March 29, 2025 - EyeClarity Podcast
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Show Notes
Keywords: Iridology, eye health, iris analysis, health insights, holistic health, dietary recommendations, preventive health, Sam Berne
Summary: In this conversation, Sam Berne discusses the practice of iridology, explaining how the iris serves as a map to the body’s health. He elaborates on the significance of eye color and pigments in diagnosing potential health issues, emphasizing the importance of dietary and lifestyle changes for prevention and overall well-being. Berne highlights the educational aspect of iridology, advocating for a proactive approach to health rather than merely treating symptoms.
Takeaways
• Iridology analyzes the iris to reflect organ health.
• Eye color can indicate specific health tendencies.
• Blue eyes may suggest lymphatic and respiratory issues.
• Mixed eye colors often relate to liver and digestive health.
• Brown eyes can indicate blood toxicity and sluggish elimination.
• Iridology helps identify genetic health patterns.
• The shape of the pupil can reveal spinal health.
• Pigments in the iris indicate metabolic inefficiencies.
• Dietary changes can support eye and overall health.
• Iridology is a preventative tool for health education.
Sound Bites
• “The iris is a map to the body.”
• “Iridology can be used as a tool.”
• “Brown eyes struggle with blood toxicity.”
• “Iridology can show inflammation signs.”
Chapters
00:00Understanding Iridology: The Eye as a Health Map
13:06The Colors of the Iris: Insights into Health
19:51Pigments in the Iris: Indicators of Metabolic Health
Sam Berne (00:00.414)
One of the methods that I use to analyze and help people is by doing a investigation into the colored part of the eye called the iris and the iris is a map to the body and iridology is the study of the color the pigmentation and the structure of the iris and we also look
at the pupil which is inside the iris and through lots of clinical research over the years. There have been certain say patterns that show up based on the color of your eyes. So just generally speaking, if you’re blue-eyed like I am, there’s a tendency toward lymphatic weakness, sinus congestion.
lung congestion and arthritic symptoms, arthritic symptoms. If you’re dark brown, that’s a person that tends to be more towards having blood issues and glandular disturbances. And then the third type is the kind of the mixed where that’s a person that’s inherited both the brown and the blue eyes.
And they tend to suffer liver and digestive issues. So when we look at the colored part of the eye and we’re looking at the color the pigmentation and the structure. This is going to reflect several things our organ health our glandular health. It’s also going to show us genetic tendencies that perhaps our parents or grandparents were dealing with, you know, where could be things like
blood sugar issues or heart issues thyroid issues just as some examples, but iridology can be used as a tool. It’s the way I use it to measure different strengths and deficiencies that are located within the body and especially when you use it with kids like I do at kid power where I’m working with a lot of special needs kids. I mean just the other day I was
Sam Berne (02:28.673)
doing some, you know, vision analysis of several kids and I did a little iridology on them and parents couldn’t believe how spot-on I was about what their nurture points were in terms of their digestive health, their glandular health, toxicities that they might have to deal with. So when we look at the iris, we’re looking at all these different
pigments and patterns and colors that can be proactive and preventative, you know, like for example, sometimes I’ll pick up say a cardiac issue in the iris. I’ll see say a certain way the the heart. You know the heart pattern is and so that can tell us that herbally we might be able to do some things like Hawthorne.
as a way to support the heart better. Or if we have lymphatic congestion, it might be advised to avoid foods with gluten and dairy because those are definitely going to set off the respiratory issues and it’s also going to affect the lymphatic health which is going to cause inflammation.
So I want to give a shout out before I go any further to the father of iridology in the US, Dr. Bernard Jensen and Dr. Jensen. I actually studied with his daughter-in-law Ellen, Dr. Ellen Jensen. She was my teacher and that’s how I became certified in iridology. But Bernard Jensen was such a pioneer in the field of iridology. mean, he, I think he taught.
iridology in like 55 different countries amazing and he had the wherewithal to develop the maps and you know collaborated with a lot of different doctors around the world to create a mapping system today that is really great in terms of pinpointing different patterns in the iris and you know we talk about
Sam Berne (04:48.013)
How you know the eye is very connected systemically and metabolically to the body through Chinese medicine and acupuncture. Well, it’s also very connected to our glands our organs are inflammatory issues possibly cholesterol problems thyroid issues and to be able to have that validation proactively and especially in kids it’s
really really a great tool to help kids get what they need because if they have the proper energy on a cellular level, they’re going to learn faster and develop quicker, especially through the functional vision therapy programs that we’re talking about. All right. So I started off by talking about the three different colors of the eye.
blue eyes mixed and brown. I want to go into a little more detail on each one and it’s very simple. If you’ve got blue eyes, they can be light blue, gray, green, blue. There tends to be a sluggishness in the lymphatic system, mucus and sinus congestion. Inflammation is a big issue for the blue-eyed person, especially in the upper respiratory tract.
where you get, you know, conditions like croup and bronchitis and you know, colds and things like that that create a lot of mucus. So it really comes down to number one eliminating gluten, dairy and sugar and this includes, you know, wheat and making sure you’re getting enough of an anti-inflammatory diet things like celery. That’s probably my number one celery cucumber.
sprouts and lemon water. Okay, you can also do apple cider vinegar sipping it is a is a way in a glass of water. Again, you want to get the raw you can put apple cider vinegar is vinegar on your salad dressing berries apples. Pears are great for the blue-eyed people herbal teas like nettle dandelion clover. One of my favorites is oat straw tea.
Sam Berne (07:10.001)
Or you can do Mullen teas very good for the respiratory health. Omega-3 things like flax chia wild-caught salmon. These are things that are really helpful and foods that you want to avoid. If you’ve got blue eyes would be dairy products for fine sugar and heavy starches like the white foods white bread and pastries. All right, the second color Constitution is the mix the hazel.
These are like a pure green light brown. There’s a blend of blue and brown. I mean you can ask the person or ask the mom, you know, do you think your child has blue eyes or hazel eyes, you know, get their feedback. So with this particular set of colors, the mixed colors, there tends to be a problem with the liver and digestive health. There’s more inflammation in the digestive tract. They might not be digesting their food well.
This could be leading to things like candida or irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn’s disease. And of course, liver is very important for our eyes, but it’s important as a detoxification organ. Another thing the the mixed Constitution will show is blood sugar fluctuation. So we might see markings on the pancreas as an example, bile insufficiency, sluggish gallbladder.
Remember that it’s very important for us to absorb our eye nutrients vitamin A, is fat soluble lutein and zeaxanthin. So if we have a problem with our gallbladder or we don’t have a gallbladder or we’re dealing with a lot of toxins in our body, then we’re not absorbing those fat soluble foods that are really feeding the eyes. That’s why we get night vision issues, dry eye retina issues, cataracts.
You know macular degeneration all of these things show up later. what is the recommended food for the mixed color? I would say number one liver supporting foods. This would be carrots beets artichokes turmeric and lemon high fiber vegetables really good the cruciferous vegetables would be like broccoli or cauliflower kale radishes and then the low glycemic
Sam Berne (09:35.157)
fruits and I think this goes for everybody is if you’re going to do some kind of fruit or carbohydrates pastries sugars, you want to go more towards low glycemic index foods. So this could be berries cherries grapefruit and bitters. So this would be something you put on your salad in the middle of the day could be dandelion greens arugula the bitter bitter type.
vegetables for your salads go a long way for cleansing the liver. Obviously foods you want to avoid fried greasy fast foods, alcohol, processed sugars and food additives and dyes. I mean that goes across the board. And then the third type I call the hematogenic type or the brown eyes. These are the dark brown black brown may look velvety.
or uniform. So these people tend to have a really strong constitution, but they struggle struggle sometimes with blood toxicity things like anemia or you know blood imbalances. They also can lean more towards sluggish elimination. So you have a tendency toward liver and bowel sluggishness and there’s a risk of
Mineral imbalances like not absorbing the minerals. These are really people that are on the go a lot. So they need B vitamins and minerals that they’re absorbing and the B vitamins help them. They’re going to do mineral rich foods and this would support the thyroid really well seaweed dolls. And then of course the dark greens lentils work really well quinoa.
clean proteins. So if they’re going to do, you know, more animal products, I would say cage free eggs, wild caught salmon, grass-fed beef, organic chicken, and then chlorophyll rich foods like chlorella, spirulina, wheatgrass works well. They tend to do better if the foods are cooked. So things like Kitchery, that’s an Ayurvedic formula.
Sam Berne (11:58.955)
rice and beans and vegetables that’s very healing for the body and you can use different Ayurvedic herbs like cumin, coriander, turmeric.
Sam Berne (12:12.403)
Those things help with the digestifier and Kitchery is a really great great thing for the brownite folks. You want to avoid excess red meat, white sugar, refined grains and synthetic binders and fillers. So that’s kind of the scenario with the with the colored part of the eyes.
The next thing I want to do is I want to go into the pigments of the eyes before I go into the pigments. I want to reveal I want to share what are the inherent strengths of what iridology can do and what it can’t do. So first of all, iridology can improve the organs the glands and the tissues. It tells us what
is weak what we need to nurture on what nutrients they need to utilize what what are the the problems with toxicity? they discharge the toxins? Sometimes the pigments and the markings can tell us what special nurturing is needed in terms of toxicity. Iridology can also show inflammation signs.
in an organ or a gland and that tells us how we might react to illness autoimmune disease. It’s also going to show us genetic patterns. So even though we may not be dealing with it, there might be tendencies based on our mother and father and by the way, the right eye is the father and the left eye is the mother in terms of our, you know, genetic connections. Another thing that we can look at in iridology is the
The shape of the pupil that regulates how much light gets in and it tells us the pupil shape tells us about the health of the spine. It can also tell us about what part of the spine is traumatized or is injured based on the shape. And so chiropractors use this quite a bit as a diagnostic tool. I certainly use it in my practice in craniosacral therapy.
Sam Berne (14:32.347)
looking at the shape of the pupil. If it’s not completely round, if part of it is kind of flat or it’s elliptical. This tells us that there’s definitely some problems with our spinal health. Everything from the cervical spine all the way down to the sacrum. Now, another thing the iris will show us is problems, weaknesses in our connective tissue.
Tendency towards tend we might have a tendency towards hernias hemorrhoids, varicose veins and even scoliosis. Iridology can show us glandular deficiencies, high cholesterol levels and lymphatic congestion. But now here are some things that iridology can’t do. We can’t diagnose disease and treat based on that. It doesn’t diagnose things like parasites.
our Candida. cannot confirm bacteria viral or fungal infections. We can’t tell whether a woman is pregnant. We can’t diagnose tumors cancer or whether a person has kidney issues in iridology. We talked about the three different constitutional types. And now what I want to do is I want to move towards the pigments. So
What are the pigments mean in iridology pigments are the colored spots. There are the the flex there the specs that we see in the iris and they can be there. Usually we see them really quite prominently where they’re kind of deposits of byproducts of inefficiencies in our metabolism.
Sometimes they’re inherited. Sometimes they show up later. So they offer insights into different glandular and organs of the body. So for example, one of the most common pigments that we see is orange and this is often related to pancreatic stress or blood sugar metabolism issues and it can be a predisposition to things like hypoglycemia.
Sam Berne (16:56.679)
insulin resistance diabetes. It’s also something I look for in cataract development because sometimes cataracts develop based on blood sugar imbalances. And if you can repair those sometimes the cataracts can slow down their progression and even in reverse and early stage cataracts. Brown either the rust or the reddish brown suggest
that there’s stress in the liver in the gallbladder in the digestive tract and there might be a history of poor detoxification or exposure to environmental toxins. The third pigment that I see is yellow and this is related to lymphatic congestion. It also can be related to kidney stress. Usually you’ll see a diffused ring maybe around the
the edge of the the iris and this also can affect the skin health. This can tell us about skin. Another pigment will see is dark blue or black and this often relates to stagnation or degeneration in a certain organ zone. So this can relate to long-standing toxicities or poor circulation that area. One of the things I look at is dental health and
If you’ve had mercury amalgams or mercury removed, have you done enough toxicity release of the mercury or is it still, you know, part of your systemic and metabolic health? And then there’s the white pigment around the edge of the iris and this can relate to cholesterol imbalances, fatty deposits, circulatory congestions, drusen in the retina.
and inflammation and acute stages. Whenever I see cholesterol rings, one of the things I’m really looking at is liver health because if we can prove improve liver health that can really affect a lot of different aspects of the health and the body. So I think it comes down to a couple things. First of all, I think we need to take a look at our genetic tendencies. Number two, I think we need to take a look at
Sam Berne (19:21.695)
What are the actual nurture points of our glands and organs in our current health and can we be proactive in educating ourselves in dietary changes possibly supplements and obviously reducing things like sugar dairy gluten wheat and then the third is lifestyle our stress response to life and you know how we deal with family dynamics with
You know relationships, I think the lifestyle is also part of this whole situation. So in summary, what I would say is that iridology is an educational and preventative tool where we can work on proactively our health and restore balance and vitality from the inside out. So we’re not treating symptoms. We’re not treating disease, but we’re trying to restore balance and harmony.
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