The Eye-Brain Connection: How Vision Impacts Cognition, Focus & Long-Term Brain Health with Dr. Bryce Appelbaum

Bryce, Dr. B, a pleasure to have you here. You know, we have an epidemic of people that feel like their brains are failing them at times and a whole group of individuals that don't actually know that our eyes are actually part of our brain on the outside of our face. We're gonna talk more about that in a second and individuals are struggling with all sorts of stuff. They're struggling with that feeling of feeling low energy at 2pm. They're struggling with that brain fog. And there's record number of individuals that are being diagnosed with things like ADHD when most people are telling them, look at diet supplements, fix your sleep, and not that those things don't play a role. But you argue that for a huge percentage of these folks, the problem isn't their brain in the classic sense. It actually could have something to do with their eyes. Take us down that pathway. What do you mean? So I would say not probably, it very likely has to do with their eyes and how our eyes work together as a team and the connection between our eyes and our brain. That is what's responsible for so much unnecessary struggling for like you shared fatigue throughout the work day, feeling like you're reaching for that second, third, fifth cup of coffee because your brain's on overdrive all day long just trying to use your eyes. Anybody at any age has the opportunity to use their eyes to rewire their brain to optimize performance and to unlock potential. But we're not looking at vision. Vision needs to be the first piece of the puzzle. And hopefully after this conversation, people are going to recognize that pretty quickly. Well, you came prepared. You have a few exercises you're going to take the audience through. So everybody stay tuned. But before we get to a couple of those exercises, we have five big ideas that we're talking about today. And we're going to start off with the first one. And I already hinted at it. It's this idea that eye health is brain health. Let's expand on that. Most people think of eye health as completely separate from our brain, but it's not. What do you mean by that? So the eyes are the only part of the brain that you can see without things getting messy. Our eyes are actually part of our brain that emerge from the brain in utero in the first trimester. And vision is a direct reflection of brain function. So I think there's a clear distinction we really should make out of the gate here between eyesight and vision. So people can understand this a little bit better. I think when we talk about vision, most people think about sight. And so if we look at eyesight as really the ability to see, it's how we focus light clearly. That's letters on the letter chart and an exam, street signs when you're driving for a child with the teacher rights on the board in the classroom. Eye sight is glasses or contacts. When we're talking about vision, vision is how our brain filters, organizes, stores, processes, all the input coming in through our eyes, knows what to do with it, how to drive meaning, and then direct the appropriate action. So eye sight is glasses. It's a symptom. Vision is brain and vision problems are brain problems. And just like we can teach our brain how to do pretty much anything that we want to with the right motivation and compliance and the right work, same holds true with vision and how our eyes work as a team and track and focus and process information. And I know I'm biased, but vision is heavily responsible for so much of our processing, our happiness, our performance, our productivity, our energy, our focus. And a lot of people don't even have a file on what that even looks like. What's one of the worst things that people are doing today for their vision? Staring at screens for way too long. I mean, screen time is the new pandemic. And screens are toxicity for our visual system and for our brain. If you just think evolutionarily, we're not meant to be staring at these 2D devices inches from our face, blasting all the high energy light that contrasts the glare, the brightness for hours on end. And when we are on screens for extended periods of time, it's causing terrible maladaptations, bad habits. It's allowing myopia and your sightness to increase an alarming relate. And it's also putting us in a stress state. When you think about the autonomic nervous system and the fight or flight response, what that looks like visually is our pupils widen and we get this tunnel vision effect. When we are on screens, our visual system becomes locked up. Our thinking, our attention and our vision become tunneled, which means the longer we're on screens, the more we're locked in, the more we're in a stress response. And then we're making critical decisions throughout the day for work, for our families in a stress state. We're not able to think outside the box. We're unable to have diversion thinking because so much is tunneled in. So one of the worst things we're doing is what we're all doing is being on screens for way too much. Okay. So you talked about one of the worst things. What's one thing and we're going to drill into a bunch more, a bunch of more bad things and a bunch more good things. What's one thing that people could do today to help correct that a tiny little step that they can do if you're on the screen, people are watching this on the screen. I'm on the screen a bunch. What's one thing that can counteract that? Take vision breaks and go outside. So vision breaks, I mean, I talk all about the 2020 rule, which means at least every 20 minutes on a screen, take a break for at least 20 seconds and look at something at least 20 feet away. So you're disengaging, you're giving yourself a vision break. You're allowing for flexibility, but then going outside during those breaks. Ideally, you're getting natural light. You're moving, you're getting your all of your systems fired up, but then also you're exploring through dimensional space and balancing this 2D world that we're all in. How much of that benefit do you think is seeing things that are not so close up to us like screens and the contrast and the artificial lighting? How much of it is just seeing things far away and how much of that benefit of being outside is sunlight? Have you had a guess? I mean, I would say sunlight is really important, especially in the world we're in where it's sedentary and we're all inside for too long. But I think a lot of it is really developing that balance. And when our system is locked up, I mean, even if you were to squeeze your hands and hold them for five seconds, 10 seconds, your hands start to hurt. But if you were to let go and maintain more flexibility, hands don't hurt as much. When we're on screens, our focusing system, the inside muscles of the eyes responsible for clarity are literally contracted and they're under tension over time. And unless you're trying to get really buff at the gym, tension over time, that's not a good thing for your visual system. So I think it's really pulling away from that stress, but it's allowing you to navigate through space and have vision guide movement, which is really what vision is intended for. A lot of times people don't feel good and they don't know why. What are some early warning signs that it's your vision that is under attack through this way that we're living in our modern world that can help people connect the dots that, wow, maybe I didn't have the entire exception to notice the dots, actually what's going on. Just like you were saying earlier, sometimes people have brain fog or they're reaching for that third or fourth cup of coffee because they just think that they're so fatigued or they think they need a nap and every so often I'll go for a nap and that feels great. But what are some of these early warning signs that you would argue are a strong indication that your vision is under attack? Losing your focus, your mind wandering with reading or screen engagement, relying on audio or audible instead of reading with your eyes because reading with your ears is that much more comfortable and easy. Poor eye contact when you're talking with somebody. Not trusting what you're seeing. So knocking over glasses of water, bumping into walls, hesitancy with stairs or escalators, fear driving at night, trouble spatially organizing a room where let's see you're trying to even pack the trunk of the car and you have all these two cases that have to fit in. Unless you can mentally map out the trunk and know where everything should fit. A lot of people listening have probably been in this situation. There's no more room and there's a suitcase left over and then you know who is yelling at you saying you messed up here. What are we doing? We're late. So much of how we organize life is based off of how we organize vision up here and when our brain is on overdrive, just trying to align point, focus and process the information coming in through our eyes. It means we're overwhelmed and visual input can become a sensory overload. So along those same lines, if you're somebody who at the mall or grocery store or Costco feel like there's just this overwhelm of busy information coming in and you feel like you want to retreat or it's too much. That is a clear sign that vision is not tying together input from all of the other senses to drive meaning and allow you to feel safe in space. So there's so much that absolutely is related to how our brain is using our eyes and the extra effort that we're all putting forth for just normal activities of daily life. And really one of the many take-homes today is going to be put vision first when you're thinking about any type of struggle in life because very likely it's a piece of the puzzle as our dominant sensory system. So you talked about some things that go wrong when we don't put vision first. Let's take that to the extreme. What have you seen out there? I mean, you've taken care of thousands of patients, your clinic based out in outside of DC. If you really don't pay attention to this, where does it end up? You spent time thinking about what goes in your food, grass, red meat, organic produce, high quality oils. But there's another question worth asking. What are you cooking it in? 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I think the mental health piece is one big piece. We've seen significant traumatic brain injury from problems with vision, car accidents. I mean, some car accidents are not avoidable, but many are if we're able to really access our periphery and we have the depth perception and the reaction time to be able to see something coming over from the periphery here and make a quick adjustment in real time to get yourself out of harm's way. And I don't want doing this type of work and fear of what could happen be what dictates why we do this, but life can be scary at times. I mean, as we age, falls are way more common. A lot of people here or think that's because of bone density decreasing and muscle mass decreasing, but vision is really responsible for many falls. When I say vision, our visual midline and our visual midline and our body midline often aren't in the same place, which means balance then becomes a challenge or you don't see the change in elevation on a curb or with a tree root coming out of the pavement. And when we can really trust what we're seeing and when we can open up our visual world, that only can vision regulate our nervous system. It can prepare us for life and allow us to almost have armor to protect us in many situations where bad things can happen. You know, our second big idea that we have here is based on this notion that sometimes when people feel overwhelmed or brain fog, they'll use the example of I just feel like I have so many tabs open in my brain the same way that you're going to go on your internet browser and you're looking at a million different things and you feel so scatterbrained. People use that analogy. They're like, yeah, I feel like I just got so many freaking tabs open. The airplanes taken off but not landing. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So this idea that brain fog and burnout can be visual overload. That's idea number two, big idea number two. And where I want to get into because you've already acknowledged that this exists, this connection between brain fog and burnout can be visual overload. But how is that exactly happening? Let's break it down a little bit further. Like what's going on in the body? How are these sensory inputs causing that feeling that we would name as brain fog and burnout? Vision is an entirely learned process. None of us are born with the ability to read or to use our eyes to convert, track, or focus or even with the ability to see in 3D. It's all developed through our life experiences and the right sequencing of developmental milestones. And so those milestones are either learned appropriately through the right order and the right learning or not. And that leads to these vision imbalances. We are in a world where there's so much visual stress and so much screen time that allows mismatches between where we're operating and where we should be to become even larger. So every year of school and then to the workplace and beyond the visual demands keep increasing. So if you're somebody who has been a reluctant reader or has struggled in school early on, that doesn't get better with time. We just learn how to compensate and we learn how to adapt and we learn how to go down paths and even career paths that really cater to our strengths. But as that keeps becoming compounding with time, we get to the point where getting through a work day can be so exhausting and so taxing because your system is overwhelmed with visual input. It's on overdrive just trying to use the eyes that the ability to process that information is one of the most daunting tasks. And the people who, you know, after back-to-back Zoom calls, like, I don't want to look at another screen or do one more thing with my eyes. I mean, that's a clear sign of you're doing too much or you don't have the foundation in place to be able to thrive in this world that we're in. Wait, wait, wait, wait. You're telling me that some people actually like back-to-back Zoom calls? I mean, I did a webinar a couple weeks ago on how to fake a Zoom call and how to shut down the video, how to soften your gaze, how to open up periphery, how to look through the screen and what to think about and what to do with your eyes so that there's less of that locked-in feeling and that you can be on more for longer because truthfully, if you're looking at the screen, no one knows whether you're making eye contact with them. And so if you can actually protect your system or do the right type of works that you can handle that, then the back-to-back Zoom calls, it's no big deal. It's like hanging out with somebody even though it's better to be doing this in three-dimensional space. So you are faking the idea that you're still paying attention. Yeah. But you're faking the things that are stressful for the body. So would that be like you're turning off Self View? Turning off Self View or even just like putting your computer on sleep. Put your computer on sleep. Make sure they're still there. Make sure they're still there. But dim the screen. Yeah, dim the screen. I mean, start, everyone who's listening, we're on a screen right now. Bring your brightness to zero and then slowly increase it until you get to a comfortable level. For most people, it's about 40 to 65% brightness. That's kind of the sweet spot. But when you're on 100% brightness, of course, that's terrible end of the day for disrupting circadian rhythms and all the light and blue light. We can talk about that. But we want to make it so that the autonomic nervous system doesn't have to contend with such an invasion of input that it can't make sense of. So that's one simple thing. Also making sure the screen is not too close to you. You want as far away as you can. Ideally, like if you stick your arms straight past where your middle finger goes, you want the line of sight a little bit below eye level. You want good posture, good balance. And you want to have the right setup in terms of if you're wearing glasses, what those glasses do. You came prepared today and you have some exercises that we're going to weave in between these big ideas that will help people understand this larger thing that you talk about, which is you're not asking us to give up so many of these things that make our lives possible. Laptops, computers, whatever it might be, the TV. You're simply sharing that if we care about our brain health, we should be caring about our vision. We should be putting vision first. And a huge part of that is making sure we have enough contrast throughout our day and balance. Absolutely contrast balance, which essentially gives us a break. And with break, our body can do what it was designed to do, which is in a way let go of that clenched fist. Yeah. So give us an exercise right now that you might want to walk our audience through if you're watching Spotify video. You can do it with us over there if you're on YouTube. But even if you're on audio, you can describe it to the audience as well. What is something that could bring in that element of balance of creating a little bit of contrast of restoring some of the harmony and taking off the stress from our already very stressful visual world. Let's start with peripheral pointing. And the reason I say this is we've talked about how when there's a fight or flight response, our periphery gets collapsed and we get stuck with central processing. We all have a light switch that we can flip to access our side vision to get panoramic viewing. And with enough work, that switch can always be on. And the more open your periphery is, the safer you are in space, but periphery grounds our visual system and grounds us into presence. So peripheral pointing is something as simple as let's do it both eyes open, pick something across the room to point your eyes at. So I'm going to look at the thermostat across the room here. My eyes are going to stay locked in on the thermostat, but then I'm going to notice something off to the side. So I'm actually going to use your face here, Drew. So without moving away from my alignment or my fixation on the thermostat, I'm going to point to where I think your face is. When I think I've got you directly pointed to, then I make the jump with my eyes over and see how accurate I was. If you're right on the money, awesome, bring it down and then go farther out. But if you weren't right, bring it down and then try and calibrate and get to right where it was. So we want to do this to the left, to the right. You want to try to do it both sides together. The more we can actively open up our side vision, the more we can localize where things are in front of us. And I've had countless patients tell me that with exercises like peripheral pointing, it's truthfully saved their life. And the first time I heard this, I was like, what are you talking about? This is a simple exercise. And then, you know, I've heard stories of somebody driving over a bridge or going into a tunnel where all of a sudden you're aware of what you are not aware of. There's this fear of safety. And then you go into that fire flight response, you become really central, really focal and things become a lot more scary by being able to access periphery and recognize, okay, there's space to the side here. The guardrail is actually farther than I thought it was. And if the more open I can keep my side vision, the more I can actually understand where exactly I am, that's pulled them out of that spiral that often occurs where we have panic attacks. I've had patients go into elevators and start to feel claustrophobic. And as soon as they could actively say, no, I'm not going to let myself go there. I'm going to open up my side vision. Then it's almost you're pulling yourself out of that deep end. So something as simple as this, we can tap into peripheral awareness or peripheral pointing with any task that we're doing. If you're walking down the street, try and notice the house to the left and the mailbox to the right, but both at the same time. When we're driving, try and notice the cars to the sides and the lanes without actually moving our eyes there. We can see so much without moving our eyes to new positions. We can see so much with this panoramic feeling, but when everything is collapsed, it becomes a lot harder to understand sense of self and space. It's interesting when I heard you talk about this originally on another podcast. I remember thinking when I was a kid and I'd be like in a stressful environment or dealing with something or maybe taking a test or doing some homework that's stressful or even playing some sports that you might be in a tense situation. I would notice that I would naturally just sort of notice my periphery and it was a de-stressing sort of event. What's going on there? What's going on that I'm not even really thinking about it, but I'm just sort of paying attention to the periphery around me like I can see kind of my phone on the table over here on the left. I can see the camera over the right. I'd kind of like take it all in, notice the things around it, but I'm not doing it consciously. I'm just kind of it's that softening and I would immediately it's almost like internally my nervous system would feel like I'm taking a big deep breath like I mean, that's exactly what you're doing. You're regulating your nervous system and clearly you are enlightened as a child, which makes sense why you are enlightened. Maybe I was just stressed all the time and my body had to figure out something. Could be, but you know, if you think about flow state, so many people talk about flow state from different perspectives and for me flow state is this heightened sense of central and peripheral integration. So we have these pathways in our brain that respond to central input and peripheral input that like a seesaw, we want to have totally balanced, but under stress, we go more central under more parasympathetic, we go more peripheral. But if we have those balanced, we can actually slow down space and we can take in more and almost slow down time. I work with a ton of professional athletes who, you know, baseball hitters will say once I've figured out how to really find this equilibrium, it's almost like the ball's coming at me in slow motion and I can arrive based off of all the muscle memory I have where I know the ball's going rather than where it is. And I think as a kid, you were probably exploring with vision, which so many kids do. So many parents will notice that when they're talking to their child, it seems like they're just kind of disengaged. You can see my eyes going out a little bit here diverging and the and parents will say, well, they're not paying attention to me. And truthfully, they're not paying attention. They're taking in more of the room and they're disengaging from what's in front of them, taking more of what's around them. But that can also allow other sensory processing to take place for not able to integrate all that sensory processing simultaneously. So, you know, I think really periphery is the key to eye movement control and better smoother tracking. It's the key to better eye coordination or eye teaming and convergence. It allows us to have the Z-access to what's in front of us to be that much more fluid. And it's something that we all rely on in daily life, but don't even realize that we do. And one of the simple ways to help facilitate that is with movement, noticing everything moving past us as we're walking, as we're running. That's creating what's called optic flow, which allows us to have a better sense of what's around us. You know, you mentioned me as a kid. A lot of your story starts with you as a kid and feeling a little bit overwhelmed by things. I think it's worth talking about because whether people have kids or not and my wife just gave birth to a beautiful baby boy just a few months ago and we're deep into the milestones of, you know, teaching him, showing all the black and white pictures and practicing things and etc. All the beautiful things that the doctors tell you about and I'm sure you have some other tips for us as well too. But so many of that early world and how we learn to operate it is the foundation for how our nervous system and how our intelligence and our processing all kind of comes together. So tell us your story. We spend so much time optimizing things like workouts, our diet or a supplements. But what about the clothes that we wear, the sheets that we sleep in, the things that touch our body all day and all night. Those little details shape your nervous system more than you realize. That's what I appreciate about Cozy Earth. They focus on comfort in the details. 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And what that meant was I had a hard time to get my eyes toward the others. A team had an alternating eye turn. I had reduced to eyesight, a lazy eye in both eyes, which is pretty rare. And I was lost in space and on the soccer field. I struggled in the classroom. And in so many instances, really felt like a turtle retreating in my shell in life. Fortunately, I was born to the perfect parents who knew the signs and made sure that I went down the path of vision training and sensory integration based occupational therapy. And I attribute all of my success in life, athletically, academically, and even internationally to optimizing and enhancing my eye-brain connection. So I went from being a reluctant reader, tears and complete meltdowns. Anytime I was asked or told to read to then an avid reader, I went from the last one picked on sports teams to a stud with athletics that required eye hand coordination. And I went from this insecure kid to this confident person because I really opened up my visual world and reestablished the development that didn't take place naturally on its own, rerouted things so that my brain started to use my eyes the way in which it was wired, but then turned a disability into a strength and a superpower, which is why now I feel so grateful to be able to offer this work to the world because so many people struggle unnecessarily without even knowing. And, you know, we can take so many scenarios and so many paths that people are on, whether it's, you know, developmental challenges, whether it's acquired brain injury, whether it's even just being too tired to do stuff and allow vision to become that dominant sensory system that it's supposed to be. You know, you talked about how these early interventions helped you turn things around. Have a question about it and then I'll tee up our next big idea, which I know a lot of our audience is thinking about. But the question that I had was, what do you think were some of the causes that were there that played a factor in you having so many of these challenges early on? I can only say this now having done a ton of personal and spiritual work myself, but we all have events in our life and experiences that we internalize often unconsciously and they create stories and they lie within our bodies and we don't even know they're there until we unpack them as we get older. And looking back on this, I had a lot of trouble navigating social situations. I was a middle child. I had an older and younger sister. I things didn't come naturally for me and I from an early age remember just feeling different and feeling like the world was out to get me and certain situations that I can that come up with my mom with my dad and different athletics in the classroom where I misinterpreted what was actually happening. And when I then realized like, oh, no, this was just this was just me and I read facial cues wrong because I literally couldn't see them or I thought something was being directed at me, but it wasn't. It was being almost presented for me. I didn't know any of that. And so I went down this path where even though my parents knew how important reading was and even though there were not really screens at all around at that age, I took the stress from the world and adapted in a negative way towards it. And we're all faced with our environment where there are stressors, but it's really what we do with that information and how we how that can empower us moving forward. That really dictates whether that becomes something that turns into a disability or disadvantage or the opposite becomes a superpower or a strength. And so for me, I think it was more. I had eyesight issues as well where I wear contacts now have a very high prescription and we did everything possible that we knew as a profession to slow down that progression. But I felt like I was so disengaged from life that I was always seeking out clarity and seeking out the ability to be a part of the situation. And because I couldn't see, I kept driving that forward. That's what progressed a lot of my nearsightedness. Some huge percentage. I don't remember exactly what the number is, but some huge percentage of fortune 500 CEOs are dyslexic, right? And there's the theory that a lot of people have written about, including Malcolm Gladwell, which is. You know, you end up rising to a top of a leadership position when you deal with dyslexia because you get good at compensating for the fact that it might be harder for you to learn. It might be harder for you to do things like math and reading and other things like that. So you get good at sort of asking questions, barring homework, maybe cheating from other people that are there. So you get good at asking for things and you get good at delegating. You get good at sort of getting help on things, which are all things that are very important for leadership. Some maybe might say there's, you know, you want to skip out on the cheating, which is probably a good idea, but everything else is a really good situation. So sometimes there's things that we all encounter in life that might look like something that is an Achilles heel for us. But yet it's an unlock for this opportunity or this thing that we would have never paid attention to or focused on if it wasn't for having that in the first place. Thank you for bringing up dyslexia because dyslexia very often is not dyslexia. It's a functional vision problem making reading and learning harder than it's supposed to be. No one is born with the ability to read. And when you look up dyslexia in the dictionary, what is shared is difficulty reading words. And I look at dyslexia as the different centers of the brain not communicating effectively the way they're supposed to the language processing centers, the visual processing centers, the auditory processing centers. And even those who will say dyslexia is a language based processing disorder understanding and processing language begins with the eyes. And if the signals coming in from the eyes are disorganized, if we're not aligning, pointing and focusing our eyes where we're supposed to, we can get almost what it feels like darts coming out of our brain that we have a hard time organizing. So the person who writes a lowercase B, D, P or Q in the wrong direction or sees the word was but pronounces it as saw, they're literally sequencing visual memory or visual processing, not in an organized fashion. And so many functional vision problems like tracking problems, eye coordination and convergence problems and even visual processing problems can show up as dyslexia. We work with so many high powered execs who initially will say, I'm dyslexic. I'm a little hesitant to even go down this path for this work because I've learned how to bypass a lot of this and use my brain differently. I don't want to lose that. And I said, no, no, you're not going to lose that. We're going to just throw fuel on the fire to make it so that reading is fluid and effortless with tens of thousands of patients. I've yet to come across one where we couldn't improve their reading ability. And very often with dyslexia, kind of like a D or ADHD or other labels. They're diagnoses or labels to describe behaviors or symptoms without addressing the root cause. And if we recognize that when we're learning to read, it is a learn process and it's learned differently when people are visually ready at different stages. If we then keep funneling more reading and more crowded words and more words on the page without the foundational skills in place to organize and support that reading is going to be something that never becomes developed. And it's crazy to think, but any brain can learn how to read, but no brain knows how to read without the sequencing of milestones in terms of vision development to get you to that place. The second idea I was going to bring up, which is our next big idea and we're going to go into it a little bit. It's this idea that a lot of people heard your story and then I think one of the takeaways from it is, oh, good for you. You struggled as a kid and you had awesome parents that paid attention and you intervene early and knew what to do and they knew what to do. Right. And I think the key is early when it comes to vision. Most of what people hear in the background or get told by their doctor when they're having eyesight issues or things that start to bleed over into what they starting to realize now as vision is that, hey, this is a byproduct of age. You're getting older. There's not much you can do. Just maybe sometimes you can include some things in that can slow down how bad it gets. So the next big idea we're going to tee up is that you can improve your visual system. Your visual system is trainable at any age. Do you want to talk about that? There's so much to unpack from what you just showed. So I will, I'm going to let's talk about how it's trainable at any age, but then also recognize that eye care, like most of healthcare is a reactive model that is intervening when there's problems and we're trained as eye doctors to manage deterioration rather than to get ahead of it. And cognitive capacity and vision often decline as we age. That's common. That's not normal though. That's not supposed to happen unless there's a problem with brain function or we're not able to meet the demands of life. We know there's neuroplasticity for the brain for so many different things. Yet we're taught in school that there's this critical period for vision development and after age eight, you go out the candles and all of a sudden what you see is what you get, nothing can be done there. That is misinterpretation of the research that's out there that says there's this critical period for vision lost, not for vision gained. So if either you or I were to wear an eye patch for six months and take off the eye patch, we'd be sensitive to like, but we wouldn't have lost sight. If you take a six year old and give them an eye patch for six months and take it off, there literally will be eyesight lost. But in terms of what can be gained and what can be reestablished, any brain at any age has the malleability and the neuroplasticity to reestablish new visual pathways, new firing and wiring of neurons to be able to allow the eyes to work together as a team and to develop the cells in our visual cortex that respond to depth perception and two-eyed learning. We just have to have the right type of learning and the right arrangement of conditions to make that happen. So with the exception of near eyesight, which does decrease as we age, and that's from the lens inside of our eye hardening and the fibers and muscles controlling them becoming more rigid and less flexible. That's something that happens, but we can absolutely slow it down. We can stop it and in some cases even counter it, but we have to get ahead of it and do the right work. And just like we exercise our body, we have to exercise our visual system to keep and maintain what we have, but most people don't even know that's possible. Now I'll tell you, I was taught in school that's not possible and five, six years ago, I would have said that doesn't work. And now that we're in this new screen heavy world and we've learned from our patients and developed new protocols, we now know that you can maintain focus and stamina and flexibility of eye focus, which then influences cognitive focus at any age, but we have to be able to know what to do and the right protocols to put in place. Well, speaking of protocols, a little shout out to your screen fit online course. People can check it out. Screenfit.com. We set up a URL for our audience. You've given a nice discount. We'll have him in the show notes. Talk to us just briefly about what is that? So screen fit is an online vision training program designed to teach the specific visual skills and abilities needed for reading, learning, sports, driving for life. And it's really designed for people who don't have access to somebody like me or flying to Maryland to be able to work with us. Although it's an option if people are really motivated. Absolutely. The option and that's definitely better results faster, but it's kind of the equivalent of like screen fits doing body weight work at home, sit up to air squats and push ups rather than going to the gym and working with a trainer. You work with a trainer one on one and customize program with the right equipment, you're going to get better shape faster. And everybody has access to that. So screen fit is there's two different courses. Each course has 30 lessons. Each lesson is a video of a specific vision exercise. We explain what to do, how to do it. You then put the device down and you do the exercise. None of it requires any equipment. We've had a hundred percent of people who've gone through the first course seeing improvement in symptoms and we've had thousands of people go through it. And every time I say that, I want to knock on wood. Some people don't go through it and don't finish it and then you're not going to get the same results. We've had as young as five and the old as 89, but it's a way to take a step across a start line to just get going in terms of vision improvement and the journey that that takes. And we're going to give a 40% off discount to your crew because you are bringing this to the world and let's make it as simple as possible for people to take action. Yeah, I mentioned you have a newborn. So I was doing a lot of the exercises in between of all the stuff that's here that we're trying to do. And, you know, they're simple, right? Meaning they're straightforward. They're not things when you do them, you realize how quickly your eyes can get fatigued and it's just an indication of like when I go swimming after I haven't gone swimming in a while, I'm like, wow, this tiny little muscle that never gets used is a little sore. Yeah, right. But it feels good because you're actually using it. That's kind of experience that I had going through some of the exercises that you guys put together. When I love that you're doing this with a newborn, which means you're probably not as rested as you normally are asleep. Probably not something that is just as much as you want whenever you want. And it's really cool to be in a taxed fatigue state and still allow vision to become that dominant sense and give you an advantage in the world. And all the athletes we work with, we have them doing treatment when they're exhausted after practices at the end of the day, because that's when we can often overcome those biggest obstacles. So you probably notice, you know, doing, doing screen fit work or doing any type of vision exercise now is very different than when you've had eight plus hours of sleep, you're not juggling the life of somebody else and support for your partner. But no matter how fatigued you are, no matter what's going on, we still have to use our visual system. And so we still have to have vision guide and lead rather than interfere. One of the things that I was feeling, which also happens after a long day of work where you've been so insular and this connects to one of these, the next big idea that we're going to talk about today is that, you know, when you're caring for a newborn and it's like all hands on deck, especially at the early stage, it's me and my wife, we're lucky, we do have some help. You, you feel so insular. Yeah. And obviously there's a lot of joy and you have your baby and everything else like that. But when I was doing some activities, I was like, man, I feel like I would normally be better at this exercise, especially because if I'd be going outside or like seeing off in a distance. And the big idea that I wanted to talk about is that when it comes to our overuse of screens, people often have this turn that they don't often tie to the screens and their vision, but they'll say things like, I feel stuck. I can't think outside the box, which is one thing you said earlier. I feel too insular and I'm not open enough to seeing a different perspective on how to solve this problem, navigate this thing or how to handle the situation. So the big idea that I want to tee up here is screens train tunnel vision and this can create a stress pattern. Can we just touch on that a little bit? You know, probably half, if not more, the people that are listening today are part of the zoom class. They're individuals that largely get work done on the computer. Some aspect of their work is remote, if not fully remote. And many people feel regularly that they're in this tunnel vision state for giving them best self to whatever it is that they're working on. And it's so true and it's so scary because we don't know what a lifetime of screens looks like yet. And we're starting to get feedback and it's not pretty for what's coming out. And let's really simplify. We have two main eye muscle systems. We have inside muscles that control our focusing system. We have outside muscles that control our eye coordination system. In a normal healthy brain, when we're in homeostasis, the inside and outside muscles are giving the same feedback to make something single and clear. There's three main profiles that have emerged post COVID in this digital world, but the most common of these is this tendency to want to over focus our eyes and underconverge our eyes, which you could not teach a brain to do if we tried. But it's often how people are adapting to screens because it's too hard to use these systems together. And that contributes to headaches and ice training and dryness and fatigue and stamina issues throughout the day. Screen time really is a toxicity to our nervous system. And I'm not anti technology. We rely heavily on virtual reality, augmented reality, eye tracking software and my practice. But we also take a cross training approach where we're doing work in a virtual world, in a 2D world and in a 3D world. But when we're spending our lives and the vast majority of our days locked into a 2D device with the junk lighting from the screens and not moving and sedentary, so many of our systems function differently. And that contributes to metabolic disease and trouble sleeping, but then it contributes to a visual system that feels like it's climbing a mountain all day long, wearing a box of bricks on ice skates, working so much harder than it's supposed to, but also not using these systems the way that the brain is wired. And that's why taking breaks can be so helpful, vision breaks, even if it's just looking out into the distance and coming back, even taking blinking breaks. I mean, the average person blinks 15 times in a minute. And when we go on screens, that goes to three to five times a minute, which means you're literally blinking less and most of the blinks aren't even full blinks, which means the front surface of your eyes, the cornea has fresh new tears being dispersed over the front surface less often. Your brain then starts to signal the dryness and secrete more tears, but the tears come out in the wrong consistency and then we're watery and less oily, so they drain faster. And then this negative feedback loop gets tapped into where there's an inflammatory response. And so even just taking blinking breaks, like blinking, I like to say do 10 quick blinks and five slow blinks every hour if you can. And if anyone listening to this feels like this sounds annoying, this guy is asking us to take blinking breaks and to get up and take movement breaks. If you took four hours of work and tried to plow through that versus taking those same four hours of work and taking breaks every 20 minutes throughout, I can guarantee you're going to be more productive and get more accomplished when you're able to come back ready to roll each time. And that regulation of your nervous system through vision is something that most people can avoid screens, but we can have the right habits in place and the right protection in place in the form of digital performance lenses, blue light glasses or a large monitor, whatever it is that we're doing to help make it so that this is less harmful to us. But it's a world that we're in. So we need to all know that with the right training, we can get our brains to handle this without negative implications. It's just most people require extra work to get their brains to that place. Large monitor, is that a good idea for most people? This gives everyone the excuse to get a bigger, the biggest screen possible, the farthest away, the better. And that kind of extends for everything. If you're, if you're your child or going to watch a show, it's better to watch it on a big, big TV far away than it is to watch on a phone or tablet or a computer. It's a very different visual demand engaging out here than it is locking it up close. And there's different eye movements required up close for screens versus even just printed pages. There's more of them, the more sporadic. There's a different demand on the convergence and the focusing systems and things become locked up with up close versus being able to be opened up when that's not the case. Any tips for when I do this podcast here, you know, we have these bright lights in studio. Obviously, I'm trying to be as present for the guests as possible. And then naturally, you know, having something really bright on your eyes during this entire time is also visually sort of taxing. You get a little bit tired at the end of a podcast. Anything that I could be doing, you know, sometimes people wear these crazy blue light blockers during their podcast episodes. I wear them at night, but not during the day. There's definitely tips. I think this is this is a sensory overload. Yeah. And you need it so that we can look good. And so that the images are solid. But think of it as just a flood of input that your brain is now having to respond to and it's not natural. And it's only one spectrum, right? It's probably like a one narrow spectrum of light. Even though it's so bright, it's probably actually not that bright from a lux perspective compared to being outside. That wavelength wise, it's the junk lighting and it's the LED light. And so, first of all, blue light is really important for regulating moods, circadian rhythm, hormones, but that's natural blue light outside. And that's why it's such a good reason to get outside first thing in the morning and in the evening to help regulate yourself in time and space. But the blue light from these screens and from these lights, that's what causes this kind of panic. And blue light glasses, the amber ones or the orange ones that sounds like you're wearing at nighttime, they block a wide range of not just blue light, but lots of different junk light and yeah. And those help your brain then secrete melatonin, which helps you fall asleep. So even if you put those on during a podcast in the day, you're probably gonna get a little sleepy. We have these receptors on our retina, the lining of the inside of our eyes whose sole purpose is to signal the sleep wake signaling to secrete melatonin. And when those receptors are constantly overstimulated, melatonin comes out at the wrong times and the wrong consistency and it throws off your circadian rhythms. So I would say there are blue light filters that we can put on lights or that we can wear. I think wearing the amber orange ones during the daytime to me is a little excessive. You know, the yellow ones or the clear lenses that have kind of like a purplish or bluish hue, they're not blocking all blue light, but they're blocking usually the harmful blue light if it's good quality. For getting the $5 ones from Amazon, you're pretty much paying for the quality that you're getting. But to be able to have balance there really does support performance over time. And I do think in the relatively near future, we're going to have lighting that comes out with a very different spectrum. And right now the LED lights, they're the cheapest lights out there. They're easy to manufacture. And so it makes sense why so many people have them and they do provide good quality light, but we can change the flicker frequency. We can have different spectrums within them where it's only a matter of time before the first company comes out with them. And there is a company that is going to be launching new bulbs in the next few months that do support this. And I think that's going to help so much because we now are having, we're now seeing compelling evidence that when circadian rhythm disruption takes place, that can influence metabolic dysfunction and even certain cancers. So really making sure that our systems are functioning at their potential, but not taking on excess toxicity. I mean, that's going to improve so many areas of healthcare. Yeah, we just had Dr. Such-in-Panda on the podcast last week and we went into a deep dive about circadian biology and its role with Alzheimer's, cognitive decline and cancer specifically and how getting the wrong light at the wrong time and the toxic junk light and how it increases our risk and then not getting enough of that great light that we need from the sun with the full spectrum. There's so much there and we're just at the beginning stages of all this. My wife was pissed at me the other day because I went to this website. I think it's called like healthy lighting or smoothing that healthy lighting.com. I have no affiliation with them and I like ordered all these new bulbs for our house to replace all these LED ones. But it's so tricky with bulbs. It's like this one doesn't fit into this one and you can't use it because these incandescent light bulbs, they give off heat so they can't work in recessed lighting that have like a cover and then the colors are off in different rooms and colors off and like our bathroom like babe, just give you a little bit. It's for our health. It's for our kids health. She's teasing me more than anything. We'll get there. But I bet you she'll feel different with these. Totally. I feel like she's more impacted by a lot of this lighting than even I do. There was a study that came out. We're linking in the show notes. We had Jonathan Jacari on the podcast a few weeks ago talking about the latest studies about light therapy, photo, bio, bio modulation and his 21 day light challenge that he walked us through. And one of the studies he talked about was that, you know, we are in this junk light world that's there, but just even keeping on your desk and there's now companies that actually make products that are like this. I have no affiliation with any of them, but keeping on your desk, a little light bulb holder that plugs in, right? And you put an incandescent light bulb on that incandescent light bulb just being next to you, just one light bulb, even in a room of a bunch of junk lighting has major improvements. The spectrum. Yeah. It balances out the spectrum, improves eyesight, does all these different things. So interesting to know just small little changes that we do, which is obviously goes back to your work. Little things that we do on a regular basis can add up and can radically improve our health on that note. Give us another exercise. Give us something our audience can start doing today. You already gave us one, which was the peripheral exercise that's there. Give us another exercise that people can incorporate. Let's do eye pushups or near far focus. And so this is for anybody who notices their arms are long enough and you're starting to reach for reading glasses. You're already wearing reading glasses or for somebody whose distance prescription feels like it's changing. And every time you go to the doctor, they're giving you something stronger or different because your prescription has changed a little bit. Now I'll tell you as an adult, if your prescription is changing in the distance, that is neon lights and red flags around it saying that is a functional vision problem, because what that means is you're adapting to the lens you're in to maintain the same level of clarity because likely your focusing system or one of the functional vision systems is not operating the way that it's supposed to. So near far focus or eye pushups helps develop flexibility and stamina of your focusing system. And think again, far away blur is a symptom often of a near problem. So with this, we're going to cover up an eye. Use your thumbs. You don't have any excuse not to do this. We don't need equipment. Hold your thumb and arms length like you're giving somebody a thumbs up. Have the nail facing you and you're going to bring the nail toward you until it gets a little blurry. When it gets a little blurry, stop. Hold it. Try to make it clear. Think about looking hard, locking in your focus. Anybody watching you will see your pupil gets a lot smaller because the focusing system is behind the pupil. You look at it hard for five seconds and then you're going to relax your focus, look across the room, throw your focus out into the distance ideally like out of window as far as you can for five seconds. Back at your thumb for five seconds. Back in the distance. So this is a gross stimulation, relaxation, stimulation, relaxation of the focusing system. You're going to do this the same amount of time with your right eye as you do with your left eye. And most people will probably notice that one of the eyes can hold the thumb a little bit closer than the other, which means under two eye conditions, which is how most people roll throughout their day. Your eyes are actually focusing in different planes because of a binocular rivalry or competition over a center, but we're brain has a hard time using them both together. You do this every day. You literally will not need stronger reading glasses. Many people will be less dependent on the glasses they have and maybe even be able to do more with a weaker prescription because it's countering the age related changes that occur where that system becomes more sluggish. And many eye doctors will say, this does not work. And I would just respectfully say, well, if you haven't done it and you haven't tried it, you can't say it doesn't work. We have patients who are in their seventies and eighties not wearing reading glasses doing work like this every day. But just like it's important to exercise and strengthen the rest of their body, it's also important to exercise and strengthen their visual system to keep things clear and solid for longer. My wife, when she turned 42, blew out the candles and all of a sudden couldn't read the back of the medicine bottle and she's like, Bryce, do something. Finally, it's time. And we put her through a specific sequence of vision performance training exercises. She reversed the age related changes. She now is the focusing system of somebody half her age. And just like she works out every day, she works out her focusing system and near far push-ups she does every single day. She can only read the medicine bottle now. She can read it really, really close. And she knows if she stops doing this, just like if you stop exercising, things don't stay solid. Things regress to the norm. This is the type of thing that this is the one functional visual system that does change as we have a birthday every year. Everything else, if you've rebooted and fixed an eye turn or lazy eye or rewired the brain after concussion or develop the accuracy of eye movements to support reading and eliminating even a dyslexia diagnosis. That's yours to keep. If in fact the roadblocks have been removed. This is the one though that you do have to keep up with time. And if you do it, I promise you'll see changes and even moving that thumb two millimeters closer in a week, weeks add up, millimeters add up, millimeters turn a centimeter, centimeters turn inches and all of a sudden you can read the menu at a restaurant in dark lighting where you couldn't before. And as long as you are not looking for an overnight fix where all of a sudden things are perfect, you keep this up. I guarantee that things improve with time. Amazing. So that is also part of some of the exercises that are part of screen fit. But even if people want to just start something right now, do something for free. This is one of those things that they can do. And if they wanted to do it and minimum viable dose, you know, couple minutes each day. It's hard to concentrate when you're worried about your health. It can feel like there's a wall between you and the rest of the world like you can't be fully present. Hello, AXA Health. How can I help? At AXA Health Insurance, we build our teams with people who care. So when you need us, we're here to support you for cover that cares. Search AXA Health Insurance. Pre-existing conditions are not covered. When it's a day each eye would be amazing for that. And even if you do 30 seconds a day each eye, this is compounding over time. So this is something where you got to put the reps in. But absolutely the near far focus eye pushups, the peripheral pointing, we go over others. These are easy, tangible take-homes that everyone can start actionably today to at least get started on that journey. And many people will notice even with something like eye stretches that tension in the system gets alleviated. You mentioned eye stretches. That's another exercise. Do you want to talk about that real quick? Let's do it. So eye stretches is kind of like yoga for the eyes. So you can do this one eye at a time, cover up an eye, look as far up to the ceiling as you can, hold it for five seconds and don't go too far that you can't hold it steady. And then all the way down the floor as far as you can for 10 seconds. All the way to the left, all the way to the right. And obviously we're doing this faster than 10 seconds just for the podcast, but then up into the left, up into the right, down to the left, down to the right. You're going to do the same amount of time, right eye as you do left eye. And that's a really nice way. I mean, I have a lot of, a lot of patients or people we work with who do these three before they start their workday at lunch and then end of the day. And from their standpoint, that's all they need. They're solid. Are there any activities that we might be doing on a regular basis like pickle ball or something, some sports where we're naturally getting some version of this incorporated in. I'm not saying it replaces these eye exercises, but it would add to them for sure. So any ball sport like pickleball, tennis, ping pong is phenomenal for applying what you're learning through these exercises, too fast moving space, but you're also getting both halves of your brain to communicate in ways that they would. And otherwise you're making visual determinations on where the ball is, how to react and you're incorporating a lot of visually guided motor control, which is wonderful. There's, there's Dr. Deit Daniel Aiman says that ping pong is the, the number one activity of longevity that we should all be doing because it helps get airs of the brain to talk to each other in ways that they wouldn't. So I think any of those paddle sports are great. Even just playing catch or taking a ball and throwing it against while having a bounce once and catch it and alternate which hand you're doing it on have different bounces, different speeds. But when we're integrating eyes, brain and body, that absolutely helps us keep what we have for longer, but in many cases learn from those experiences and develop pathways that maybe we weren't even tapping into. And it's a lot harder doing a one night at a time because you lose depth. So that's a great way to increase level of demand if you want to. Yeah, it's a great reminder. It also reminds me of this newsletter that we wrote for our audience. A couple of weeks ago, we talked about the first ever randomized controlled trial showing that cognitive training can reduce dementia risk for decades. This came out just like a few, like a month ago, this, this study and the individuals inside of it that followed this program. They had a 25% lower risk of receiving an actual dementia diagnosis over 20 years and I think it was like an NIH. I'll link to it below, but it was called the advanced cognitive training for independent and vital elderly. We broke down the study, what they did, what they used, how they went about it. And one of the conclusions of it was is that the individuals that were doing this brain training, which isn't like Sudoku or crossword prosels, they were following this increase, increased pressure and something that the study called speed of process training. That group was the group that saw the benefits of it. Now they were using a digital program of it. No affiliation with the website and we wrote, we wrote about what the website was, but separately we were talking about if you extrapolate that idea of speed of process training to things that we do in daily life, the, the, the most equal things to them are going to be like pickleball, racquet sports, dancing, choreographed dancing. These are all things that are going to challenge the visual system and the brain and our process and ability to learn, which is all those things combined and have us actually use things that we wouldn't otherwise use if we didn't have these things incorporated in our life. 100% and we're very close to having objective testing for the work we're doing in my practice for vision performance training to actually measure the changes in brain function in real time and need with EG's pre post enduring to show that that cognitive training done from a visual perspective has such a higher ceiling in terms of potential because vision is represented in every lobe of our brain and the more years of our brain dedicated to processing vision and all the other senses combined. We then take cognitive work with vision mark work with motor work and motor planning work. We can live very, very long and still have full capacity and even be improving some of these skills, even though the rest of our body maybe isn't the same way that it was when we were much younger. Can I go through a speed run of a few areas that it'd be great to get your perspective on please. Okay, let's kind of talked about this previously, but somebody wakes up today. Most of my audience listening is 40 plus somebody wakes up today and your wife situation and they say, okay, you need reading glasses now. Right. Can they actually make a difference with that recommendation diagnosis? Somebody telling you and then for the person who's been using reading glasses for 10 years now and finds himself a little bit older than that. You're I think you said your wife was 42. Can they actually get to a stage where they no longer need those reading glasses anymore? Tell us what you've seen with that. Yeah. So with the first group, somebody who's starting to see the early changes, they are primed to put this in the rearview mirror and the equivalent of this is literally saying like my knee hurts. I'm going to jump in a wheelchair. I'm going to stop using it. And as silly as that sounds, when you grab over the counter drugs to readers, the first chance you get, you're preventing your brain from using your focusing system and then that gets really comfortable and you get used to that and then status quo deteriorates quickly. So when this is first changing, there's a lot that can be done to bolster the system from a few different angles and you can for sure prevent the need for reading glasses with the right work and the right motivation. That's for pretty much anybody taking a person who's 10 years in. It obviously depends a little bit on the visual profile. We it's harder to reverse if there's already challenges in place, but we have found that it's harder to reverse if we're doing this stretched out program, but when we do it on an intensive basis where we know every week in my practice of people from all around the world who fly in for these bootcamps of 12 hours of work in five days and very specific protocols. We've had 100% of our adults who've done the intensives, whether it's early into the process of reading reading glasses late or really late, seen improvement in near acuity and less of a dependence on the reading glasses or in some cases even a weaker prescription because the more opportunity the brain has for learning with the least amount of time between the learning, the faster learning takes place. I would have told you five, six years ago. That's not possible. And now not only is it possible, we're seeing it with 100% and we have a high volume there. Take somebody who's decades into reading glasses. It's harder to reverse things because the system itself has much farther to go from the starting line basically. We can make it so that visual processing improves tremendously and that spatial awareness improves and that balance and coordination and stamina and efficiency improve. But in terms of needing the glasses, that's a harder scenario. We haven't seen it happen, but I wouldn't say that should be the intention for going through a program like that. And we can really clearly identify who the people are that would benefit versus who those that is less likely would be. Eye supplements. Do any of them work? Supplements, I mean, it's really hard to have a clean diet and provide your brain exactly what it needs to function at its best without supplements. So I'm a big proponent of supplements, but just like any supplement, quality matters. And there's certain supplements that are really important for eye health. And for the most part, because like we talked about, eyes are part of the brain. Eating for brain health is eating for eye health. Supplements for brain health are supplements for eye health. So if we were to talk about like top five supplements to me, number one, without even a question, omega-3 fatty acids, great for brain health, great for eye health, great for our tear film and certain aspects of our retina and the photoreceptors that are there. And omegas, you really need high quality and you need a nice balance of DHA and EPA. Number two would be antioxidants. And there's lots of different types of antioxidants out there. Vitamins, A, C, and E are fantastic. And you can find a lot of those in different fruits and in different vegetables as well. Number three, I would say lutein and zeaxanthine. And most eye doctors would say that's number one. Lutein and zeaxanthine are macular carotenoids. So what that means is they beef up the macula, which is the 2020 area of the retina, the line of sight. They're found in green leafy vegetables. Most people don't eat green leafy vegetables every meal, every day. Lutein and zeaxanthine can be protective for macular degeneration. They can even act as like internal blue light blocking filters because they absorb a lot of the damaging UV light that comes in. So they're protective. Those are fantastic. I think glutathione is incredible for decreasing toxicities throughout the body, but especially for the eyes and for cataract formation and macular degeneration formation, taking the right form of it. And I don't know if you're familiar with glutadrol. I have no affiliation other than it's incredible. It's a transdermal spray. If you spray it on your skin, rather than having it go through digestion where a lot of it gets excreted, there's incredible benefits of glutathione. And then I would say number five would be in the antioxidant category, but really berries and blueberries are phenomenal. They have a certain pigment in them that really help support rhodopsin, which is part of our rod photoreceptors that help us see and dim lighting and can be really effective there. But antioxidants in general can be in a lot of different forms, but wonderful for eye health as well. And just as important as it is to what to take, there's also equal importance for what to avoid. And the things that typically trigger symptoms visually and neuroinflammation that occurs where we all have some level of systemic inflammation, but what triggers a lot of the neuroinflammation from a vision perspective for many people, gluten, dairy, seed oils, sugar and processed food, and alcohol. So not to say don't do all of that, but in moderation and at least be intentional with what you're providing your body in terms of instructions to function. And if you're avoiding what you know you're sensitive to and providing what you know is healthy for you, that's going to help maintain integrity of the structures of the eyes and help a lot of that toxicity and oxy-aib stress that occurs from manifesting the level that it would. All right, this is totally random. But what's your opinion on lacyc? There are so many viral videos these days that come out where people are saying, I regret getting lacyc, I wish I never did it, this, that. And then I have friends personally that have gotten lacyc and felt like, man, I wish I got that years ago with also the understanding that my first friend that got lacyc many years ago, but I actually had to go pick up from like the clinic where he got it done here in Santa Monica because he couldn't see. He had to go back just earlier this year and the last year to get updates to it because I guess it wears off over a period of time. So what are your thoughts about lacyc? So I know we have a limited time here. I will say there's a reason why a lot of eye doctors don't get lacyc. I very comfortably and happily wear contacts and would never go down the lacyc route. Never, never. And there's a couple reasons why. Think of lacyc as taking a prescription and making it permanent. We can predict whether somebody's prescription is going to change over time, looking at functional visual skills and abilities. Some of the top lacyc surgeons in DC send us patients to say, is this a good candidate for lacyc? And almost every time the patient comes in and says, why are they sending me to you if they're the one doing the surgery? We can look at different functional systems and predict whether someone is the lacyc is going to take or whether they're going to need a touch up. If we're adapting to the visual stress of our world because of near challenges, the symptom we talked about often happens in the distance. So just like your prescription often changes when there's functional vision problems, lacyc, you adapt to what you're in and then you need more help to maintain that same clarity. On top of you probably needing multiple treatment down the road or maybe glasses or contacts on top of that, glare, dryness, halos, they're never better after lacyc. And in some cases they are terrible. So I would say in clinical experience, probably 75% of people who have lacyc or PRK are relatively happy. And if you go in with the right intention of saying, I don't really want to have to wear glasses or contacts and if things are a little blurry, whatever, I'm cool with that. I just don't want to wear these. Then lacyc can be maybe successful if that's your idea of success. There's about 15 to 20% who have new problems that emerge and they're super annoying, the dryness, irritation, the glare. And then there's a smaller subset who are absolutely miserable based off of the symptoms. And there was even a story, I forget if it was Good Morning America or something else, where they were tying suicides and terrible mental health challenges to the spiral and negative effects that happened after lacyc surgery. And you're taking the most sensitive tissue in your body and literally cutting it off. And yes, certain areas of the cornea grow back, but you're taking a very sensitive system and losing those layers. And for many people, lacyc is something that they really regret doing. And there's so many alternatives out there. There's something called ortho-keratology, which are contact lenses you sleep in at night. They change the shape of your cornea like a retainer would for your teeth, but instead of your eyes, you take them off during the day. You see crystal clear all day long and then you put them back at night. It's a reversible lacyc. So if you think of your corneas in Mount Asana, flattens the cornea and makes it so that the images focus on the back of the eye more easily. Not only is this the number one way to slow down your sightedness for kids, it's really cool. We have a bunch of pro athletes who are in these where they don't want performance. I don't because you need the cornea is only a certain thickness. And my prescription is so high that although the company we work the closest with says, oh, we can do this for you. I don't want to be, I don't want it to be better. I want it to either be perfect or not. And so there's not enough cornea to counter the prescription that's needed for me because your prescription is so high, a little bit of improvement. You're still going to have to wear contacts and you need a really thick cornea to treat to flatten to get the image to focus on the back of the eye. So for me, it's, it's not necessarily a win. But I think ultimately, like if we're going into any evaluation seeking 20 happy rather than 2020, then any treatment that we're going to get is going to be better tolerated and more successful. And so I'm a big believer that the ideal for prescription for anybody is the weakest lens possible that gives the most improvement. That's the most balance between each eye, but that improves performance. So if we were saying we wanted your blood pressure to be 120 over 80, 100 milligram pill gets you there. But so too does the 10 for me, always go to the 10. But then also let's figure out lifestyle nutrition, how we can avoid the meds. And that's kind of the parallel here. Like let's be in the weakest lens as possible to allow improvement in performance. But in many cases, having things not be HD crystal clear all the time, that's actually a good thing. I purposely have myself seeing around 2025, 2030 in the distance because that's comfortable. But it gives me so much wiggle room for everything in life. And I have such an elite visual brain that I, there's nothing I can't do visually with my eyes. All right, we got a couple more. Here's a long winded answer. Sorry about that. I love that answer. I love that answer. There's probably some people that are on the fence that are, you know, thinking, I don't know, do I want to risk it and ask how likely it is. You would have a second, third or multiple surgeries, ask what the risks are and talk to the doctor. Because very often in leaky patients who get put in mono vision, LASIK, or one eyes for near and one eyes for far on purpose, which literally prevents the ability to see in depth, preventability, seeing 3D. And they don't even get to experience what that's like beforehand with a contact lens on. Think about that. Think about having your brain always have to decide which eye to use. And although they'll say, oh, you'll adapt or you will adapt, but that's not a good thing. Same if you get glasses that you put on after an eye exam, they don't seem right. They're not right. And the doctor is going to tell you, oh, just wear them. You'll get used to them. Of course you'll get used to them. That's not a good thing. Glasses should seem great when you put them on or else it's the wrong prescription. Good food for thought. I'm lucky. Knock on wood right now. I don't need contacts. I don't, you know, I'm not a candidate for LASIK. You know, there was a few years ago, there was this viral article about when everybody's really starting to become aware of PFA's and all sorts of different things. Yeah. It's like PFA's in your contact lenses. And I'm like, oh my gosh, babe, why don't you just get LASIK. It worked for my other friend. I don't know. So many people have had this and obviously I was undereducated on the topic at that time period. And then since then, I've heard a lot more of these stories that you're saying and for you to say that like 25% of people, it's not going exactly the way that they want to. That's a risky thing. Absolutely. And the PFA's and contacts. I eliminate plastic in every scenario I can. I've never once thought twice about wearing contacts. We don't know anywhere that wearing contacts is going to allow microplastics to show up within your body because you can't say where it's from. But also the material, the breathability, the wetability of most contacts out there now is so much better than it's ever been. And you pick your battles because of the benefits of being able to access periphery with contacts versus wearing glasses, especially the higher the prescription is. There's so much distortion and it's so much harder if the eyes work together when you can't take in all of space. So I am very comfortable wearing contacts. And if anybody says it's so important to me to not have any plastic on me, great. There's other solutions. But yeah, that's not the source of forever chemicals that you're probably getting exposed to the most. Right. And then if you're that person, are you looking at the clothing material you're wearing? Are you looking at, do you have a microwave in your house? I mean, there's so much that we can all do to at least chip away at first. A couple of others that I had here and they're more actually related to your content as examples of thinking twice around them. You brought up one of them before, which was this idea of feeling sleepy when you read. Yeah. So a lot of people actually will use the idea that reading at night is a good way to sort of put themselves to sleep. Myself included. I don't use it every night, but occasionally. There might be more to that than what we think. So talk to us about falling asleep slash feeling sleepy when you're reading. And this is no judgment towards you, Drew, but reading should not fatigue you. Unless it's super boring. Unless it's super boring, but it shouldn't drain the system to make you want to fall asleep faster. And I look at that is if your brain is working so hard, just to a line point, focus the eyes and then process that information. Of course, that's going to be taxing on the system. And using reading as a sleeping pill or using it as a way to just calm your system. That means you're working harder than you need to. That's one of our symptom questionnaires where like, if that's you, it doesn't have to be that way. But reading should be exciting and provide enjoyment and almost be energizing. But it's kind of like if you're using this systems and your brain's on overdrive. I mean, that's letting you know the systems aren't operating the way that they're supposed to. It makes you sleepy at night, but during the day you read and you have no problem. It doesn't make you sleepy. Is that a different situation? I would say that's a stamina situation. And probably the candlewick has just burned out some so we can absolutely get that brain to operate better for longer. But then that may also be a nice scenario because that's a lot healthier than popping medications or certain supplements that have side effects. Okay, last one. Have you seen these like speed reading things that are out there? Yes, yes, yes. Right? For anybody that's not aware, they're using technology and these speed reading apps and getting you a place where you can regularly read like crazy numbers like 400, 500, 600, like, you know, I guess it's at words per minute. But you're you by using sort of this visual anchor off in a line and then having these words flash in front of you one by one, you're able to read way faster. It's there's different apps that are out there. I think there's speed reader. There's this, there's that. What do you think about those? We in part of our evaluation, we look at eye movements and lots of different setups. So one of them is we have people read on a screen with eye tracking software that shows percentage of time your right eye is on target, percent of time your left eye is on target, how many eye movements each eye is making, how many times the eyes backtrack, the speed, accuracy, regressions, fluency. When your eyes and brain are operating at different speeds, it is impossible to accurately point your eyes to every single word and read across the page. And good readers don't make eye movements to every word. They scan across to the words that have more letters, the bigger words, and that usually is enough to infer meaning. But if you skip over a not or none, it completely changes the tone and the meaning of the passage. Speed reading courses are training specific organization of eye movements across the page. We're almost scanning zigzagging across the page. But in most cases, people say they're really fast readers or speed readers in general because they can't slow down eye movements enough for accuracy and they've just generally learned how to go faster to take in as much as they can and then often have to reread. So the comprehension isn't there? The comprehension isn't there and maybe the efficiency is you're getting to the passage fast, but if you're reading a contract or material where literally everything in there matters, speed reading is not what you want to be doing. And I would say for anybody who has eye movement control problems, they skip words, skip lines, lose their place, gets the end of one line. It's hard to get to the beginning of the next line or feel like when they're reading, they get into the passage. They forgot what they read or their mind was wandering. The key first is to slow down eye movements and really hit accuracy hard. And then once accuracy is there and the eyes are working equally together as a team, you can then hit the gas to build speed. And so on the vision board for me is creating a speed reading course that actually heavily focuses on eye movement control so we can develop accuracy and rhythmic eye movements to then be able to take in more with each span because any eye movement, you're then taking in a span or chunk of space. If you're able to take in a large chunk of space, organize and filter it appropriately, then with the next eye movement, you're able to move on to the next input. For most people though, you can read faster, but if you're not remembering what you're reading, what's the point of reading faster? Yeah, I've never been motivated by speed reading because I feel like a lot of people that I've met that are huge fans of it. I haven't felt like, oh, OK, I want to be like you. When it's bad, if this is like you're reading a trashy novel on the beach on vacation, sure, our speed reading is like, if it makes you feel better to get through the book faster. Awesome. But if you're reading the book for enjoyment and you're really developing the mental pictorial imaging and turning the letters and the words and the pictures, the pictures and the movies and there's this fluid movie going on in your mind that you're applying past experiences to, then the beauty in what comes out of reading is really phenomenal. But if we're then trying to just do things faster, I mean, we're in a society where we try and do everything faster. That's not necessarily a positive in my mind. This teased up our last big idea after we went through that speed round, which thank you for being open to that. That was a list of a few different things that I wanted to get a chance to cover. Our last big idea as we're starting to wind down on today's episode was this theme that you just touched on. This is the last big idea, big idea number five. If you can't control eye movements, attention suffers. The whole point of this podcast really is how can you leverage your vision so that you can give attention to what matters the most in your life? Whatever that is for you that's listening today, think about anything that you care about. Think about anything that you want to make progress in. Think about anything in any area that might revolve around attention that you might struggle with. And if you can't harness that attention and your visual system is a huge part of attention, if not the biggest part and eye movements are a huge part of that too, then you're going to be struggling. And when you're struggling, you're literally saying, I'm walking around with an extra weight that's preventing me from making progress or going the distance down a path that I really care about. So is there one thing, just like you've given us other exercises today, is there one other thing that people who struggle with controlling their eye movements, which might relate to skipping lines, losing your place when you read some of these other examples that you mentioned, is there one thing that they could be doing today to help improve their attention? And if we think of any change in eye movement as a change in attention, like you shared, whether it's voluntary or involuntary, if you can't control your eyes and ability to focus, you can't control your mind and its ability to focus. So for so many people, where are our eyes go or our attention flows? And a lot of people think of eye movements as X axis, which is a cross body. And really, eye movements, those are tracking eye movements, but so many are also the Z axis, which is eye coordination and eye focus. So I'd say if there's a lot of, if we were to take a cross training approach and work on all the different systems simultaneously, as visual focus improves, cognitive focus and attention definitely improves. But I think one that everybody could start today is for those who still get the newspaper or have any type of magazine, any printed work, take a paragraph or take a long passage, start at the beginning, take a pencil. And as you're scanning across, find the first time you see the letter A. So you're going to draw a line under the line when you see an A, circle it and keep going until you can find a B, circle it and then a C and try and go through the whole alphabet where you're literally looking at every single letter of every single word. Because you're slowing down eye movements to build accuracy like we talked about, which then improves attention. But that's probably going to be hard for a lot of people because we're trained to not look at every letter. So this is actually raising to awareness what we're not doing to learn how to self correct and how to self monitor. And I would do that one night at a time. And I would also do with both eyes. If it's harder with both eyes, or if words start moving, if you lose your place, you're going slower, that is diagnostic for an eye coordination problem or by not to the vision disorder. And that even further means we got to get you in a vision training protocol. But I think in doing something like that, you're really focusing on the detail and the focal processing, and that can help support attention in general. But ultimately, the more we do from different angles, the more attention is going to improve. And just like, you know, there's not a blood test that says you have ADD or ADHD. It's based off of symptoms and behaviors. And there are so many misdiagnoses and misopportunes when it comes to vision. And that being a piece of the puzzle in a lot of these scenarios. So combining some of the exercises that we did earlier, putting yourself in positions in places where you are doing maybe ping pong or pickleball or these or dance coordination, things that basically require you to learn under pressure and your tracking movements and using a whole body system, taking major pauses from screen time and this overuse of screen screen time that we all find ourselves in, looking out in the distance, getting in nature, getting in sunlight. You know, for those of us who still shop in the grocery store, I would say pick three things, pick five things that you know you need to get, put them in your phone, put them on a sticky note, put it in your pocket and don't think about it. And before you get to the grocery store, want you to visualize those five items, visualize where they are in the store, the sequencing of which one you're going to and which order and then go to the store and try and see how many of those you can remember and have those five go to six, then go to seven, go to 10. So you want to load your brain with more to have to recall. That can be really helpful for sequential memory and for visual memory. And then try and do it where you're looking at the picture, you're putting it away. And then you're remembering where those five items are on the page and you're picturing them in a mental pictorial image in your mind. So that's a great thing to do. Another great thing to do it. Hopefully everyone listening is going to pick up pickleball tennis, paddleball, ping pong, something like that. Practice holding the racket, putting the ball on the middle of the racket, even if it's a ping pong ball and see how long you can hold it there without it falling. And then try and walk around doing that where you're trying to keep your body steady, but you're holding fixation on the ball as you're doing it. Then try and do it looking straight ahead and with your side vision, just keeping it balanced where the ball is. Try then hitting how many times you can hit it up and down without a falling. The more we're tying together, eyes, brain and body, the more we're integrating systems and the more this becomes a part of us and available to our at our disposal. So a ton of stuff that people can do for free, even starting today. Yeah. And there's countless things we can do. But I mean, these are just a few starting point without overwhelming people. And if you want to take it one step further and really go down a protocol. And a program that will help you work on in some cases, maybe regaining some aspects of tightening up some vision in the case of, you know, you're less dependent on some of those reading glasses. You are even beyond eyesight. You're improving your focus and cognition and attention. Which has all sorts of cascading effects. That is a great opportunity to check out your screen fit program. Yes. And even motion sickness, driving at night, fear of heights, hesitancy on stairs or escalators. I mean, so much of this we've seen improve drastically for people with something like screen fit. Amazing. We'll put a link in that in the show notes below. We have a code for everybody. It's code DHRU. That's true. That's me. But can it deal with one major problem? I increasingly don't like driving at night because everybody's headlights are so freaking bright. What do we do for that? Spare while we make a rule where you can't have these blue LED lights and have them blind all of us. But I mean, having the right filter on the windshield or on glasses can support that. But more simply, let's just get those out of cars. And then we'll have to deal with that. I will say light sensitivity is a really common symptom of concussion or traumatic brain injury, of autonomic dysfunction and of even just sensory overload. And definitely with the customized in-office program, we see drastic improvements there. And in many cases, like that's not an issue. Some people have reported drastic with screen fit. I would say if that's why you're going into screen fit, I would just expect some improvement and let's leave you a little bit cautiously optimistic and see what happens there. But how we regulate our pupils and how light comes in is one of the most direct reflections of autonomic function and brain function. And we can learn how to regulate those from different angles and we can allow the system to be more balanced than those annoying headlights are less annoying. Awesome. So I can work on that or I need to figure out is my wife being my head at night and that's I have a traumatic brain injury. And that's why I can't stand all of this. Hopefully that's right. This was fantastic. I feel like you're opening up people's worlds and their eyes and their brain to a whole new area that goes often under talked about, under addressed. And especially as a new father, I think about this because I see so many young people who are struggling with so many aspects of attention and people just labeling them as not smart, not caring enough, not giving it their their best. And I would hope that, you know, just any parents that are listening today, beyond the fact that this could be supportive for anything that they're struggling with, if your own child or somebody that you know, this could be a good thing to pay attention to because it's super painful to see kids who really feel like they're putting in their best effort and energy. And feel like they're just not getting there and feel like something is wrong or broken with them. 100 percent. And I hope anyone listening who themselves or loved one is experiencing any of the symptoms we talked about today, headaches, dysregulation, fatigue, resistance with reading, learning, any of the stuff we talked about. Think about vision as likely a piece of the puzzle. And when you go to your eye doctor and they're getting you in and out, looking at the health of the eyes and eye sight, then I would definitely ask about vision and say, do I have the visual system to support performance over time, to support in your visual demands? And if they look at you like you're crazy or don't know how to answer that or don't even know how to test for that, that lets you know you should probably be taking a more comprehensive, holistic approach and finding somebody who looks at the brain and the person behind the eyes, because that's really what we're talking about here. And a functional vision evaluation picks up where the primary care leaves off. So we have screen fit link in the show notes. You can check it out. The code is drew DHRU. And then the clinic, if people want to reach out to the clinic, where should they go and just talk a little about what happens in this five day boot camp that you guys put together. So appreciate that. The clinic is my vision first. We've got two locations in Maryland, in Bethesda and Annapolis. And I'm so grateful that every week we have people from around the world flying in for these boot camps. And it's a five day program. We do a really thorough to our evaluation on Monday, on day one. We look at all the functional visual skills and abilities, tracking, focusing, depth perception, eye teaming, eye coordination. We lift up the hood, see exactly where everything is functioning. We then design a customized program for that person that starts that afternoon. We're shooting for about 12 hours of work within those five days. Friday, we do a fall up evaluation. We highlight all the wins from the week. We view the week as kind of like the reboot. But then for most cases, the work continues at home for the next three to six months. And we give you specific vision exercises based off of your profile. We set up regular calls with our docs where we increase the level of demand of what we're doing. We also put everybody in a customized virtual reality platform, which is so cool. So every patient gets a headset is theirs to keep when we're done. But within the headset, you're playing a certain game that's on the dock up for the day, whether it's chopping fruit, popping balloons, whatever that may be. We then can adjust the ocular. So you have to converge a specific amount or diverge a specific amount or adjusting the brightness of glare, the contrast, they're oscillating. We then get your answers and your date on the back end. The doctors go and adjust the settings. So next time you're in the platform to play a new game, it's at a higher level of demand. So it takes this really cool cross-drying approach where learning takes place in a 3D world, 2D world, and in a virtual world to allow for better integration and better results faster. And most of our patients, they do the week in office and the rest is done at home. We have many who come back for multiple weeks down the road. But it's a it's a pretty cool opportunity where with more opportunity for learning and less time between the learning, the brain has to adapt and learn quicker. And so the results we get in five days is the equivalent of sometimes three, four, even more months of work if you were local, make an endspere at a time. And I think the big reason that we offer this is there is not consistency yet on what vision training or vision therapy looks like. This isn't like PT, where spraying MCL, you're getting a dozen sessions for grade one, two dozen grade two, and there's a plenty of people around town to do this work. There's not consistency yet on what this work looks like. And so we're doing a lot to train docs and to raise the level of care and set a bar for everybody. We're just not quite there yet. So that's all under my vision first. And yeah, I mean, it's a cool opportunity to be able to work with really motivated people who are ready to do the work and come in saying, show me what to do to fix this rather than fix this for me. And outcomes typically drastically exceed what we expect. So some people come because something is wrong, like they've had a traumatic brain injury and some people come because they're interested in the performance aspect of it. They just want to get better. Yeah, we see eye turns, lazy eyes as an alternative to surgery. We see traumatic brain injury, concussion. We see people with reading and learning challenges. See people who want to get rid of their glasses, if that's an option for them. We also see a lot of people for longevity, for overall visual wellness. And now for those familiar with the term biohacking, biohacking vision has become kind of the new sexy thing because we now recognize how we can use the eyes to rewire the brain and to open up so many opportunities. And when we do outer vision work, especially if somebody's done a lot of the inner vision work, when the outer vision improves, we see more clearly when the inner vision improves, we can almost choose more powerfully. And so the ability for those to align allows for so many opportunities to open up for people, especially if they're done simultaneously. That's awesome. Love what you're up to, brother. Shout out to our mutual friend, Rungan, Dr. Rungan Chatterjee, who connected us. And he also got a chance to check out your clinic in person, heard a bunch of his stories from his time there and how much you enjoyed it. I'll hopefully I'll get a chance to check it out in the future. Right, such a pleasure. Thank you for coming on the podcast and talking about this super important topic. It is beyond my pleasure. I am so grateful for you and recognizing the importance of vision and sharing this with your community. When we know better, we can do better. And hopefully this changed everybody's perception of vision, which is really my goal. Hi, everyone, Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already subscribed, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share with a friend, share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter and it's called Try This. Every Friday, yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy to digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health. We cover everything from nutrition to mindset to metabolic health, sleep, community, longevity, and so much more. If you want to get on this email list, which is by the way free and get my weekly step-by-step protocols for whole body health and optimization, click the link in the show notes that's called Try This or just go to druproit.com. That's d-h-r-u-p-u-r-o-h-i-t.com and click on the tab that says Try This.