full
How to Improve Vision & Brain Performance | Dr. Bryce Appelbaum
Your vision is more than just seeing clearly—it's a direct reflection of your brain function and overall health. In this episode, we explore the groundbreaking field of neuro-optometry and how vision training can improve focus, mental clarity, energy levels, and even stress resilience. Learn how screen time is impacting your eyesight, why more kids are becoming nearsighted, and what you can do to optimize your vision at any age. Discover natural solutions beyond glasses and contacts to train your eyes and brain for peak performance.
What You'll Learn in This Episode:
🔹 How vision training enhances mental clarity, focus & energy
🔹 The truth about screens & their impact on eyesight
🔹 Why nearsightedness is skyrocketing & how to prevent it
🔹 How hormones, stress & aging affect vision health
🔹 The best strategies to strengthen your eyes & brain
🕐 TIMESTAMPS 🕐
[02:10] What is neuro-optometry & how does it go beyond glasses?
[10:45] The impact of screen time on vision, sleep & mental clarity
[18:30] The nearsightedness epidemic & why kids are affected more
[27:15] How hormones, aging & stress affect women’s eye health
[35:40] Vision training for cognitive function & productivity
[44:00] Concussion recovery, motion sickness & vision therapy
[50:20] How to reduce eye strain & improve digital endurance
[58:00] Nutrition & lifestyle strategies for long-term eye health
🎙️ GUEST: DR. BRYCE APPELBAUM 🎙️
🔗 Website: https://www.myvisionfirst.com/
📸 Instagram: @drbryceappelbaum
📺 ScreenFit Training – Get $200 OFF! Use promo code OPTIMIZED at checkout: https://www.screenfit.com/
🌐 LET'S CONNECT 🌐
Host: Orshi McNaughton
Website: https://www.optimizedwomen.com/
Podcast Links: https://optimized-women.captivate.fm/listen
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@optimizedwomen
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/optimizedwomen
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Enjoying the podcast?
Don’t forget to subscribe & leave a review to help spread the word!
Transcript
Screen time has become this source of significant visual stress from our environment that most of us don't have the foundation or the visual skills in place to support.
Speaker A:And even more simply put, most of us are not visually ready for screens.
Speaker A:So whether that's eye strain, headaches, blurry vision, disrupted sleep, light sensitivity, decreased productivity, technically could talk forever about these symptoms.
Speaker A:Those are very common, but those aren't normal and those are really from too much screen time.
Speaker A:And we can talk about why and the different systems impact and what we can do about it.
Speaker A:But I think screen time has catapulted vision into the conversation now and into a really firm seated medical table where a structural model doesn't have any solutions other than try blue light glasses, try blinking more, and here's some special glasses that do the work for you, that act as crutches rather than anything else.
Speaker A:Versus my specialty with this visual performance training is establishing the visual foundation with specific eye exercises, specific visual skills so that we can all thrive in this digital world that we're all living in.
Speaker A:And that's not going anywhere.
Speaker B:Welcome to the Optimized Woman, the podcast for high performing women ready to take back their health.
Speaker B:I'm Orshi McNaughton, a board certified holistic health practitioner and functional nutritionist.
Speaker B:If you're tired of feeling stuck, you can't lose the weight.
Speaker B:No matter what you do, your energy is in the toilet, your metabolism feels like it's at a standstill, and you lost the spark you once had, then you're in the right place.
Speaker B:We are here to unleash the unstoppable force you meant to be and give you the tools to fix what's holding you back.
Speaker B:So if you're ready to own it, start thriving again and live the life you deserve.
Speaker B:And let's get to it.
Speaker B:So your vision isn't just about how clearly you can see.
Speaker B:It's a direct reflection of how well your brain is processing the world around you.
Speaker B:And if you're dealing with eye strain, headaches, blurred vision, or even brain fog, it's not just a sign that you need stronger glasses.
Speaker B:It's a sign that your brain is struggling to keep up.
Speaker B:Today I'm joined by Dr. Bryce Applebaum, a neuro optometrist specializing in vision therapy and brain performance.
Speaker B:He's here to break down how vision training can revive your brain, your improve cognitive function, and even help with things like motion sickness, migraines, and digital eye strain.
Speaker B:We are diving into why screen time is racking your eyes and what you can actually do.
Speaker B:To improve your vision without just resorting to stronger prescriptions or Lasik surgery.
Speaker B:So if you've ever felt like your eyes are exhausted after hours on the screen or you're noticing that your close up vision is starting to fade, this episode is packed with solutions.
Speaker B:So let's get into it.
Speaker A:I'm really a product of the work that I offer now.
Speaker A:As a child, I was struggling in the classroom, lost on the soccer field.
Speaker A:I had a really hard time even with interpersonal communicational skills.
Speaker A:And the reason for that was I had these visual developmental delays.
Speaker A:What that meant was I had trouble focusing my eyes, I had poor depth perception, my eyes didn't work well together as a team, which really caused me to struggle in so many areas of life where vision should be guiding and leading rather than interfering.
Speaker A:And fortunately, I was born to the perfect parents.
Speaker A:They knew what to do.
Speaker A:I did years of office based vision training and sensory integration based occupational therapy and really attribute all of my success in life, athletically, academically, even interpersonally, to what I trained and developed in terms of that ibrain connection.
Speaker A:And really view it now that I'm here so others don't have to struggle the way that I did.
Speaker B:Now, most people are familiar with optometrists and ophthalmologists, but neuro optometry is a field that many have never heard of.
Speaker B:Can you explain what neuro optometry is and how it's different from traditional eye care?
Speaker B:How does it go beyond just prescribing glasses?
Speaker A:This extends to all of medicine, but specifically with the eyes.
Speaker A:We are all trained on a structural model, on a reactive model, on the intervention of eye disease, rather than a preventative model and a functional model and the more proactive model.
Speaker A:In school, we're all taught how to screen and test for eye problems and eye diseases.
Speaker A:But we're also heavily on this pursuit of allowing every patient to see the tiniest letters far away on a chart and the tiniest letters up close.
Speaker A:And it all means necessary to get there.
Speaker A:With neuro optometry and specifically functional vision care, really what we're looking at is all of the stuff I just previously mentioned, but more so how the eyes are working together as a team and how well the eyes, brain and body are integrated in this cohesive fashion to be able to support reading and learning and driving and sports and all the areas of life that require careful eye coordination.
Speaker A:If we look at really eyesight and vision as kind of separate entities, then a lot of this makes a little bit more sense.
Speaker A:I always say Eyesight is simply are just our ability to see.
Speaker A:That's letters on a letter chart.
Speaker A:That's street signs that teacher writes on the board in the classroom.
Speaker A:And that matters.
Speaker A:But that's really just a symptom.
Speaker A:Vision is far more complex.
Speaker A:Vision is how our eyes move and converge and track and focus and how we make sense of the world around us to be able to drive meaning and then direct the appropriate action.
Speaker A:So really, vision problems are brain problems, and eyesight problems are glasses problems.
Speaker A:And so from a neuro optometric standpoint, we're really addressing the vision component, which is how well the brain filters the information the eyes are sending it, and how well the brain knows what to do with that information, process it, and then know how to execute whatever action is needed after that.
Speaker B:Now, what is the connection between vision training and brain performance?
Speaker B:Obviously, it's all about brain training.
Speaker B:How does that improving vision help with energy levels, mental clarity?
Speaker A:Vision training is teaching an individual how to use their eyes to rewire the software of their brain to change how they're using vision.
Speaker A:So whether it's from a developmental standpoint or a rehabilitative standpoint, or an optimization standpoint, any brain at any age has neuroplasticity.
Speaker A:Assuming the eyes are connected to the brain, and hopefully everybody listening, their eyes are connected to their brains.
Speaker A:But we have the ability to establish new neuronal pathways and establish connections that maybe weren't learned through natural vision development and life development, or were, but then were compromised or damaged from an acquired injury.
Speaker A:But in any case, how our brain uses our eyes and how our brain functions is what allows for happiness and comfort and clarity in life or the opposite.
Speaker A:And if it's significantly more effort than there should be to focus the eyes, converge the eyes, track the eyes, process information, put all these together for reading or screen engagement, then the brain becomes taxed way faster than it could or should.
Speaker A:And that can impact our attention, that can impact productivity, that can impact happiness, it can impact even just mental health.
Speaker A:Because so many people don't recognize that they in fact have functional vision problems that are treatable and fixable.
Speaker A:Yet the standard medical model doesn't even acknowledge these or recognize these, because we're not testing most doctors not testing for.
Speaker B:These problems, which is crazy, since I'm in my 50s and I've never heard of this until now, and I had quite a few eye issues my whole life.
Speaker B:So I'm just surprised no one screened me for it, no one told me about it.
Speaker B:I'm really excited that there is ways to make improvements instead of just Lasik surgery or contact lenses or glasses, that there are some solutions that can get to the root cause.
Speaker B:In this conversation I want to get into all those nuance, but before we even go there, I would love to touch on this use of screens and the idea how screens are ruining our eyes.
Speaker B:Because I myself sit in front of the screen all day and in the last couple of years and really have taken a toll in my eyes and I can feel the difference in so many ways what's happening to our eyes when we are sitting in for our screens.
Speaker A:You mentioned not having heard of any of this, still in your 50s.
Speaker A:This type of work, vision training, eye brain optimization is becoming the new sexy thing.
Speaker A:A lot of people are saying this is the new gluten and the new microbiome because screen time has become this pandemic that we're all experiencing and that's not going anywhere.
Speaker A:The average American spends seven hours and four minutes a day on the screen.
Speaker A:That's average.
Speaker A:The average eight to ten year old spends six hours a day on the screen.
Speaker A:If you think back just to what our visual system is intended for, it's to guide movement, it's to prepare us for the saber toothed tiger coming at us from the distance and to make these scanning, panning eye movements far away.
Speaker A:Not to make these very intricate, careful eye movements up close on a machine that's blasting high energy, short wavelength blue light and the contrast and the glare, and then even the critical eye movements that are much more sporadic and less organized on the screen compared to a page, screen time has become this source of significant visual stress from our environment that most of us don't have the foundation or the visual skills to in place to support.
Speaker A:And even more simply put, most of us are not visually ready for screens.
Speaker A:So whether that's eye strain, headaches, blurry vision, disrupted sleep, light sensitivity, decreased productivity, technically could talk forever about these symptoms.
Speaker A:Those are very common, but those aren't normal and those are really from too much screen time.
Speaker A:And we can talk about why and the different systems impact and what we can do about it.
Speaker A:But I think screen time has catapulted vision into the conversation now and into a really firm seated medical table where a structural model doesn't have any solutions other than try blue light glasses, try blinking more and here's some special glasses that do the work for you, that act as crutches rather than anything else.
Speaker A:Versus my specialty with this visual performance training is establishing the visual foundation with specific eye exercises, specific visual skills.
Speaker A:So that we can all thrive in this digital world that we're all living in.
Speaker A:And that's not going anywhere.
Speaker B:It's amazing that you can actually build visual skills.
Speaker B:And it makes sense.
Speaker B:But how come no one told us this before?
Speaker A:If you go back to babies born, no one's born with the ability to track, focus, converge, or even with depth perception.
Speaker A:It comes through our life experiences.
Speaker A:It comes from hitting developmental milestones and going from crawling and the reciprocal bilateral integration, body movements and developing the core stability and the motor foundation from which we then develop vision from to then walking and more dynamic.
Speaker A:And all of these functional visual skills, they're learned.
Speaker A:So they're either learned well or not learned as well as they could be.
Speaker A:And that's when some intervention is needed.
Speaker A:But kids today are being exposed to screens like we talked about at early and early ages, being asked to read earlier than ever before.
Speaker A:And that's causing these massive gaps in terms of where somebody's functioning, where they need to be.
Speaker B:So before their brain is fully developed, we are already asking them to do these complex things with our eyes that they are not ready to do.
Speaker A:The visual system is not developed until much older.
Speaker A:And even as an adult, the stress and tension on the inside and outside muscles of the eyes and how the brain processes that information.
Speaker A:We don't know yet what a lifetime or screen engagement will do to somebody.
Speaker A:But we do know what a short term massive amount of screen time is doing to people and their brains and their visual development.
Speaker A:When you know better, you can do better.
Speaker A:And the medical world is now recognizing that many docs don't have solutions for these, but there are absolutely solutions out there.
Speaker A:We just have to find this subspecialty in functional vision care.
Speaker B:One of the things I'm seeing is more and more kids are developing nearsightedness.
Speaker B:And correct me if I'm wrong, but it just appears to me that all the kids have glasses now.
Speaker B:I was actually an exception that I was nearsighted.
Speaker B:And I became nearsighted without screens.
Speaker B:When I was growing up, we didn't have screens and computers and all that.
Speaker B:And yet I became nearsighted to.
Speaker B:I would love to understand walk causes that when you're becoming a teenager or going through those teenage years and then why screens actually make this even worse.
Speaker A:Love that you're bringing this up here.
Speaker A:Nearsightedness, the medical term for that is myopia.
Speaker A:So far away is blurrier than it is up close.
Speaker A:Myopia is increasing at an alarming rate, especially for countries that value technology and Education.
Speaker A: When we landed on the moon in: Speaker A:Now it's about 43% and it's climbing.
Speaker A: And it's estimated that by: Speaker A:And that includes countries that don't have access to the technology that we have.
Speaker A:The reason for that is twofold.
Speaker A:It's genetics and it's lifestyle, but genetics.
Speaker A:We can't control who the parents are.
Speaker A:But if two people were to have a child today and both parents were nearsighted, the child would have a 1 in 2 chance of becoming nearsighted.
Speaker A:If only one parent is a 1 in 3 chance, and if neither parent is nearsighted, that child would have a one in four chance of being nearsighted because of environment and lifestyle.
Speaker A:And we now have the data and the research to show that the biggest risk factors for nearsightedness developing are not enough time outdoors, which has proven that 90 to 120 minutes a day has this protective effect and can slow down the development and even the magnitude of nearsightedness.
Speaker A:And really it's engaging with three dimensional space.
Speaker A:It's natural light from the sun and it's being away from screens and all the near stress.
Speaker A:The other two are prolonged near work in the dark.
Speaker A:So reading and writing in the dark, or with reading a bed with a sheet over your head and no light there, that puts extra stress on the visual system and then extended screen time and extended screen time.
Speaker A:We're seeing now what that's doing for social development, emotional development, cognitive development, but of course now vision development.
Speaker A:I think what's the biggest take home from all of this is if we go back to the symptom versus problem discussion.
Speaker A:The symptom is far away blur.
Speaker A:The problem is often near.
Speaker A:Whether it's focusing, stamina, the inside muscles of the eyes fatiguing faster than they should, focusing flexibility, eye coordination problems, tracking problems.
Speaker A:I mean there's a whole list of problems there.
Speaker A:But if that's the root cause, that those systems are not functioning the way they're supposed to, and then the symptom is distance blur.
Speaker A:Well, if we just treat the symptom by saying here's stronger glasses, that then becomes your new normal, you adapt to those and then you need something stronger to maintain that same clarity.
Speaker A:And you go down this vicious cycle when in fact, if those functional problems are in place as far away as getting blurrier, if you address the functional problems, far away actually stops changing or slows down Many cases can even reverse.
Speaker A:And that's something that most doctors would say, that's absolutely impossible.
Speaker A:We see it all day, every day.
Speaker A:When any of our systems are under stress, we adapt or we avoid.
Speaker A:We're not avoiding screen time.
Speaker A:We're not avoiding the near stress.
Speaker A:The adaptations, these maladaptations, these bad habits that are in place are really the medical system feeding that problem by just saying, here's stronger glasses or your stronger contacts.
Speaker A:And I'm by no means anti glasses or contacts.
Speaker A:I wear contacts myself.
Speaker A:But if we're ignoring a problem, then that just spirals out of hand.
Speaker A:And I have a private practice in Maryland, and we've got two different locations.
Speaker A:Some of the best LASIK surgeons around send us patients to say, is this a good candidate for lasik?
Speaker A:And hearing that, you kind of laugh and say, wasn't that your job to figure that out?
Speaker A:But they're sending it to us because they're wondering, is this the type of person whose prescription is stable and going to stay stable, or is it going to increase?
Speaker A:Because it seems like you can predict that based off of the crazy testing you do.
Speaker A:And it's really true.
Speaker A:LASIK surgery just takes any glasses prescription and draws a line in the sand and says, this is permanent.
Speaker A:Many people's prescriptions don't change ever.
Speaker A:So they would be a good laser candidate, but somebody who needs another laser surgery or it doesn't stick, or these, then glasses on top of it.
Speaker A:That's because there is a brain attached to these eyes that is not meeting the visual stress or demands of life.
Speaker A:And so that permanent adjustment is no longer permanent.
Speaker B:I actually ended up getting LASIK surgery myself in my late 20s.
Speaker B:And even now I have really good far vision, but my close vision is starting to go.
Speaker B:We will talk about that, too.
Speaker B:But I'm curious.
Speaker B:Since I was growing up before screens, it's likely that it was a genetic factor, because I do have parents with pretty bad eyes.
Speaker B:You think that was the factor mainly?
Speaker A:I would say now screens is absolutely the biggest factor.
Speaker A:I have a very high amount of nearsightedness.
Speaker A:I wear contacts, and I did everything possible that my profession knew to slow that down.
Speaker A:I did a ton of vision training.
Speaker A:I had undercorrected contact lenses.
Speaker A:I wore special rigid gas permeable contact lenses.
Speaker A:I had a bifocal or extra support at near.
Speaker A:I got outside a lot.
Speaker A:I did the right nutritional stuff.
Speaker A:I would say, for me, absolutely, there's a genetic component, and it would have been way higher of a prescription had I not done all of that and same with you.
Speaker A:Genetics does play a role, but if you just look at visual behavior as well, I'm the type of person who shot out clarity and felt almost like I was missing out on life because I was purposely under corrected.
Speaker A:And I actually think that pushed me to want to seek out more and to try and engage more with the world in front of me.
Speaker A:And that actually fed the prescription increasing.
Speaker A:That may be true with you as well.
Speaker A:Some people who are very detail oriented, who want to see each individual tree rather than the whole forest.
Speaker A:And if we're that type A looking at the details, we're driving the need to see clear.
Speaker A:We're driving the focusing muscle, the inside muscle of the eye, like an old school camera, to be more and more on this manual focus rather than having autofocus that's allowing just visually happy rather than 20 HD vision.
Speaker B:If you are the type A super focused person that more likely to be in this sympathetic focus state, you may actually have more issues with your vision because you become more likely to become nearsighted.
Speaker B:Is that what you're saying?
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:But I would just correct you and say you would have more like have issues with eyesight, with the ability to see clearly, but also with vision.
Speaker A:That type A personality very often is more likely to have an eye turn that is over conversion eye turn in rather than out, or up or down or diagonal.
Speaker A:Because we're driving again, that Z axis, that world in front of us.
Speaker A:And in those cases, if there's a spatial mismatch, if we're aligning our eyes as if we're perceiving something closer in space than where it is, then that's going to drive the need to use the outside muscles to take over, which would be an eye turn or to use the inside muscles to try and take over and they fatigue faster, which would be that focusing inflexibility.
Speaker A:And so that would cause the eyesight issues.
Speaker B:Earlier you walked me through all the things that you did trying to fix your own eyes before deciding to get contact lenses.
Speaker B:So if somebody's listening and maybe themselves have a slight nearsightedness or they have children that are dealing with this, what are the things they can do before they get glasses or contact lenses?
Speaker A:What we know now is very different than what we knew 35, 40 years ago.
Speaker A:When I was a kid, if I was born today, even though the visual demands are greater, I'm confident that if my dad was me, we would have known what to do here.
Speaker A:So things that we can do, vision training and we can talk about how to find the right person, what's involved and what to look for, and all of the really important pieces that either allow that to be helpful or absolutely life changing.
Speaker B:Before you move on, can you just tell us what vision training is?
Speaker A:Vision training is kind of like physical therapy for the brain, but really for the eyes.
Speaker A:Through the brain.
Speaker A:It's teaching us how to raise to our awareness what we're doing.
Speaker A:Whether it's an eye turn, it's a focusing stamina problem, or even just for optimization so that we can learn how to self correct, self monitor and know what it feels like when the eyes are pointing, acting like they're working together as a team and the brain's turning on that information we're seeing in 3D and then being able to reproduce that in multiple scenarios.
Speaker A:So it's arranging the conditions to raise your awareness, how you're using your visual system in life to teach you how to self correct and self monitor.
Speaker A:For us, our model is office based training with a ton of home reinforcement.
Speaker A:The new learning takes place in office and the practice of that takes place at home.
Speaker A:And just like any newly learned process, the more you practice, the faster you see things changing.
Speaker A:We see some really complicated cases.
Speaker A:Our model is to have doctors doing the therapy and in the therapy room at all times.
Speaker A:We're kind of unicorn in, in the space.
Speaker A:Most of the time the doctors prescribing therapy but then passing them on to the team.
Speaker A:But with vision training, there's the old school model of what's called orthoptics, which is just learning how to straighten an eye.
Speaker A:There's vision training, there's vision therapy, there's visually enhanced etrot, there's cognitive behavioral therapy.
Speaker A:My model is a hybrid of all of these and we call it visual performance training because it's targeted work for specific performance tasks in life.
Speaker A:And we heavily utilize high tech like virtual reality, augmented reality, eye tracking, computers, but also very, very low tech, like 3D activities and goofy filters and glasses that control each ICs.
Speaker A:So just like getting into really good shape, you want a cross training approach.
Speaker A:You don't want to just do strength, you want to throw in some cardio, you want to throw in some flexibility.
Speaker A:The same is true for rebooting the visual system.
Speaker A:Just like any muscle in our body, if we stop using it, we lose voluntary control so we can exercise our brain and our eyes just like we do with our body.
Speaker A:We all think that as we age, we lose cognitive capacity and we lose, we lose vision.
Speaker A:And although that's common, that's not normal.
Speaker A:So from a vision standpoint, the focusing muscles and the lens inside of our eyes become more vision, less flexible.
Speaker A:In our mid-40s, we blow up the candles on our birthday and all of a sudden our arms aren't long enough.
Speaker A:But grabbing over the counter readers is literally the equivalent of saying my knee hurts, I'm going to jump in a wheelchair.
Speaker A:You stop using it.
Speaker A:Anyone can prolong the need for reading glasses.
Speaker A:Anybody can prolong the need to increase reading glasses.
Speaker A:And many people can actually prevent the need for reading glasses, at least for a decent amount of time moving forward.
Speaker B:I'm in my 50s and I just started noticing and I think a lot of men and women start noticing that in dim lit conditions it's hard to see, especially reading.
Speaker B:For me, that was the first thing I started noticing.
Speaker B:I, I started noticing that I need help with reading and I am not wearing glasses as much possible because I just hate wearing glasses so much.
Speaker B:So if I can get away with not having glasses, I will, I will do it.
Speaker B:But I definitely feel it's becoming difficult to be in front of the computer all day.
Speaker B:It's actually much more difficult.
Speaker B:Is the training how you cleaning your brain and your eyes different or it's the same process just in, in a different way.
Speaker B:The other caveat I was going to ask you, somebody who had LASIK surgery is that makes a difference that you already had this permanent correction in your eye when you're training it first.
Speaker A:Far away is very different than up close near engagement or revision.
Speaker B:It's a different thing happening in your totally different.
Speaker A:So in the distance, our eyes in their natural resting position.
Speaker A:With up close tests, we have to use the outside muscles of our eyes to converge and then the inside muscles of our eyes to focus.
Speaker A:And we want these inside outside muscles to be in synergy and in a happy midge.
Speaker A:When they're not, things get really scary very quickly.
Speaker A:If everyone listening here were to take two fists with their hands and squeeze as hard as they can, after about 5 seconds your hand starts to hurt.
Speaker A:But if you let go and squeeze and let go and squeeze, you could probably do that for a really long amount of time.
Speaker A:Our focusing muscles, the inside muscles we talked about a few times, our sphincter muscles, they're circular, which means they're behind our pupil.
Speaker A:When we look close, the pupil gets small and the muscle constricts and the muscle stimulated and we look far, it's relaxed and dilated.
Speaker A:When we are on screen, the muscles are literally locked in and it's tension over time.
Speaker A:So if we're trying to get buff and build up our glutes, let's say for every woman listening here, tension over time is the name of the game.
Speaker A:That's what you want to do.
Speaker A:But from a vision perspective, tension over time is the animal you don't want.
Speaker A:And that's what contributes to eye strain and headaches and fatigue and blurry vision.
Speaker A:As simple as taking vision breaks and do wonders for productivity and even visual stamina.
Speaker B:How often should we be taking breaks?
Speaker A:People on the Internet often say the 20, 20, 20 rules, which is the absolute max, which would be taking a break at least every 20 minutes for at least 20 seconds and looking at something 20ft away.
Speaker A:But I think personally that's way too long for most people.
Speaker A:Even if it's every five or ten minutes.
Speaker A:If you just get disengaged and look across the room, hopefully you're in front of a near a window, look out the window, you're letting go of the system, you're then coming back.
Speaker A:As we're filming out on June, I have my screen black and oftentimes I'm coming back and forth with just the zoom window up because I don't want distraction of everything else.
Speaker A:And I can actually let go of my focusing system to look through the screen so that my brain can be fully unlocked to let all these airplanes land.
Speaker A:With these questions.
Speaker A:If you're like the average American in seven hours and four minutes a day on a screen, many people that's like, without looking up and drinking a lot of good quality liquids without sugar, so you have to get up and go to the bathroom is huge.
Speaker A:Taking movement breaks, going on walks, productivity, even if you're taking eight hours of work and doing it in 10 hours.
Speaker A:But with breaks, you're gonna feel so much better afterwards.
Speaker A:And many cases you can do it in less with other tactics as well.
Speaker A:But I think the big key is lots of movement breaks, lots of vision breaks, and even blinking breaks.
Speaker A:The average person blinks about 15 times in a minute.
Speaker A:When we go to screens, it goes to three to four times a minute, which literally means you're blinking less.
Speaker A:Your fresh tear foam is going over the front surface less.
Speaker A:The windshield wipers are cleaning out the debris less.
Speaker A:The focusing system is stuck more.
Speaker A:And then that actually leads to dry eye syndrome because our brain is sending the signals of dryness release more tears yet then the tears are released in the wrong consistency.
Speaker A:More of the watery layer, less of the oily layer, and your own tears evaporate faster than they would Otherwise and then we go down this really scary path.
Speaker A:And especially with women, there's a much higher likelihood of dry eye disease and dryness symptoms.
Speaker A:Women have a one and a half to two times higher prevalence of dry eye disease than men do.
Speaker A:And a lot of that's related to hormones.
Speaker A:But a lot of that's also related to being on screens and in life and not blinking as much as we're supposed to.
Speaker B:I'm so glad you mentioned that because that is a huge thing that I see with especially women heading into menopause and fluctuations and hormones and drop in estrogen.
Speaker B:Dry eye could be one of the symptoms that women don't really connect back to hormones.
Speaker B:Partly because we are also in front of the screens and we are also doing so many other things to just train our eyes.
Speaker B:But I love the analogy that you said about holding your hand in a fist for a really extended period of time because it really puts into perspective of how much stream you're putting on our eyes.
Speaker B:Constantly focusing for hours and in most of my zoom sessions are over an hour long.
Speaker B:And sometimes you are on one session and then you jump right into another and you're constantly just focusing on the screen.
Speaker B:And so many people are in front of the screen all day.
Speaker B:And that is sometimes hard to say.
Speaker B:I'm going to take a break every 20 minutes.
Speaker B:But what you're saying is that you could just look away, focus far away or focus somewhere else, just even for a few seconds or how long do you need to do that?
Speaker A:It's just disengaging as much as possible.
Speaker A:So going on a walk, opening up periphery, getting that optic flow with motion and then getting steps in, I think that's the best case scenario.
Speaker A:But if you don't have the opportunity to retrain the brain with vision training and we can talk about what that would look like.
Speaker A:Taking lots of vision breaks.
Speaker A:Visual performance lenses can be amazing.
Speaker B:Can you tell me what that is?
Speaker A:I've been prescribing these for 15 years to kids, kids that don't have a visual system developed yet.
Speaker A:We have tens of thousands of data points to know what is optimal for 80% of the population and then the other 20%.
Speaker A:It needs to be customized.
Speaker A:But these are glasses specifically for near screen engagement that are way more than just blue light protection.
Speaker A:So they do have blue light filters in them, they do have anti glare filters in them, but they have a very specific amount of magnification which acts therapeutically, not compensatorily.
Speaker A:What that means is it helps the brain decrease some of the visual stress associated with near and give the brain a better opportunity for the eyes to work together as a team with no negative adaptation that comes with it.
Speaker A:It's not like compensatory glasses that take something blurry and makes it clear the muscle gets stuck there, then we have to adjust from that.
Speaker A:These are like a spot.
Speaker A:If you're lifting weights, it's ensuring you have the right form in place, but it's decreasing the stress point.
Speaker A:And in behavioral optometry, these have been around for over a hundred years.
Speaker A:But I would say now post pandemic, every child should be in these and every adult should be in the right version of these.
Speaker A:The prescription changes a little bit as we're past vision development periods and we have a ton of these on our website and we've just wanted to get these out to the world because I think of it as a really low powered specific over the counter reader with a really high quality blue light filter in there and a few other filters.
Speaker A:But if you were to put these on from CVS you'd say, well, this doesn't really do much but it allows for performance to be stable or improved over time.
Speaker A:So the performance over time component is really the key.
Speaker B:With these, it doesn't really magnify what's on the screen or does it?
Speaker A:It does, it does magnify the screen to a very small specific amount.
Speaker B:And are you saying that it's something we can order from your website or do we need to see a doctor like you in order to get a prescription?
Speaker A:You absolutely can order from our website to know 100% is this going to benefit you the best or do we need something customized then for that you'd want to say doctor.
Speaker A:But for kids for sure.
Speaker A:The vast majority of kids benefit from this low power prescription.
Speaker A:And then for adults, if you wear contact lenses, these are essentially set to be over the distance correction.
Speaker A:Distance is solid.
Speaker A:We're putting these on over top.
Speaker A:So like for you having had LASIK surgery, these would be ideal for screens, but not for watching TV screens or far away things.
Speaker B:So for computer use would be ideal.
Speaker B:And how would I know what are the different strength of these losses or how would I know which one to get?
Speaker A:Right now we have the strength that's for 80% of the population and for.
Speaker A:We haven't had anybody order these yet and say these didn't help.
Speaker A:But if that's the case, obviously we'll take a Mac and refund the money.
Speaker A:I think it's the type of thing everybody should have eye exams regularly.
Speaker A:Everybody should be able to make sure there's not diseases occurring and structure looks good.
Speaker A:But when more doctors than ever now are saying, well, you can try glasses because that's really the only solution they have.
Speaker A:But those are still compensatory doing the work for you.
Speaker A:These would be very low risk because it's like buying an over the counter reader that may not be strong enough.
Speaker A:If you're wearing a really high powered over the counter reader, it's probably not going to feel strong enough.
Speaker A:It's going to feel very different.
Speaker A:Basically allow better use of these systems and synergy.
Speaker B:But somebody like me that can still read without glasses, but struggling a little bit for me probably would be ideal.
Speaker A:These would be perfect.
Speaker A:And my wife, who sounds very similar to you, if I look solid and it's just up close, the back to back zooms, he puts these on and she's like, oh my God, it's like, I'm going to the spa for my eyes, I want one of these right now.
Speaker A:Well, I'll send you someone after the show, for sure.
Speaker B:Women experience more hormonal shifts than men throughout lives.
Speaker B:How do pregnancy, perimenopause, menopause impacts vision?
Speaker A:Fluctuating hormone levels during pregnancy during just different stages in life, they often temporarily can impact the thickness of the cornea, the front surface of her eye that bends light, and the curvature of the cornea, which can very often change eyesight.
Speaker A:A lot of women will say when they're pregnant, depending on where they are in that time period, that there's fluctuations at different trimesters or end of the day or different scenarios there.
Speaker A:And that's where vision exercises can be really helpful for improving visual clarity and comfort.
Speaker A:There are certain diseases like Sjogren's disease, which is a really frustrating version of dry eyes syndrome.
Speaker A:And there's definitely an inflammatory component there.
Speaker A:But changes with systemic inflammation and hormonal levels with women can lead to reduced functional vision and fluctuating vision that can then impact migraines.
Speaker A:Women experience migraines about three times the rate of men.
Speaker A:And very often when there's symptoms with migraines like the visual auras or people talk about ocular migraines or vestibular migraines.
Speaker A:In my opinion, a migraine is a diagnosis of exclusion.
Speaker A:We should rule out everything else first before we're slapping on the label of a migraine, especially with a visual or vestibular migraine, because so often those are exacerbated by visual stress and are treatable.
Speaker A:And then they never happen anymore.
Speaker A:But again, we're in a society that slap labels on behaviors.
Speaker B:When people have migraines and they have visual auras and things like that, vision training can help them.
Speaker A:There are certain types of migraines where it is absolutely a cortical hypersensitivity, and that's not going to benefit from this.
Speaker A:But it's hard to find somebody that we work with who's identified as having migraines who didn't say that they were improved by allowing the brain eye connection to be optimized.
Speaker A:Digital eye strain symptoms, women are report a 20, 20% higher likelihood of these than men.
Speaker A:The blink breaks and just the overall breaks can be really helpful there.
Speaker A:Women have a one and a half to two times higher prevalence of dry eye disease than men.
Speaker A:But specifically with with estrogen that you mentioned that exacerbates dryness as estrogen declines.
Speaker A:And it increases the need for functional vision strategies to help support so many aspects of life.
Speaker A:And then as we get into menopause and beyond, dry, irritated, annoying eyes, that's one of the most common symptoms I see with women 45 to 65.
Speaker B:I want to touch on concussion recovery.
Speaker B:How does that work and how do you work with people that have concussions?
Speaker A:We talked about that.
Speaker A:Eyesight, vision difference.
Speaker A:Vision is represented in every lobe of our brain, not eyesight.
Speaker A:And there's more areas of our brain dedicated to processing vision than all of our other senses combines.
Speaker A:And two thirds of the neurons entering a brain actually come from our eyes.
Speaker A:So in my opinion, you can't have a concussion, mild or major, and not have vision be involved.
Speaker A:It's just a matter of at what level and when that happens.
Speaker A:So often the normal activities of daily life, like going to the mall or grocery store or chasing after your kids or so many aspects of just daily life can become stressful, so visually overwhelming.
Speaker A:And there's these sensory overloads or the brain can't filter and process all that information.
Speaker A:And we want to retreat from the environment because it's almost like we just need to block out everything visually.
Speaker A:I'm a firm believer that with the right work, the right motivation and the right compliance, pretty much every concussion can return to previous level function and return to learning, Returning to screen, then returning to life.
Speaker A:So often what happens is the symptoms of dizziness or nausea or motion sensitivity, they kick in with screen engagement or in tasks when you're not in motion, because the visual and vestibular systems get into this tug of war with each other and the vestibular system, for those who Aren't familiar with it.
Speaker A:It's kind of like your internal gps.
Speaker A:It lets you know which way is up and down and left and right in the roadmap of life.
Speaker A:And our visual system and our vestibular system have a very intimate relationship.
Speaker A:Where that's the root cause of most motion sickness or car sickness, even in the absence of a head injury, is the brain processing these different systems in an opposing fashion.
Speaker A:So the person who's much more motion sick when they're in the back seat or a passenger or reading on a tablet, but they're pretty much solid when they're driving, that's diagnostic for that can be fixed with the right type of work.
Speaker B:I'm one of those people that don't do boats.
Speaker B:Or is that different if you are.
Speaker A:Water a little bit different with water in that the fluid in your inner ears can kind of be shifting a little bit more than it would on the road.
Speaker A:But really it's that central peripheral visual processing not occurring in.
Speaker A:In a simultaneous fashion.
Speaker A:When you're reading or on tablet, your brain is getting the signal that you're not in motion because you're making these very careful, intricate eye movements in ear that your vestibular system's activated from all this optic flow in the periphery.
Speaker A:And then it's like, what's happening here?
Speaker A:This disequilibrium occurs.
Speaker A:And what everyone says to do is either close your eyes or look straight ahead where you're basically having vision, then try and override what the vestibular system signals are telling you.
Speaker B:So in a sense, your body is being confused because getting those different signals that are contradicting what you're experiencing.
Speaker A:There's people who get motion sick just looking at water, but they're on land and they just get the motion of the waves and they're like, oh, God, get me away from here.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:I think for you, for people on boats, very often there's a strong visual component that's treatable.
Speaker A:But there also could be a vestibular component from the inner ear with the fluid in our semicircular canals that are slushing around a little.
Speaker A:But if that's the case, you're probably also getting motion sick.
Speaker A:If it is just inner ear or more heavily inner ear, you're also probably getting motion sick with changes in elevation on planes or body in different positions.
Speaker A:And I would argue there's still a lot that can be done there to help envision a vestibular on the same page.
Speaker A:But it's.
Speaker A:It's the ones where it's like you do anything.
Speaker A:You're driving all the time.
Speaker A:Because if you're not driving, it's a game over.
Speaker A:Those are the ones we can help a lot.
Speaker B:I want to touch a little bit more on visual overwhelm and a connection with anxiety and just vision.
Speaker A:I see so many women, 35 to 65, who are told, nothing's wrong with your eyes or your symptoms.
Speaker A:We all can figure out why these symptoms are occurring.
Speaker A:It must be in your head.
Speaker A:It is in their head, but it's in their head because no doctor or specialist has figured out what's wrong.
Speaker A:And they're not doing the right tests or looking the right areas.
Speaker A:And I want anybody listening to that validation that symptoms are the clues and the keys to what's going on and to how we resolve the confusion.
Speaker A:When our visual system is under stress, all humans, our pupils widen and we get this tunnel vision effect where we override our central focal processing.
Speaker A:And it could be chaos going around you, but you're blocking off to try and control things.
Speaker A:That manifests so often in scenarios where mental health spirals out of control, like driving over a bridge, where all of a sudden you're aware of everything out in the periphery that you weren't aware of.
Speaker A:And it's like, do you want to close off even more fear of heights or escalators or stairs, where you're not trusting what you're seeing with the changes in elevation.
Speaker A:And then our normal response is to try and control the uncontrollable by pulling in when somebody's looking at each individual tree rather than the forest.
Speaker A:That's going to override even more visual stress and often cause eye strain and headaches and even eye turns there.
Speaker A:But any brain has the ability to activate periphery or side vision.
Speaker A:Walks are so important for so many reasons.
Speaker A:But when you're walking, try and think about where you're looking.
Speaker A:Try and look straight ahead, but notice the house to your right and the mailbox to your left.
Speaker A:But you'll notice you're probably selectively going one to the other.
Speaker A:If you can actively look soft and open up the whole periphery and see them both at the same time.
Speaker A:That's almost vision therapy in itself, because you're taking in the world with a much wider lens and then having it process as you're going by.
Speaker A:And that can even be done walking backwards to help stimulate certain areas of the brain that you wouldn't stimulate if you were walking frontwards, but actively opening up periphery.
Speaker A:That is the key to decreasing stress and decreasing Anxiety and mental health problems that can really cause a scary situation.
Speaker A:I had a phone call with the patient on Friday who had finished vision therapy with us, and she called to say she was actually having a claustrophobia panic attack in an elevator.
Speaker A:And she remembered one of the home exercises we gave her, which was peripheral pointing.
Speaker A:But she started doing this peripheral pointing activity and completely put the brakes on and came out of the attack that normally she said she would have had all the time.
Speaker A:And how cool are our brains that we can learn how to open up so much and shift functioning when we need to?
Speaker B:So much of our stress comes from just being indoors and now indoors, infrared technology combined, which is even worse and just not getting outside.
Speaker B:Earlier you mentioned that you recommend 100 minutes or about two hours.
Speaker B:What is the average that we should have outdoors?
Speaker A:What I mentioned was the study that said 90 to 120 minutes, but everybody listening.
Speaker A:Five minutes is better than zero minutes, one minute is better than zero minutes.
Speaker A:Get out of the morning, get fresh light, fresh natural light coming in to help set your circadian rhythms.
Speaker A:And in the evening, same thing as the sun's going down.
Speaker A:But I would say as much as you can.
Speaker A:And I always tell parents, they say, what are your recommendations for screen time?
Speaker A:And I can give numbers.
Speaker A:But at least as much time outdoors as your child is spending on screens, if not more so, have a balance and have everything in moderation.
Speaker A:And I think that's really key because when we get outside, we're engaging with three dimensional space in a way that we're not indoors, in the basement or on screens.
Speaker A:When we're locked in all day looking.
Speaker B:Out into the distance, there's something to look at.
Speaker B:In your office.
Speaker B:If you're in a room, it's not that exciting to look around.
Speaker B:You have clouds, you have a mountain behind you.
Speaker B:There's things far out in the distance, trees, birds, things to look at.
Speaker B:And I think those are the things that relax us.
Speaker B:When you open up your vision outdoors, just being in nature is so healing.
Speaker B:And I think people are spending 95 or even 98% of their time indoors.
Speaker B:I can't even get people to get outside for 15 minutes in the morning.
Speaker B:I am so big on morning sunlight exposure.
Speaker B:It's so hard to get people to do it, but when they do it, they report back.
Speaker B:I'm more relaxed, I'm managing my stress better, I have more energy, all these things.
Speaker B:But to actually build it into your routine and have the discipline I suggest to people, try to do a walk in the morning and around Sunset to get the right circadian signals.
Speaker B:And then if you can't, maybe in the middle of the day, lunchtime, go for a short walk or at least sit outside in a natural light when you're eating your lunch.
Speaker B:Do you have any practical ways that we can incorporate this?
Speaker B:What do you do with kids?
Speaker B:Because you mentioned you want kids to be the same amount of time outdoors as on the screen and that's probably very hard for parents to enforce.
Speaker A:When we were kids, we were outside all the time and it wasn't until it was dark out or your mom saying it's time for dinner that they drag you in.
Speaker A:And now it's a complete opposite.
Speaker A:We're dragging kids outside away from screens because they're not going out.
Speaker A:I love what you said about what you're recommending just from being in nature and grounding and how much comes from just being outside.
Speaker A:There's honestly no better medicine when there's stress, when there's frustration, just stepping outside for a few minutes.
Speaker A:Any call that you can take where you don't need video, put in wired earbuds, go outside and go on a walk on the call.
Speaker A:Kids, we don't allow screen time unless they're outside.
Speaker A:And I've got three kids, I've got two 10 year olds and a six year old.
Speaker A:They know we're not a house that supports screens at the level that their friends are.
Speaker A:But I also recognize that if I tell them no, you can't do this, it's going to want they want it even more.
Speaker A:So they have limits, their 15 minutes max and the older ones get max two of those a day.
Speaker A:But if they are on their screens, it's with their digital performance lenses on, there's a timer set and they have to be outside for at least a half hour before that.
Speaker A:And what's crazy is there's a lot of schools now giving kids pictures of clouds and pictures of nature and saying oh, tell me what you see here and trying to stimulate what they think is similar, which is not even close to similar to actually being outside and laying on your back and looking up the clouds and actually recognizing, oh, I can use my mental pictorial imaging and I can actually think from perspectives rather than my own and develop better cognition by using vision to guide that.
Speaker A:Nobody's doing that these days.
Speaker B:I don't know if it's helpful.
Speaker B:But what I try to do sometimes, even though I have to be on my screen in front of my laptop, but that I sit outside in a patio where I have a lot of natural light.
Speaker B:So I have maybe a little bit of shade, but it's open and I'm outdoors.
Speaker B:I have something to look at.
Speaker B:I have a lot of natural light.
Speaker B:And of course I'm still on my computer because I have to work.
Speaker B:But would you say that's helpful just to be outdoors?
Speaker A:I would say a hundred percent.
Speaker A:And there's even a study that says that a lot of doctors try and discount, but that says it's more protective to be outside, bam, inside, on the screen.
Speaker A:And this isn't from this country, and that's why people talk it down.
Speaker A:But I think as much as you can do outside, the better be careful with screens outside and just that you're not creating extra glare or strain by having dirty screen or at the wrong angle or whatever that is.
Speaker A:But vitamin D levels are plummeted in the US and you probably know that better than anybody and that just getting outside extends your lifespan.
Speaker A:And we all talk about all the little hacks we can do and we should all be biohacking our vision.
Speaker A:But even just getting outside is biohacking revision.
Speaker B:Even just getting your vitamin D levels up is probably good for your eye health.
Speaker B:And I'm sure there's a lot of supplements.
Speaker B:Aren't there certain nutritional supplements and foods that are beneficial for our eye health?
Speaker A:Think of this as anything that's good for the brain is good for the eyes, because the eyes are actually extensions of the brain, a part of the brain.
Speaker A:They emerge from the brain in utero.
Speaker A:Specifically for eye health.
Speaker A:My number one seed, or the one supplement that everybody should be taking, is Omega 3 fish oil.
Speaker A:Great for cognition, heart health, so many aspects, systemic function.
Speaker A:But for our tear film, and for every woman listening who has any type of dry eye syndrome or symptoms, omega 3s help your outer tear film be produced in a more viscous fashion so that your own tears don't evaporate as quickly.
Speaker A:But also they act like a protective barrier.
Speaker A:Jamaica 3 is great, especially if they're.
Speaker A:If you're recovering from a concussion or head injury as well.
Speaker A:And then there's other supplements like glutathione and specifically gluterol, which is a transdermal spray version that you spray on your skin.
Speaker A:But specifically for eye health, the main one is for the macula, which is the sweet spot of our vision or of our eyesight, which is the center of the bullseye that allows us to see the clearest lutein and zeaxanthine, carotenoids.
Speaker A:Those are really helpful for that, for those areas.
Speaker A:But then you can Also find that in dark green leafy vegetables like kale, collard greens, spinach, things like that.
Speaker A:Antioxidants are great for eye health.
Speaker A:Vitamins A, C and E help decrease the risk for macular degeneration and even for cataract formation.
Speaker A:Eggs are fantastic for a lot of reasons, but the choline that's in there, beta carotene, which is wonderful and lutein, is really helpful.
Speaker A:Great for cognition and for many aspects of sight.
Speaker A:The colored fruits and vegetables, the green leafy vegetables, and then the cold water fish.
Speaker A:But in Omega 3 form is really great.
Speaker B:All the things that you mentioned, things that are good for our skin, our brain, it makes us more resistant to uv, argues for our eyes too.
Speaker B:The basics, good nutrition, getting enough sleep, managing your stress.
Speaker B:All the same things we say for your health optimization, it shouldn't be a surprise.
Speaker A:It's good for your skin and good for your brain.
Speaker A:It's good for your eyes and also the healing things to avoid the sugar, the seed oils, what causes chronic inflammation we see, especially with head injury patients, and that's about half my population out of who we treat very often gluten, dairy, sugar, processed foods and alcohol are the biggest triggers for symptoms when there's neuroinflation and vision.
Speaker A:And symptoms emerge in a much more angry fashion after that.
Speaker A:I tell my kids with food, we want that to be instructions for our body to function.
Speaker A:If you're giving your body the right instructions, your body's gonna function better.
Speaker A:And there's so many swaps that we can do to even just rely on ketones as a primary fuel source rather than on glucose and to avoid the stuff that's gonna tip the scale in a negative way.
Speaker B:One more thing I wanted to touch on is autoimmune disorder.
Speaker B:Women are statistically much more likely to have autoimmune conditions like Hashimoto's and lupus.
Speaker B:How do these conditions affect vision?
Speaker A:When there's autoimmunity, very often there's an inflammatory cascade that's emerging and the body almost attacking itself.
Speaker A:And I say that in a loving way, not to place any judgment for anybody here.
Speaker A:When there is systemic inflammation, very often it becomes this new source of visual stress for our visual system.
Speaker A:And then all of a sudden, our eyes are not working together the way that they would previously.
Speaker A:And we, we talked about visual stress causing more of this central pulling in focal response that can lead to instability with the eye coordination system or spatial mismatches and aligning the eyes in different places than where the target is or using the Eyes in different planes.
Speaker A:So often somebody develops one eye that's more dominant for near and one eye that's more dominant for far that they don't have to use both eyes at both distances, because they can't.
Speaker A:So with any type of autoimmune disease, if you're ignoring vision, you're leaving a massive piece to the healing journey still on the table.
Speaker A:And what that often looks like is brain fog, and then visual fog.
Speaker A:And visual fog can be clarity, but can also just be distorted vision.
Speaker A:The ability for our, our brain and our mind to stay focused is deeply embedded in our ability for our eyes to stay focused.
Speaker A:If you can't focus your eyes, you can't focus your mind.
Speaker A:So that can be anyone who's feeling like they have trouble focusing or ADD or adhd, like symptoms or any type of fog or just fatigue.
Speaker A:I would almost guarantee there's a visual component to that that's treatable.
Speaker A:And it's so cool to work with people who are working hard on their systemic health and have autoimmune diseases, but they can grab control of vision.
Speaker A:And even if they're not in a good place or having a good day based off of what they're still healing and struggling systemically, vision can absolutely hold things together and be solid, regardless of the poor night's sleep, the inflammatory response they've had, what they ate that day.
Speaker A:We can get vision to really be the dominant sensory system that it's intended to be.
Speaker B:The body is so interconnected, and we cannot neglect certain parts of our body and vision.
Speaker B:That is one card that's been, for the most part, left out of the conversation, all our health issues.
Speaker B:And I'm.
Speaker B:I'm really astounded.
Speaker B:I think it has to do with our allopathic model of everything siloed into its own body part.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And even though we have our eyes checked, we don't get any preventative advice or any advice on how to improve things besides just these quick fixes like glasses or contacts, which I think most people are really happy to learn about.
Speaker B:Hey, there is something I can do, especially with children.
Speaker B:I think that's the most important with kids, when you can start them early, their brain is still so capable of adapting.
Speaker B:You probably can fix kids a lot faster than adults, I'm assuming, because of their brains.
Speaker B:Tell me how that works.
Speaker A:I would say it depends on the person.
Speaker A:And Ned, very often there's more malleability the younger we are, but also there's more motivation, and you're doing it for yourself.
Speaker A:More likely than doing it.
Speaker A:Because mom, you're saying to you as an adult, I was taught in school and I'm not that old, that there's this critical period for vision development and after you're the eighth birthday, when you blow out the candles, what you see is what you get.
Speaker A:Vision cannot be improved.
Speaker A:And as crazy as that sounds, that's what 99% of eye doctors still preach.
Speaker A:And that is from vision lost, not from vision gain.
Speaker A:So if you or I were to wear an eye patch for six months and then take off the eyepatch, that eye would be a little sensitive, but we'd still be able to see.
Speaker A:But if you take a six year old, put an eye patch on for six months and take it away, there literally will be eyesight lost.
Speaker A:From a vision gain standpoint, any brain at any age has the ability to rewire itself with the right work.
Speaker A:So that's neuroplasticity.
Speaker A:And we have as old as a 92 year old in office based vision therapy.
Speaker A:Developing depth perception for the first time.
Speaker A:Bad habits or maladaptations often become embedded more firmly the longer we're fighting through them.
Speaker A:So maybe the time course is different as an for an adult than for a child.
Speaker A:But anyone listening who has children knows kids are sponges.
Speaker A:They learn things so quickly.
Speaker A:The bulk of the work that we're doing, especially when there's problems, is removing roadblocks and allowing the brain to operate the way in which it's wired.
Speaker A:We're not doing brain surgery.
Speaker A:We're literally establishing vision development that hasn't taken place naturally for whatever reason, whether the child was under physical stress, emotional stress, cognitive stress, and they just took a different path of development or did learn from life experiences the way that they're supposed to, or somebody who's had a head injury or some sort of event where all of a sudden they're using their brain a different way than it actually is wired.
Speaker A:So much can be done when we know what to tap into and we know what specific work to do in the right sequence of learning.
Speaker B:You have a really cool online program called Screen Fit and it's very affordable.
Speaker B:I think it's such an empowering message that you can do something about it yourself.
Speaker B:And no matter how old you are, Tell us a little bit more about this program.
Speaker A:Not only can you do something, you can do a lot of something no matter how old you are.
Speaker A:Screen Fit is an online vision training program designed to teach you specific eye exercises in the right sequence, in the right controlled fashion to handle screen time.
Speaker A:Veteran for longer.
Speaker A:And we've had as young as 5 years old and as old as 89 go through it successfully with 100% of people who've gone through it seeing a reduction in symptoms.
Speaker A:And every time I say, how is this so cool that that happens?
Speaker A:But it's because these are specific skills that we all should have in life and we should all be using to establish better synergy and stamina through the world.
Speaker A:There's two different courses, but each course has 30 lessons and each lesson is supposed to be one a day.
Speaker A:And you're not supposed to do it every day.
Speaker A:Can the 15 minutes to do it.
Speaker A:If you did it five days a week, that first course would last six weeks.
Speaker A:But it could last for longer.
Speaker A:And you only need to buy it once everyone in the family can do it.
Speaker A:And it's specific videos describing what to do.
Speaker A:But then you put the phone or the screen down and do it.
Speaker A:So it's not more screen time to treat screen time, it's screen time to show you what it is that we're supposed to be doing and then you put it away.
Speaker A:But no equipment is needed.
Speaker A:A lot of these are exercises that can be incorporated into daily life.
Speaker A:Some of them you can do in the in the bathroom when you're brushing your teeth or at a stoplight.
Speaker A:So that it is the type of thing we're kind of constantly working on.
Speaker A:The equivalent of this is doing body weight work at home rather than going to the gym and working with a trainer with all the equipment.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:Better results, faster and gold standard to work with a doctor board certified in this who can customize exactly what you need to where you are.
Speaker A:But not everybody has access to that.
Speaker A:So Street Fit is kind of designed for the masses as a one size fits all approach.
Speaker A:But many people go through that and notice ridiculous improvement in visual stamina, productivity and reduction in symptoms.
Speaker A:I'm grateful that we created this over Covid.
Speaker A:Before COVID I thought if I couldn't help somebody 100%, I didn't want to work with them.
Speaker A:And then I realized there are so many people struggling unnecessarily.
Speaker A:This program is needed because if it helps somebody 20%, 50%, 70%, whatever amount, it's still helping.
Speaker B:It's a really small price to pay if you're somebody who's on screens all day or your kids.
Speaker B:It is absolutely a no brainer that you got to do something like this and train yourself how to use your brain and your eyes more efficiently.
Speaker B:This product, in combination of the glasses you mentioned, sounds Like a really good inexpensive way to get started and see where you get.
Speaker B:For our listeners, we do have an option to get a really big discount.
Speaker B:Tell us what how that looks like.
Speaker A:Women are often the caregivers and bear the burden of taking care of everyone else but themselves.
Speaker A:So I want to make this as easy as possible for you and all your listeners.
Speaker A:If you put that code optimized, screen fit is a $497 program.
Speaker A:That code will give you $200 off.
Speaker A:So it'll drop it down to $297 and you have access indefinitely.
Speaker A:We're going to be adding a lot more value to this and group programs and there's other courses as well.
Speaker A:But for that specific one, if you do the work, you see progress.
Speaker A:It's kind of like people who say I exercises don't work.
Speaker A:Those are the same people that say normal exercise doesn't work.
Speaker A:If you do the work, if you exercise and you keep it up, you're going to get in better shape.
Speaker A:Same with this.
Speaker A:If you do the eye exercises and you keep it up, you're going to notice improvement.
Speaker A:But it's not going to be the type of thing that you say, oh, if I do calming and sunning and then all of a sudden I won't need glasses and I can stare at a screen for 20 hours straight.
Speaker A:It's not that easy.
Speaker A:If it was that easy and simple, we wouldn't be having this conversation today because you would all know about this stuff at it.
Speaker B:Dr. B.
Speaker B:The people that actually live near you, how can they find you?
Speaker B:What state and city are you located?
Speaker A:I'm in Maryland and my main office is in Bethesda, Maryland.
Speaker A:We also have an office in Annapolis, Maryland.
Speaker A:So it's right outside Washington D.C. we have a very large amount of patients who fly in from out of state or out of country for these intensive boot camps where they come in for a week and it is insane results in that week.
Speaker A:And we're very careful with screening ahead of time to make sure that it is a slam dunk scenario.
Speaker A:But it's dozen hours of work during the week in our customized home program with virtual reality and all this other high value products.
Speaker A:That's for people who don't have access or don't live in this area.
Speaker A:But then for those who do live in this area, we see people who come in for once a week, twice a week, five times a week, training.
Speaker A:And it's like physical therapy.
Speaker A:We figure out exactly what the problems are.
Speaker A:We figure out what paths we need to take on what solution it is, we figure out exactly how much is needed.
Speaker A:And then in every case, the more motivated you are, the more compliant you are, the faster the results.
Speaker A:And the group is in the pudding.
Speaker B:Not the idea of a bootcamp because then you're really focused on that training for a whole week because it's so easy to get distracted.
Speaker B:Even when you sign up for something, if you don't have the commitment, you might just not do it.
Speaker A:You bring up a pointer issue to commit to yourself and say, okay, I'm all in.
Speaker A:I'm doing this.
Speaker A:Not only are you putting, you're decreasing the amount of screen time and all the other stuff that you're doing in life for that week, but you are committing to the outcome.
Speaker A:And when you make that commitment, it happens.
Speaker A:We found that the work in a week at the minimum is the equivalent of three to four months of work if you were local.
Speaker A:And it's in a week.
Speaker B:If I come to your bootcamp, I'm spending a whole week, I'm dedicated doing the exercises.
Speaker B:What kind of improvements can I expect?
Speaker A:So it totally depends on the person and what we're working on.
Speaker A:We've had many people come in and notice they don't need their reading glasses after the week, but it's a very specific profile that would allow that to manifest quickly.
Speaker A:Many people will come and notice significant improvement in reading ability, both in terms of stamina, comprehension and even just enjoyment.
Speaker A:We see a lot who come in for motion sensitivity, come in to fix an eye turn or a lazy eye as an alternative surgery, concussion, brain injury, rehab.
Speaker A:We also see a lot of people who don't have problems who want to biohack their vision and optimize and enhance their vision.
Speaker A:And then also a ton of athletes I work with, a bunch of pro sports teams, individual athletes.
Speaker A:Anybody's visual skills and abilities can be improved.
Speaker A:It's a matter of whether improving them does anything to improve life in terms of outcomes.
Speaker A:We recently had father of biohacking come in for a week long bootcamp and then outline exactly his experience on his podcast with Ave Asprey.
Speaker A:And his improvement was nuts.
Speaker A: He went from: Speaker A:But he also had a very unique case where we knew that ahead of time you really identify exactly what the pain points and goals are initially and then make sure let's under promise and over deliver.
Speaker A:And so far we're at 100% success in about 10 years of doing these because we don't recommend this for Everybody, it's not for everybody, but for a specific cases or symptoms or problems is a big time game changer.
Speaker B:So it's completely customized your situation.
Speaker A:Everything we do is customized.
Speaker A:We do a two and a half hour evaluation for those listening and say, well, my last eye exam was 10 minutes.
Speaker A:What you pay for is what you get.
Speaker A:But also we look at every single system.
Speaker A:We're looking at the tracking system in three different ways.
Speaker A:We're looking at it in three dimensional space.
Speaker A:We're looking at it in 2D space on a piece of paper in a book setting, and then also looking at it on a screen where we're using eye tracking software that's measuring your exact eye movements as you're reading across a page or following the target and saying oh, or she.
Speaker A:Did you realize this?
Speaker A:Your left eye is actually undershooting and made many more jumps than your right eye did.
Speaker A:Do you feel like you skip words or lines when you're reading or do you ever feel like you have to reread?
Speaker A:This is a big reason why.
Speaker A:And then we do an evaluation at the beginning of the week.
Speaker A:We also do an evaluation at the end of the week to then identify the wins, figure out what we still need to work on, and then we do a customized home program as well.
Speaker A:We have many people come in for multiple weeks, but the vast majority of patients, it's a one week one and done.
Speaker A:And then we just give them a lot to work on moving forward and then we circle back whatever timetable is needed.
Speaker B:I could imagine it's a lot of work for your brain when you're training is.
Speaker A:But if you think about it as you're using your brain, the way in which it's wired, we're removing roadblocks, but it's not the no pain, no gain mentality that like some physical therapy would be.
Speaker A:We're finding each person's threshold with every activity, every sequence of learning, and we're staying below it.
Speaker A:But we have doctors doing the work with you, so there's really good quality control.
Speaker A:There's no surprises on is this working or how's this going?
Speaker A:And we really want the person who knows the most about all this there to jump in and adjust the level of demand so we can maximize every minute that we have with you.
Speaker B:Ladies, you heard it here.
Speaker B:You can biohack your vision and your eyesight and it all can be improved.
Speaker B:I love that you have all these options.
Speaker B:If you live in Maryland, you can go in person, you can go for a week bootcamp, or you can go to the Screen Fit program.
Speaker B:What is the website to get to the Screen Fit?
Speaker A:ScreenFit is just screenfit.com and then practiceismyvisionfirst.com Dr. B.
Speaker B:That was such an amazing conversation.
Speaker B:I learned so much.
Speaker B:Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker C:Thank you so much for tuning in.
Speaker C:This is Maya.
Speaker C:Our production team pours our hearts into this show because we believe women deserve better.
Speaker C:Better conversation, better tools, and health strategies that are actually built for our physiology.
Speaker C:But here's the truth.
Speaker C:This show doesn't grow on its own.
Speaker C:It grows because you share it.
Speaker C:So if this episode hit home, do me a favor.
Speaker C:Follow the show, leave a quick review, and text it to a girlfriend who needs to hear this.
Speaker C:And if you want to go deeper or connect with other women on this path, come join our free community@ optimizedwomen.com thank you for being here.
Speaker C:We appreciate you more than you know.
Speaker C:The views expressed on this podcast are solely those of the speakers and do not reflect the host's opinions.
Speaker C:The content is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical or nutritional advice.
Speaker C:Always consult a licensed healthcare provider.
