May 25, 2023 - EyeClarity Podcast
Here is a great presentation I gave recently that I wanted to share with you. I talk about my history and how, as an eye doctor, I came to work with children struggling with their development and how that lead to KidPower. Enjoy the show.
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
child, primitive reflexes, eye, vision, kids, trauma, nearsighted, visual, important, therapy, understand, create, doctor, called, parents, conditions, birth, developmental, nutrition, problem
Hello, everyone, it’s Dr. Sam, I’d like to welcome you to my EyeClarity podcast. This is a show that offers cutting edge information on how to improve your vision and overall wellness through holistic methods. I so appreciate you spending part of your day with me. If you have questions, you can send them to hello@drsamberne.com. Now to the latest EyeClarity episode.
Hey everyone, I want to welcome you to my talk today, here at Kidpower. And Albuquerque. Kidpower is near and dear to my heart, because it’s a place I’ve been coming for, I don’t know, over 20 years, and I help the kids with their vision. So I’m going to talk about that today. And to begin with, what I want to do is I want to talk about a core issue that has been coming up in the context of working with kids. And that core issue has to do with cracking the code, cracking the code, with each child, what is it going to take to turn the switch on so that they’re thriving? And when I see a child here at Kidpower, or in my practice, that’s my biggest curiosity, because usually, you know, parents are coming in and we know as parents were really struggling with what’s going on with my child, and why are they struggling in school? And how come they’re not reading and we just went to an IEP, you know, we did the testing, and now they may end up in a special education class.
So I have to say, I have some personal experience, because I was one of those kids. I grew up in the Northeast, and I came from a family that really stressed education. And my parents, my grandparents, my aunts, and uncles, a bunch of intellectuals. And so I remember my uncle going to his house, and he had like, all these books on foreign language, he actually spoke five different languages. And my, my mom and dad, I mean, they just stressed college and grad school. But the thing was, is I was eight years old, and I was diagnosed with a learning disability. And, as I, as I think about it, now, it’s kind of a painful time because I didn’t want to read I didn’t like reading. I wasn’t a good reader. School was really challenging for me. And so my, my mom took me to a lot of places. And we actually ended up like a lot of the kids here at Kidpower. I ended up at an eye doctors office. And he said to me, Well, you’re nearsighted. And let’s give you some glasses. And so I got these lenses. And I started to memorize, that’s how I got through school. And I never was a good test taker. And I just worked really hard. And I was able to do pretty well in high school and college and got into professional school, graduated and I met a, what we call it developmental optometrists. This was a, an eye doctor who looked at vision in a more holistic way. And I was 20 years old. And he had a course that he was offering. And he also was offering his services as a doctor and as me as a patient. So I started going with him, and he diagnosed me with a condition called convergence insufficiency.
Meaning my left eye used to wander out, I would see double vision, I couldn’t focus. I had a little bit of impulsivity, a little bit of hyperactivity, and sounds like ADHD, right. And that’s kind of what I had. And so through his physical therapy exercises, I was able to heal that condition. And because of my pretty extreme nearsightedness that completely dissolved, so I didn’t need my lenses anymore. And so today, I, you know, I’m on my fifth book that I’ve written, and I read voraciously, and my learning is incredible. But when I see kids, I have a lot of empathy for them and their parents, because I was the puzzle I didn’t, you know, know, the first thing and my mom didn’t know at that point, that there were other resources like this. And so, when I meet a child and meet a family, I’m not just looking at the eyeballs, you know, and in traditional eye care, you know, we’ve all been gone to an eye for an eye exam. And what happens you sit in a dark room, and the doctor is flipping lenses. You’re looking behind a machine, and, you know, especially in children and then they use eye drops and it’s a pretty traumatic experience for Right.
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And, and I just, I just kind of go, Look, there’s more to this than trying to figure out the lens prescription and use eyedrops to figure out, you know, something that’s going on that maybe is a learning issue and developmental issue that’s much more than in the eye. And one of the, one of the places that I studied was a place called the gazelle Institute. So Gazelle arnoff, Gazelle was a physician, who in 1948, started this institute, it was, at that point, it was affiliated with Yale University. And being a developmental specialist, he brought in a multidisciplinary group of professionals, who would evaluate children, it reminds me a little bit of Kidpower, in the sense that this is a multidisciplinary clinic, where the therapists and the professionals are studying a variety of different things. Well, I went there in the mid 80s, I spent a year there, and I learned how to evaluate a whole the whole child, the whole person, not just the eyeballs. And so we looked at speech and language, we looked at actually primitive reflexes, we looked at nutrition, we looked at the stimulator health, we looked at trauma, there were many things that we did that at that Institute, which helped me understand about seeing the whole picture seeing, okay, what is the time we should be introducing this activity or this modality. And it was really a profound training, and it launched me, along with my personal healing into my, you know, my current professional state.
And of course, I’ve had many lifetimes in it, studying many different things. But the point is, is that with a child that is struggling, and you know, by the way, you know, the diagnosis of ADHD, ADHD, and the whole spectrum disorders, is off the charts. You know, back in 2016, there was an article that was published in one of the medical journals that said, about 15% of all kids who are diagnosed with ADHD have vision problems. And maybe right here, I should make a distinction between what is a vision problem, can you define that. So when you go to the eye doctor, and they have you read the eye chart, that’s called 2020. That’s your eyesight. Vision is how the eyes and the brain and the body work together, it’s a developmental skill set, that we actually start learning. I say we because all of us started learning. While our mother was carrying us in gestation, that’s when we start to develop our peripheral vision floating in the amniotic fluid, or the birth experience coming out of the birth canal, there are certain signals, cues and signals that the infant needs to have in order to have their sensory motor systems turned on.
And then the bonding period is also critical. And remember, establishing eye contact with your mom and dad, breastfeeding, exploring your environment on the floor, creeping and crawling, doing tummy time, see, all of those fundamental experiences affect our sensory motor development, our brain function. And I just want to say that the eyes are the only part of the brain that sit outside the cranial vault, but the eyes are brain tissue. And because they are brain tissue, they fall under the category of something called neuro plasticity. And all of these kids, one of the main things they have going for them is they have a plasticity in their nervous system, their fluid body, their movement, their emotional body, and so on, that can be repaired, it can be stimulated, they can be improved upon.
And the problem that I see in traditional medical care, is that number one, all the medical practitioners are staying in their little world. And so if you go to a certain doctor, they’re going to diagnose you with that particular thing that they’re specializing in. And so then parents go to three or four of these specialists, and they walk away and they’re totally confused with, what do I do with my child? Where do I plug in? How do I do this? And I remember when I first met Carla, and And we talked about, you know, children and learning, we were so in resonance about with these families understanding that there’s more to it than treating the symptoms, instead getting to the root cause and understanding the global situation with how to unlock the blocks that these kids maybe have come in with. And it’s part of their process. So, in the exploration, in my part of it envision, I want to talk a little bit more about the difference between visual acuity and visual processing.
So if you think about this particular contrast, eyesight, seeing things clearly is a static experience, you know, I see it clear at 20 feet, I see it clear up close. And that’s static. But in vision, it’s so related to our movement, our balance, our orientation, our ability to see the parts, and make a whole perception figure ground, can I see the detail and make a relationship with the whole picture? visual memory, recognizing shapes and forms. And, you know, I know, in my case, when I was back to that eight year old, one of the things that I knew is I was able to see patterns. And I see this in kids here, that, okay, they may have some confusion going on. But if you can set up the environment in a way that’s supportive, then you start to see some of their genius come through.
And each one of them has an individual lock, and key that you have to put together. So it isn’t a cookbook approach. This is another issue I see in some of these big medical practices, is one size fits all. And this is certainly true in the school system, especially in the public schools. And understandably so because they’re overwhelmed. The public schools just don’t have the staff, they don’t have the money. And then these kids get put into these special education classes, and they get lost. And that’s why I’ve always said to parents, you have to be the squeaky wheel, you have to ask for more services, you may have to step outside your normal, you know, every day public school experience to get some help. So that being said, when I am evaluating a child, one of the things that I’m looking at, is in their visual system, how connected are their eyes, to their body and their movement. And I would say the fundamental theme that I see over and over again, whether it’s here at Kidpower, or in the bigger stage with kids along the spectrum disorders, is that their eyes and their vision are developmentally behind some of their other sensory motor skills. And when we think about any person, we think about their nervous system, right? We call that the fight flight freeze response.
One of the people that’s really done a lot of great research and writing on it is a man named Steven Porges. And he came up with a theory called the poly vagal theory, I would recommend looking at that it’s a very complex theory. And I I want to give Dr. Porges, full kind of honoring and what his writings are and his teachings are, but one of the aspects that I really take away when I study Dr. Porges is trauma. And so I want to take a moment and I want to talk a bit about trauma. Gabor, Ma Tei has written a lot about trauma, I highly recommend him he’s a very well known psychiatrist. He’s written a number of books. He wrote a great book on ADHD many years ago, and he’s talked a lot about trauma. I have personal experience with trauma in that when I started my first practice in the Philadelphia area i i associated with another developmental optometrist. His name was Dr. Ellis Adelman and for five years I apprenticed in his office, and it was probably one of the most
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the deepest experiences I had in learning how to work with kids. Dr. Elman was amazing. He was in his 60s when I was in my 20s. And I was so grateful that he took me in. And we actually ended up becoming partners. I built up a very big practice in Philadelphia, which I sold and moved out to New Mexico about 25 years ago. But the point that I’m trying to make is that in this trauma situation, one of the things that I had to do to build my practice in Philadelphia, because I couldn’t get any patients, because we were in a very conservative area, is I went to some of the hospitals, and I volunteered to help their traumatic brain injury patients. And over a period of about three months, I was able to help hundreds of people heal their double vision, their blurred vision, their brain fog, their memory issues, through the physical light therapy techniques that I learned at the gazelle Institute. And it launched me into a position where I became very well known in Philadelphia, because of my traumatic brain injury work and the regular eye doctors, they had no interest in working with these kinds of patients. But the physical therapy was the thing that brought them back. Now, in that process, I also recognized there was a whole population of kids in the Philadelphia area that were special needs. And these were Down syndrome, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, obviously, the spectrum disorders. So I focused on that community. And I said, I can really help this community. And between working with those kids and working with a traumatic brain injury, they kind of came together.
And it’s how I built a very successful practice. And I got my name out there. And I was very well known. And I did some research and writings on traumatic brain injury. And so I really understood how trauma affects our nervous system. And even more deeply our brain, our cerebral spinal fluid, are connected tissue or fascia. And with the visual system, when we are exposed to trauma, because the eyes are kind of a soft tissue doesn’t show up on the MRI scan. So it’s soft symptoms, like you know, as I say, double vision, blurred vision, focusing issues, memory problems, issues with vestibular and balance and orientation. And so through the physical therapy, I was able to help people heal and release the trauma.
And it kind of catapulted me into this next phase is when I moved out to New Mexico, and I started working with birth trauma, I started working with kids who were along the spectrum disorders, and I remember working with an OT up in Santa Fe where I practice and live. And she said, You know, I think you want to go back to massage school and learn cranial sacral therapy. And this was a major breakthrough for me, because I spent about two years studying cranial sacral. And I started to apply it with these kids who had had birth trauma. And it unlocked the developmental delays that they were going through it not only did it improve the visual system, but it seemed to balance out their nervous system. And it also helped their ability to sleep better, to function better to learn better. And so I recognize this as a great modality in releasing trauma. So one of the things to note in this whole population is what was the birth boy. And this is such a pivotal question to be asking. And it’s kind of weird when I go to conferences, and I might start talking to other doctors about birth and the importance of birth. deer in the headlights.
They have no concept relationship or interest in how our birth imprint affects us. But if you think about things like forceps delivery, if you think about the suction, or breech birth or Susteren when I did my cranial training, we worked with pregnant moms we worked with women giving birth, doing cranial sets didn’t grow right after birth. It was mind blowing to see how those kids launched differently by removing those early impediments. So that’s why the birth is so important in this conversation, and then the next conversation to have is bonding. So many of these kids are taken away from their mom, at the most essential time when they need to bond which is right after birth. You’ve heard of the hormone, oxytocin. Oxytocin is one of those love, I love you, hormones that mom and her newborn get to have that experience. Now, sometimes in premature babies, we have to put them in the incubator, or again, they’re taken away or mom was completely knocked out, because of Pitocin, or other drugs.
These are the issues that later on start to affect our eye brain connection, I mean, much more than that speech, language, auditory, or motor, and so on even our biochemistry, which I’ll get to in a minute. So the point of the story is, trauma, trauma creates a paralysis in our system. It also reduces those good brain hormones that we need like dopamine, and serotonin, which are critically important in our circadian rhythms and our moods, and those kinds of things. So when I studied cranial sacral, I started to understand how much trauma impacted a child’s sensory motor developmental arc. And then I got introduced to something called the primitive survival reflexes. And here it Kidpower they have
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they have dove deeply into how critical the primitive reflexes are, you know, when I’m on social media, and I’ll mention primitive reflexes. Most people have not even heard of them that sometimes moms have heard of the Moro reflex. But these primitive reflexes are motor patterns that start occurring in utero. And they help set the stage for a child’s visual thinking motor speech, language, auditory integration with the brain, it’s really a reflection of their nervous system. And when you combine the cranial sacral treatment, which is more of the fluid health, with the nervous system health, so you’re doing cranial sacral, and you’re doing primitive reflexes, what you’re doing is you’re releasing so many of those restrictions and obstacles that then catapult the child into a developmental space, that then they can reach their full potential. I learned my primitive reflex therapy from a group of optometrists in dense Denmark and squeak in Sweden. And they had been doing primitive reflex therapy since 1975.
And when I brought that back to the US with my mentor, Dr. Al Sutton, we started to teach seminars to eye doctors, and they didn’t want it they didn’t like they thought getting on the floor was absurd. With kids, what does that have to do with the eyeball? So today, fast forward, I see more and more behavioral optometrists, at least knowing about primitive reflexes. So things have changed, but in the OT world, and then what Kidpower has done is they’ve studied a variety of different teachers in primitive reflexes. And when I come here and evaluate, I’m looking at the visual component of the primitive reflexes. And it’s amazing that when we work together, there’s the synergy, where we then come up with a plan that helps these kids integrate those primitive reflexes, which then allows them to start to understand their inner ear, their vestibular system more. And the visual system and the vestibular system are married. They’re parallel to each other.
The Vision stimulates vestibular, the vestibular speech stimulates vision. And the primitive reflexes are a component that influence both. And if you saw one of the exams that I do, we actually use the special yoked prisons, the special prisons that we have If the child were and we have them walk the plank, we have them walk, and you we can see in their posture and their movements, where those primitive reflexes occur, which ones are there. And it gives us a roadmap, that that unlocking of what is going to take to help this child thrive. And talk about an eye exam that tests the whole child.
This is, to me the future of what we need to do to help these kids and realize that it’s an individual by individual situation that we can’t give the child the same thing. Oh, you know, every child gets the same thing. It just doesn’t work that way. So the next topic I want to move to, is our nutrition. And this is a hot topic. In my in my process, one of the specialties that I really admired and I started to study was functional medicine. And I’m thrilled that there are so many naturopaths, chiropractors, physicians that are now embracing functional, functional medicine, functional nutrition, that people are becoming awakened to the importance of what we eat, and how it affects our brain, our emotions, our cells are aging. And in kids, they’re learning in concentration.
So I remember one of my mentors, I want to give him credit for helping me understand this principle that I’m going to share with you his name was Dr. House Sutton. And he was another one of these just world renowned developmental optometrists. And he was practicing in Miami Beach. When I met him. He was also a professor at Berry College, and he was teaching teacher, teachers and educators and psychologists, this form of developmental Optometry. And one day I was at his clinic in Miami, and he pulled out a lab test. And it was a hair mineral analysis. And he said, you know, this particular test is a reflection of a person’s ability to deal with their stress. Say, Well, that makes sense, right? Okay. So we were looking at mineral ratios and the minerals in our body, they kind of get ignored, but they’re so important, because they’re the spark plugs, you know, they keep our pH levels as they are, they help us with dietary absorption, they help us with detoxification, they balance our pH levels, they influence our inflammation. So there’s a lot of things that happen when we start analyzing the body. And one of the things he taught me, which I still think about today is that when a child is diagnosed with the developmental delay, whatever it is, what could be speech language, it could be visual, it could be whatever.
The thing is, is that on a cellular level, they are probably in a depleted state, at some level, and the reason they’re in a depleted state is because somewhere along the line, and this is if they’ve had a normal development, they weren’t given lots of antibiotics for ear infections, or they had colic or, you know, they were in the hospital or or whatever it was, these are the normal kids, that if they’re not getting enough energy into the cell, then they’re not going to have the energy to absorb the therapies that we are giving them. And it’s why over and over and over again, and I get communications from many parents around the world, again, because of my social media presence, where they go, you know, I’ve done that the OT I’ve done that.
The counseling, I’ve done the tutoring, and my child is in exactly the same place. So my next question is, well, have you ever done a biochemistry analysis? What’s their diet? Like, if you took them into a grocery store, what foods would they be attracted to? And every time there’s a disconnect, I never thought about nutrition and diet in this equation. And that’s the place I feel we need to start. So with these kids, if you can give them more energy, then they’re going to absorb the therapy much better and they’re going to grow they’re going to develop in a much greater accelerated way.
And that’s the linchpin, that’s the starting point. And where you start, sometimes is really important. Where are you going to plug in with his child. And you really have to be adept as a practitioner, as a therapist, to understand that concept. And not just think what way I learned this technique, let me give this kid my technique, and I’ll give every kid the same technique, you’re not going to get anywhere. I mean, you might make a lot of money you might have, you know, whatever, whatever it is, but you’re not really dialing into, okay, where’s the place that I can start in with his child to help them flower? And so with the nutrition part, and I, you know, do
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it all the time here with Kidpower? When I asked the parents, you know, have you looked at the nutrition? Not really, you know, we go to McDonald’s, we, it’s a lot of fast food, we don’t have a lot of time, I say, okay, so what we need to do right now is we need to do some kind of a biochemistry analysis to get a baseline, and then based on that baseline, then we can start giving your child the nutrients that they’re missing. And what you’re going to see is this expansion in their energy, which then when they start doing, whatever the therapies they need, they’re going to really take off. And parents kind of buy into that. And so the point of what I’m making about nutrition is that it’s more important than you think. And it can be your kind of health care, especially if you eat foods that are non GMO, that are pesticide free, that organic, as best as you can. And I know they cost more. But in the long run, when you eat in a more conscious mindful way, where think colorful vegetables, you know, think low sugar, think good fats and oils, good protein, think about ways to support the digestive tract. You know, these are all strategies in functional medicine that we talk about that we think about. And I think it’s an essential component just as important as physical vision therapy, cranial sacral, therapy, primitive reflexes, auditory therapies, and so on. So I really want to implore parents to take stock, and what is their nutrition?
And what is their nutrition with their child? And what are some things they can do to up the bar, so that they can give their child a better opportunity to develop their learning and their skill set. So that just like I did, they flower in a way so that they can have the expression on what they’re supposed to be doing in this life, instead of maybe withdrawing or having some mental or emotional challenges, addiction issues, you know, it just goes on and on and on, and that there isn’t a simple formula. But this is a roadmap that I’m talking about in our in our process. So there’s a couple other things I want to speak them up to speak about today. The first is more vision related, and this has to do with a condition called strabismus. strabismus is a condition where we see a child and their eye is either turning in or it’s turning out. And it may be an alternating situation, or it may just be on one side. And it’s interesting. I wanted to give a plug here. I was just on a podcast that’s very well attended and receive Katie wells and wellness mama and I just did a podcast she interviewed me about how to do a proper vision exam with a child. And since that podcast, I’m getting so many parents calling me saying, Well, I went for this exam, they did the drops. They gave us a really thick strong prescription.
My child doesn’t want to wear it. I’m concerned because the eye is turning and are turning out. What should we do? So it’s perfect for me, because I will share with you what what we’re going to do. Now another thing about this is that in this strabismus world, the tendency is for or the doctor to want to possibly give really strong glasses, or do eye muscle surgery. And both of those are very symptom based. Let’s fix the symptom. And again, it’s back to gazelle, which is Gizelle would say, treat the whole child, when there’s a vision problem. It’s not just in the eyeball, it’s in the whole child. So the strabismus pattern is in their movement, their posture, probably their emotional reactions, why in the world would you want to give strong glasses, that’s only going to stunt the visual development and reinforced the eye crossing. Or if you do the surgery, you’re going to change the length of the muscle, but the brain is going to get very confused, because it’s the brain that directs the eye muscles to begin with. And so what you do is you cut the muscle, and so the eye will look straight for a little while, but then it’s going to revert back. So the success in that fit in that surgery is is very, very low.
And it’s also very traumatic. So we’ve talked about trauma, we don’t want to create more trauma in these kids. This is where the physical vision therapy works so beautifully as an organic method to help the child understand integration, how to get both sides to talk to each other. Because when an AI is turning in, what the child is saying is I’m turning away from life. It’s too stressful for me, I’m scared, I’m vulnerable. Or it may be if the eye is turning out, they’re saying, I can’t focus on all this, I got to space out. Now the thing is, is that that is a symptom of my middle, where’s the midline and myself? And how can I learn how to use both sides together? So they’re going to be in the School of vision, which is, how do I learn to use these two eyes with my brain and with my body.
And this is where cranial sacral therapy can be beneficial. The primitive reflex therapy, the gross and fine motor things that relate to the stapler, stimulation, all of these things, give the child the palette for them to start to explore. Okay, what is it like for me to be simultaneous to use both sides together, and there’s a learning curve, it doesn’t happen overnight. And one of my big counseling points to parents is some days are going to be better than than others, some moments are going to be better than others keep the big picture. And if you see the eye turning, it’s just a signal. Your child may be getting sick, maybe fatigue may be stressed, timeout is necessary. But don’t get hooked into, oh my goodness, there’s a problem. Because as long as you kind of access this plasticity that I talked about at the beginning, these kids can change right away. And when you put strong glasses on them, you are stunting their potential of being able to make the changes they need to make. And that’s really for any glasses prescription, which I’ll talk about in a minute. So in strabismus, we want to create more integration. Now the other side of that is what we call lazy eye, or amblyopia.
And what this means is that one of the eyes is seeing much more blurry than the other eye. And it could be because of many reasons, birth trauma, some kind of injury, it could be that that is just developmentally really behind the other it could go back to being how they were in utero how they came out of the birth canal. You know, there’s many reasons why we develop this lazy eye where we’re not stimulating. So the last thing you want to do another kind of classic approach is, well, let’s patch the good guy for eight hours a day. You never want to do that. Because that is going to create more trauma, the child is going to be more confused. And it really doesn’t solve anything in creating an environment, which is the environment is how can I set up some conditions so that this child can learn and problem solve in being able to use their visual system in a better way. And that’s really what I learned in physical vision therapy is setting up the conditions That’s a problem from them to solve. And the way they solve it, is they have to use that IMR, they have to stimulate both eyes together. And in our visual system, there are certain skills like visual tracking, visual focusing, visual coordination, hand eye coordination, they’re probably all familiar to you, innately. You, adults,
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we know how to use those skills. But this is what’s missing with these kids is their visual skills have not come online to their brain. And so this is where stimulating their physical vision in different experiences through movement and balance in catching a ball and jumping on a trampoline and many, many things like that. The child then begins to have the experience of what am I supposed to do with these two eyes? And how am I supposed to use them. And this is the baseline of then, organically them learning how to use their vision, through their brain and through their body. And doing this a long time. I have seen so many success stories with kids who have gone through this, and then what they’ve done with their lives. It’s been pretty profound for me, and it’s why I keep doing it. So that’s strabismus and amblyopia. But let’s talk about the conditions like nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism. So my latest book, it’s one of the reasons why I’m doing this. This recording is called Vital vision clear eyed solutions for midlife and beyond. But in the book, even though I’m talking more about adults and eye disease, and how to, you know, improve eye disease through more functional medicine methods, the fundamental things that happen when we go to the eye doctor, because our eyes are blurry, in near sightedness, which is the inability to see far away, we are reaching an epidemic. And the reason we’re reaching an epidemic is that and I just read this statistic 94% of all public schools are now using a computer in the classroom. Ah, digital devices and our eyes.
Do you know how many questions I get a week from parents? how is this impacting my children’s eyes. And, obviously, COVID was a real game changer because that’s when in the schools went online. And these five and six and seven year olds are being asked to stare at a screen for much of the day to learn the curriculum. But the bottom line is that our eyes are not made to look at a screen. For long term ancient, we just this is not what we’re made to do. Now we’re adapting. And one of the adaptations we’re making is that we’re giving up our distance acuity, we’re becoming nearsighted. So our vision is now all in our phone or tablet, our screen, or computer. And not only are we doing dealing with the, you know, the pulsing of the screen, but we’re dealing with the blue light, the artificial blue light. And this is a whole other topic, because artificial blue light is a very chaotic frequency that does some very damaging things to our body number one, and this is happens especially after 6pm it begins to fool the pineal gland it tricks it so that it’s not producing the melatonin that’s needed to help us with sleep. So it’s affecting our sleep profoundly. No, sleep is so important in our regenerative capability. If we don’t sleep, well, we’re not going to heal we’re sleeping is so important. So with the blue lights situation, or not sleeping as well, there’s more disturbed sleep.
Next, because we’re in this visual confinement, our eye muscles are not able to move beyond that 14 to 16 inch range. Number three, because of the blue light, this dries our eyes out more, it creates more inflammation, it’s affecting the brain. And overall, whether you’re learning or you’re gaming, because a lot of the kids that I see on Tik Tok, and I’m talking to them, they’re doing video gaming, and hours upon hours a day with their vision. Well, what how is that affecting them? They’re all becoming nearsighted. Another piece of this is this astigmatism, where the eye begins to change its shape, so it becomes more egg shaped. And this astigmatism is another factor with the nearsighted. This that’s creating all this blurriness. And so instead of dealing with the problem here, up close, the eye doctors have decided to say, let’s just correct the distance, which is treating a symptom. But what it’s doing is it’s reinforcing the problem. And this is why kids get stronger and stronger lenses. It’s what happened to me. I became nearsighted. I began reading, and my eyes just kept getting progressively worse.
So I know the drill, I know what happens. So we’ve got that side of the aisle. And then we’ve got the farsighted kids. And these are kids that maybe they tend to want to be more out into, you know, the bigger picture, nearsighted, they look good here, farsighted, they’re more distance based. And focus is hard for that. They it’s hard for them to come into the computer to focus. So they get a magnifying lens, which makes things artificially bigger, but it shuts off. They’re focusing responsiveness in the muscles. And so they start wearing that magnification lens, guess what happens, it gets stronger and stronger and stronger. And then they’re wearing this big magnification lens, and it’s very distorting, but it’s shutting down their accommodation, cook accommodative ability, their ability to focus. And one of the things we do in our vestibular therapy is we actually have people balancing, changing their focusing. So focus here focus their focus there.
This is one of the best ways to integrate the visual vestibular system. But if you’re farsighted, and you’re wearing this magnification lens, you have lost your ability to change your focus, because you’re now dependent on the fact that the lens is making things artificially large. So you go up, I don’t have to do it, because the lens is doing it for me. And so this in both scenarios, nearsighted, farsighted, what’s going on is these prescriptions are now becoming the fabric of the visual system. And that’s okay, you know, glasses are fine. But the thing is there other ways that you can work with the vision, so they don’t have to have this disability, this weakness, and the way we’re going with screens, I don’t see it changing, I see the trend. Continuing along that we’re going to have more and more and more vision problems. So beware, with the screen time, there’s some great research I want to share with you about this particular topic. And what it is, is this, researchers say that if you can take a 30 to 60 minute break, from your screen time, go outside, go outside into the sunlight, especially in the morning. What it does is it creates a rebalancing in your circadian rhythm, it increases your mental capability or mental focus. And it also ups your dopamine levels your mood.
So you need to spend time outside every day, preferably more in the morning. And when you get that natural sunlight, it can offset some of these negative things that you get exposed to in these artificial environments, whether it’s fluorescent lighting, whether it’s screen time, and all of these things come together, which is now creating another downward spiral, and the kids are paying the price for it. So sunlight is very important for these kids to get out there. 3060 90 minutes a day, is really what the researchers are saying. And since we’re on the topic of light, I want to talk about one more thing. And this has to do with something in the body. Very high concentration in the eyes. Call me mitochondria. Mitochondria is a buzzword right now. And I think it’s partly because mitochondria are organelles that live in almost every cell in the body and they are responsible for energy production. That helps us absorb better nutrients, get rid of toxins, reduce inflammation, reduce oxidative stress. Now one of the conversations that is really going on is the mitochondria that exist and live in the eye. So let me explain.
50:14
You know, in neuroscience, there has been some incredible research on the regenerative capability of our eyes. But if you go to an eye doctors office down the street, that concept of neuroplasticity is non existent. It’s not there. And in fact, and I was trained this way as well. So I’m guilty of it as well, is that looking for disease is the goal for the eye doctor you walk in, they immediately are looking at two eyeballs, and they’re looking for the disease. And they’re really looking forward and kids you know, as well, even though the percentage is pretty, pretty low. So there’s no talk, that you can regenerate your eyes that you can improve your vision. In fact, if you actually met some of these folks, these professionals, they would probably either laugh at you or invalidate it or, you know, just say it doesn’t work. And it’s too bad because in the body of research that’s in Harvard, Stanford, some other very well respected journals. Neuroplasticity is something that’s talked about a lot, and especially with conditions like Alzheimer’s and dementia, and aging, the fact that now there’s this kick of anti aging, so whatever it is, the mitochondria is the key. While just so happens, there was a study done by an ophthalmologist at the University College of London, where he took a group of adults between the ages of 40 and 70, who had degenerative retinal diseases, like macular degeneration drusen other retinopathy is maybe due to diabetic retinopathy or hypertensive retinopathy. So he took these subjects, and he applied red light to their eyes every day. So only a few minutes in the morning, and he did this for 12 weeks.
And in his published report, he said, These people increase their ability to read the eye chart by 22%. Now, that is an astounding number, because if you look at AI research, whether it’s stem cell, whether it’s, you know, whatever their nutritional therapy, the most, the best hope that we can have is maybe a two to 5% increase 22%. That’s huge, just by looking at red light. What’s the story? So the story is, is that for some reason, the mitochondria like the red light, and after about age 40, we begin to lose our resiliency in the retina. With our eyes, they start to age. When they age, we start seeing oxidative stress, we start seeing inflammation. This leads to conditions like cataracts, glaucoma, macular degeneration, whatever it is. And so what the Jeffrey’s lab the guy’s name is Dr. Jeffries. What he wrote in his paper is that this red light stimulates the mitochondria. And it reduces the negative things that get produced when the mitochondria stop producing their energy. And so as the mitochondria get better, and it produces more energy, all of these conditions fade away. Or I would say most of them. So we’re back to light therapy. And the eyes are one of the main portal portals into our body. I mean, our skin is as well, here at Kidpower.
What I’ve taught the therapists to do is something called color therapy. So we use all the colors in this spectrum because it’s a language that the kids understand. If you want them to fixate, you start shining a red or a blue or a purple you do a tracking with them, you’re going to start to see some things around their visual engagement. So with the red light now, this is highly therapeutic in being able to increase the mitochondria function. And in increasing the mitochondria function, the cells are going to work better There’s more vitality, there’s more resiliency. In fact, in some of the research I’m looking at right now, if you use like a red box, a big red, you know, LED lights, they’re saying that it can reverse conditions like arthritis, fibromyalgia, it can improve the immune system.
This is systemically. And more and more functional medicine, doctors, more and more naturopaths are using red light, as a way to create more vitality, and resiliency in the body. Now, remember, this is done without pharmaceutical drugs, this is done without surgery. And I bring this into the circle here today, because I want you to understand the therapeutic value of natural sunlight, using different types of color therapy, and understanding what we call photo bio modulation, which is the red light therapy. So there’s a lot to unpack here. And I think I’m going to end here, maybe if there’s a question or two, we can take that. But this is a lot of information for you to digest. And I want to leave you with three things. The first is number one, and this is for the children, you don’t have to live out your diagnosis. So even if you are diagnosed with ADHD, or autism, or Asperger’s, or whatever it is, that that is a diagnosis, it can be advantageous in terms of an insurance, reimbursement.
But we don’t want you to live out that label, you don’t have to do that. Number two, that understanding the importance of nutrition, as the building block, that if you can create more energy in a person, they’re going to absorb the therapy much better, much faster, and you’re going to get much farther. Okay, and number three, understand, find a practitioner that can help you unlock the code of where can we start with this child? Where is the opening? And it’s so interesting with me, when I first meet a child, I may get on the floor with them, I might chat with them. And I’m scanning and tuning intuitively. Where is there an opening here? What what is their hot button? What is it that where I can create some commonality. And within that, it’s going to start to create a trust and a relationship where then they’re going to feel safe in their vulnerability. And then they’re going to start to buy in. And I think that’s so important to establish that bond of trust, and not come with such an agenda, or a prejudice, or a preconceived idea. I mean, obviously, there’s a certain direction we want to go. But I know in my case, what these kids have taught me is the places where I have let all that go. And can I just meet them, meet them as a human being. And when we do that, and we create a resonance, the magic happens.
And that’s really important. And it’s less about the technique. And it’s more about how we’re showing up to that child in a way that creates safety. Because I can tell you when I have observed my colleagues and they go to these very sterile offices, they’ve lost the child before they’ve come in. And it’s interesting when they come and see me for the first few minutes, we have to kind of get rid of the trauma of what’s happened with these other offices. Because they they think oh my goodness, this is the same thing. So we start our eye exam hitting a ball or you know, playing with some blocks or whatever it is just to take that trauma piece off so that then they can flower. So any questions here? If not, we’re going to end probably open a lot of questions. If you want to you can always email me hello at Dr. Sam Berne, calm and Uh, my team and I will definitely answer your questions. You can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok YouTube,
1:00:09
pretty active on those. And yeah, so, thank you very much for your attention. It’s been an honor to be able to speak to you today.
Thank you for listening. I hope you learned something from the EyeClarity podcast show today. If you enjoyed the episode, make sure to subscribe on iTunes or Spotify and leave a review. See you here next time.
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