State of the Union: Holistic Eyecare Trends of 2023

I wanted to share some trends I am seeing in holistic eye care that I think will grow in 2023. Let’s jump in! Enjoy the show.

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SUMMARY KEYWORDS

eye, prescription, people, called, studying, vision, doctor, creates, mitochondria, therapy, nearsighted, reduce, read, lens, glaucoma, intermittent fasting, patient, red light, wear, visual

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, I wanted to introduce this podcast, it was a State of the Union that I gave on how I see holistic eye care in 2023. I touch on a number of different subjects. And I wanted to share with you so I hope you enjoy the show, take care, what I wanted to do is I wanted to start off and give kind of a State of the Union of how I see holistic eye care in 2023. And I’m going to weave in everybody’s sharing so that it’s more appropriate for you individually than just kind of spilling off because I could go in a lot of directions. So in 2023, one of the things one of the trends that I see in Well, overall holistic health is that people are wanting to take more responsibility for their health and wellness, not just their eyes. But I think this was accelerated through the COVID period. But even before that, I think people were exploring, you know, things like herbs and aromatherapy. And, you know, just finding professionals who would listen to them and not just see them as a number. And you know, one of my sayings is, whenever I evaluate a person, I don’t just look at the numbers, but I look at the person behind the numbers. And I remember when I study Chinese medicine and acupuncture, one of the things that really blew me away, as I learned how to read pulses was that a lot of times on the surface, people would have certain symptoms. But if I treated the cause, then the symptoms would go away. And I think all of the people in this class today are seeking that, or if they’re, you know, if they haven’t experienced it, they’ve experienced it with me, by finding me online.

So one of the one of the things that I see changing is that people are going to be more say, self directed and empowered to work more in partnership with their doctor. And, you know, over the past six months, patients have said to me, they’re really happy that I create an environment where I’m not just the authority, and that I have I’m the only one with the answers, but that we work together even if it has to do with certain prescriptions that they’re looking through. Because by doing that, it creates a more healing environment instead of saying some of the ophthalmology experiences that people have had, where the doctor says, Well, if you don’t have this procedure, you’re going to go blind, or in children if you don’t get this really strong glasses prescription and wear it full time. You know your child is going to lose his or her eyesight. So that’s that’s one trend that I see going on. Another trend that I see going on, is that people are starting to talk about mitochondria. This seems to be a buzz, and not only in eyecare although I don’t know how many eye doctors are actually thinking about mitochondria. There’s a few but certainly in the functional medicine functional nutrition world. Mitochondria is a conversation and one of the reasons an eye care it’s such an important conversation is because the retina has one of the highest numbers of mitochondria. In the retina specifically the cones we have our rods and cones. The cones are

the In the area called the macula. And I’m getting more and more people, we have somebody here today with the right eye and retinal detachment, that more and more research has come out. This morning, I was down at the beach and I shot a couple videos on some research that I found, where red light, as an example, has actually reduced the degeneration in both the macula and retina areas. And not only I’ve talked about Glenn Jeffries in his work at the University College of London. But there’s also been some ophthalmology papers that have come out. One is there was a study done by the investigative ophthalmology and visual science journal. And they did a really cool study where they exposed people to blue light, and it’s the artificial blue light that we get from our screens. And then they gave them red light therapy. And without a doubt, they saw that the mitochondria function, the retina function, their visual performance, increased or improved, or it neutralize the negative effects of what the artificial blue light does to the retina, not only the retina, I think it also affects every part of the eye and even the brain and the body. So that was really cool to see. And there have been some other studies that I’m going to be reporting on in social media over the next couple of weeks, which talk about the value of red light as a way to reduce inflammation, oxidative stress, macular edema, macular degeneration, and even people with retinal detachments. So I get a lot of emails from people and direct message on social media on hey, I have this retinal detachment, I’ve got scar tissue.

You know, the doctor says there’s nothing you can do about it. And I’ve been giving them red light therapy. I also recommend a certain digestive enzyme, a protease enzyme one’s called serrapeptase, which actually helps reduce scar tissue in the eye. And then adding the MSM eyedrops, which I’ll talk about MSM and the castor oil eyedrops. And by doing all of those things, you’re hydrating, your lubricating your, you’re creating more collagen. And then with the red light, you’re actually changing the mitochondria. And so the mechanism in the eye around mitochondria is that as we age, I would say after age 40, our mitochondria function definitely starts going down. And as a person’s mitochondria goes down, their ATP goes down, that’s the the energy that’s needed to get rid of, you know, toxins and oxidative stress and so on. And so as the ATP goes down, there’s another substance that goes up called reactive oxygen species, R O S. So as that RLS goes up, and the ATP goes down, what happens is it just creates oxidative stress, poor circulation scarring. And this is, you know, then leading us down the path where eventually, the eye doctor is going to start picking up different eye conditions and pathologies. And of course, the toolbox of regular eye doctors is pretty limited because it’s pharmaceutical drugs, and or surgery, which are pretty invasive. And not to say that sometimes you do need those. But if you can be more proactive, or you can start doing these things to feed the eyes, then you’re going to prevent or, you know, eliminate the inevitable so they say, so the mitochondria conversation is really coming into play in 2023. And there’s another ingredient I want to bring in, which is something called nitric oxide. So this is my third trendsetter.

Nitric oxide is an ingredient that’s evasive. dilator and there have been some papers, especially in the glaucoma world that nitric oxide can actually slow down the progression of glaucoma or other vascular diseases, even things like optic neuritis, papilla edema, these optic nerve issues that are pretty unexplainable and regular eye care. It’s just you know, you’ve got this situation There’s not much we can do. Well, nitric oxide is one of those ingredients that I actually put into my optic nerve formulas a glaucoma protocol. And that coupled with Alpha Lipoic Acid, gingko biloba, bilberry, taurine, and of course, the good fats. Those are things that kind of build the optic nerve, and it protects it, even if you have some challenges in vascular disease. And it just so happens, the red light also contributes to the production of nitric oxide as well. So this idea of being able to increase the circulation in the eyes is really important. Okay, another trend that I see going on, and maybe it’s because I’m getting enough, following now enough traction, that people are questioning their contact lenses and glasses prescription, especially if it’s a really strong prescription, and they don’t want to wear it. And, you know, I can’t tell you in the last couple of weeks, I received very disturbing emails from parents where their children are wearing prescriptions like plus 10

plus 12. Now, this is extreme, and of course, they’re dilating, you know the and doing a cycloplegic exam. But that’s crazy to give a child plus tan or plus 12. I mean, it just doesn’t fit and what we’re doing. And then on the other side of the spectrum, we have adults who are dealing with the monovision condition, monovision situation, or one is corrected for distance in one eye is corrected for near, whether it’s in LASIK surgery, cataract surgery, or, generally speaking, even in a contact lens, this is very disruptive for your depth perception, your balance your orientation. And so I’ve been really having to put out a lot of fires, because people are not happy with what they’re being given. And the eye doctors are not necessarily open to the negotiation of saying, Can you give me you know, reduce prescription. And you know, one of the funny things I say to people is, you have one pair of shoes, you probably have more than one pair of shoes, based on your condition, you’re also going to need more, maybe the more than one set of lenses, contacts or glasses, based on the circumstance or the experiencing experience that you’re doing. So people are really getting tuned into that.

And they’re really excited that they can actually start reducing their prescription and moving more into a direction of at least wearing something part time, that’s not quite as strong for them. And so that’s, that’s another trend. And then I would say last but not least, I think people are getting more and more conscious about the relationship between diet and their eyes. And I’m going to take it a couple steps deeper. Because in studying functional medicine, one of the most powerful practices that helps everything, but really helps your eyes is the intermittent intermittent fasting program. And I suggest that if you don’t know about intermittent fasting, it’s something that you want to start studying. Because in a lot of research out there, even this is people like with cancer and chronic disease, chronic inflammation, pain, the intermittent fasting somewhere between 12 and 18 hours, doing that a few days a week, resets the body. And it actually reverses the aging process in the cells. And this is very potent. And in terms of the eyes, there’s actually I’m going to start posting a couple of studies that I have found on the relationship of intermittent fasting and improving your vision. And so if you’re dealing with cataracts, for example, and this is another trend that I see in the biochemistry lab work and we’re going to actually go into a lab report today one of our participants had some lab work done and I’m going to go into it in great detail. But the point of it is is the glucose glucose molecules, they attach themselves to the vitreous which is causing floaters and eventually PVD or the glucose molecules attaching itself to the lens, which is creating certain types of cataracts.

We call this the glycation process. And because we’re eating so many carbohydrates these days, this glucose, insulin level in our body is wreaking havoc, no. And so when we eat carbs, our body is going for the for the energy through the glucose molecules. But when we go into intermittent fasting, it starts to go to the fat molecules. And so it’s, it’s a whole different dynamic in terms of our oxidative stress or inflammatory situation. And certainly you want to check in with your doctor before you do it. If you’ve got, say, diabetes, or hypertension, or you’re on medications, definitely check in with your doctor. But one of the things I’ve noticed about intermittent fasting is it creates more resiliency, in your, in your health, in your neurological health, in your cognitive health, in your immune health, and in your digestive health. So that it’s It’s another tool that I feel will even grow as we move into 2023, especially if I keep talking about it. And there are a lot of great functional medicine doctors who I’ve studied with, who talk about both the intermittent fasting and also the ketogenic diet, and the keto diet. If you’ve got a condition like diabetic retinopathy, or some very intense retinopathy situation, I would certainly consider the possibility of moving more into a keto diet, but certainly work with a functional medicine doctor where you can get a baseline of certain, you know, certain blood markers, one of the ones I look at is homocysteine. So homocysteine is one of those markers when I see a high, a lot of times, it’s going to show me down the road that there’s going to be an eye problem. So that that’s a marker that’s creating an inflammatory situation that we’re picking up. And so and there have been some papers written on the relationship between high elevated levels of homocysteine and eye problems, just as as one example Now today, we’re going to actually do what we call a hair mineral analysis. And everybody on this call, if you do want to do a hair, mineral analysis, contact Monica appointments at Dr. Sam berne.com. And we can certainly arrange a hair mineral analysis.

I want to give you an example of and Dr. Bailey will relate to this very well. We had a mom who and her daughter they live in Austin, Texas, and they did one year of vision therapy. And there was absolutely no change in the binocular vision. And that’s kind of weird. I don’t know, you know exactly what’s going on. But one of my mentors taught me this when I was studying with him and his name was Dr. Albert a Sutton. I don’t know if you heard of Dr. Sutton. And Dr. Sutton was a really great developmental optometrist he practiced in Miami Beach, Florida. And one of the things that Dr. Sutton taught me was the value of if you’ve got a difficult developmental case, that doing a biochemistry test, to find out what’s going on on a cellular level, and giving more nutrients. And you did that first.

Then when you did the vision therapy, the child would be more available to make the changes they needed to make, you know, because if they have a developmental delay, or they’ve got something going on, it takes a lot of energy to change. And if we’re in a depleted state, if our adrenals are out of balance, if we’re in a calcium shell, where we push our calcium away as a way to protect ourselves, because we’re overwhelmed, if we’ve got heavy metal toxicities, if we’ve been exposed to mold, if we’re not metabolizing, our protein, we’re gonna get into this today, then the vision therapy is not going to work as well. And we did so one of the first things I did with his family is we did a hair mineral analysis with on this 12 year old and the the imbalances were off the chart. They were off the charts in terms of you know, the struggles she was having. And so as we repair that, and then we did some very specific primitive reflexes, vestibular therapy, yolk prisons and some other things. Now there’s improvement happening and it’s happening pretty quickly, because she’s got the energy Now to do it. And this is one of the key things that Dr. Sutton taught me around, don’t ignore the nutrition, don’t, don’t ignore that, ask about it, see what’s going on. And if you can get a biochemistry test, do so one of the places I work in Albuquerque is called Kidpower. And Kidpower is an institution that works with autistic kids. It’s a really cool facility, because it’s like this big warehouse. It’s kind of like this office, but it’s about four times as big, and they have these huge ceilings. And it’s a group of OTs, who are very progressive, I mean, they’ve studied primitive reflexes, they’ve studied so many different things. And so they brought me in, in the vision therapy party, because my job is to help connect the eyes to the brain and the body. Because these kids, their visual system is just not connected. And the level of eye care in ophthalmology there is all about giving strong glasses, and forgetting about writing these kids off. But what what I’ve instituted in there is biochemistry testing.

And you can do it a lot of different ways. You can do a urine test, you can do hair analysis, you can do bloodwork, you can do muscle testing, I, I’ve taught them now they’re doing muscle testing, and we have a whole list of things that they test for. And I’ll tell you, it’s made a huge difference in the overall community of the kids in the parents. And these are kids that are in wheelchairs, Down syndrome, minimal brain dysfunction, severe autism, I mean, it’s a wild time, when I go there, I’m basically on the floor the whole time doing my exam. And it has nothing to do with reading the eye chart. But you know, it’s more about I give them prisms and walk on a on a two by four and ask them to, to I watch their posture, and we diagnose based on what we see, based on their, their posture and their movement and those kinds of things. So vision is a whole body experience. It’s not just in the eyeball, and your you know that that’s why you’re with me. Alright, the last thing I’m going to say, and then we’re going to we’re going to move more into kind of specifics where I’m going to work with people here. And that is that if you are in a vision improvement process, and we have two people in zoom, who are in that blurred vision is a big issue for them.

And they can’t really find a prescription that corrects them completely to 2020. And I’ve recommended some prescriptions for them that are reduced, and they’re still not happy, it’s still blurry. So this is something I say this on social media a lot. And that is is that it’s very difficult to wear a reduced prescription without doing the vision therapy. First. You have to make the changes. So your visual system can adapt to the new prescription. If you try to wear or reduce prescription without doing the work. It’s cheating. It’s trying to do a shortcut. And it doesn’t work. And I know this in my own case. Many of you I don’t know whether you know this, but when I was a child, I was diagnosed with a learning disability. And my mom bless her heart. She took me to all kinds of professionals. And we ended up at an ophthalmologists office. And the ophthalmologist said, Well kid, you got myopia, and let’s put you in some lenses. And so I got these lenses. And I remember years later, it’s like, wow, I got this strong lens. I see things clearly, but I’m feeling weird about this. So what ended up happening is I became a memorizer. That’s how I got through school and I got A’s I did well, in school. You know, I was in a family that really emphasized education. And so I had to get good grades. I worked really hard. So but but every couple of years, my myopia got worse and worse. And so when I started optometry school, my prescription was a minus 275 and each eye with three quarters of a diopter of astigmatism at 90 degrees. And I was in contacts. I was in glasses and I was even going up a little higher. Because in optometry school, of course you’re doing a lot of studying and reading and so on.

Well, when I got out of optometry school and I, I worked at the Gizelle Institute, and then I opened up a practice with another doctor in Philadelphia. I met a developmental optometrist in Connecticut. His name was Dr. Al Shankman. I’ve to two out I was in my life. Albert a Shankman was an optometrist who wrote a book called Vision enhancement training, and the optometric extension program and they also psycho behavioral vision enhancement. And he did a course for a year where you would go up to His place, His his house in Stratford, Connecticut, and I became a patient of his vision therapy. And so as I did my vision therapy every day, and within six months, my prescription went from minus 275, to about minus one, I couldn’t believe it. In fact, I remember he gave me a reduced prescription. I was working in my office. And after about a week, my, my staff said to me, you know, are you are you on medication, when you seem more relaxed, your, what’s going on with you, and it was the prescription, I had reduced my prescription. So the lenses that I was looking through, were not as intense. So I wasn’t as intense, I was less reactive, I was more in flow. So I kept working with them. And I eventually completely dissolved my myopia. I think today, I’m probably the last time I measured myself, I was probably about a minus 50. But I still see 2020. And what’s great about being a little nearsighted, as you get gray hair is that you can still read without needing reading glasses. So it’s kind of perfect for me, you know, if you’re going to be nearsighted, be a little bit in near sight. And so if you get cataract surgery or LASIK surgery, tell the doctor keep me a little nearsighted. So that I can still read when I get old. And so the whole, the whole thing of it is that, I think that

about a minute, let me just lost my though, the whole thing of it is that, you know, when you get a prescription like I did, and you were it, it reinforces the imbalance that you have. And so the the goal for me was, as I did my vision therapy, things were blurry for a while. And I was okay with that. So those of you that I’m working with, that, maybe aren’t seeing quite as clearly as you want to be, do the vision therapy, and then your visual system, and you will finally adjust and adapt to the reduction. And that’s kind of how it is you’ve got to be patient. And here’s the deal. If you need to see clearly, then put on the strong lenses, I am not in the blur when you’re driving on the freeway, no way that’s not part of the deal. What I want is in a non demanding and a non threatening situation, I would say were something less. And those of you that have worked with me, we do opposite lens prescriptions. And we’re going to do that today. So that by giving somebody an opposite lens, there’s a term in physical therapy called hormesis. And what it is, is that you challenge the body in a way that makes the body stronger. And so envision, if you’re nearsighted and we give you a farsighted prescription, like we’ve done here with with my patient, which we’ll get to in a little bit. When you take it off your visual acuity is going to be better. It’s like you have stepped into a broader sense of mental psychological, visual possibilities, or if you’re far sighted, so we’ve got two people on the call that are farsighted. On the zoom that those people wearing minus lens, the blur and pinhole glasses, that’s very positive. To get an experience first of all with the minus lens that’s going to give you a blur and in the other direction. And then the pinhole glasses are great for reading so you’re not falling into the trap of what a farsighted lens is going to do to you. Because a farsighted lens really creates less responsiveness in your eye muscle flexibility. And so the more magnification you wear, the weaker Your eyes are going to become. So those are some ways that you can interrupt what these lenses are doing to you. So I would say be patient. I like to balance the prescription so that both eyes are beginning to work together. We can also reduce the astigmatism some but it’s a process and you were the Vision Improvement prescription in the you were the Vision Improvement prescription in the time that you know it’s safe for you when there isn’t a demand.

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.