Interview With Travis Ziegler

In this throwback episode, I am interviewed by Travis Zigler, OD on The Dry Eye Show. I discuss Colloidal Silver, MSM, and offer tips to improve your vision and health! Enjoy the show.

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SUMMARY KEYWORDS

msm, eye, colloidal silver, people, vision, healing, therapy, field, drops, doctor, dry, called, sulfur, optometry, improve, inflammation, alternative therapies, energy, talk, support

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@drsamberne.com.

Hey folks, it’s Dr. Sam and I want to welcome you to another EyeClarity podcast. We are the 118. Today I was interviewed by Travis Ziegler, who’s an optometrist, he has a show called the dry eye show and give my perspective on things like MSM, colloidal silver, and we talk about a lot of different things. So, enjoy the show. Here it is.

So, dry eye syndrome sport community, we have a special treat for you today. I have Dr. Sam Berne on today and we’re going to talk everything regarding Colloidal Silver, we’re gonna be talking about MSM drops, and then we’re also gonna be talking about how to use your mind, body and your spirit to help with not only blepharitis, and just healing in general. So Dr. Berne, thanks for being on the show.

awesome to be here, Travis.

So before we get started in our topics for today, why don’t you just tell people who you are, where are you from, and then what you do for a living.

So my name is Dr. Sam Berne, you can call me Sam. I’ve been practicing behavioral vision therapy, Optometry for 35 years. I’m based in to seeking in Mexico, which is just north of Santa Fe. And I’m very passionate about helping people heal their eyes and Vinit vision. So work in more natural medicine, complementary integrative, I’ve studied a lot of different modalities, and really excited to be here and sharing this with you.

So for the viewers that don’t know what is behavioral optometry and vision therapy, well, we

go for a regular eye exam. And the doctor, you know, gives you a prescription for distance, lenses, what He’s measuring is your eyesight. That’s not vision, vision is how the eyes and the brain and the body work together. And so there’s a whole series of tests you can do to measure things like visual tracking, focusing, visual coordination. And if those skills are below normal, you can offer something called vision therapy, which is a form of physical therapy that re educates the eyes and the brain back to a high skill set. And it really affects your, you know, your visual processing your learning. And it also has an impact on your behavior. That’s why they call it behavioral Optometry. There’s an aspect of it that’s developmental. Many of my colleagues and mentors took a look at vision from a kind of a developmental child development perspective. And so I bring that into it. And then I studied things like nutrition and bodywork and even some of the shamanic healing things. And so that’s where I’m at today with adding all those things to the mix as an alchemist, and helping people improve their vision and health.

And we’re gonna get into all of that today in just a couple of different topics. And I love behavioral optometry and vision therapy, because it’s something that we were truly passionate about, we actually started a pediatric clinic. But then God had other plans for us. And they sent a geriatric clinic our way. So vision therapy kind of went out the window for us. And we started more on the dry route, which led us to here. So thank you for what you’re doing. And if you’re watching this, and you’re wondering, like is vision therapy for me? I went to revision therapy, I had convergence insufficiency. And the reason I hadn’t done is because I was having trouble with reading. I was skipping lines while I read, I had trouble remembering what I read. And I was just having trouble with reading in general and this is optometry school. And then I had convergence insufficiencies. Then I started getting vision therapy and kind of healed that that part of my my journey. So if you have children, or you yourself suffer from struggling with reading, or you fall asleep while you’re reading or anything like that, this is just one of the many things that Dr. Burns says. But it’s just one of those things that you don’t really think that it could be vision or eye related. So make sure you go see an optometrist and just typing vision therapy near you to go go check out somebody that is a behavioral optometrist. So let’s jump into the topic at hand today. And I first want to discuss colloidal silver. So for the viewers, can you just talk about what Colloidal Silver is and what kind of uses it has?

Yeah, this is kind of an ancient remedy. And it’s a very popular alternative therapy, especially people that don’t want to do antibiotics or steroids. So basically what Colloidal Silver is it’s a liquid that contains these tiny particles of silver suspended in a liquid. And actually before modern antibiotics Colloidal Silver was used as an all purpose remedy for various infections and illnesses. And it’s kind of made a revival. Where you know, there’s some claims that that it’s better than antibiotics, it treats viruses and fungal infections. And there have been, you know, few cases where Colloidal Silver actually helps in tuberculosis, Lyme disease. Even things like HIV AIDS, it is classified as a dietary supplement. And people do apply it directly to the skin and their different strengths, you know, based on the size of the particles. But the thing to know is that one needs to be careful about using Colloidal Silver, obviously, the sources of it are important. But if you use too much of it, it actually can turn your skin blue and that, that can get kind of scary. But for the eye so the eye has what we call microbiome healthy bacteria in it actually did a blog on mind body green a few years ago, which I could give you the link, and it talks about the good bacteria that’s in the eye. And so what Colloidal Silver is helpful for would be things if you have conjunctivitis, if you have chronic eyelid inflammation, and you’re not getting any results from it, that if you use a high quality Colloidal Silver, it can actually reduce some of the symptoms. And if what they say that it’s anti my microbiome, anti bacterial, viral, and fungal that it may actually even reverse those conditions. None of these have been approved by the FDA. So one needs to be, you know, cautious and careful about what they’re going to use, but it definitely has its place in alternative healing.

Do you have anybody that you would not use it on?

Yes, I think that, you know, people that have not been introduced to alternative therapies, and they’re just coming to me for the first time, or they have really severe acute symptoms, I would start off using it very tiny amount and watching what their response is. I think it’s an individual by individual case. But you know, if you have a robust immune system, if you’ve had a lot of experience using other alternative therapies, that I think as long as you look for a, you know, a trusted source of Colloidal Silver, I think it’s a good option if you want to go that route.

Yeah, and that’s what we always talk about in the community is that even when you’re just taking things like supplements, supplements should be monitored by a physician. And if you’ve never worked with a functional medicine doctor, or an alternative doctor before, then you should definitely go see them. Because even though you think you’re taking the right supplements for dry, quote, unquote, it may not be the right supplements for you. And so that bloodwork those blood panels are really going to help tell that and so that’s the same thing with any alternative therapies, make sure you know how to use it, before you use it and make sure that you need something like that. So Colloidal Silver is just like anything else, that’s over the counter. It’s not FDA regulated, like Dr. Burns said, so you have to be very careful with it. And just make sure that if you’re using it, you’re using it as prescribed by your functional medicine doctor or your alternative doctor that, that you’re seeing anything else to add about colloidal silver at all?

No, I think that you you hit it really well, in terms of the disclaimer, I agree with you that people should get a biochemistry analysis I can my office, we do a hair mineral analysis, just about on every patient. And then we get a baseline on biochemistry and that gives us a roadmap on what they should be doing or not doing. Because if you just go on the internet and research something and you don’t know what your personal biochemistry is, it may not be maybe the wrong thing for you. So getting that baseline biochemistry test lab test is super important before you enter you know, what are you going to put into your body?

Let’s jump into MSM drops, can you go over just briefly what an MSM drops are what MSM is, first of all, and then what MSM drops are for and what the benefits are.

Okay, so Ms. M stands for methyl sulphonyl methane, MSM. It’s an organic sulfur molecule naturally occurring. It’s actually in nature. One of the places that MSM is present is in the oceans. It’s in the soil, it’s in the atmosphere. And some of the history of it, it’s it’s been eaten by animals it’s it’s been around and it’s a sulfur molecule and sulfur is the third leading trace mineral found in our body. And it didn’t really get much press in terms of nutritional benefits until like the 1980s there was Researchers name is Robert Herschel. And he started to research the benefits of MSM. And then complementary physicians like holistic physicians started to use MSM in their practice. And they saw reductions in pain, inflammation, improvement in college and health. And then there was some things in the literature that MSM might actually even help things like cataracts, glaucoma, RetinA problems. And so I looked at all this research of MSM, and about 10 years ago, I finally got somebody to make it for me. And I was getting really excellent results, when I would compare it to using you know, traditional eyedrops both on the pharmaceutical world, and even even the things in the in the pharmacy. And so I developed to percentages, I used it on 1000s of patients. And then a few years ago, I put it up on E commerce and it just exploded. And it’s a fabulous eyedrop as a support for improving. Well, let me just say it this way, it moisturizes it hydrates, and it brightens your eyes. I’ll just leave it as that and then we won’t get involved with the FDA that it actually treats things but we can talk more about MSM and ice stuff, but I just want to say it that way.

Yet so who would this? Who would MSM drops be good for? Like if a viewer is watching, they’re like, would this be good for me? What would you give it to? I know, I know, you can’t say exact conditions. You said it helps moisturize the eye. Yes. Is there anything else that has been shown to do?

Well, one of the one that we just leave it at that yeah, one of the trends I’ve seen with floaters because that is a boy is that a gnarly subject we could get into. When I have people use the high percentage the 15% MSM, I would say there’s a little over 70% of my patients will report back to me after using the 15% MSM drops after two weeks that they’re floaters or less. And I think the MSM actually supports vitreous health better. And it’s really hydrating the collagen. So, floaters Of course, as a support system, it can help dry eye eyelid inflammation. You know, there’s a technique that I teach actually two one is called the eye bath and the other is called Eye massage, where we actively put the MSM on the outside part of the eyes. And we have people massage the MSM into the eyelids and the eyelashes. And then the eye bath is where they just squirt the into the eyes. And they’re getting six to eight drops in. People will report to me when they’re on digital time that it takes the strain away the fatigue. So as a support system, we know MSM is anti inflammatory, it improves collagen health, it improves the circulation. So what I’ve seen is that MSM is one of those sulfur ingredients, that as a detoxification agent, that’s another function of it, it seems to help improve the eye length and just create more resiliency in your eye tissue.

So who would you not use MSM for?

Well, you know, it’s interesting, I get this question a lot of people will will write me and say well, I’m allergic to sulfur. So I have to go into the distinction between sulfur and sulfur drugs. They’re very different. We have sulfites, we have sulfates and then we have the trace minerals sulfur, but you know, if somebody has had some kind of an allergic reaction to something like that, I might say at the beginning, put the salt put the MSM on a compress and put it on the outside part of your eye. So that would be you know, one way around if you got some fear around that. I think again, if you’ve got a cute really painful, dry blepharitis MGD I would use the lower percentage MSM and just try it on the eyes because it could sting and burn and just see how you can enter MSM carefully. I think if you’ve had cataract surgery, all you need to do is wait three days and then you can use the MSM eye drops. If you have glaucoma. Just wait 20 minutes between using your glaucoma meds and using the MSM eyedrops in children or you know toddlers and infants Again, reduce the dosage and just see how your eye responds to it. But it seems to help my young patients, the infants, all the way to the elders, and they love it. The other thing that’s really cool about MSM is that it pushes other eyedrops more deeply into the eye. So one of the cataract protocol techniques is I use MSM first and then they use a glutathione vitamin C i dropped called ocular med. And so MSM has that DMSO quality, which improves the absorption of the other eyedropper into the eyes. And so that’s another technique that one can use to push that glutathione vitamin C drop into the lens. Also in the PEMF world, the beamer vascular therapy, if you put the MSM first you can then put a pad over the eyes. And that pushes the MSM more deeply into the eyes as well. That’s a pulsed electromagnetic field device and there is an application for the eyes. So I’ve used that as well. But almost everybody could use MSM. It just depends on where you’re going to enter it.

And one of the common misconceptions that I see with MSM drops is that most viewers are most people that are using eyedrops expect that kind of instant relief like a sustained lubricating drop gives and you’re not using MSM for the same purpose as sustained drop is just for lubrication, it doesn’t do any healing. It’s just there for symptoms. Whereas an MSM is more similar to like autologous serum, where you’re using things that are found in the drop to heal the surface of the eye to heal parts of your body. And so that’s going to take time. And so you may I’ve never actually taken MSM drops, but do you get any lubricating effect, you said Can stink some people, but do you get any of that lubricating effect from the drop itself or use?

Yes, definitely, definitely, it can be lubricating, there’s a small percentage of people that it actually can dry your eyes or create a cloudiness. And part of what’s going on there is because the detoxification pathway in the eye is so shut down, that it overwhelms the detox system. So you have to cut way back on it. But if you are using the MSM and you’re massaging it into the eyelids, and you’re doing the eye bath, it will have a secondary lubricating effect, but you you hit it on the head, it’s a therapeutic agent. And so it’s different than treating symptoms, we’re really aggressively and proactively treating the causative factors. And, you know, I really feel that it can regenerate and rejuvenate collagen. I think that that’s one of the science proven benefits of MSM, so to be able to get it right on the eye tissue. Like for keratoconus, Corneal dystrophies, I also have had great success in supporting people to have clear acuity. I’m not saying it reverses corneal dystrophy. That’s a tough one. But in those more difficult corneal dystrophies, MSN seems to support people to see more clearly have less distortion and have less dry eye.

Yeah, that’s great. So let’s switch gears just a little bit. And I want to talk about the mind body and spirit for treatment and dry. No, this is something that you’ve actually written a book about. And it’s something that I think is one of the most overlooked things of any treatment of any disease. Is that mind body spirit connection. So can we dive into that a little bit? I’m just going to leave it broad like that and just kind of let you take it where you want to but okay, what is your book about and then let’s talk about that a little bit more.

Well, basically, it’s it’s looking at health from an energetic perspective. So I’ll give you two brief history perspectives for me personally, when I first moved to New Mexico, I met a naturopathic eye not an eye doctor, naturopathic chiropractor, and her name was Dr. Hazel Parcells. And when I met her she was 103 years old. She was just starting retreat center. And I wanted to interview her for my my first book, creating a personal vision on nutrition. So I went out to her retreat center, and I saw all these machines in her laboratory said, What are you doing? And she said, You know, I’m healing people by sending them frequencies and vibrations, but they’re not in this same geographical location. I said, That makes no sense to me. Anyways, I became a student of hers, and I learned something about the non local field. and this has actually been researched by a physician, Larry Dossey is one of many people, Joe Dispenza talks about it. Gregg Braden, these are thought leaders in the field of consciousness that actually, you know, we live in a cloud. And based on our, our local energy field and the global energy field, when we connect those things, it actually can improve our health and wellness.

So I still was skeptical about it. So about 10 years later, I met this, this doctor who was from Russia, his name was Constantine Korotkov. And he had this machine that actually could measure your energy field, your chakras, your acupuncture meridians, in a scientific way. So I bought the machine and I started to do research, using the machine measuring people’s energy fields before and after. And so I would take a look at different eye conditions like glaucoma, macular degeneration, dry eye, and you could see in the configuration of the energy field, where there are holes in the field or disharmony in the field. And so we would do energetic healing using homeopathy and essential oils and cranial sacral color therapy.

And I worked in groups and I worked in you know, in my practice, and I came to the conclusion that I disease starts in the in the energy field, and then if it’s not handled there, then it moves in the physical body. So now you’re at your question about dry eye and the mind body spirit. So with dry eye, usually what’s going on there is there is a, there’s a stagnating energy in the entire eye, and we see this in the energy field. But you also could figure it out. pain, inflammation, oxidative stress, you know, we do have the physical symptoms, and it’s great to be able to reduce, you know, someone’s pain, whether we’re going to use your protocol or my protocol. But on a more energetic level, if people are open to it, there’s usually a psycho emotional, or even a spiritual reason why the person is having the dryness to begin with. And one of the techniques I use is called Eye dialogue, where we actually have people wear a patch, and they dialogue with each eye. And that’s very interesting.

When you start talking to your eye. And you ask the age, the marriage between the eyes, what is the eye need, and you start tapping into the body’s bio intelligence for healing. And unfortunately, most pharmaceutical drugs take you further away from that biological intelligence. And then of course, all the digital time that we’re on also creates this repetitive movement in the eyes, which is going to shut down the circulation and, again, reduce the nutrient absorption, those kinds of things. So inflammation comes in. So when you start connecting on a psycho emotional level, talking to the eyes, maybe adding color therapy to the eyes and, you know, helping people understand what what’s the inner vision, like, what’s the internal programming that causes the physical eyes to deteriorate? You know, one of my taglines is we want to blame faulty vision on the eye. But it’s actually the programming behind the eyes, that causes the eye tissue to deteriorate.

And that’s very powerful to acknowledge that because then the patient takes back their power for healing. Instead of being told, Oh, you have this diagnosis, it’s only gonna get worse. You could go blind, you know, you all the things you and I probably confront on a daily basis. So bottom line is, is that if you start asking those questions on a psycho emotional or psycho spiritual level, you might recognize that at a very early age, these imprints actually start in gestation. At birth, that’s a very important important imprint, and even your bonding time, prenatally pre verbally, that these are the places where the eyes start to lose their potency. And it becomes a really interesting journey for people to include the psycho emotional aspects, they seem to get to the finish line of healing their condition, when they bring that component in, if they’re open to it. So I hope that gives you a broad brush. We can go into more detail if you want to. I know this is kind of out there. But if you’re asking the question, then obviously you have an awareness about it. So I’m, I’m happy to talk with you. You know, with regular eye doctors, I don’t even go there because you It’s just not in their wheelhouse. And, you know, imagine

this being a CT lecture at an optometry convention and no way back that you’d receive from it. But no, it’s I’m actually in the middle of Dr. dispenses book right now. Okay, becoming supernatural. So it’s something that I’m open to. I see a Reiki healer that she does acupuncture and acupressure on me. Yeah, every two weeks. And so it’s something that I’ve opened up to in the last year. And I told you your story before we started, or told you my story before we started recording. But for those that are very skeptical about this, because skepticism is natural for this type of energy healing. I want to tell you our story again. And most of you guys know this, but my wife and I, back in 2015, decided we wanted to try to have kids. And we six months and we knew something was wrong, because we couldn’t get pregnant. And so we started seeing Western medicine doctors. Just to remind you, Dr. Byrne, myself, my wife are all Western medicine trained doctors. And now we’re getting more trained in the Eastern medicine side, you’re more trained than I am. But I’m just starting my journey. But we went down the western medicine route for three years, we did everything they asked us to Metformin, Clomid, we did everything but IVF. And the morning of our IVF appointment, I looked at my wife and I said IVF is not for us. It’s not what we’re supposed to do. Let’s see if there’s other options out there. And so we found an acupuncturist in our area that specializes in fertility and opening up energy fields. And so my wife started seeing him we took we changed our diet just a little bit.

As most of you know, we’re mostly vegetarian, gluten free and dairy free. But we changed a couple more things, we had more high, high quality fats. So we added avocados, organic olive oil, organic coconut oil to our diet. And then after three and a half, four months of this, of acupuncture and just a little change in our diets, we were pregnant with jute and jute is now three years old. And so what we did there is we address the energy field around my wife, and something that was stagnant and causing her to be infertile. And so opening that up lead to pregnancy. And so going back to present day, we’re having our third son in two months. So it’s something that once we’ve got to unstuck and use that energy field for the better, just really opened up the floodgates, so say, and now we just need to stop them. But on my case, I’ve had lower back pain my entire life. And every time I go more than a month without seeing my acupuncturist or getting my kind of energy straight again, I have trouble. I have lower back pain. I’m a little tweaky right now, because I haven’t seen her in a month. But something you can do at home every day is meditation. Can you talk a little bit more about some at home things that people can do to kind of increase the energy field to heal themselves a little bit more?

Well, one of the modalities that I discovered it’s a combination of using sound, and breath. So it’s a form of meditation. It comes from the work of continual movement, invented by my teacher and friend Emily Conrad, and this is on my website, it’s called the palm hum. And basically you rub your hands together, you’re doing a palming, but then you do humming. And the humming is like this.

Um,

so the sound is vibrating into the jaw, the face the eyes. And these are like tuning forks, so it brings the sound into the eyes. And if you do eight or 10 of those, you are going to feel much more centered, your eyesight is going to be much clearer. And it’s such a simple way to interrupt the stress pattern, because it’s going to return you to that circulation process. Another exercise I use is the tongue clock exercise. And this comes again from my work in cranial sacral. Because the mouth and the jaw have a huge impact on the eyes. And you take your tongue and you put it around the inside part of the the lifts, and you do a humming sound on the exhale. If you did that you’re going to get so activated here. It’s going to again, increase the circulation, you’re going to feel a sense of calm, peace, relaxation, openness, your nervous system is going to be slowed down. So these are all pattern interrupters, that that people can do during the day during their you know, digital time. And those are just two really basic simple things. They’re on my website, I clarity, exercises, they’re free video blogs.

So, you know my own personal life I meditate every day, probably 30 or 30 minutes a day. I I’m out in nature, I try to be out in nature everyday as well. And balance is something that I’m really looking at with my partner. So, eating right, having healthy relationships, lifestyle, diet, you know the things you’re talking about. And then that spiritual connection, whatever that means to you, it makes a huge difference in your health and wellness. And I think in 2021, and then with this whole COVID thing, I think we’re being asked to go on a personal retreat that’s part of this quarantine, to really understand, okay, what is it that I really need personally, to develop a better health and wellness inside myself?

Yeah, I love that. And don’t be intimidated. If you’re watching this, that Dr. Berne said he meditates for 30 minutes it meditation doesn’t need to take that long, especially when you’re just getting started, you’ll work your way up to that, because you’ll realize how great it is. I used to do less than five minutes a day. And sometimes I only get five minutes a day, because I have young children. But you can build your way up to it right now where I’m at around 15 to 30 minutes a day. But just start out with less than a minute a day, just take that time through that exercise. He just he just said and even something as simple as the 2020 20 rule is something we talked about all the time, you know, every 20 minutes of Up Close work, just take 20 seconds to walk around or just to look far away. Because again, relax is that that area of your eye, but if you want to take it up a notch, go over the exercises that he just went over as well. Well, Dr. Byrne, this was a fantastic interview. Yeah, I loved everything we went over. Is there anything else that you wanted to discuss with our viewers?

Well, if you want to get in touch with me, I do classes. I’m doing a class February 20th. really inexpensive price point. I’m also doing an advanced workshop in March. I’m on Facebook Live every Wednesday 6pm mountain time you can ask your questions. It’s all free. And I want to applaud you, Dr. Ziegler, you and your partner for the great work you’re doing you know I discovered you a few years ago as well and keep going I we need to bond together because we’re definitely in the minority. So thank you for what you’re doing. Thanks for having me on today. And we’ll do it again sometime.

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.