August 22, 2022 - EyeClarity Podcast
I had a great conversation with Dianne Koehler, the Executive Director of the Nutrition Therapy Institute. Dianne graduated from Nutrition Therapy Institute in 2007. Since graduating, she has become a teacher and active community speaker. She has continued her education through additional training in holistic health, high level wellness, herbal therapeutics, functional blood chemistry analysis and functional endocrinology. She has been an instructor at NTI for more than 10 years and became Academic Dean in 2017. As the Owner/Director of NTI, her passion for learning about and teaching nutrition informs her desire to make NTI the choice for nutrition education. She is profoundly grateful to have the opportunity to share NTI’s vision with our current and future students – Choosing to Create Optimal Health Through Nutrition Education – it’s not just a tagline, it’s truly what NTI’s students do, and Dianne is proud to be at the helm, driving expectations and making changes in the field of nutrition education. Enjoy the show. If you want more, sign up for my newsletter at: www.drsamberne.com.
Dianne Koehler: Nutrition Therapy Institute | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | PodTalks
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
eye, people, vision, exercises, nutrition, doctor, talk, question, podcast, called, glasses, holistic, cataracts, optometry school, nearsighted, practice, studied, left, vitamin, carotenoids
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 everyone. In today’s podcast I’m interviewed by Dianne Koehler. She’s the executive director of Nutrition Therapy Institute. She has a podcast called PodTalk, and I was interviewed by her today we had a lovely conversation. So I hope you enjoy it.
00:19
Hello, everyone, my name is Dianne Koehler. Welcome, again to the NTI PodTalks. And we have such fabulous conversations on this pod talk, we get to talk about student or we get to talk to students and graduates and instructors and people within the NTI community. And then also we get the opportunity to speak to people outside the NTI community who are passionate about health and nutrition, and holistic wellness. And today is no exception to that. trend line. We are talking today to Dr. Sam Berne, who is a holistic eye doctor who talks about holistic wellness in the concept of vision and nutrition that’s important for vision and also other holistic things. So I am so excited to talk to talk to Dr. Sam today. I actually have been to see Dr. Sam in person in his years. You’ve got your your there. There. No, it’s not a year. It’s a what is
01:35
it a geodesic dome?
01:40
Yes, there we go. Yeah, geodesic dome. Anyway. So thank you so much, Dr. Sam, for being here. I know that our listeners in our community are going to really enjoy this conversation. So thanks for being here.
01:53
Hey, thank you for having me and all the great work you’re doing. So we’re gonna have some fun today.
01:59
Yeah, thank you. So first, I think it would be helpful for people to understand kind of what’s your conventional training and background in vision care is and you know, because obviously, you have a conventional training, and then we’ll get into kind of how you grew in your understanding and got into more holistic vision care. So let’s talk about your conventional training.
02:29
Okay, well, great. Thanks for being here, everybody. And I hope I can offer some value to you today. So my career started very early on, and I was eight years old and I had a learning disability. And my mom took me everywhere, couldn’t help me, ended up at an eye doctors office and he gave me a pair of nearsighted glasses. And my eyes just got progressively worse. Until, you know, I I enrolled in optometry school, I had studied a lot of chemistry undergraduate, I was a chemist, and also did a lot of classes in humanities because I was bad. I wanted to be balanced if I was going to go become a doctor to know some things in liberal arts and foreign languages. Anyways, I went to the Pennsylvania College of Optometry in Philadelphia. And at that time, it was probably number one or number two as the most medically oriented, optometry school very allopathic ly focused. But I had the good fortune to get to do some internships in that program. And one of them I chose was going to a holistic optometrist in San Diego and I worked in his clinic. His name was Bob Santa, Dr. Bob sanit. And it was a practice where we devoted to help kids and adults with vision problems using a process called vision therapy. And it was inspiring to work with Dr. sanit. And so after I graduated optometry school, I enrolled at a place called the gazelle Institute. And it was affiliated with Yale University and it was started by Arnold Gazelle who was a physician in the late 1940s. And it was focused on child development. And so when I went there in the late 1980s, it was being run by a group of holistic optometrists. And I spent a year there learning how to evaluate and treat children with the spectrum disorders.
Now back then it wasn’t really called spectrum disorders, but it was the same thing. So then I opened a practice up in Philadelphia and it was more holistically minded. I actually apprenticed with a holistic eye doctor in Philly, and I couldn’t get any patients. It was really a hard time. So I went to a couple of the hospitals and I I volunteered my time to help people with traumatic brain injury had been in car accidents, sports injuries, and they’d been written off by the conventional eye doctors, but I did this kind of physical therapy with them and of course, really impacted them positively. And I was able to get a contract at about three hospitals in Philadelphia, which was unheard of back then. But I did. And then I also focused on special needs kids, I worked with them, that community because it was another community that I doctors really didn’t have an interest in. So I built up a very busy successful practice in Philadelphia. And I sold it about five years later, and I migrated back out west to Santa Fe, New Mexico, which is where I am now. And I chose Santa Fe, because one of my internships was at the Indian hospital, IHS, and so I knew Santa Fe would be a great community that would support more of a holistic eye care approach. So I opened up a practice and got busy immediately. And then, you know, many other things happen that we can talk about or not, but here I am today, 35 years later, and I’m going strong, more passionate than ever, and, you know, glad to share this information with people who are interested.
06:24
Yeah, so I, um, you know, I’m an avid listener to your podcast, and I actually can’t remember how I stumbled on to hearing your, you know, your podcasts and learning about you. And then coming to you as a patient. I really don’t remember how all of that happened. But your your passion definitely shines through in your podcast. And, you know, I love how you do, you’ve started doing sort of snippets of your, your, your virtual appointments with your client, with your patients. And your passion is just truly evident. And, and the vastness of your knowledge is truly evident. So one thing that really attracts me to you and your work is that you talk about nutrition, and of course, as a nutrition school, anything having to do with nutrition and food is always really interesting to us so. And that framework in which you talk about holistic vision care, using nutrition is very rare in your field, at least from my perspective, and you can talk about, you know, if you think it’s also rare. But so how so how did this? How did your training progress, like you talk about so many different things, you talk about? exercises, of course, and we’ll talk a little bit more about that and nutrition, and you talk about aromatherapy and all kinds of different sort of psychological things that are involved in in vision. So where did you kind of get all of this additional training and interest? It’s just fascinating.
08:26
Well, thank you for that question. It’s a it’s really a great question. So I would say it started off when I met a holistic eye doctor when I was 28. And I went to him as a patient in vision therapy. And he said two things to me. He said, Well, your left eye wanders out. That’s why you see double sometimes, and you’re very nearsighted. But I think you could reduce that. I think it’s mostly tension related. So I went through his program for six months. And yes, my two eyes work together now. I’m an avid reader, my learning just has skyrocketed, and my myopia went away completely. 100% I see 2020 at distance and near. So I’m a I’m a test case, you know, I walked the talk. And so that’s one aspect people meet me and they know that I’m not bullshitting them that, you know, I’m actually, you know, living what I’m talking about. I had the good fortune of meeting about five behavioral developmental optometrists, when I was in my early 30s, and they were in their 70s. And I was like a sponge, I would go to all their meetings up in Connecticut. And so they passed on, you know, all this wisdom to me that to this day, you know, a lot of my content is based on what they taught me and what I applied. Now, the nutrition piece was interesting because when I started in Philadelphia, and I started working with people, I wasn’t as sophisticated as I am now. But I read a statistic that really, really inspired me. And it said that the eyes and the brain make up 2% of the body weight, and use 25% of the food intake.
10:15
So take a moment there and just digest that 25% of what we eat is needed for our eyes to remain healthy. And as you know, in your work, one of the big issues is, well, what we eat causes inflammation, lack of dietary absorption. And when I started to dig into functional medicine, I was amazed at the connections between the internal lining of the gut, and the internal lining of the eye, the retina, and how one mirrored the other. And yet it was never taught in any of our classes. And it was also not talked about at any of the meetings. So I think again, social media and we’ve become more sophisticated and people like you, with their programs, people are becoming much more conscious about what they eat and how it affects them. But since the eyes need such a high amount of nutrients that we you know, we have such a high concentration of mitochondria in the retina just as an example, that what my question was, what can we do nutritionally, to improve our eyesight?
And so you have all these people with macular degeneration, cataracts, glaucoma, that if they just altered their diet, at the very least they would neutralize some of the symptoms without having to do the laser surgeries, or the pharmaceutical drugs. And so as I studied more and develop more inside myself and talk to colleagues, I would consider myself more of a naturopathic eye doctor. And yes, over the years, I’ve studied herbal medicine, aromatherapy, cranial sacral therapy, somatic therapy. And one of the places that really turned me on was when I became a faculty member at the Esalen Institute, Esalen in Big Sur and SLM was, at least, you know, back in the 60s and 70s, there were a lot of my amazing people that went there, Ida Rolf, and Emily Conrad and Gabrielle Roth and so many others. Anyway, when I was able to teach there, I worked a lot with many different disciplines, body workers, functional nutritionists, you know, trauma specialists. And so I became very adept at understanding a person’s vision from a whole body perspective. And our eyes do carry our history based on you know, are we nearsighted or farsighted? Do we have a stigmatism do we have eye conditions, eye diseases, and so those things were a way into understanding that our eyes reflect our systemic, metabolic and energetic health and trauma, stress toxicity can really deeply and profoundly affect how we perceive and how we see. And our eyes are one of our primary senses. And yet, in this culture, we’re losing our vision on so many levels. So I’m kind of in a perfect place to be able to talk this way. Even though on the professional level, there is still a lag, where, you know, the mainstream are still just talking about disease and pharmaceuticals. I do see some of the younger graduates are curious, and they will reach out to me and so there we are. So that’s kind of in a nutshell, how I got to where I am today.
14:01
Yeah, well, that’s really inspiring that you have younger people in the field who are coming to you to look you know, you are now becoming a mentor, like you had the experience with your mentors early on in your training, you’re becoming the mentor for those young people who are interested and I you know, I think it’s, it’s fantastic. And I am always so amazed how people just don’t recognize the full impact of you know, your your food choices, your lifestyle choices, your movement, your psychology, our stress, all of those kinds of things, how they actually impact the, you know, the experience of our, of our body functioning and and that goes all the way to very small places like the vision which the eyes are have, you know, a small mass of the body, but as you say, they use a lot of the energy, the resources, all that kind of stuff. So I’m, I’m just thrilled to hear that, that you’ve got people who are interested in it. I also am, it is so inspiring to hear you talk about how vision can be improved, because, you know, as you say, you go to a conventional eye doctor, which, you know, they, they’ve got lots of training, they have, they have lots of, they have a purpose, they have a function, but they prescribe glasses, and then that that’s kind of it, and then you know, they get into the surgeries and those kinds of things when vision problems become diseases, but, um, they never talk about how vision can be improved. And with without using glasses without using surgery.
And then, of course, as you talk about so often, in your podcast, you get a prescription, and then two months later, three months later, six months later, you have to get a stronger prescription, and then a stronger prescription because your eyes are constantly adapting. And, and and what’s not happening is that you are actually utilizing all of the functionality of your eyes and all the resources that are being put into vision to stop that progression, and actually maybe get some improvement. So your personal story about how you essentially, you know, healed your vision impairment, and now no longer need glasses is amazing. And I I, you know, after coming to you, I, you know, you gave me the exercise, all that kind of stuff. And I have not gotten to the point where I don’t need to wear glasses at all, but certainly, I have way I have areas where are, my vision is obviously improving a little bit, but not to the point where I don’t need glasses ever, but I’m working on it, I want to get there. So I’m, you know, I’m just very excited about your whole everything you do and everything you talk about. Um, so a couple of directions that I want to go, I want to talk about some eye exercises, because I think if you could just give us an idea of a couple of eye exercises that you promote, often then and kind of have broad spectrum benefits that would be beneficial. And then also some specific nutrients that you see being important for broad spectrum, vision care. So it which wave which, which, where, Which way would you like to go? Which of those two things would you like to talk about next? Why
18:13
don’t we do the nutrition piece first and then we’ll turn this into a mini workshop, where I will give two exercises and the second one is a relaxation one. So that might put people in like a really great space. Alright, so in terms in terms of nutrition, obviously, one of the main ones is vitamin A, and people with dry or retina problems. Vitamin A is essential and you know, are people even absorbing their vitamin A, and what are some other things that they can do like zinc is a trace mineral that helps vitamin A absorption. So that’s probably number one on my list. Number two would be the carotenoids these would be the the red and the orange and the yellow green vegetables. Specifically the carotenoids are called lutein, and zeaxanthin. These are very important pigments for the macula, protecting us against the damaging blue light over exposure of ultraviolet salmon from the sun. And so we get those from, you know, a variety of our red, orange, yellow green vegetables. So they’re the plant based carotenoids and then we have the Marine Base carotenoid Astaxanthan which is also really helpful on so many levels, preventing cataracts reducing the risk of macular degeneration. And that either you can get through some healthy seafood salmon is one possibility or if there was supplement micro algae, that would be another and then we’ve got Some other ones like glutathione.
Studies have shown that low glutathione levels you can have a higher risk of developing cataracts, I would put vitamin C in that as well. And then we can go to some of the other things like bilberry and gingko, which are great for vascular health, especially for glaucoma, and optic nerve protection. And the fats and oils are really important in reducing the risk of dry and optic nerve disease. And then finally, I would say that you need to eliminate sugar from your diet, processed foods. Again, you could talk for hours about sugar and how it’s negatively impacting us. So those are some general broad brush. Some people like the Mediterranean diet, some people with more severe diseases like diabetic retinopathy, or wet macular degeneration may qualify for more of a ketogenic or keto directional diet, some people are into the intermittent fasting, and those kinds of things is a little more sophisticated. And when I studied acupuncture, we know that the liver and the gallbladder rule the eyes, the liver specifically. So any way we might do a liver talks or take better care of our detoxification pathways, that’s going to help our vision and eyesight. So that’s kind of just a general, you know, broad brush for whether you’re vegetarian, vegan, or you eat animal products. So that’s, that’s my nutrition information. Now, in terms of exercises, oh, go ahead.
21:44
Well, so I was just gonna say that, um, you know, that is much more comprehensive than then most people know, I think I think most people here, you know, what nutrients are important for vitamin for eyes, and they know vitamin A, so vitamin A, you know, they know that what that is. But just getting the more broad list that you provide, is, you know, very helpful, and also shows how expansive the need is for a nutrient dense, full, nutrient dense diet. So, yeah, that’s amazing. So, alright, so sorry to interrupt you. So moving on to exercise.
22:31
So first of all, whenever we do some, some vision therapy exercises, especially the ones that I’ve learned, and promote, they are offering a way for you to develop more connection and relationship with your to your eyes. And so there’s a physical connection, there’s an emotional connection, there’s a psychological connection, and even an energetic connection. So one of the exercises, that’s really fun, and it will show people whether their two eyes are working together or not. And it’s called the eye dialogue. Now, in this particular exercise, if you can do it, you do this in a safe environment, you know, no demands on you, you can take all your glasses and contacts out, you’re sitting in a chair, and you either cover your left eye or use a patch, and you start tuning in to wow, what is my awareness? When I cover my left eye? What do I see? What do I feel, you know? And so you take maybe 10 seconds, and really kind of register that. And then there are some questions that you can play a game where you ask your right eye, right eye, how well do you feel. And so it’s very interesting to listen to what the First Age that comes into your, you know, your awareness, and it could be a child could be old age, it could be I don’t know, doesn’t matter, it’s just for you to start cultivating an internal relationship with your right eye. So how old is the right eye? The second question is really great, write it you know, you’re married to the left eye. And you know, I’ve heard things from a name only We sleep in separate bedrooms.
24:24
Or I didn’t even know I had a left die or I’m feeling resentful because I’m doing all the work in the left eye, you know? So there’s a lot of things going on there with that when you start slowing down. And you’ve you kind of feel somatically psychologically what’s going on there. So then the third question is right, I am I married to my body because the eye body connection helps us with balance and orientation and focus. So see where that is. And then the last question is, right i What do you need? What do you need? You’re not getting, and you listen for that. Now, once you’ve done that, you take your hand away, and you reintroduce the left eye. And you notice that things are now brighter and clearer, you’ve just released some energy in the right eye. And you’re also now reintroducing the left eye. So it’s got to recalibrate. To the right, I said, there’s a little neuro plasticity practice that’s coming in there in that reintroduction, then you repeat the same thing on covering the right eye and you ask those questions with the left eye as well. And it could be a completely different story with the left eye, we don’t know. And then you take your hand or the patch off the right eye and you reintroduce the right eye to the left eye.
If you did this for once a day for 30 days, your eyesight would be a lot clearer, and you you would be a lot clearer, you’d have a better relationship with your two eyes. Because the major emotion that people have around their eyes is fear, I’m going to lose it, I’m going to go blind, I’ve been told I have this, you know, I care is mostly a fear based system, you know, you go in and the doctor says, well, you’re getting older, you got this, there’s nothing you can do except surgery or drugs. So you walk out of there, and you’re like flabbergasted, wait a minute, you know, I study nutrition, and they say if I do eat better, I’m going to improve my health, why not the eyes. So part of this is developing and cultivating a positive, healthy, inspired relationship with your eyes becoming empowered. And so the eye dialogue is one one of those really cool psychological, emotional exercises that impacts the physical. So that would be the first one to do. And then right after that there would be a relaxation exercise to do where you’re combining some breathing with some sound that you’re going to put into the eye tissue. And why sound sound is one of the best ways to penetrate compressed tissue in the body. And you are making the sound persons doing it. So this is called the palm hum exercise. And what you do is you rub your hands together for about five seconds, you cut the palms over your eyes with your eyes closed, you take a normal breath in through the nose on the exhale, keep your mouth closed, but make an audible humming sound. So you can feel the vibration in your jaw, face and eyes.
27:47
So you do about eight of those. And when you’re done after the eighth one, you take your hands away. And you go into just a pause mode. You’re listening now to what that sound and stimulation did for you. So there could be a temperature release, there could be better breathing, deeper breathing, there could be more relaxation, something good is going to really happen from doing those eight hums because it’s vibrating this and your hands are like tuning forks, so the sound is going directly in to all the eye tissue. And then after you do that for about 30 seconds, you know, you just listen, it gives you a chance to metabolize the stimulation you gave yourself, you open your eyes. And again, it’s a recentering it’s a it’s a way that you will have more relaxation, more clarity, and do that three times a day in between your screen time. After 30 days you’re going to notice that your nervous system is more calibrated, your vision is going to be more open and you’re going to have more clear eyesight so these two exercises you don’t need any outside equipment you just need yourself Self Awareness, discipline and the curiosity of how can I learn more and cultivate my relationship to my vision better? So they’re simple they’re all on my website you could Google I dialogue Dr burn er and palm hum Dr. Burn and you’ll get a video it’s free. It’s all free. So those would be two of those that I think could be really game changers for people who are really motivated to improve their eyes vision and wellness.
29:33
Yeah, that is one of my favorites, the palm humming one. I like doing that one quite a bit it it definitely reduce the stress levels. It definitely helps kind of clear my mind and I know it’s doing something for my vision but for me, it’s a good mind clearing thing so I use that one quite often. Well, that that It was, you know, amazing. Thank you for sharing those two exercises. And I know that you do have other exercises other resources on your website. So can you talk about what your practice looks like now, and then a little bit about the resources that you provide on your website.
30:21
So in 2016, I opened up an e commerce Store and I started to move more into social media, I just saw that that would be a way to reach more people. And so we fast forward to today, I’m on all the social sites. And we put out about four to six pieces of content a day, all educationally based to help people some of its research some of its practical information. So whether you do Facebook, Instagram, tick, tock, LinkedIn, YouTube, Apple, iTunes, we do a lot of podcasts. And then my online workshops, I’m getting ready to do one October 7 through the ninth it’s called the vision sanctuary, three day online workshop. So if you’re interested in that, I still do see some people either through telehealth or handful people here at the geodome. And so it’s kind of a combination of teaching the bigger groups and also doing the private one on one, it kind of keeps my hand into the clinical side of it. And then I have a new book that’s coming out in February 2023, called Vital vision. And we’re, I’m recording the audible version now. So that people can listen to the book as well as read it. So we’ll be spending next year promoting the book. And the way I wrote that book was that we did research on what were the most popular questions that people had on social media. And so then we wrote the book based on what people were most interested in, you know, eye floaters, how to get rid of their cataracts, their nearest nearsightedness. Anyways, it’s very interesting how I put that together. And I think it’ll really be a great resource. So lots of ways you can get in touch with me, audio, video written word, you can always contact me at hello at Dr. Sam burn.com. And either I’ll answer your question personally, maybe create a video blog for you or answer it on my podcast. I also do live events, Facebook Live, Tik Tok live Instagram Live, so you can always hop on those sites? And, you know, I’ll take your question. So lots of ways to get me and, you know, I’m here. So please use me as a resource.
32:53
Yeah, that’s awesome. Um, you know, that is so appreciative, are so appreciated that you do provide all that content, you are definitely a prolific provider of content. And I’m, I’m thrilled to be able to, you know, utilize your content, and I was really thrilled to be able to come see you in person. So thank you, once again, for doing that. Well, this has been really exciting to talk to you, is there anything that I didn’t ask you that you think is important for people to hear? In this in this discussion?
33:38
Three things. Number one, it’s a great idea. I think in terms of wellness, for us to practice, self regulation, like that palm Ha, that makes you you do it and you feel more relaxed, like having to having that kind of a practice to self regulate, I think is really powerful. Number two, I want to share with your community that you don’t have to live out your doctor’s diagnosis that there are alternatives. And number three, you can improve your vision at any age, even into your 90s I have a patient now who’s 92 He reversed his wet macular degeneration and he’s driving again daylight driving he went to motor vehicles and passed his driver’s test. So don’t let those obstacles stop you. And again, you can plug into my content, you can just type in anything you’ve got, and something will come up that will be helpful or beneficial to you. So those would be my my words of wisdom today. And I want to thank you for the work you’re doing and for inviting me on today. And future collaborations I’m sure.
34:50
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. That would be awesome. I’d love that. Yeah, and I can just you know, a little personal it’s a testament I one of the reasoning that I came to as was I was having floaters. And I definitely noticed that I don’t notice that I have floaters as much anymore. It used to be very noticeable when I would read. Mostly when I would read would be the only times I would notice them. And now I’m not noticing them as much as I was before. So that has definitely been a big improvement in my vision. So thanks for that. You’re welcome. All right. Well, thank you so much for taking time out of your day today. It’s been a wonderful conversation. And as you say, I hope we can do some future collaboration. And I hope that our listeners reach out to you and see what kind of things you have to offer because I know they’re going to find benefit. So thanks so much.
35:53
Oh, you’re welcome. Thank you, Diane. All righty, bye.
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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