March 21, 2025 - EyeClarity Podcast
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Keywords
nutrition, brain health, children, vision therapy, developmental delays, biochemical imbalances, essential nutrients, meal planning, healthy eating, cognitive function
Summary
This presentation by Sam Berne explores the critical role of nutrition in enhancing brain health and functional vision therapy for children aged 3 to 16. It emphasizes the importance of addressing biochemical imbalances, essential nutrients, and effective meal planning to support cognitive function and overall development.
takeaways
• Nutrition is a building block for children’s learning and development.
• Biochemical imbalances can hinder nutrient absorption in children.
• The digestive system’s health is closely linked to brain function.
• Sugar addiction in children can complicate dietary changes.
• Essential nutrients like Omega-3 and zinc are vital for brain and eye health.
• Hydration is crucial for maintaining cognitive and digestive health.
• Meal planning should focus on whole foods and nutrient-dense options.
• Early discussions about nutrition can improve therapy outcomes.
• Healthy eating strategies can be adapted for busy families.
• Food choices directly impact children’s behavior and learning capabilities.
Sound Bites
• “Sugar addiction is hard to break.”
• “Zinc is important for retinal health.”
• “Food is the fuel for vision.”
Chapters
00:00Introduction to Nutrition and Brain Health
02:47The Importance of Nutrition in Developmental Delays
06:11Biochemical Imbalances and Nutritional Testing
08:59Essential Nutrients for Vision and Brain Health
11:55Meal Planning and Healthy Eating Strategies
14:48Conclusion: Fueling Vision and Learning
Sam Berne (00:00)
Hey everyone, welcome to the program today. So this is a lecture that I gave recently to my students on the aspects of nutrition and high brain health and this is working with kids between the ages of 3 and 16. So I hope you enjoy the presentation. Thanks for tuning in. Hey everyone, welcome to the presentation today. So it’s
It’s great to be here. I enjoyed your Q &A at the beginning. So I want to jump in and talk about the nourishing vision and this has to do with what are the best foods in nutritional practices to enhance functional vision therapy in children. So I’ll start off by telling a story.
I was practicing in the East Coast at the time and I was giving a presentation down in Florida and it was a very well received professional lecture on vision therapy, nutrition, naturopathic medicine. And at the end of the lecture, there was this man that was sitting in the front row.
and everybody had left and he said I want to introduce myself. My name is Dr. Sutton. I’m a professor at Berry College here in Fort Lauderdale. I’m also a developmental optometrist. I’ve been in practice over 45 years and I really enjoyed your lecture, but there were some holes in it and I was kind of taken aback by it because
You know, I was a hot shot. had already published a couple of books. I was very well known. I was lecturing all over the place. And here was this gentleman saying, you know, dude, you got some holes in your thinking. So it caught my attention and we went out to dinner and he told me a little bit about his background and all the things he had done working with special needs kids.
And so we struck up a friendship and I actually became a student of his. And over a course of many years, he and I did a lot of collaborations together. And he was in practice in Miami Beach, Florida. And he was a professor at Berry College where he taught special ed teachers and teachers who worked with learning disabilities.
So I definitely had a lot to learn and got some humility over it. And there are many things I learned from Dr. Sutton, but one of the main things that I did learn and this had to do with nutrition is that when we would consult on a lot of different cases and these were complicated cases where there were multiple developmental delays sensory motor integration issues birth trauma.
Obviously there was biochemistry issues. One of the things that he taught me was that the nutrition is an essential piece the building block sometimes the secret in the puzzle and really stimulating a child’s learning and development because what he said was that when a child has got
developmental delays, possibly traumas, other issues that usually there’s a biochemical imbalance going on on a cellular level, meaning that there is an interference in the child’s ability to absorb nutrients. Now, of course, there can be things like inflammation, oxidative stress, poor digestion.
And you know, many other things that are obstacles which inhibit the ability of us to absorb our foods. mean, plenty of us as adults have had these kinds of dysbiosis imbalances in the digestive system. And we know the digestive system has been called the second brain and it mirrors a lot of the things that go on in our upstairs brain in our head.
And because our eyes originate from the brain, we have to include the eyes in the brain discussion. And so the eyes are distant relative to our gut health and especially working with kids where we’re trying to have them make big changes in their development and getting them to learn. They have to have the energy to do that. And if they have
biochemical imbalances on a cellular level. They probably don’t have the energy to do the learning and the changing and the transformation that we as therapists are asking them to do. So in the sequence of when we might introduce the conversation of biochemical imbalances, especially with parents. It’s important to have that discussion early on. Now, one of the ways that I open the door with that is
That in my history, and it’s a very extensive history over 12 pages, lifestyle, birth, motor skills, auditory skills, many other things that we have the parent write out. What does a child eat? What do they eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks? What are their drinks? Because a lot of times if there is a biochemical imbalance, we start to see where kids
gravitate certain to certain types of foods and one of my favorite games. I like to play with the kids is I’ll say, okay, Johnny, we’re going to leave your mom and dad out of this discussion. You and I we’re going to go down to the local grocery store. Just you and I and I want you to take me to your favorite aisle. What would you go for? What would you eat? What are you thinking about and 99 % of the time it’s either cookies candy.
carbohydrates, sodas, you know, all the things that are going to interfere with having that long-range energy that we need to have proper brain chemistry, mood and also the ability to learn because we need the energy to do that. So once we have the diet, once we know, you know, what we’re dealing with another thing that we have to
Take into account in the equation is that if a child is going for sugary things, carbohydrate things that this has almost become an addiction and it’s very difficult to just go cold turkey on any kind of addiction, especially sugar. So one of the things we have to look at and there are many tests that we can use. I have a book that I wrote about 10 years ago called taking it in and in that book I talk about
different biochemistry tests that I do that give us a baseline on what’s going on. Now we can obviously do a 24-hour blood test. could certainly order, you know, other things like what are your D3 levels? What’s your, know,
protein inflammation, homocysteine levels will tell us about inflammation. A lot of things that we can we can ask for but usually in a blood test things are missed because unless there’s a gross imbalance, everything’s going to look pretty normal. So then we start looking at more subtle tests like a 24-hour urinalysis test urine test, which can give us information on heavy metal toxicity.
or saliva test, which gives us information on endocrine health or hair mineral analysis, which tells us about what are the minerals that work. We’re excreting into the hair and these minerals are the spark plugs which make ourselves work and based on mineral ratios. We can see if we’re either sensitive to carbohydrates, not absorbing carbohydrates, whether we have inflammation, adrenal thyroid imbalances.
heavy metals, other toxicities. So there’s a lot of things that you can get from all of these kinds of tests. Not one test gives you everything. I also like stool tests. If we’re thinking about parasites and you can even do bio resonant testing, which is more of an energetic way of measuring the body’s compatibility, especially with foods and supplements and so on. Another way we can test it is by going through certain
guidelines, which I’m going to talk about and you can do something called kinesiology muscle testing and for those of you that aren’t doctors certainly doing kinesiology, which is where you read the body based on the body strength while they’re holding the supplement or the food or the or the whatever and if it’s strong, then the body could use it. There’s a good chance. There’s a compatibility going on.
So the role of nutrition is so important in our functional vision therapy program because if we can improve dietary absorption and get the right foods in the body, it is going to have a very high impact on things like visual processing, visual coordination, visual tracking and cognitive function as we call it our prefrontal cortex. So
The the issue around not having the proper nutrients in the body affects us from everything when we start the primitive reflex therapy vestibular stimulation gross and fine motor skill sets that we’re working on and common nutritional deficiencies that we can say pretty much are in most of these kids would be number one Omega-3 fatty acids.
Number two would be the trace mineral zinc. Number three would be the fat soluble vitamin A or beta carotene and then B vitamins magnesium and perhaps other minerals trace minerals depending on the stress level. Most kids are under stress. So they’re going to need B complex and minerals. A lot of times they’re not holding their minerals. We can look at iridology.
And we can tell say on a blue-eyed person their constitution is saying they need to have a strong lymph system and the very sensitive to gluten-dairy and sugar. We can look at the mixed hazel color, which has to do with the possibility of maybe liver gallbladder issues. And then we can look at the brown colored eyes, which can reflect certain things blood disorders and certain issues with
Most of the glands and organs could be pancreas liver gallbladder and so on. So we can use a variety of different ways to figure out what are the possible nutritional deficiencies. So going through this in more detail number one, I think omega-3 is so essential not only for our eye health retinal health, but also our brain health and some of the sources that we can get omega-3 would be wild-caught salmon.
grass-fed eggs. Obviously everything we do is related to organic non-gmo very important. So omega-3 wild-caught salmon sardines walnuts flax seeds chia seeds. These are all possibilities vitamin A, is related to retinol or beta-carotene. This affects our night vision. It affects our focusing muscles.
It affects our retina health. So these would be foods that contain eggs, carrots, sweet potatoes and dark leafy vegetables. Then there’s the fat soluble plant carotenoids called lutein and zeaxanthin which protect us against blue light and they also can help with visual acuity. Lutein and zeaxanthin can be found in spinach, kale and eggs and bell peppers.
I find that zinc and copper are notoriously low in kids and zinc is very important for retinal health and it’s also a neurotransmitter. So it’s copper. And so where can you get these pumpkin seeds chickpeas cashews and shellfish and then we look at the B vitamins and I would recommend getting folate not folic acid. Make sure you’re getting an end niacin B3
It’s really good for circulation, but you want to get a full spectrum B complex. This is so good for nerve function and stress. So where do we get B vitamins grass-fed meats eggs legumes dark leafy greens and then finally magnesium magnesium is such an essential trace mineral and most of us are really deficient in it.
Magnesium helps in so many different chemical reactions on a cellular level. It’s really great for the muscles, especially the eye muscles and visual stress. We can find magnesium things like avocados, nutseed and cacao dark chocolate. Obviously the foods you want to avoid would be processed foods, sugar, artificial dyes and preservatives, omega-6 overloads. So too much
Omega-6 creates more inflammation and then of course gluten-dairy considerations. I find with most of these kids if we take them off gluten-dairy and sugar immediately their behavior gets better and their cognitive health improves. Something that’s not talked about is hydration. Make sure you’re getting six to eight to ten glasses of healthy water daily.
We’re now recommending hydrogen water or and or structured water. Those can be very helpful in terms of giving the cell more energy and being able to absorb the water better because when we’re dehydrated this affects our brain health and our digestive health and it creates more inflammation. So you have to be really really careful. All right. So in terms of meal planning some things we talk about would be
getting those Omega-3 rich smoothies in the morning. If you can get a smoothie in there that works really well. Again, we use things like celery and beets and kale. Maybe a little ginger turmeric. You could add a date if you wanted to. Cabbage also. Again, it’s kind of you have to see what kids with their texture.
their ability to handle different textures. I should say especially orally some kids just can’t do smoothies try to get more protein in the morning whether you do almond butter eggs avocados and try to do more whole grains as opposed to white food again when we when we get into the white food. This is really going to be low calories.
lots of carbs, a boosting or a spike of the blood sugar levels, which are going to throw us off in our behavior and our focus. So lunch and dinner could be things like wild caught salmon, grass-fed meats, root vegetables. If you’re going to do snacks again, organic nuts, cacaua, fruit with almond butter, hummus.
with carrots and easy food swaps. So healthier, healthier alternatives for busy parents. How do you figure this out? Because you can’t keep going to McDonald’s or Wendy’s and you know, expect to get the proper nutrients that you need. So food is the fuel for vision. That’s what I’m going to leave you with and you want to
have this discussion about nutrition. Either in the first or second sessions are very early on in your physical vision therapy program. And the reason is is the earlier you can Institute the food conversation the supplement conversation the better chance you have of getting success in the physical therapy. Remember if you’ve got the energy you’re going to absorb what you’re trying to learn better.
than if your energy is inconsistent because of poor diet. So this is round one of nourishing your body and nourishing your vision. And these are some of the best practices and foods that enhance function in children.
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