I’m Answering Your Questions

I’m answering your questions today! I had a listener reach out to me and ask how much he should reduce his myopia prescription at a time and how long it would take to see results. So, I decided to focus on walking you through my Myopia Protocol so that you can do it yourself! Enjoy the show. If you want more, sign up for my newsletter at: www.drsamberne.com.

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SUMMARY KEYWORDS

prescription, eye, optic nerve, infrared saunas, question, nearsightedness, nearsighted, important, blur, optic neuritis, bdnf, terms, podcast, wearing, doctor, reduce, called, myopia, infrared sauna, problem

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, everyone, its Dr. Sam, and I’d like to welcome you to another EyeClarity podcast. It’s fabulous day here. I’m having a great time. We, we have a number of questions we’re going to get to today in the podcast. And so let’s let’s just jump right in. This is a question from Dimitri. And he is suffering from nearsightedness or what we call myopia. And he has a couple of questions about that, because he would like to improve his myopia like to reduce his prescription. And he wants to know, how much should he reduce his prescription? And how many months is it going to take for his eyes to get better? So I love this question. And I have personal experience with it. Because when I was a kid, I was very nearsighted. And I went through a physical therapy program in my early 30s with a holistic eye doctor, and I completely dissolved my need for nearsighted glasses, and I haven’t worn them over 30 years, I see 2020 at distance and near. And so if I can do it, you can do it. So I’m gonna give you a crash course this is called myopia, 101, Dr. Burns, myopia 101 protocol. And so if you have been diagnosed with nearsightedness, and you’re tired of going back to the eye doctor, you know, every year or every two years and getting a stronger prescription, like many of my patients have done and you’re feeling frustrated. And of course, all you hear is, Well, there’s nothing you can do about it. I’m gonna give you about eight different steps that you can kind of go through to improve your nearsightedness. So number one is to have an inquiry about how old you were when you got your first prescription. This is really important because, you know, we want to blame any eye problem, and especially especially a refractive problem.

Whether you’re nearsighted, farsighted, and have a stigmatism on genetics, it’s like, well, if my parents or grandparents were nearsighted, I’m going to be nearsighted. And there’s a little truth to that, for sure, genetics is definitely influencing and informing our genes in a certain way. But I find that the environment really affects our eyes in terms of how they develop environment, lifestyle, diet, stress, trauma toxicity. So in terms of the, the question, how old you were, when you got your first prescription, this is telling because usually about a year or two, before you got your first prescription, there was probably some event or series of events that occurred that caused you to pull your eyes your vision in to a very close part of yourself. You know, I call it close to the vest, so to speak, where you pull your visual world and you blur it out there at you know, 20 inches to four feet to 10 feet. And it’s a tightening of your vision, your eyeballs. And so then when you go to the eye doctor, basically what they’re doing is they’re giving you a prescription to validate that pulling in of your eyes. And so you start wearing that prescription and you don’t deal with kind of the cause of why you did that. And this starts you down the path of getting stronger and stronger nearsighted prescriptions. So that question of what was going on for you? Was it school? Did you have a parent who died Did you move? These are really important questions, and I would start keeping a journal and write this down and maybe every day ask that question. Okay, how old was I when I got my first prescription? What was going on for me? It’s going to be very insightful. Number two, I would do my eye dialogue exercise. This is on my website. Because when you start patching an eye

and of course you’re doing this without any corrective lenses on so you want to do this in a very safe environment. And you start asking questions about how old is the AI and is the AI married to the other AI and is the eye married to the body and you know, is the AI what is the I need? Ede you’re gonna get some very interesting responses write them down. If you want to accelerate it, get the plus lens to blur the farsighted glasses, the magnification glasses that you put on over the eye that’s not patched and start interacting with your blur. Because for nearsighted people blur is like kryptonite. It’s like the one thing you’re going to avoid at all costs. And I want you to see how invested you are, in seeing it clearly. And when you start wearing something in a blurry fashion, it’s going to bring up your control issues, it’s going to bring up your fear, it’s going to bring up what you don’t like your, your preference, your point of view is right the ego. And the goal is how much have I can how much can I surrender into the blur. And if you go to my website, I go through the steps on how to do that, obviously, you’re not going to do that while you’re driving or walking in traffic, you want to do it locked in your bedroom where there’s no demand.

So you want to start exploring the blur. And what’s interesting is when you take those blurry glasses off, you’re gonna see really clearly, and when you take the eyepatch off, you’re gonna see even more clearly, and you’re gonna start to go, Wow, maybe I don’t need this prescription or need this strong prescription. Okay, number three, we’re talking about what prescriptions you should wear. And this is what this is a very interesting conversation, because you don’t want to be practicing blurry prescriptions or blurry vision, when you have a high visual demand. So you start off and you wear this full prescription when you’re driving when you’re working when you’re going to the movies when you’re watching TV, if you’re in a social situation, or you’re at an airport, where you need to see clearly where the full prescription and then see if you can negotiate with your eye doctor, Hey, Doc, can I get a prescription that’s a 2040 prescription, so corrects me to 2040 instead of 2020.

Because I want to try to exercise my eyes, I promise, I will only use it in my bedroom, I’ll only use it in a safe environment. But actually that 2040 prescription could be used for all your digital devices. Because when you wear a 2020 prescription for your digital devices, it’s too strong. Because that prescription is made for 20 feet or birria. Beyond. And if you start using it for your digital devices, it is going to accelerate your nearsightedness getting worse. So negotiating with your eye doctor to get a 20 to 25% reduction in the distance prescription and wear it indoors were walking around, wear it in low demand situations and interact with it. Use it as a lens to be an inquiry about your awareness. What shows up for you. Maybe it will cause your eyes to feel more relaxed. That’s what happened to me. In fact, I tell the story. When I was working with my doctor, and I was I was wearing minus three at the time and he said, Sam, I want you to start wearing a minus two when you work in the office, because I just had started an optometry practice. And after about a week of doing that, we had a staff meeting and my office manager said to me, Dr. Berne, what happened to you? What’s wrong with you? Are you on antidepressants? With you seem like so happy and so relaxed? Are you in a new relationship? What’s going on? And I said, Well, actually, I’m wearing a reduced prescription. And so I recognized I slow down, I was softer, I was more receptive, I was more compassionate. I listened to my patients more. So a lot of amazing things happened. Because the filtering system I was living my life through was less intense, it was less focal, it was a little more dissolute. And that was really helpful for my nervous system. And eventually that became my distance prescription. So I started to reduce the prescription even more. Okay, number four, how long is it going to take for my eyes to get better? I love this question, because it’s so open ended. And

I remember my doctor saying to me, when I asked that question, he said, You have to give up the goal of getting rid of your nearsightedness. I want what? I can’t get rid of my goal. This is I’m goal oriented. I am like, inner directed outward directed Goal, goal goal. And he said, No. You’ve got to give up the goal and you’ve got to go into the process and trust the process. And if you give up the goal You will get there. And I struggled with that for about three months. And then lo and behold, one day when I gave up the goal of getting rid of my nearsightedness, I woke up, and I saw 2020. So when we asked the length, I mean, I could say the generally, the more nearsightedness you have, the longer it’s going to take for you. If you have say under minus three or less, it could take you anywhere between three to six to nine months. And you have to be willing to stay the course. And so, my, my recommendation would be to just trust the process.

And you know, just go with it. Okay, number five, it’s really important to boost your nutrients, especially your eye nutrients. So whether that’s going more plant based a lot, lot more nuts and seeds, getting into smoothie formulas, maybe doing a detox, you know, but really increasing your antioxidants going organic, really changing your diet, getting off a sugar getting off a gluten and dairy. You know, how far do you want to go with this. But I think changing your diet and getting more nutrients, good nutrients into your body is really a big piece of the puzzle. I would add my MSM eyedrops with the eye massage, why not, it’s going to be great for you in terms of bringing more moisture, and more nutrients to your eyes. Number six, probably emotions are going to come up for you when you start wearing less prescription might be time to do a little bit of psychotherapy or you know, emotional release work. Because we do carry emotions in our eyes and in myopia, the primary emotion is fear. And so as you start reducing your prescription, your dreams may get more robust and intense. And you might have more emotional releases. So having a support system there is really important.

Number seven, getting more exercise. Now this could be aerobic exercise, it could be more mindfulness practices like yoga or tai chi, chi gong, continual movement. So getting more of the mindfulness exercise in the regular exercise, getting a breathing practice Pranayama or what I like to do is something called the end breath, which helps us kind of oxygenate and hydrate our body more. That’s also a great thing. And number eight, getting better sleep. So the better we sleep, the more our parasympathetic nervous system will kick in, which induces more healing. So that’s my eight step myopia program Dr. Burns 101 Demetri go to town you can do it. Second question is from Miguel who’s asking about optic neuritis. optic neuritis is an inflammation of the optic nerve, it kind of swells up. It’s usually more it happens more in women than men, usually over the age of 45. But it can happen to anybody. Some of the symptoms include blurred vision, colorblindness, some swelling, there can be some tenderness and soreness in and around the eye. Also, there’s a decrease of peripheral vision there can be flashing lights. The pupil response can be irregular so you can have more light sensitivity. And this is a pretty serious condition. And whenever I see optic neuritis, I think of a couple of things. First of all, multiple sclerosis. That’s one thing that I’m rolling out.

The second thing I’m thinking about is an auto immune disease. There’s something going on in the immune immune system level. It can be caused by viral infections, fungal infections, parasites, chemical poisoning so toxicities if you’ve exposed been exposed to any toxicities, heavy metals or pesticides Even pharmaceutical drugs so I do a real thorough history on what drugs have you ever taken or been exposed to? You know, even things like antibiotics sometimes can trigger this optic neuritis. I also look at things like allergies and obviously what’s going on in the gut the digestive health. So in terms of treating optic neuritis, the first thing I recommend is getting some kind of a scanning test. Now in ophthalmology or optometry, there’s a test called the O CT. This this is a scanning tests that you can you can check the optic nerve, you may need an MRI or a CAT scan, but it’s good to get some baseline of a picture of the optic nerve inflammation. And then maybe short term, I might prescribe some cortical steroids maybe. Sometimes when you apply a short term corticosteroids it can bring the the inflammation down pretty quickly. But then what I’m doing is I’m supplementing with complementary therapies, things like really boosting the Omega three fish oil I might do 2000 milligrams of the fats and fats and oils include MCT oil, coconut oil, your nuts and seeds, because the optic nerve needs a lot of good fats. You know, I wrote an article in mind body green about ocular regeneration. And one of the things I talk about is brain derived neurotrophic factors, the BDNF, which is a very important component in brain health. It’s also important for Eye Health. And there was a research study that I reported on this was an animal study where they crushed the optic nerve, they added BDNF, and within a week, the optic nerve increased by 17%.

And in two weeks increased by 55%. And there’s other ways that you increase BDNF by increasing Omega three, getting better sleep, reducing your stress, reducing inflammation, increasing probiotics, getting you know 20 To 30 minutes of sunlight, natural light every day, reducing your use on computers and digital devices. So BDNF is a really important component here and it kind of it it parallels and intersects with optic nerve health. I might also recommend color therapy, MSM, eyedrops cranial sacral therapy, and then I would add the nutrients taurine, which is a really important amino acid, alpha lipoic acid. And of course lutein z is Anthon glutathione bilberry. So, this is a situation where you have to be a detective, you have to look at it both systemic metabolically and also in terms of looking at the optic nerve specifically. Okay, my last question is from Barbara. And she’s asking whether Infrared Saunas are good for your eyes. I love this question. This is this is a great question. And I’ve had a lot of experience with infrared saunas. And I think infrared saunas, do some really positive things for health. But I also I am not going all in on infrared saunas. And the reason why is that there definitely are some negative side effects that aren’t up reported about infrared sauna. And some of those side effects can be things like, it does change your heart rate, and it creates more perspiration.

It also if you are sensitive to say you have a sensitive skin, I would be very careful about entering the infrared sauna world. And for most eye problems. What I have observed is there’s actually too much heat in the eyes already. If we look at conditions like any of the inflammatory responses, anything from conjunctivitis to I write us I would put glaucoma in there. Even things like macular degeneration and dry eye syndrome, and maybe even blepharitis there’s too much heat already in the eyes. And so if you’re gonna go sit in an infrared sauna, you This is going to make even more heat. And so you need to be very careful. So number one, I would consult your doctor before you do infrared saunas. And if he or she gives you a clean bill of health, I think you can start off very slowly with using infrared saunas, because it has been shown to improve cardiovascular disease, reduce diabetes, reduce high blood pressure, reduce some of the symptoms and rheumatoid arthritis.

It’s been used to help reduce chronic muscle and joint pain. But if you’re going to use infrared saunas, very, very important that you hydrate, what people forget to do is drink, especially when they’re doing these kinds of therapies. And infrared saunas can definitely trigger detoxification. And it can come out through your skin as a rash can show up on your in your body. It can even show up mentally, you know, and cognitively in terms of being a little foggy or dizzy or nauseous. So hydration is very important if you’re going to be doing infrared saunas. So overall, I would give it a conservative Yes. But I’d be very, very careful, I would do my research to see whether infrared sauna is right for you. Because just because you read it on the internet, or just because somebody says, hey, I really liked this. Do your research. And you got to go beyond things like Wikipedia or even blogs, you want to check it out and make sure it’s a big study that was done. It’s in a reputable medical journal. Has it been done over years of research? Or is it just one time and I would look beyond animal studies.

Okay, Barbara, I hope that that helps you. Unfortunately, that’s all the time I have for today. I want to thank you so much for tuning into my podcast. It’s been great. And until next time, take good 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.