So we have an interesting show today. I’m going to be counseling some parents who have a 16-year-old son who was diagnosed in his left eye with a condition called Keratoconus. Keratoconus is a bulging of the cornea. It’s one of the most common corneal dystrophies out there. This creates a distortion of light that comes into the eyes and blurred vision. Enjoy the show. If you want more, sign up for my newsletter at: www.drsamberne.com.
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
keratoconus, cornea, eye, contact lens, scleral lens, called, corneal, cranial sacral therapy, left, kinds, topography, person, cranial, child, create, screen, talk, kids, spectrum disorder, brain
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, it’s Dr. Sam, and I’d like to welcome you to another EyeClarity podcast.
00:08
So we have an interesting show today I’m going to be counseling some parents who have a 16-year-old son, and he was diagnosed in his left eye with a condition called keratoconus. keratoconus another way to describe that is a bulging of the cornea. It’s one of the most common corneal dystrophy out there. What happens is the cornea begins to thin and there’s a protrusion that takes on a conical shape. And this creates a distortion of light that comes into the eyes. That creates blurred vision.
00:58
A stigmatism, sometimes myopia
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and the thing to note about the cornea is there are six layers of the cornea. And the cornea is made up of mostly a connective tissue called collagen. And I talk a lot about collagen and MSM. And
01:26
some of the reasons why keratoconus occurs is because there’s a buildup of the fluid
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and one of the layers of the the corneal layers, actually the Bowman’s layer of the cornea. And this can create things like oxidative damage free radicals that start forming on the cornea. And some of the causes can be obviously genetics is a big piece.
02:02
Oxidative stress, as I said, inflammation, allergies.
02:08
Magnesium deficiencies is actually a big cause of keratoconus. Also, conditions like diabetes, thyroid imbalances, but basically the low magnesium level is one of the key issues. Down syndrome is another place that I’ve seen keratoconus, respiratory conditions like sleep apnea, asthma, and even other retinal conditions like retinitis pigmentosa or Leber’s disease. If you do a lot of chronic rubbing,
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this can
02:49
accelerate the keratoconus. So in this particular session, the parents be this is what happened, the parents took their son for the motor vehicles exam, you know, the eye test, and he couldn’t see anything out of his left eye. And that was the first thing that
03:13
you know, the first time that they saw that this was going to be a problem. So they went to an ophthalmologist, and he diagnosed
03:23
this this person with keratoconus and wanted to do something called corneal crosslinking. And now this is a procedure that
03:37
is used to mitigate some of the corneal dystrophy. And I talk about crosslinking at the beginning of the session, because the parents are are really concerned. What the doctor has said is that the left eye is completely gone. And so he wants to do the procedure, corneal crosslinking on the good eye. And they’re befuddled by that because the good eye is doing well. Why risk any side effects by doing this corneal crosslinking. So this is the first part of the session where I talk about this. So here we go.
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The thing with corneal crosslinking, as you probably know, they use a riboflavin a b two
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and it’s a it’s an eyedropper and then they use a UV light. And
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those combinations can stabilize the corneal dystrophy.
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The thing is, is the part of part of vision is in the brain. It isn’t just in the eyes.
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I would say you know, part of vision is 50
05:00
percent is probably in the brain, it may even be higher. And one of the things to consider from a functional point of view would be to try the Scleral contact lens and see how much improvement you could get in the left eye. And see if you can then maybe do some, this is a different way than the surgeons, but do some kind of functional physical eye therapy, where you’re getting the brain and the two eyes to work together. And then maybe you could do more proactive natural kinds of things there eyedrops. There’s Nutrition and Dietary things.
05:45
And also, because he’s on the screen, to do everything you can to minimize the blue light emission, because blue light has a negative effect on the corneas because it dries it out. I don’t know if blue light was even talked about around the screens. But believe me, it does. It’s like being at a tanning salon, except in a tanning salon, you’re there for a few minutes. But I would get a screen protector, and I could help you get something to protect on the screen, and then maybe even a pair of glasses, that would also block the blue light, because of all that screen exposure. But that’s not helping the situation.
06:35
And I would be more conservative because the the cornea surgeries, and the cornea procedures, they don’t have a super high success rate, say compared to like a cataract surgery. And you’re also dealing with after that scar tissue in the cornea. Now there are systemic things that you can do to reduce scar tissue in the eye either digestive enzymes and you know, things like that, that I could help you with. But I would enter any procedure very, very cautiously. And I don’t think I would do anything with the right eye. I might try some of these other natural like eyedrops and things that I can introduce you to, and then do these other other things as well that I’m suggesting, you know, the surgeon, that’s how he makes his money. It’s easy, that’s what he offers. But that’s pretty aggressive and pretty invasive. And the results are not, you know, bulletproof, they’re not, I’m sure if you talk to his patients, you might get a 40 to 50% success rate maybe. But there’s more distortion you’re dealing with. So and I would say right now your your son’s brain is probably just looking through his right eye, that’s probably any suppressing the information in the left eye because of that blurry. So when you get the Scleral Lens, that would give the left eye more stimulation, more clarity, more input, so it would work with the right eye. I think that would be my first option. I would do the Scleral Lens and see how much usable vision he’s getting out of the left eye. And then do some of these more conservative, proactive things. Maybe doing doing some a little physical therapy, things I could show you that you could do with him. And then getting that protections on the screen, and then wait and see.
08:43
All right, in this next segment, the parents are asking me about the risk to reward of the corneal surgery. So here’s my response.
08:57
It’s too risky. And the surgery is just not you know, as I said, the results are very iffy. It’s and you’re going to have side effects from that surgery, more dryness, more scarring, different kinds of cloudiness, fluctuations. With a keratoconus you’re dealing with also a prescription that has what we call a astigmatism. And astigmatism means that there’s another blur that’s going on, due to the distortion of the shape of the cornea. So when the light goes into the retina, it’s distorting that light in another kind of a way.
09:40
And, you know, a Scleral Lens can correct for some of that astigmatism. And
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I would try that first. I mean, you go get the Go get the opinion, see how you feel about it. But in these medical situations, parents trust you
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Your gut,
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trust your gut. And I’m with you on it, in that I’ve seen too many car wrecks where these, these guys are aggressively going in and doing these kinds of, you know, procedures. And it’s not like doing a cataract surgery where you know, you’re you’re controlling the variables. In this kind of surgery, it’s hard to control all the variables, and the more variables that you can control, the more chances you have of, of creating some problems. So that’s, that’s where it’s at. So get the opinion, you can even send me, you know what he says, but I would not touch the right eye, I would leave it alone. 2030 is good enough acuity, he passed his driver’s test with that.
10:55
Maybe there is a corrective lens he could wear if you go to a good optometrist, and say, just correct his eyesight for distance with some lenses. I know he’s got this in. But
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sorry, I’m just I’m just gonna write down my question. So I don’t forget it. But now you’ve finished sorry.
11:19
So in other words, going to somebody just to get what we call a refraction. And a refraction means what’s the best optical correction you can give me based on my situation, and a contact lens is the way to go because it sits on the eyeball, so you’re gonna get better optics, and less distortion spectacles, because they’re further away from the eye,
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it’s not going to be able to correct or fit on the cornea, you know, because it’s a far away from the eye. So contacts would be the way to go. And you’re looking at a hard line hard lens, or a Scleral Lens, or, you know, there are a lot, there’s a lot of great technology out there in terms of the contact lens world. And I would definitely go there first, if you could get some improvement in the acuity in the left eye, that would be a winning situation. So in this next section, I talk about referrals to a big ice center, you know, Bascom Palmer, which is in Miami, these folks were from Florida, I recommended that they go there, and they actually made an appointment, because they see everything and they would be equipped to be able to handle this keratoconus situation. So here is the, here’s my feedback that, you know, these big ice centers all have cornea topographies you know, there’s the
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bomber Institute.
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We go into Miami, and yeah, that’s, that’s the pre that’s where I would go, if I had
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forget, go into these other people. Because the bump bomber, they’ve got the research, they’ve got the specialists, they’ve got the experience. And you could what you could do is you could get the corneal topography, and then you could send it to me, and then I could interpret it, you know, they’re gonna give you a good interpretation, too. But that’s the way to monitor it is just to get, you know, it’s kind of like somebody’s got a condition, you get the scan, you get the X ray, you get the MRI, you get the and the corneal topography is is the ticket. So that that would allow you to see, okay, what’s the baseline, and then maybe doing some of these interventions. And then in three months, you can get a say, and then you’ve got some data that you can compare whoever is fitting it. So this is you want to make sure, whoever is fit it, fitting it, they have a good support staff, and they’ve got the experience. You know, when I had my office in Santa Fe, I had a contact lens technician, that I hired and trained. And she worked with all the kids who learned how to insert and remove contacts in so you just need to have a good contact lens technician, in the practice of where you go, go, so that they can work with him. And it’s a skill of just learning how to insert and remove and, you know, you need to learn how to do it too. But you know, he’s 16 I think he can I think he can do it there also. Yeah, he he’s gonna want to learn how to do it. Obviously, he’s gonna bring in site doc, so that
14:45
here’s his hot button. Two things. You got to learn to do this so you can drive. Oh, okay, I’m motivated now. And you got to learn to do this so you can do your life’s work, which is video games. I have a lot of kids hey guys.
15:00
On lightning video, so you got to hit his hot button, you got to find ways to motivate him, I do work with a lot of spectrum kids, because I work at a place called Kidpower in Albuquerque and worked with them for 30 years. So that’s why I asked you about it, because I’ve worked with a lot of these kids high level, low level, cerebral palsy, brain injury, high level autistic, and, you know, you’ve got a, there’s an intuitive thing that I do with these kids, which is kind of meeting them where they are, and not trying to impose some heavy thing on them at the beginning, but also getting them to buy in. And once they buy in, and I’m intuitively kind of
15:51
tuning in where, Okay, where can we start here, they open up like a flower, you know, whereas if you go to somebody, you know, that’s just very dogmatic and you’re doing it my way, and there’s no intuitive side of it, then, yeah, you know, you’re not going to get the buy in. So you’re going to have to kind of scope that out. And it may not be a doctor may be, you know, one of the technicians in the office. I mean, I would take a look at Ballmer and see what their, what their processes around the Scleral Lens.
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That by going to basketball and Palmer, you’re going to the best place. And
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you’re gonna get an experience there that
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is going to be first class, you know, I mean, you might get some information that you don’t want to hear or I don’t know, you might get something that oh, this is better. But as I as I have worked with basketball, and Palmer because I used to be from the East Coast, I was always very impressed with the ophthalmologists that I talked to, and they see this all the time.
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keratoconus is one of the many things that they that they look at. And so you’d be going to the best.
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And I think at this point, you know, if you started with somebody else,
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this other person doesn’t look like you know, he’s immersed in it, like he doesn’t even have
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a website of any kind. And I noticed that too. There’s, there’s a little there’s a little one, but
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you know, I’ve been at this while and, and I look at you know, like on social media and so on. I look at people and their passion and their interest. They’re, they’re showing me something
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online, there’s an online
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set of information and it kind of tells me the the tone, I not getting a clear tone from this person, which tells me that is he dabbling in it Is he is he specializing in it, I don’t really know. And this is, this is something you want to get right. And you want to get it right the first time if you can, and I think your best
18:27
it is a really good place where they can they can handle they’ve seen all kinds of things like this. In this next segment, I talk about what nutritional things that you can do to support your cornea health. I mean, here’s the thing, you know, B vitamins are very important for the cornea, omega threes very important for the cornea. You can’t you can’t get that from, you know, you can’t create that you’ve got to usually a supplement.
19:00
So, here’s where you have to be out of the box on this and see what you want to do because maybe it’s just Scleral Lens and forget about it. But forget these these allopathic people, I’d look for like a functional medicine person or naturopathic.
19:20
Somebody, they could do an analysis on his biochemistry, we do something called a mineral analysis. And that’s a much a blood test because that’s not going to tell you much, but somebody who can look at his whole biochemistry, trace mineral levels,
19:38
you know, microbiome and the gut inflammation, you know? So just to give you a stat, the eyes and brain makeup 2% of the body weight and use 25% of the food intake. Right 5% or 2% of the body weight the eyes are to our members
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to the eyes
20:00
In the brain makeup 2% of the body weight 20 25% of the food is. And so this is where all those great vitamin A C, I think a vitamin A
20:12
supplementation is good, healthy cornea, you know, and you could do that in a general high vitamin, like put them on my vitamin or, you know, find. In other words, he needs more on nutrients.
20:29
You know, we haven’t really talked about that. And that’s, that’s going to take longer. That’s not like a quick fix. But I wonder if this is brewing for a while, on a biochemical level? And
20:43
I’m still it’s not that I’m skeptical. But it just sounds odd to me. Because when I work with kids with keratoconus, we know very early, something is off. Like there’s a screening, even a nurse, a school screening or pediatrician, oh, that left eye is not seeing as well go for an exam. So this is macro, now we’re in the big picture, the micro is my suggestion is go to Baskin Palmer and basketball and Palmer and figure out what the AI thing get get a definitive second diagnosis, work on that Scleral Lens, if that’s, you know, if they offer that. And then on the macro, I’m just going to speak from my experience, because I’ve seen work with a lot of spectrum kids. There are two things going on here that I’m questioning number one, it’s the imprint of what happened at the birth process. And there’s an imprint that the infant gets in their nervous system. And then the second imprint, which can be again, overwhelming, is all those inoculations at once. And there’s also a toxicity factor around that as well, depending on what’s in those. So the two things that you can do to say release any residual imprints that I feel might be influencing him, even though he’s much he’s older now would be number one, look for a type of therapy called cranial sacral therapy.
22:34
Yet, well, yes, it would be very, I’m a cranial therapist, and with the cranial sacral, what that could do is that might be able to
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start touching that stem, that self stem and that all that stuff that you’re seeing, because his nervous system, there’s something out of balance there with that, that he’s not able to regulate and self regulate, you know, a place you could really kind of zero in on is the Upledger Institute in on the east coast of Florida.
23:08
By train there, and they could handle they could handle him in a way like Bascom Palmer, but it would be in this other genre, the cranial work can have a really positive effect on his brain and his nervous system, and help release some of those early things that may have been even in the eye part of that as well. That’s number one. And number two, I would keep your eyes open to see if there’s somebody you could go to to get him explored in the area of heavy metal toxicity and dietary absorption. Now, you’re not going to find this in the GI specialist. It’s going to be a naturopath that’s going to be a functional medicine person, somebody who can see the whole person like I’m talking to you about with those inoculations that early. They do put, you know, Mercury and thigh Mirasol in all kinds of things. And it’s overwhelming for an infant to have to process that. And it can contribute to spectrum disorder situations. I know the allopathic people poopoo it they say there’s no correlation. But I’ve seen it hundreds 1000s of times this story. And when I test with hair mineral analysis, I find levels of mercury and arsenic and things like that, that when they key laid out of the body, it’s a different child. And with what you’re telling me, those things, I think are still influencing him, but you’re not going to get that information.
25:00
on any kind of mainstream medical, you’re going to have to live and Florida does have integrative alternative practitioners. And that’s more of his his tune as well. I mean, there are things like sound therapy, where you listen to different tones, and that can actually release the brain. Yeah, create, right? Tomorrow, this is what comes to mind was I actually took the it’s called the tomato sauce method to Tia. He’s a French physician tomorrow, and he found even kids different frequencies. Nowadays, practitioners can have the person talk, and through the voice, they can tell what frequencies they’re not hearing, or they’re not processing, that’s how sophisticated it’s come become. And in the spectrum disorders, they do much better in these frequency modalities.
26:03
So I, if it was my child, I would certainly investigate that because I think those things are influencing him at some level, and
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you know, and then you’re covering all the bases, you are going to the best AI specialists, it’s going to be medical, and it’s going to be you know, straight, narrow. And again, we can we can talk afterwards and, and see what’s the best option. But as a summary, I would not touch that right I and I would just get the diagnosis in the left, I can see by getting a contact lens on there to improve the optics, and then go from there. In this next segment, the data is asking me about prescriptions. And we’ve been talking about putting a contact lens on the left eye, we call that a Scleral Lens. And you could also put some glasses over the contact. So you were a little prescription on the right eye with the glasses, and then the left eye would just be window glass. And then you’d have that contact lens, right on the cornea. So there’s a lot of ways to prescribe lenses. And here’s my feedback.
27:20
Of course, of course, you know, again, it’s going to be it’s going to need to be a creative eye doctor that is willing to I mean, I would do it.
27:32
In fact, what he could do is get a pair of glasses, the left lens could be just window glass with no protection, and the right lens to correct him protect, and then you would do a contact lens on the left eye. Absolutely. That’s a great, great option. Sure, sure, of course, but it’s going to take, you know, again, it’s got to be somebody that, that you can work with some of these AI people, they’re very,
28:00
they’re very closed to input from the patient’s, you know, they have their way we’re doing this, blah, blah, blah, and you need to find somebody a little, maybe a woman, maybe you need to, women tend to be a little more open than men, so that they can work with you creatively, oh, there’s all kinds of lens combinations.
28:20
I’ve worked with a lot of kids who needed cataract surgery, and I had to put a contact lens on that eye. And so that they would see, and then we would do glasses over that, you know, and the contact lens was an extended wear lens they slept in.
28:38
So there’s all kinds of ways to do it. But you’ve got good people there. And where I can be helpful is look at that I can look at the results, I can look at the topography help you there. I can guide you, I can counsel you. And, you know, in the worst, worst worst case scenario, and this would be more than the physical therapy, you could come out here. And you know, I could do a little physical therapy with him from that spectrum disorder perspective. But let’s keep that in our back pocket and see if you can get this solved. Man, I actually think if you can get a Scleral Lens on the left eye, that’s gold, and get them to see for a while. You’re good, you’re good. You won’t do much more. And then this other stuff I’m talking about. Mom, that’s kind of up to you if you’re feeling intuitively that this resonates.
29:30
Yeah, I mean, I think yeah, I was trained in a developmental model. So I looked at kids developmentally. That’s why I asked you about gestation, birth bonding. Those are critical for sensory motor integration. OTs don’t tend to look at the big picture developmentally. Now the OTS I work with to, but there’s primitive reflexes that you can that’s a whole therapy that opens up the brain that’s movement patterns.
29:59
You know,
30:00
sensorimotor integration from a developmental point of view, but if you go to regular OT, I agree you’re not going to get very far. And so you go, Well, what is this, this is nothing. So one of the things I love doing when I have a session like this is to keep digging, history wise. And you’ve heard in previous segments that this child is on the spectrum. And there are some developmental delays, there were some challenges at birth. And he does some things called Visual stimming. And he also angles his eyes. So he’s looking out of the corner of his eyes. And I give some reasons why he may be doing that. And these behaviors are definitely adding to the visual stress that he’s going through a
30:51
few things, I think it’s some kind of eye trauma, and brain trauma. And when a child does that,
31:02
they’re trying to manage a traumatic imprint in their brain and in their eyes. And you know, when you get an epidural, there’s a disconnect between you’re not feeling and so there’s a disconnect between you and your child.
31:22
So it could have been at that time, it could have been the vaccinate vaccination thing.
31:29
You know, again,
31:31
heart hard to say we’d have to do more, I felt the cranial rhythm. And in his head,
31:38
there may be the binaries are just as in a way that again, he’s got to do that, that kind of viewing
31:47
to overcome
31:49
some impediment that he’s dealing with, I make a few more comments before the end of the session. I’m a firm believer that cranial sacral therapy is very helpful at releasing these early influences, gestation, birth and bonding, interferences in our sensory motor development. So I talk about cranial sacral therapy, I talk about the negative effects of staring at a screen all day because this boy really likes to work at the screen. And so here we go, you see, there’s a cranial rhythm, that the cerebral spinal fluid feeds the brain in the eyes, and that cranial rhythm burs, when there’s a wave motion, if you see my hands, yeah, and it really needs to be really was slow, and symmetrical and alive. And that probably needs to be cultivated. And that has an effect on behavior. It has effect on choices. And you know, I gotta say, looking at a screen all day feeds that compression. Exactly. So it’s feeding in, and maybe that is affected the circulation of the cornea, which is created, you know, this corneal starvation, I would look more in that area also. And, you know, I know where you are on the west coast to try to go to the east coast. But you know, if you even if you contact the Upledger Institute,
33:26
I like them better than Nova. And I went to Upledger, they could probably help you, even if you said, Do you know, some practitioners in your local area?
33:39
And I would, I would follow that through, I think there’s something there that can be very eye opening. And as a spectrum disorder, we do cranial sacral, and all the kids, they all get it. And that makes a huge difference. I think at this point, go go to BP see what they say. And then, you know, let’s talk after that. If you’re unclear about what to do, but I think your your track is a good one. And they will be able to meet you
34:07
very well. And then you’ll know what the next steps are but no surgery don’t touch the right eye. Oh, and let’s just take the steps and see what what what’s the best thing for your son. So to put an exclamation point on this.
34:26
It’s very important in keratoconus that number one, you get a definitive diagnosis. Number two, you’re doing some corneal topography, you’re getting some initial data on how the cornea looks. And then I would use a contact lens first to see if you can improve the visual acuity and then do some dietary nutritional things. Do some vision therapy, and then maybe even some deeper things because they’re because of this
35:00
A spectrum disorder child, things like cranial sacral Functional Medicine and start there. So that’s our show for today. Again, if you want to contact me, you can send your questions to Hello@drsamberne.com or you can text me at 1-844-932-1291 and I’d be happy to answer your questions.
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.
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