I'm Answering Your Questions

Here’s another great conversation I had with my Facebook followers the other day. We covered everything from hallucinations to angiogenesis. If you have questions you would like for me to answer, be sure to email them to hello@drsamberne.com. Enjoy the show. If you want more, sign up for my newsletter at: www.drsamberne.com.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

eye, cataract, floaters, question, blood vessels, called, nitric oxide, visual hallucinations, cranial sacral therapy, migraines, lymphatic, macula, diagnosed, reduce, people, circulation, macular, optic nerve, nutrients, cornea

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, Facebook Live. Great to be here. How are you? Well, we’ve got about 30 minutes together. So if you’ve got questions, you can send them in the chat here. I’ll look for the comments. Good to be back. I was off last week and had a good time doing some camping up in Southern Colorado in the San Juan Mountains. And some of you might have seen some of my Instagram Stories. Anyways, I’m back. And I’m very excited to be here. Very grateful for the community and what we’re offering. So welcome, everybody, just hop on. And I’ve got a ton of questions here. I’ll try to get to them as best I can. couple of announcements. I’m going to be teaching a retreat, leaving a retreat called the vision sanctuary on October, this is going to be the first part of October, October 7 to the ninth. And it’s going to be three days of an immersion. And we’re going to explore a lot of different topics. Everything from eye health to refractive error. We’re going to explore your vestibular system, your brain, we’re going to do some things with movement and sound and light light therapy. I’m also going to be teaching a little mini class on aromatherapy and of course, I’ll be sharing my nutritional protocol pearls that will not only help your eyesight, but also help your overall health and wellness. So if you want to sign up, look for my website, drsambenre.com, hopefully we will be putting it up we’re in the final stages editing. So it should be up on Friday. And if you can’t make it live, you’ll be able to watch it for 60 days after the Sunday class, October 9. So check that out.

We’ll also be doing a Labor Day sale for all my products. I want to make those available to you I’ve got two new actually three new products I hope to be releasing by Labor Day one is actually a castor oil, I draw castor oil I dropped this, this is gonna be very exciting. And you’ll be able to do that I massage around the eyelids. So that’s number one. Number two, I’m going to be releasing a special optic nerve formula to help your circulation. So if you’ve been diagnosed with glaucoma, or you your family people in your family have had glaucoma. This this would be a great product to add to your repertoire. I’m also going to be releasing another product called carnosine carnosine. This is a major antioxidant to help improve lens health. So I keep discovering and inventing and researching new things for you. And I’m really excited to do that. Obviously on my social media, I will be on Tik Tok live this Friday at noon mountain time. If you have more questions or you’re on Tik Tok, that would be great to connect with you.

So if you hear in the background, some buzzing right outside my door here over here. We’ve got a couple of hummingbird feeders. So the hummingbirds are are here. And they’re going crazy because my wife just fed them. And so you might be hearing some pollinating in the background. That’s gonna be the hummingbirds. Okay, they’re joining us tonight. All right, I’m going to jump into my first question. This is kind of out there. So fasten your seat belts. This is a concerned daughter. She’s got a mom who’s 80 You’re going to be at in October. And she is suffering from hallucinations. Now you would say what is hallucinations have to do with our vision. But a couple of months ago, I released a podcast on this very topic. And this comes from the the discovery from a Swiss philosopher. His name was Charles bone a, and it’s called the bone a syndrome and believe it or not, he published an article way back in 1760. And he was talking about his grandfather, who was suffering visual hallucinations, and he was diagnosed with cataracts. So we fast forward to 1967 and George For more, who was also a Swiss scientist, he actually labeled this condition condition, Charles Benet. And so what is this actually so, you know, sometimes as we get older, we start having some structural changes in the eyes.

You may know, somebody who’s been diagnosed with macular degeneration, and you notice that maybe as you look out in the peripheral vision, things look distorted, or there’s a Corvinus. If you use something like an Amsler grid, which is a small chart that has squares on it, and you looked at it, with each eye, if you have macular degeneration, those squares can look very distorted, some of them can go away and come back. Or if you’ve got a cataract forming, there’s a cloudiness and depending on the day, you know, the cataract can be worse or better. And glaucoma, if you have a peripheral vision loss, you have dry eye syndrome. So in other words, every visual condition, it begins to affect your habitual way of seeing the world perceptually. And so in this Charles bony syndrome, what was discovered is that actually, people with eye diseases can develop these type of visual hallucinations. And it’s kind of hard to explain because, you know, in in the regular eye care field, what the eye doctors are doing is they’re diagnosing, and then they’re using their surgical procedures or pharmaceuticals, which is just fine. But it doesn’t necessarily change the visual hallucinations, or the perceptual changes. Now, I was lucky enough in my training, to study a lot of different modalities, everything from somatic therapy, cranial sacral therapy. Also, in the somatic world, as we worked with the whole body, and we work with sound and color and light, I became comfortable with helping people with certain psychological and emotional aspects of how they related to their eyes and vision.

So one of the things that can can be done as a way to start to desensitize yourself from these visual hallucinations, is to work with eye movements and eye stretching. And there’s actually an exercise on my website, called the animal eye chart, and you’re patching one of your eyes and you’re having this chart up to your face, and you’re tracing your eyes along the lines and you’re, you’re stretching your eyes, and that’s really good for circulation. So doing the eye movement exercise also helps move the lymph in the eye, which can sometimes clear up some of the congestion or the consolidation of you know, tissue like floaters or you know, even cataracts, that when you have a better functioning lymph system in the eye, it can sometimes flush things out. And then if you use MSM drops, that can also help you also have an exercise called the palm hum, which putting sound into the eye tissue is a way to relax the eyes, open up the circulation, and probably have a positive effect on your breathing and balancing your nervous system.

Because in the hallucination, there’s an emotional component, a psychological component, and there’s a physical vision component. So the physical therapy that I use, invites people to move more into what we call an open system of consciousness. And what this means is that as you get more comfortable with moving away from the status quo of how you used to see or how you think you should see, and you go into this open system, what happens is your nervous system begins to relax. A lot of times either the hallucinations go away, or they’re not dominating your awareness. And it’s so funny because, you know, in floaters, this is, this happens a lot with people. It’s not so much the floaters go away completely. But people stop fixating on the floaters as a you know, as the culprit. And emotionally they get much more relaxed and they start seeing, you know, a lot of other things besides just being, you know, attracted to the floaters, because that’s can be a form of visual hallucination. So in any case, visual hallucinations are real. There is a condition around it. I did a podcast on it. You can type in Charles bone, a syndrome Dr. Byrne, and you’ll get my podcast and you can watch Watch it or listen to it. And it’s fascinating on, you know how this evolved and developed and there, there definitely are visual hallucinations that can occur when your eyes start changing. So I hope that’s helpful. Thank you so much for the question. I don’t want to jump over to LinkedIn. And

in this question, this is a question about nitric oxide. And in a recent, I think this was a blog that I wrote about, and it was on the the benefits of this molecule called nitric oxide. So nitric oxide is produced naturally in your body. And what it does is it dilates the blood vessels, so it’s increasing your circulation. And the name of the game as you get older, you know, the eye is has a very high concentration of blood vessels in it, when we start developing oxidative stress and inflammation. One of the the counter the counters to that is including or activating nitric oxide in your body as a molecule that can actually improve the circulation. And this comes from a science where investigative ophthalmology actually published an article on the relationship between this molecule nitric oxide, and the regulation of fluid production in the eye, better known as glaucoma. And in the study, what they found was is that people who either ate foods that had nitric oxide, or they would do a supplement with it, this actually could help reduce the the blockage of the fluid in the eye, and it could slow down the progressive deterioration in the optic nerve. And as we know, in glaucoma, it is a silent disease tends to run in families. So that, you know, if you were accessing nitric oxide, that would actually help you open up the circulation. So one of my favorite foods actually to my favorite three of my favorite foods that stimulate and have the nitric oxide, you know, activation would be arugula, celery, and beet root. So in this blog, I talk about, you know, the the science behind nitric oxide, specifically with the eyes, but also it can help cardiovascular disease and, you know, other vascular diseases. So it’s something that should be on your radar for sure. And, as I said, at the top of the show, I’ve developed an optic nerve formula to improve the optic nerve circulation, and it has nitric oxide in it and just finishing the final stages of labeling and getting it to our fulfillment people getting up on our webstore. That might be an answer for you. If you’re curious about nitric oxide, it certainly can help. Alright, let’s move on. This is from all our friends and Geetha. Good evening, welcome. Does putting one or two drops of fresh coconut water a couple of times a day help with cataract? I haven’t seen that. So I can’t really comment on coconut water into the eyes to help cataracts I think that, you know, what I have seen that helps cataract is glutathione and vitamin C, those are two essential ingredients.

Third one might be an acetylcysteine. That would be another one, you need to do high levels of antioxidants, that that can help dissolve the oxidative stress in the lens. And if you feel there’s a sugar component, you know, you might include what we call a substance being able to reduce the glycation process. So glycation is when the glucose molecule attacks attaches to the protein molecule in the lens of the eye and we we call this a cortical cataract. It’s like spokes around the lens. So it’d be good to know what kind of cataract you have. And then from that point, if it is more glucose generated, you would move more towards the glycation process of dissolving it. I don’t really know about other people’s products. So I’m going to defer from that. Since I don’t use them. I can’t really comment. I think that if you’re looking for other products, I would just contact those manufacturers and ask them that question because they’re going to have more experience than I do. And then your question about progressive lenses. Um, so the the rule of thumb is that in any glasses prescription that you wear, this is really important. What I’m going to say is that you wear the prescription when you need to function at a high level, and you need to see clearly, it’s not going to deteriorate your eyes to wear the prescriptions when you need them. And fact, if you try to strain yourself through circumstances, it actually makes your eyes much worse. So you use the glasses when you need them. And then there are times during the day when the circumstances will say, Okay, I don’t need the lenses to see things quite as clearly. So I can go without them and I can explore my vision in the more blurry state.

So check that out. I hope that that that’s helpful. Yeah, somebody’s asking about the blue blockers and we’ll certainly be doing another sale in the fall. So stay with us. All right. Audrey is asking about bad floaters. I don’t think there are any floaters that are good floaters. I’m going to bring in a research study that was done to help floaters which is from this was a study that said that bromo choline, which is from pineapples had some positive effect, in dissolving floaters. And I believe it’s in one of my, my blogs where I talk about the actual study. But you know, you could certainly try pineapple if you’re not allergic to it and you like it as a way to dissolve floaters. That’d be one kind of new wrinkle that is just kind of come on the scene. Number two, I would relate floaters to poor lymphatic health, lymph. So the lymph system is stagnating, it’s not moving, you know, we’re all sitting way too much. And so there’s an exercise on my website called Long swings where you’re standing at shoulder width, and you’re swinging your arms from side to side very slowly. And you do that for a couple of minutes every day. So the you’re activating the eye movements, which is going to help your eye lymph and the movement of your body so lymphatic health, and there are a lot of ways that you can get lymphatic healthy, you could jump on a rebounder, you could take a walk, you could go get some lymphatic drainage from a massage therapist, you could get cranial sacral therapy. So in other words, how can you activate the part of your body that gets rid of toxicities, so the liver and the eyes are very related. So we would take a look at maybe doing a liver cleanse and that’s also then related to lymphatic health.

And then finally, I think that you know, you really need to boost the major antioxidants in your eyes and I would just the way I would say it is eat the rainbow color of vegetables and maybe adding some of either strawberries or blueberries. And if you eat the rainbow color you’re getting all the major antioxidants from vitamin A to lutein, zeaxanthin and Astaxanthan and the potent antioxidants that your eyes need. And again when you develop floaters, there’s a drying out of the of the vitreous or the vitreous is just losing its in Tegrity and getting too big. could go either way so it enlarges or it shrinks. So hydrating the eyes with natural eyedrops. You could do the uptake homeopathic eyedrops, you could do my MSM 5% or the 15% MSM missed on the eyelids. So hydrating oxygenating increasing the vascular health, giving your eyes more nutrients, improving the lymphatic health, maybe adding brambling to your diet. These would be things that I would use to see if you could reduce floaters. Okay, let’s go to Jenny. She’s asking about her daughter as I inflammation, blood vessels growing in the corneas losing her sight. She’s only 14. We can’t figure out how to stop this the blood vessels. We’ve got our lightning and thunder. So we’ve got a little storm going on here. There you go. Hopefully we won’t lose power, the beginning of a lot of rain that’s for sure for the desert southwest but we welcome the rain because it puts out all the fires. Anyway, back to the question. So this is this is a Uh, certainly a disturbing issue.

I think that you know, what you’re talking about is when you have blood vessels growing into the cornea, we call that neovascularisation or it may be angiogenesis. And the reason why that that could be happening is because the eyes are not getting enough circ, you know, nutrients and hydration. Again, I don’t know all the details about it. But certainly I would start with hydrating the eyes with some homeopathic eyedrops during the day, maybe my 5% MSM drops using them three to four times a day. And then the evening you might consider doing a compress over the eyelids and you could use an herbal type formula. So could either be a chamomile tea could be a golden seal or a go to cola is another great one. Or eyebright if you can get that so doing the compresses in the evening, the eyedrops during the day. I think you need to get a you know a definitive diagnosis from your eye doctor and have him or her take some pictures so that you’re monitoring, you know this this new blood vessel situation, but there’s a starvation going on in the eyes. So adding, you know omega three fatty acids, adding a really good eye nutrient that includes Asda, Xanten, which is a great carotenoid. And you know like in my vitamin, I have gingko and taurine and bilberry. Those help improve the circulation of the eyes.

And then maybe my eye exercises, one that I would recommend would be the palm hum exercise, that’s the one where you rub your hands together, you cup it over your eyes, and you do about six to eight hums On the exhale, that will help improve the breathing cycle. That could be another reason is there any eye trauma, or just no birth trauma. So you could get some cranial sacral therapy get some acupuncture. You know, again, these are some generalities that could maybe slow down some of this, these new fragile blood vessels that are trying to give the cornea which is the clear window of the eye. It’s also called the a vascular tissue of the front of the eye, meaning there’s no blood vessels that should be running to the cornea. But the cornea needs a lot of hydration and oxygenation and nutrients. So there’s probably some starvation going on there in the nutrients, you know, you could check out a naturopath and get get some baseline on gut health and dietary absorption. Obviously, things like sugars and simple Kargbo, carbohydrates, and, you know, processed foods, you need to kind of eliminate those so that you’re going more into the natural, you know, food area, I can’t tell you the number of patients over the years that I just say to them change your diet, and their lens health gets better or their macular problems start to go away. So there’s a real connection between diet and eyesight. And maybe that could be part of it. You know, with inflammation. Sometimes it’s what we eat that creates this general inflammatory disease in the eyes and in the body. So we need to be able to

you know, we need to be able to self regulate how much inflammation there there could be. Alright, let’s go to Dane who’s asking a question about migraines and Aras and does it damage the eye, less about damaging the eye No, but more about just creating an overall stress level that is going to keep your nervous system at a place where there’s more cortisol in the body, which is that stress hormone, and it could reduce things like your dopamine and serotonin levels, which are the happy and feel good hormones for the brain. So you know migraines and Rs. You have to be a CSI detective here in figuring out well what is triggering the migraine? And there isn’t a cookbook answer. You know if you can find a doctor that can maybe do some things in the area of nutritional analysis, food allergies, toxicities, and then maybe working with an osteopath or cranial cranial sacral person. Are there any structural things? Are the bones sitting properly? Are they moving? In the head properly, because if there’s a restriction in the movement up here, and it’s a subtle movement, this can lead to headaches and Aras. And of course, there’s the visual component, you know, I don’t know what you’re doing with screen time or using blue blocking filters. You know, is there an imbalance between your two eyes, maybe you need to go to an eye doctor, and see if there’s a prescription of glasses that could, you know, reduce the visual stress, these would be some of the things that we would start to look at. I do think that gut health and eye health are very connected.

So you know, again, it’s hard to diagnose over, you know, this kind of a question. But certainly a naturopath or a functional medicine doctor could give you some ideas on what is possible in terms of reducing some of the migraines and the RS, but they can be debilitating. Also, if you have a, you know, a tracking system inside yourself to go oh, these are some of the things that trigger me. You know, it could be intense sunlight, it could be the dark, it could be, I’ve worked all day on the computer, it could be, you know, I’m drinking diet coke. And if I stop drinking diet coke, maybe that’s an issue. So you have to do your own self awareness analysis on what is triggering when it happens, where it happens. And sometimes, you know, if you change some of the outer environmental circumstances that could reduce some of the risk of those kinds of things. All right, I’m going to take one more question. And this is a serious question. This is from a patient of mine, who has just been diagnosed with what we call macular bleed. So the macula is the center part of the retina where we see detail and color vision. The retina has one of the highest metabolic needs of the body. And the macula has one of the highest is the highest metabolic need of the retina. So the macula is like the cornea, there are no blood vessels that run through the macula that we realize on its nutrient

support indirectly. So if you start getting a macular hemorrhage, saying that, again, these new blood vessels are growing in an area that they shouldn’t be in these blood vessels are fragile. And this can lead to fluid buildup behind the eye, it looks a little bit like wet macular degeneration or cystoid, macular edema, Macula fluid behind the macula creates a waviness in the in the clarity of your seeing. First thing I think about is diabetes or out of control glucose levels. So you know, we talk about the systemic, and the metabolic reasons why our eyes led us down. And when you start getting, you know, blood vessels that are growing in areas that they shouldn’t be, you need to look at things like diabetes, hypertension, circulatory issues, and, you know, there is a very strong correlation between out of control glucose levels and eye problems because of the concentration of blood vessels that are in the eye. So you might again, work with a functional medicine doctor or a naturopathic doctor consider possibly moving more in the direction of a ketogenic diet that could be very helpful, you know, in the moment if it’s a macular bleed, and they’re you know, definitely some some side threatening issues there. You may need to get some laser or some cryotherapy that were they freeze the part of the retina where there’s bleeding going on. Certainly some natural supplements that can work well would be things like grapeseed extract, bilberry, gingko, taurine, obviously the carotenoids, lutein, zeaxanthin and acid Xanthine, and your vitamin A, all of those things can be helpful as a support to feed the retina so that it’s not getting not having to produce these fragile blood vessels. So keep in touch with me about it. But the first place to look would be your glucose levels. All right, everybody. That’s our show for today. I want to thank you so much for tuning in and being part of the community, and I’ll see you next week. Take care.

Thank you for listening. I hope you learned something from the EyeClarity podcast show today. If you enjoyed the episode, make sure to subscribe on iTunes or Spotify and leave a review. See you here next time.