February 15, 2022 - EyeClarity Podcast
Today we are talking about Night Vision. What causes it and how to improve it. Struggles with night vision can cause a lot of disruption in one’s life. People tend to stop driving at night and don’t feel comfortable going out in the evening. This isn’t something that you have to just accept and live with, so today we are going to address some basic things you can do to help improve your night vision. Enjoy the show. If you want more, sign up for my newsletter at: www.drsamberne.com.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
retina, vitamin, milligrams, zinc, night vision, work, eyes, vision, blindness, doctor, talked, pigment, people, check, capillary, myopia, macular degeneration, light, tints, photoreceptor
Hello, everyone, it’s Dr. Sam, I’d like to welcome you to my EyeClarity podcast. This is a show that offers cutting-edge information on how to improve your vision and overall wellness through holistic methods. I so appreciate you spending part of your day with me. If you have questions, you can send them to hello@drsamberene.com. Now to the latest EyeClarity episode.
Hey, everybody, its Dr. Sam, I want to welcome you to another EyeClarity podcast. And today I want to talk about night vision. Now, when you start suffering, night blindness or vision loss, it can be a very scary situation. And I have worked with so many patients who come in for their vision exam. And they say, they say to me, you know, I’m afraid to drive at night, I’ve stopped going out, because I don’t see very well. Or another symptom is, people get very disoriented, if they’re out in the bright sun. And they go indoors, and the adjustment period of going from light to dark. Or the other way around, let’s say you’re in a darker environment, just with, you know, ambient light, and you go out into the sunlight, you suffer a lot of light sensitivity and glare. And when you go to a regular eye doctor, most of them will tell you just get used to it. It’s aging, there’s really not much you can do about it. Well, I’m here to say that there are many things that you can do naturally. And I’d like to go over those today. So with night vision, this is a very common malady. And probably one of the biggest reasons why people have night vision issues is because they are not absorbing their vitamin A.
Now in the retina, there is a a collection of photo receptor cells that are highly sensitive to darkness. And we call this pigment rhodopsin. And rhodopsin in the rods, enables us to quickly adapt our vision from dark to light and light to dark. And the most essential component in getting this rhodopsin to work effectively is vitamin A. In fact, vitamin A is the biggest reason why people have night vision issues when I’m talking about his deficiency in vitamin A. Now, there are many reasons why. Even if we eat foods with vitamin A, there is a compromised intake. In other words, we can’t absorb our vitamin A very well why is that? Well, let’s run through the list. If you have iron deficiency, if you’ve got digestive issues, if you are taking the cholesterol medication, statins, if you eat a low fat diet, a big one is zinc deficiency. And I talked about how zinc is such an important trace mineral for a variety of different cellular reactions in the body and most people are deficient in zinc, because of the soil depletion, the the poor agriculture that the farming practices that are being done, this creates a zinc deficiency and zinc is really important for the absorption of vitamin A. Now when we you know evaluate the retina and we start looking at the symptoms of well how do you know you might have night blindness. There’s some easy things that you can check off the list number one would be weak vision in dim light. Number two difficulty seeing at night. We’ve talked about that. Number three, the slow visual update adaptation either going from bright to dim or dim to bright
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and There was a study that was published in the Canadian Journal Journal of ophthalmology, which reported that 50 to 70% of people with night blindness had these visual conditions called nystagmus. That’s when the eyes oscillate back and forth, or strabismus where the two eyes don’t work together. And they also put into this category, people that had myopia. Now, myopia is the fastest growing vision problem today because we’re all on screens. And so, there, these are some of the you know the things visually that begin to create problems with seeing at night. Now, there can be a genetic predisposition to night blindness, and you can ask your doctor to do a test called an electro retina gram which determines the functions of the red retina and to see if there is a genetic component. But more times than not when people have night blindness when I when I do an exam. These are the conditions they also have cataracts, diabetic retinopathy, Corneal dystrophies, like keratoconus or Fuchs dystrophy, myopia, glaucoma, macular degeneration, retinal detachment, vitreous detachment, floaters and people who’ve already had lasik surgery. Now I want to go into some some other things that show up when you have a night vision issue and we talked about vitamin A deficiency dietary malabsorption in the gut.
Tarin Taryn is a very important amino acid I actually have put it in my vitamin, because tarring is so essential for getting rid of oxidative stress on a photoreceptor level of the retina. I talked about zinc deficiency that’s a really big one. So zinc is needed for the enzyme that converts retinol which is vitamin A to retinol r e r e ti n a l r e t i n o L to R et al. And when we are taking in vitamin A either through her foods or supplements, zinc is right there to help us with the absorption and most people are deficient in zinc. Alright, so I want to go through the list of essential nutrients because this is probably the fastest and most effective way to see if you can get a handle on reducing nightvision lutein Is that correct? No. I talk a lot about the protects the macula? Well, lutein is a carotenoid you want to get and again I’m these are just general recommendations you want to check with your physician based on your height, weight and age but generally an adult you want to get about 16 milligrams a day of lutein, another important carotenoids Xanthan you want to get about six milligrams a day.
Vitamin A. I like to use the vitamin A palmitate and I get somewhere between 10,015 1000 I use a day bilberry that is a fantastic herb that helps us with not only protecting the retina but it improves the micro capillary circulation in the retina. You’re wanting to get about 100 880 milligrams a day. Talked about tarring and Tarin helps in the regeneration of rhodopsin. You know I talked about rhodopsin as that pigment in the retina that’s essential for night vision 750 milligrams a day of Tarin the Omega threes two to 3000 milligrams a day of a really high quality Omega three. The other one that’s not talked about is green tea extract. I love that one. And again it helps protect the retina. It supports the photoreceptors prevents cell death in the retina green, green tea extract 500 milligrams a day and then zinc plus copper, zinc 40 milligrams a day. copper two to four milligrams a day.
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They are synergistically working together. So when you supplement with zinc sometimes you lower the copper levels and there is bioavailable copper that also supports cellular reactions. Some other things I include would be Ginko 120 milligrams a day. Again, this helps stabilize the micro capillaries. But make sure you check in with your doctor if you’re taking blood thinners that would be a contra inject indication for adding gingko to your diet. Vitamin B. Again, the big ones would be B 600 milligrams B 12,000. micro grams. Folate 400 micrograms biotin 400 micrograms riboflavin, which is B 250 milligrams thymine B 100 milligrams. So, in terms of glasses, if you wear progressive lenses, my advice would be to wear a single vision lens when you’re driving. Sometimes getting an anti reflective coating on the lens can be helpful. Again, check in with your eye doctor about that. Certain tints sometimes can help deflect either the glare, or enhance your night vision. I know with a lot of my patients who have suffered macular degeneration, we use the yellow tints. And then in terms of eye exercises, if you can develop better peripheral vision, so that your two eyes are working together. I like doing my yin yang peripheral vision exercise that’s on my website. And that one will retrain your eyes and brain to have your two eyes work together. So send me your questions if you have any. Hello@drsamberne.com. That’s my take on night vision and how to improve it. And I look forward to seeing you in the next podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in. Take good care.
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