Answering Some Questions on Facebook Live

I am answering a few questions I’ve received recently on this Facebook live and I wanted to share it with you. If you have any questions be sure to email them to me at hello@drsamberene.com or attend my weekly Facebook live. Enjoy the show. If you want more, sign up for my newsletter at: www.drsamberne.com.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

eyes, MSM, cornea, keratoconus, vestibular system, question, called, eyesight, eyedrops, prescription, check, wear, people, blur, started, vitamin, sulfur, lens, optic nerve, blurry vision

Hello, everyone, it’s Dr. Sam, I’d like to welcome you to my EyeClarity podcast. This is a show that offers cutting-edge information on how to improve your vision and overall wellness through holistic methods. I so appreciate you spending part of your day with me. If you have questions, you can send them to hello@drsamberene.com. Now to the latest EyeClarity episode.

Hey, everybody. Good evening. It’s Dr. Sam. And I want to welcome you to Facebook live tonight. Behind me is not a green screen. This is actually my backyard. And I wanted to I wanted to come to you tonight being outside. We have some beautiful weather today. So I thought, let’s bring nature to our discussion tonight. Alright, there’s a question from Joyce and she wants to know about IPL for dry eyes. Look for dry eyes if you’re suffering, from moderate to severe dryness. The IPL procedure, IPL is certainly something that you can do. It is a symptomatic approach, but it certainly will relieve your symptoms. Again one of the keys to dry eye is the health of the eyelids. How you can reduce the inflammation in your eyelids is the key. And the way to do that you can use a castor oil I massage in the evening, you can use my MSM mist during the day you can hydrate the corneas by using Optique, homeopathic eye drops along with the MSM eye drops, and make sure you’re wearing your blue-blocking glasses for all your screen time. Make sure you’re getting enough of the nutrients that we talked about the fat-soluble nutrients like vitamin A, lutein, and zeaxanthin because these are the lutein, zeaxanthin, and acid Xanthine are the carotenoids that I talk a lot about. The B complex is very good for the cornea. But bottom line you need to reduce inflammation in the eyelids. And don’t forget systemic and metabolic health has a very strong influence on dry low thyroid overacting adrenals. That’s on the endocrine system. stress, stress is definitely going to dry out your tissues more. And again, endocrine imbalances if you have either.

Well, just any kind of endocrine problems, you should check in with your functional medicine doctor because that can have an impact on your ability to produce the tears what I was thinking about was estrogen levels. So either very low estrogen or very high estrogen can also be a contributing factor to dry. And don’t forget about omega-three fatty acids. There have been a number of studies that show that omega threes are super important for reducing dry so I think it’s a combo certainly If you need to do the more conventional things, to reduce the symptoms and get some relief, I have no problem with that. But of course, I’m always looking for the deeper cause, what are the causes that cause our eyes? To let us down? Okay, I want to take a question here from TikTok, by the way, my tic tock, if you haven’t gotten on TikTok, I’m doing some great, really fun posts on there, check it out. And but this person is asking about my exercise called the plus lens, the blur. So this is kind of crazy, because, you know, as an eye doctor, what we’re supposed to do is we’re supposed to correct people’s eyesight to 2020 with lenses. But in this plus lens to blur, I’m actually doing the opposite. This is something I discovered many, many years ago when I was learning about physical therapy for the eyes and the brain.

What if that was my question as I was working in the hospitals, for traumatic brain injury patients? What if I gave a nearsighted person the farsighted prescription? Well, what ended up happening is that when a person would wear that for a few minutes, their myopia tended to reduce because they would take the blurry glasses off, and their eyesight was much clearer than when they first started. So what I developed over time was in a therapeutic setting. So this is a very safe environment. You don’t want to do this when you’re driving or operating a chainsaw, or, you know, writing a check or anything like that. But in a therapeutic setting, if you’re nearsighted, you get the magnification lens, and you put it over your eyes on your eyes, and mentally you start relaxing into the blur. Now, the first thing that happens for all of us, when we get blurry vision is Oh, my goodness, something is wrong. And of course, the eye doctors and I’m guilty of that, too. We go, oh my goodness, if you’ve got blur, something is wrong. Well, my approach was to use those glasses and mentally relax into the blur because blur is positive in some ways. It’s about relaxation, letting go surrendering, being more creative, being more intuitive, being more receptive.

So the many positive things that you can experience again, I’m contacting in a therapeutic setting where there’s no demand on you. When you do that for a minute, and then you take the glasses off, what ends up happening is your eyesight resets itself, your mind, your brain, your eyes, your body go, oh, I can relax into this. And so you have a broader range of vision. You know, when we get a pair of glasses or contacts correcting us to 2020 It’s a very narrow range of experience. And the narrower the range, the closer we call that a closed system, and closed systems deteriorate over time. When you wear this blurry lens prescription, you are now in an open system and open systems thrive, open systems, expand their consciousness, they relaxed, they serve they, they are able to receive better, they’re able to be more resilient, more versatile.

This is a neurological practice. This is a neuroplasticity practice. So the plus lens to blur is for nearsighted people. And then if you’re farsighted and you wear reading glasses or you wear bifocals, and I you know, I see more and more people who are wearing these very thick, farsighted prescriptions, and their eye muscles have basically given up, that’s why they need stronger and stronger lenses or they wear their glasses. And when they take them off, they can’t even focus anymore. So you wear a minus lens you wear what a nearsighted person wears, and that actually gives the muscles more tone, more resiliency, more focus. And again, when you take the minus lens off or a farsighted person, Wallah, your eyesight starts to get better. And so as you do this over time, a few weeks, a few months, you can start to regain your eyesight. It’s very exciting to see this. So I want you to check it out. You know, my website has many, many videos on minus lens to blur for farsighted, and plus lens to blur for my nearsighted myopia. And so that’s, that’s the deal. Now somebody is asking, What if you’ve had cataract surgery?

Doesn’t matter. Remember, with our prescriptions, it’s partly the prescription in the eye, but there’s also a prescription in the brain and the mind. I have a hard time with some eye doctors convincing them actually I stopped convincing them a long time ago. But the thing is, is that our prescription is more than in the eyeball, and you’ve got to get that concept. So let’s say you’ve had LASIK surgery or cataract surgery or you’ve had laser surgery for glaucoma? Most definitely you can continue these exercises and they will strengthen and improve your vision. So, you know, two thumbs up especially, especially if you’ve had surgery. Alright, let’s go to the next question. I got so many questions here. We’re gonna go about 30 minutes so about 30 minutes past the hour, maybe a little before. keratoconus. Okay, this is on Instagram. Julie is asking, can anything be done for keratoconus? So, this is a cornea condition. It has some genetic roots in it and it’s related to the cornea the cornea is the clear window of the eye, where we see out and people see in or, or objects see in the tree see in anyway the point of the story is we start to lose the membrane of the of the cornea. So you get a bulging you get kind of this bulging at the center part of the cornea. And it thins and this be this creates a distortion sometimes it creates a astigmatism, where the eyeball is irregularly shaped, and it’s very difficult to correct. With a pair of glasses with contacts you can actually do a better job in getting better eyesight, but it can be a progressive disease. And I don’t have the magic bullet on reversing keratoconus. No, I

don’t have that. However, there are some things that you can do to slow down the progression and sometimes you can even stop it. So in a non surgical or non procedural type of way, the MSM eyedrops are really great because they sue the cornea, their collagen building another eyedrop that’s really good is called highlight erotic acid I dropped this highlight tears is what it’s called. And it’s made for the eyes so it’s perfectly fine to use. If you want to use those to uh, you need to keep your corneas really hydrated blue blockers, and I would also say out in the sun, you know, unless you’re out there 3030 to 60 minutes early in the day or late in the day, probably sunglasses in this particular case would be beneficial and diet wise, anti inflammatory, lots of healthy fats and oils. The B complex is a very important vitamin A is also very important. And, you know, you can manage keratoconus, if you’re hydrating the cornea with healthy natural eyedrops taking care of your eyelids, maybe with a castor oil eye massage. And if you do those things, you have a great chance of at least slowing down the progression. Now there’s a procedure called corneal crosslinking. And if you have a very severe cornea issue corneal dystrophy, like keratoconus fuks dystrophy, you could take a look at that as a procedure. I would say the results are moderately successful. And there are doctors who specialize in that you can google corneal crosslinking, and there’s some doctors you know, in the US who do that type of work and so you could check that out.

But the key and keratoconus and this goes across for any cornea issues, you got to keep it hydrated. The thing that really hurts the cornea is when it dries out. And this is even for regular dry eye syndrome. When the cornea is dry out, you’re gonna have pain, you’re gonna have inflammation, you’re gonna have blurry vision. And it’s just not a happy, fun situation, especially because you’re going to be doing what we’re doing right now, which is, you know, looking at your screen, and you need to be able to do that and with keratoconus. There can be some issues with that. All right, next question. The palm hum, okay. This is a question that was on LinkedIn. And this is from Bill. He says, What is this humming when you POM? So we got to bring in the Bates method. I want to thank William Bates Bates was an ophthalmologist. He started eyesight improvement in the early 1900s. He was a New York ophthalmologist. I’m so glad that he was alive and was able to promote eye exercises. Today. There’s a whole group of people called Bates teachers and I love them. I think they’re doing really good work. And one of the exercises that Bates came up with was called palming. And this is where you rub your hands together. You cut them over your eyes, the eyes are closed, and you do some breathing.

And so when you do that, you’re basically relaxing the tissue around the eyes because what are we doing all day? This? We’re thrusting forward with our eyeballs, and the muscles get very tight and we don’t know how to release or destress In our eyes. So, when I started to study things like somatic, body-centered healing, I started looking at things like sound, acupuncture, sound therapy, acupuncture, homeopathy, herbs, and vibration. And when you use vibration on the eyes, you actually can amplify the relaxation. So what am I talking about? So what I decided was, well, what if we do the same palming eyes are closed, but we add a humming sound when we exhale. So we want to breathe through the nose, if we can, we say, the mouth is for the nose is for breathing, and the mouth is for eating. And when we do mouth breathing, this raises our stress level, you know, run from tigers, oh, my goodness, there’s a bear over there. No, I’m kidding. But honestly, if there was a bear there, I would go, I better I better check it out. But otherwise, we don’t want to be in that fight, flight Fight, fight flight freeze response. And our eyeballs are one of the systems that we really carry that fight flight freeze response. So when we do our exhale, our mouth is closed, and we’re making a humming sound like

this. So a couple things are happening here. Your hands can be like tuning forks, and the sound is being focused. In this area, we have a lot of fascia connective tissue, muscles, collagen nerves, and there’s a tightness, there’s a gripping. And so when we start putting sound into this area, you look at my hands, we spread the tissue, the tissue starts to spread. Now, what happens when the tissue spreads, better blood flow, more muscle relaxation, better oxygenation, lowered inflammation, reduced oxidative stress. So when you do eight or 10 of these humming sounds, and you take your hands away, I guarantee you, your breathing is going to be deeper, longer, slower, which is great for resetting the nervous system. And on top of that, what’s going to happen is your eyes and around your face are going to feel more relaxed. And number three, and this is the best thing is that your eyesight is going to be very clear. So if you’re on that screen, you want to be doing the palm home, I like to do eight palms, eight homes, about every 20 minutes. And I’m telling you, it will refresh you it’ll moisturize your eyes. And it’s wonderful. It’s something that I think that I’m so glad this person asked the question Bill on LinkedIn. Because, yeah, it’s really a great exercise in learning how to regulate yourself so that you are the master of your feet. So that’s that. Now let’s go to let’s see here, we got a lot of questions. All right, let’s go to Shannon Shannon said that her husband had a vitrectomy. At 30 years old, his vision is still poor in that eye. Now a very small part of the other eye is showing similar signs. So I think I would start Shannon getting your husband on the M S M drops as a start. Now let’s talk about the difference between the 5% and the 15%. The 15% is stinging, it stings a little bit when you put it in the eyes, you may consider getting the 5% to start with and have them do it one drop in each eye four times a day, and he should start to get some clearing in the eyes. It’s probably some debris, some old inflammation, maybe some scar tissue.

So the MSM drops would be great. If he’s really up for it, you could get both the five and the 15%. And the 15% really helps the vitreous it’s really great for that. If you don’t believe me, you can go on my Web Store. fact I’d like you to go on my webstore under MSM drops, look at the patient reviews, and then that will tell you how the MSM has influenced and helped people. Some other things I would consider and this gets kind of tricky is that we want your husband to get more More I nutrients into his eyes in his body. So again, I talk about the Big Three carotenoids, lutein, zeaxanthin, acid Xanthine. Vitamin A is very important. You know, one of the things I’ve discovered is there’s a new form of vitamin E that is called a tocotrienol, and this is a different form of vitamin E than what was put out by the arid study in the air. It’s to study this form of vitamin E, it’s from an annatto tree. And the studies are off the charts on how it improves the circulation in the eyes. I sell that so you might have them get the annatto II and the other one I would have them get would be saffron.

You know saffron. Studies have shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that saffron is really helpful as a neuroprotective antioxidant that helps retinol circulation, and the better the retinal circulation. The better the vitreous, the better the cornea, the better the lens, the better the eyelids. So take the eye vitamin, add the saffron, add the annatto II, add the MSM, make sure he’s wearing blue blockers for a screen time, get out into the sun 30 minutes a day. Those would be some basic things that I would suggest to recommend. Because you don’t want to have them go through another vitrectomy. That’s not fun. And the you know, the answer really is it’s not it’s not a great answer. All right, somebody is asking a question. Can the MSM drops be used after cataract surgery? And the answer to that is absolutely 100%. Yes. So a little backstory on the MSM. I started using MSM, I don’t know maybe 15 years ago, you know, in my undergraduate studies, I was very involved in chemistry. I was I studied organic chemistry, I loved chemistry, and I was a chemist at heart. And so when I started to look at eyedrops on the market, I was very disenchanted. What I saw in the pharmacy in the pharmacy because most of those eyedrops either had high amounts of preservatives, or they actually made your eyes read more red and more dry. So I knew about MSM because it I knew that it helped the joints. It had been used as a powder as an anti inflammatory agent building collagen. So I found somebody to make it for me and I began using different strengths on my patients, cataract surgery, laser surgery, LASIK surgery, all kinds of surgeries, and I found that not only did it not hurt the situation, it seemed to clear things up.

So MSM is a sulfur molecule, not sulfa sulfur and sulfur is the third leading trace mineral that’s found in our body sulfur is found in things like broccoli and collards, cruciferous vegetables, garlic, onions. So we need sulfur. Sulfur is a really important trace mineral. Part of what sulfur is is it has sticky flypaper that’s what it’s like. So any toxin will stick to the sulfur molecule, and it’s flushed out of the body, including the eye. So long story short, MSM is perfectly safe after every any kind of eye surgery. Just wait three days get the clearance of your, your surgeon, there’s no infections, there’s no irritations and then you can jump in. Okay, we’ve got time for one or two more questions. So this is a question on see where is this? This is on clubhouse a if you guys know about clubhouse, that’s an audio social media platform. Sometimes I’m a guest on there. So this is a clubhouse question. This is somebody who’s suffering a condition called retinitis pigmentosa. Now, this is a

this is a condition where you lose your peripheral vision can there can be a genetic reason why we develop retinitis pigmentosa. So, some things that you can do. First of all eye exercises that stimulate the peripheral vision are really helpful. That’s number one. And number two, you might consider and you need to be careful about this, but you might consider the the carotenoids and I like things like lycopene, that’s another very high quality antioxidant, saffron curcumin. These would be things that I would suggest for retinitis pigmentosa. Again you have to be careful with vitamin A and retinitis pigmentosa it’s a little different so there can you can develop a toxicity and the sensitivity around it with our pee, but between the eye exercises and the proper nutrients, you can live with it, you can neutralize it. So there is hope for you. I’ve done a really nice video blog on RP. So you could check that out. And we’ll leave it at that. All right, let’s go to Carolyn. She’s asking about what what do you do? What do you use with latanoprost for glaucoma? Well, the first thing that you have to know with glaucoma is you need to protect the optic nerve that is the number one most important thing.

And the way you do that is you need to get really good omega three fatty acids into your body. You know, the retina is made up of about 50% fatty acids I bet you didn’t know that. And so the optic nerve needs Omega three that’s number one. Number two taurine is a really great amino acids it’s actually has has its roots in software as well. So you can use a taurine supplement as an amino acid that’s very helpful for the optic nerve number three gingko gingko has been shown to help the vascular health in the optic nerve. Again, you don’t need high dosages of these. These are all in my vitamins so you can get them you know, at the proper amounts there. Of course you want to do the three carotid noids and vitamin A and bilberry your trace minerals, it’s all very important anti inflammatory diet is is critical. with glaucoma, some other things to consider would be yes, with the latanoprost. You keep taking that, wait 15 minutes, you can use the MSM eyedrops, there’s an herbal remedy called coleus. For Skilar coleus, co L E U S, it’s been shown to bring high pressure down. So you can take it orally as an herb and you can also make a compress and put it over your eyes, that can be very helpful at neutralizing the high pressure, getting some cranial sacral therapy, lymphatic drainage acupuncture, these can work really well.

Also toxins in the body can give you a false sense of a high pressure, mold exposure. These are all things that can cause the the circulation to change in the eyes. So keep taking your latanoprost keep monitoring the visual fields with your eye doctor, and then start instituting these alternatives. And let’s see if you can make some waves in the next three months. All right, I got time for one more question. And let’s see what we’ve got here. This is a question. Let’s see. Ah, this is a question from Barbara. Barbara is suffering a condition called Menieres disease. This is affecting the inner ear. Now just a little backstory for me when I was working at the hospitals. One of the conditions I became very adept at is vestibular problems at the inner ear. So if you’ve if you feel like you’ve got vertigo, dizziness, nausea, I’m the guy I was the guy in the hospital, they would refer them to me. And what I know about the vestibular system, that’s a little tiny bones in the stones in the inner ear, the ears and the eyes and the feet, I call it the triangle. They have to work together and when we start tunneling our vision, what happens is we shut off the vestibular system and this wreaks havoc in our orientation or GPS because we’re relying on our orientation primarily exclusively just on our eyes. So couple things very simply. Number one, expand your peripheral vision engages the vestibular system more. Number two

head injuries traumas can also trigger things like Menieres disease or vertigo. That’s why we do cranial sacral therapy, other trauma releasing therapies as well because if you can heal the trauma, you’re balancing and reducing the hypersensitivity in the nervous system. Number three if you wear prescription glasses or contacts, make sure they’re not overcorrecting you. I have had hundreds of people with vertigo and manures disease where their prescriptions were so strong that it triggered this vestibular situation. And when I reduced the prescription in their eyes, the vestibular system came back to normal. Now it’s a balancing act because the reduction in the prescription sometimes created a little blurry vision. So you have to titrate it you have to you know know when to wear these kinds of procedures options.

But the eyes and the ears are so interrelated, that when you start developing these kinds of symptoms, you really need to check it out with your eyes to make sure that your two eyes are working together, that you’re not wearing a prescription that’s too much that you’re releasing stress in the eyes. There’s so many things that you can do as a way to start balancing out the vestibular system with the visual system. So I’m looking at my time and I’m going to need to go but, I hope to see you have a great week everybody. Thank you. Thank you for your participation. We just had a hawk fly by to end the session so many blessings, everybody.

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.