.

I would say that anything that you can do to calm down the retina circulation is helpful. So the red light therapy would be a place I might start and also taking a look at some very simple gentle eye exercises could also help. You know on the on the diabetic level getting you you can do some things like bilberry that’s wonderful for retina circulation. The carotenoids, lutein zeaxanthin and Astra Xanth and they’re great for retina health and retina circulation. Those are gentle, you know, antioxidants and carotenoids that if somebody has diabetic retinopathy, they want to be feeding their retina with these kinds of antioxidants. And they’ll slowly start improving their vision and support their retina circulation better. That’s a no brainer. So I think there’s a lot of upside for anybody at any age that’s got diabetic retinopathy.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Sam, everyone who’s listening today, if you want to follow him, he is an amazing resource for Eye Health. It sounds like you also have a YouTube channel. And you’re always on Instagram. So I see a lot of your posts and your reels and all that, which is amazing. So

thank you. Thank you for having me. And I wish you the very best. And we’ll speak to you again sometime in the future.

Sounds good. I’ll have you back for other other eye topics. That’d be great.

I really good. Well, that was a great interview. I really enjoyed being with Margaret. You can check out her Instagram at Margaret Romero. She’s got some excellent content on functional medicine, gi health and many other things. So if you want to text me your questions, you can do so at 1-844-932-1291 or you can always email your questions to me hello@drsamberne.com. So that’s our show for today. I want to thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, 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.