I'm Answering Your Questions

I had a great discussion the other week with my followers on Facebook. We had a bit of a rapid-fire question session where I covered topics like cataract surgery protocols, floaters, lazy eye, and more. Enjoy the show. If you want more, sign up for my newsletter at: www.drsamberne.com.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

eye, cataract, macular degeneration, wearing, msm, check, reduce, acupuncture, eyelids, health, glasses, called, lens, retina, vitamin, prescription, castor oil, retinal, doctor, cataract surgery

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. I’d like to welcome you to Facebook live tonight. And we’ve got lots of questions. So I’m gonna jump right in. The first question is from Geeta. Geeta, I hope you’re doing well. She suddenly says that her right eye is not being affected by glare and general sunlight. Well, if your glare is going away, your cataracts may be reduced. Now, if your glare is getting worse, that means that the cataract is getting worse. So it’s time for you to check in with an eye doctor who can do a cataract exam and see what is going on. I Robin is asking a question about cataract surgery and the inter-ocular lens that’s implanted. And she is asking about the mono-focal lens. That means both eyes are corrected for distance, or the blended vision lens. So let me briefly talk about that when you go for a cataract evaluation with your surgeon, there are different lens options. One of the main options is correcting both eyes for distance. Now, if you get one cataract lens replacement, and let’s say the other eye is working, okay. Sometimes there’s a lag in getting the other eye done. But you want to think about getting both eyes corrected for distance. That’s the basic solution. And then you use reading glasses for up close. Now another option, which is one that I don’t necessarily recommend is the monovision, where one is corrected for distance in the other eye is corrected for near. Now in this scenario, this splits your brain and I don’t recommend it. However, if you do get them on a vision, you’re probably going to reduce the need for reading glasses up close.

But you’re also reducing the opportunity for depth perception and your two eyes working together. So this can put undue visual stress on you. So I would navigate that decision carefully. Then there are what we call multifocal trifocal correcting lenses, that are a split lens in the cataract lens. And this works really well, if you’re the person who doesn’t want to deal with glasses at all. Now one of the things that you have to consider if you’re going to get bifocals or trifocals in your interocular cataract lens, is there’s going to be a limitation in the the flow of being able to move your focus from near to the intermediate distance to the far distance. And sometimes it is challenging for the brain to have to figure out, where are you focusing? Now in my opinion, I wouldn’t do the trifocal or bifocal contact lens. But for some people, you know, it’s something that they’re used to because they’ve worn bifocals or trifocals. In there, you know, before they had the cataract surgery. But that’s another one that I would tread lightly and really check it out. Now, Robin was asking about this called extended depth of focus lens,

this is a new technology, it’s kind of cool, where the surgeon is putting in the lens that works really well for distance, and pretty well for the computer distance. And just okay for the reading. So if it’s a really small print, you’re probably going to have to put on some reading glasses, because the majority of your clarity is going to be in the distance. And in the computer distance. This would be for somebody who’s super active works a lot at the computer and doesn’t mind having, say a little bit of a challenge at the reading distance because in the other distances, they won’t have it. You know, in all of these situations, the the bottom line is to know yourself, know your lifestyle, know what you can tolerate. I don’t have a recommendation one way or the other. So if you asked me, I’m gonna say well, it depends on what’s your life like what are you Do what are your activities. And I think these are the things that, you know, you have to talk to your eye surgeon about, or you know, the technicians, and then go go with that situation.

I briefly I wanted to just talk about the astigmatism or toric lenses. And this is for somebody that’s got overstay minus one and a quarter in the astigmatism before they have the cataract, cataract removed. And in this particular case, again, it’s a more expensive lens, it’s more complicated. For some people who have moderate to high amounts of astigmatism, it can actually work. Okay, but for minimum amounts of astigmatism, again, under one and a quarter diopters, I don’t know that I would correct for the astigmatism, I might do some physical therapy exercises, as a way to compensate and see if you could, you know, reduce your astigmatism through some of the other things that I talked about. All right, I’m going to take a question from Lesley on Instagram. And this is about styes. And she’s asking what causes styes. So a sky is a bump in irritation, and infection and inflammation in the eyelid and it can be actually down by the eyelashes or it can be higher up on the eyelid. Now there are lots of glands by the eyelashes, and they’re also glands up higher in the eyelid. And if these become inflamed, you start to feel things like tenderness painfulness, things get red, you can even develop like a pus like pimple. It is contagious. And for many, it’s a staph infection that that’s one reason why we get it. But it also can be caused from things like blepharitis, which is chronic inflammation in the eyelids can also be caused if you have something called ocular rosacea. I actually did a really nice long video blog on ocular rosacea. So I’m not going to cover that in this in this answer. But if you’ve got this condition, basically, what you need to do is either you want to go on a round of antibiotics, you could do antibiotic ointment.

You could also do antibiotic cream, again, you can get it biopsied and and see if it’s actually a staph infection. One of the things you need to be careful about with the STI is that it doesn’t turn into a more serious eye infection called cellulitis. Orbital cellulitis is a sight threatening condition. And you want to get yourself to the hospital, if that really creates a swelling in the entire i. So one of the ways that I like to work with styes, beyond just using antibiotics is working with compresses. So you can use a warm to hot compress, I would say four times a day. And what I like to do is I move into the plant based family. So here are a couple of choices. You could do things like burdock goldenseal, eyebright akinesia, and so you can brew up the tea and then you can dip the cloth in the warm tea and then over your eyes for five to 10 minutes. And if you do that, say three to four times a day, that that works really well. Now you don’t want to squeeze the sky. That’s the last thing you want to do. But it will start to recede. If you start doing these compresses with these plant based medicines, and also MSM eyedrops work really well so you can use the MSM, both as a compress putting the MSM drops in with the say, burdock or eyebright or whatever you’re doing. couple drops of the MSM and over your eyes, we also do the MSM eye massage, and that’s where you put a couple of drops in the corners of your eyes, and then you can massage on the eyelids.

Now one more thing I want to say about styes and this is not really known except in the traditional Chinese medicine community but studying acupuncture. The upper lid represents our spleen Meridian in Chinese medicine and the left eye represented resents the lower lid or sorry, represents the stomach Meridian says spleen stomach. So sometimes there can be a digestive problem that’s causing the sky. So getting some acupuncture where you’re creating more equal distribution in the acupuncture meridians. is really helpful. You know, when you have a sky, there’s too much congestion in the eye area. So in acupuncture, what it does is it removes or drains some of the energy away from the eyeballs. And this can be another great way to reduce the the length of styes. So generally speaking, they’re not a serious problem. It’s just a congestion.

Again, check out whether it’s inflammatory based, or infection based, but it’s pretty, pretty easy to work with. All right, I’m gonna go on to the next question I got, which is from Juanita, she has her husband, who’s in his mid 60s And he’s developed a lot of floaters. And now, because it macular degeneration runs in his family, he’s worried that the floaters are going to turn into macular degeneration. Well, the key in macular health is that you want to be proactive, and in doing that you reduce the risk of what genetics can bring to, you know, to bring to our eyes. So when I say being proactive, I would make sure number one, you’re you’re eating a rainbow, colorful diet that includes vegetables, like the reds, the oranges, the yellows, these contain the carotenoids that protect the macula. You know, we talk about lutein and zeaxanthin, these are the plant carotenoids, vitamin A, these are fat soluble vitamins, or dietary supplements or ingredients in foods that are really important. So you want to make sure you’re doing that I like the Mediterranean diet. That’s a nice general diet, you’re getting healthy fats and oils. And it’s not too extreme. Either way, there’s a lot of great recipes out there. Fats and oils are also very important. omega three fatty acids is critical for retina health. So make sure you’re getting a good Omega three. And I’ll talk a little bit more about Omega three in a few minutes.

Make sure you’re wearing blue blocking glasses for all your computer time. And, you know, maybe check in with your overall systemic and metabolic health from an inflammatory perspective, thyroid perspective. And then your glucose levels make sure that you’re not eating a lot of carbs all the time. Because if you have moderate to high glucose levels that could affect your Macula health. So just because you’re getting floaters, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to get macular degeneration. It is a signal that the collagen health and the vitreous is not working properly. So maybe start using my 5% MSM jobs say four to six times a day. If you’re dealing with dry, consider the castor oil I massage in the evening with the on the eyelids and, you know, be proactive. On my website. If you type in macular degeneration, you will come to eye exercises. So doing anything to reduce eye stress is really important. And of course you don’t want to be using things like progressive lenses, or trifocals. Use a single vision lens at the computer. So you’re engaging more of your peripheral vision.

Alright, Sangeeta is asking about lazy eye and how long she should wear the eyepatch minimal. So you want to exercise each eye equally. I would say one to two minutes maximum and do engaging exercises. You know I have a amblyopia 90 day I clarity program that you could do and you’ll see that the eyepatch is alternated equally. And just for a minute or two, you don’t wear the eyepatch. for long periods of time. I would say spend 10 to 15 minutes twice a day on your physical therapy. That’s enough. And if you’re concerned about the health of your photoreceptors, related to sensitivity of sensitivity of light, that’s a no brainer. Just go to your eye doctor and get a written exam and see what he says. All right, let’s go to Nilo. He’s got eye drusen. So drusen are an accumulation of fatty deposits, pretty common in the retina. When they start to impinge upon the macula. This can create problems, like macular degeneration. So when I think drusen I think liver health I think cholesterol, I think inflammatory disease in the gut, I think glucose levels that are moderate to high. So again, you’re gonna have to maybe work with a functional medicine doctor and now naturopathic doctor, find out why. Maybe your cholesterol levels the fat, you’re not absorbing or assimilating fat fat very well, or bio. Remember, the liver produces liver, the liver produces bile and the gallbladder stores it and you need it to be able to absorb the eye vitamins like vitamin A, and also lutein and zeaxanthin, I would definitely boost all of your eye vitamins.

I forgot to mention things like a Natto, vitamin E, these are on my website, saffron, curcumin, these are all really essential phytochemical antioxidants that are really good for the retina. And, you know, you need to do some detective work to find out why the drusen is there. And usually there’s some systemic and metabolic reasons. But as long as the drusen is staying away from the retina, sorry, from the macula, you’re okay, you know, it’s just when the drusen starts growing towards the macula. This is where you can start developing some Macula issues. Alright, let’s go to Vivian who’s talking about her screen time and digital devices and using the night mode and wants to know if more blue blocking things need to be done. And my answer to that is yes, blue light dries out your eye tissue, it can keep you from sleeping. So I would either invest in a blue blocking filter in pair of glasses, or I would get a blue blocking filter on your screen. If you’re gonna go with the screen, I would work with a company called Aqua shield. And they have screens that fit every kind of Android and Apple product. But yes, I would do more than just the the night mode. And I would also include your current noids, lutein, zeaxanthin and Asda xantham. Alright, finding ways to reduce myopia. If you do that, will that lower the risk of retinal holes and other retina problems? So of course, yes. The higher the myopia, the more it’s pulling on your retina, you have a higher risk of developing retina problems. So I remember a case that I had a lady called me she had retinal stretching lattice degeneration, she was starting to get some retinal holes. And she came to see me and she was wearing a minus 10.

And I brought her down to minus 750. All of those symptoms went away. And 10 years later, I see her every six months. She’s now wearing about a minus seven she’s doing nearsighted eye exercises to to neutralize it. So the higher the prescription, the higher risk you have of retinal problems. Alright, Lisa’s asking about myopia she now has presbyopia. Sometimes she feels dizzy because of her glasses. One eye is more nearsighted than the other. And she really gave me the answer when she said I like wearing distance contacts and with reading glasses, so I would go with that, that’s a great option. Another option would be to ask your doctor for a computer, prescription single vision that corrects you for the computer, try to get the same lenses in each eye. And that’s a good relaxation lens, I know it’s not going to be for driving or for distance. But if you wear it indoors over time, your eyes are going to flex into the reduced prescription. But this is a key point and I have to really hammer this home is that you can’t just expect your vision to improve by wearing a reduced prescription or doing something with glasses or contacts. You have to change the programming in your mind brain. And the only way to do that is through the eye exercises through my physical therapy

program. You’re not going to do it just by trying to wear reduce prescriptions or doing things like that. So I want to caution everybody that the magic bullet is not in just getting a prescription. Alright, Sue is asking about macular holes. She’s asymptomatic, but she had a diagnosis. Well, here’s the thing. Usually there are photographs that you can get from your doctor and have the technician or have the doctor show you on the imagery where he or she is actually seeing the macular hole. You can also go for a second opinion. You know a lot of this depends on where the retina is weak. You know if it’s way off in the periphery, you know you’re not going to have symptoms if it’s in the center of your vision. Then you’re going to have symptoms I just did a video blog and a podcast on what are the things you need to do to boost your retina health. So you might check that out. It’s on my It’s on iTunes or Spotify. And I go into some real detail on you know what nutrients you need to be able to boost retina health and, you know, it’s it’s a call on your part to say, alright, should I get the surgery? Or should I start boosting my nutrients, get acupuncture, reduce my stress, and maybe wait a month or three months or so on? All right, Benny is asking about dry eyes nervous system. And is it a net lacrimal nerve issue? This has happened since COVID. Well, you know, inflammation really wreaks havoc on the eyes, inflammation of the eyelids, stress, all of these things. Put pressure on the nervous system that dries out your eyes. Blue light also dries out your eyes.

So I advise acupuncture using some natural eyedrops like homeopathic eyedrops or MSM eyedrops can be helpful. Usually with dry eye, it’s a combination of doing some things systemically and metabolically and also doing some things topically on your eyes. All right, I want to take a moment I want to talk about Omega three. So the thing about it is that with Omega three, we talk about DHA, DHA is the poly unsaturated fatty acids that are very important for the neurons in the brain. They play a role in supporting the mitochondria, they help in the release of the neurotransmitters and expressing the DNA DNA. DHA has also been found in research to reduce the risk of things like Alzheimer’s, dementia, macular degeneration, dry eye, so not all omega threes are created equally. And you want to look for an Omega three that gives you enough of DHA. I’d like to see you in eight to 900 milligrams a day just have the DHA. One of the studies that I found about DHA is in relationship to homocysteine, which is a blood marker that would that’s when elevated you have a higher risk of eye diseases, brain diseases, and the DHA is one of the ingredients that actually can reduce the homocysteine levels. So by reducing the homocysteine levels, you’re reducing your inflammatory response. And this works really well for your eye brain health. So I just wanted to bring that in because I get a lot of questions about omega threes company I like as metagenics Omega Genex. And I would go with a major Omega Genex 1000. All right, so Karen’s asking are carrots good for the eyes. Yes and no, they have a high sugar

component. So you know, in moderation in salad, they’re fine. But carrot juice way too much sugar. So I think you need a kind of a balanced red, orange, yellow. So you can have some carrots, but you might do sweet potatoes. You might do red bell peppers. You might do green leafy kale. So you know you need to spread it out and I wouldn’t focus on carrots as the answer. Can glaucoma patients have cataract surgery? Depends on what type of glaucoma is the glaucoma under control, what’s the state of the optic nerve health, so you have to do a little more investigation and your eye doctor would be able to tell you, but I would look for a cataract surgeon who’s done 10,000 100,000 surgeries because that’s the kind of surgeon that seen everything and cataract surgery is a very, very safe surgery. But even so if you’ve got secondary conditions like dry eye or glaucoma, or macular degeneration, you have to you have to take into account the risk and the reward factors. So somebody is asking about retinal wrinkles around the eyes. Well my number one would be using castor oil. You know in the cosmetic world. Retinol is something again, if you get a Pure Retinol, it can be effective. But what I would do I would start off with hexane free organic castor oil. And I would stay off the retina of the retinol. Again, it depends on the health of your oil glands. If there’s inflammation in the eyelids, so there’s a lot involved another cookbook type person. So just to make a broad statement, well retinol, is this a Retinol is that there are cosmetic doctors and dermatologists who recommend those kinds of things. And for some people, it works and for other people it doesn’t. And I think it depends on your toxicity level, your inflammatory response, how much sun you get, are you on blue light exposure? So there we go.

All right, how do you feel about using DMSO with castor oil? And so what is the correct ratio, so I don’t use DMSO. So I I find that using too many things at once, can be very overwhelming for your eyes. And like every other part of the body, the eyes have a detoxification pathway. And when you start adding DMSO, MSM, castor oil, you know, compresses steroids, antibiotics, your eyes are going to shut down. So my advice would be, just use a little bit of castor oil and see how that feels on your eyes. Watch the response. Obviously, the higher quality of the castor oil, the better chance you’re going to have of a positive outcome. All right, Jan is asking my five year old grandson started wearing glasses for farsightedness. Will cranial sacral therapy, or acupuncture help? No, I wouldn’t patch either snow? No, I think you should go find a holistic AI doctor and see if you can get them to prescribe either a much less prescription or just wear the lenses. Part time when you start wearing glasses as a child full time, or it’s a strong prescription. It actually stunts the development of the visual processing. And again, you have to balance out is the child having any symptoms? Are they having blurred vision is one of the eyes crossed? Is there a lazy eye, if there are those things, usually there’s some deeper developmental delays going on that go way back to the pre verbal time of his or her life. And that’s why we bring in some of the sensory motor movement patterns like primitive reflexes, and vestibular therapy, and gross and fine motor therapy that involves vision. And we don’t slap on the strong glasses. Unfortunately, cranial sacral or acupuncture isn’t really a direct

influence on whether he is going to you know, improve his prescription or not those support the nervous system. They support if there’s been trauma in the body, but you need to find an eye doctor who understands the big picture and isn’t just looking at it from an optics level. That’s not the way to go. Alright, so yeah, Angelica is saying Colloidal Silver is great for styes that’s true Colloidal Silver can work well for pinkeye. Again, it doesn’t necessarily work for cataracts or other serious eye problems. But thank you for that. Yes, Colloidal Silver of its high quality can be helpful. And she’s going on that patching is antiquated and doesn’t promote by an ocular vision. That’s very true. You want to stay off of that for sure. So you’re talking about progressives, they make you dizzy, you should stop wearing them and not go in trifocals at all.

Okay, Nancy’s asking about vitreous separation. Well, you’ve got to see in terms of your collagen health and toxicities trauma in your eyes. Again, collagen creating things like MSM, highly erotic acid, hydrating the eyes, reducing inflammation wearing blue blockers, reducing eye stress, you know, taking a look at your systemic inflammatory disease. These are some of the things that you know, I would check in with I’ve done a lot of video blogs on vitreous health and floaters so you can check that out. Can you take more vitamin A when you’re taking 3000 I use of cod liver oil. I would say that that’s a good amount of cod. Liver Oil, but why are you taking it in the summer, cod liver oil should be something you want to take in the wintertime. And that also includes the vitamin D, which is also very important for the eyes. But right now, I would probably do first of all a general Omega three, and not do the cod liver oil that would be more of a winter experience. And again, you want to get vitamin A, at least somewhat from your foods.

And you want to make sure you’re absorbing the vitamin A and the only way you know that is if your gallbladder is healthy, your liver as healthy, because if you’re not producing enough bile, you can take 10 million I use of vitamin A, but you’re not absorbing it. And this is where you would do bile salts after a meal to help you absorb the vitamin A, but be careful about how much vitamin A you’re taking. Because too much is just as detrimental as not enough. And I would try to do that through your diet as best as you can. So with dry eye, again, you need to look at things like thyroid health, stress levels, the health of your eyelids, your digestive health, your eyes stress, how much omega three fatty acids, your estrogen levels, so there’s a hormonal relationship. Too much estrogen, or too low estrogen can also cause dry eye. So you’ve got to support your corneas by hydrating with natural eyedrops and also boosting your fats and oils, reducing your eyes stress. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, then I’m going to call that a wrap. I want to thank you so much rapid fire tonight. Check out my workshop coming up October 7 to the ninth it’s up on my website. We’d love to see you sign up. Also, we’re going to be doing a 10% all statewide statewide sale on Labor Day for all my products. So check that out. So I will see you next week. Take care 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.