July 8, 2022 - EyeClarity Podcast
I’ve gotten a number of questions about the relationship between our eyesight and vision, and our sports performance. So today I wanted to talk about my experience with sports and how I have worked with athletes. Enjoy the show. If you want more, sign up for my newsletter at: www.drsamberne.com.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
sports, vision, working, play, talk, therapy, moved, camp, Herbie, flutist, peripheral vision, NFL, NBA, helped, athletes, sporting, jazz musician, Santa Fe, basketball
Hello, everyone, it’s Dr. Sam, I’d like to welcome you to my EyeClarity podcast. This is a show that offers cutting-edge information on how to improve your vision and overall wellness through holistic methods. I so appreciate you spending part of your day with me. If you have questions, you can send them to hello@drsamberene.com. Now to the latest EyeClarity episode.
Hey, everybody, it’s Dr. Sam. And I’d like to welcome you to another EyeClarity podcast. So I get a number of questions on the relationship between our eyesight and vision, and our sports performance. And I don’t talk a lot about my sporting interests, but I have many of them. And so I want I thought, today I would weave into the show some of my professional experiences with personal experiences as a relates to sports. So I’ll speak personally first. You know, I’m, you probably can tell from my pictures and videos that, you know, I’ve got some gray hair at this point. But when I was younger, I used to play a lot of competitive sports. And probably my favorite sport was basketball. And when I was growing up, I grew up in central Pennsylvania.
And so a lot of my friends, we would talk a lot about the NBA and we talked about the Philadelphia 70 Sixers, that was the time when we had the players Dr. J. Julius Erving and Moses Malone, and they actually won a championship. And my friends and I used to play a lot of basketball. And I was a really good guard, I played point guard. And, you know, when I went to college, you know, mostly play just intramurals intramural basketball, but was really high level. And then when I went to optometry school in Philadelphia, I was playing in a number of leagues, you know, in between the intensive studies that I had to put in. So basketball was always something I was really interested in. And I had the good fortune, and one of my internships, which was out in San Diego, where I was working in practice, it was one of my mentors and teachers, Dr. Robert Santa, and Dr. Santa was very involved in vision therapy. And he was working with the men’s Olympic volleyball players, when I was interning at the office. And so I got to be one of the, you know, the, the support people in some of the vision therapy exercises that Dr. Santa was, was promoting and doing and he had had a lot of experience and success working with very high level athletes. So I was very grateful to be you know, as an intern, I was kind of at the lowest rung of the ladder.
But I learned a lot, I absorbed a lot about the importance of things like peripheral vision, visual reaction time, visual tracking. And in this particular situation, what I observed was that these men’s volleyball players actually really improved their statistics in terms of spiking the ball and serving the ball. And, you know, in the vision therapy they did, there was an article that was written about the vision therapy that helped them win the gold medal, and that was really, because of Dr. Santa and his expertise. But I got to be got to be a part of that. And I saw the relationship between our vision and our sports. So fast forward, you know, I after my internship in San Diego, I moved back to the Philadelphia area. And, you know, when I started my practice in Philly, I began working with, you know, soccer players and tennis players, baseball players. And by helping them enhance their peripheral vision. And their visual reaction time, we actually used to have a sports vision board that was blinking different lights. And you know, we would put people on these balance boards or on an eyepatch that would use an eyepatch or prism glasses. And it really interfered with their ability to develop eye hand coordination and visual reaction time.
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But then when they would take those obstacles off their vision, their scores just skyrocketed, and of course, this began to translate into increasing their sports performance. So at this point in my career, you know, I’d given up all of the kind of really competitive sports. I did a lot of things like triathlons and marathons are doing more individual type sports just personally. And then in 1990, I sold my practice in Philadelphia and I moved to New Mexico. And one of the reasons why I moved to New Mexico is because in one of my internship programs, I actually worked at the Indian Hospital in Santa Fe, and I knew that Santa Fe would be a really good place to do more holistic vision, Optometry. So I moved there 9090 Open up a practice about two years later, and, you know, saw a variety of different patients, you know, adults, children, elders, infants, but I still had my hand and sports vision. Because every now and then I would get, you know, a golfer or I would get a, you know, a tennis player or baseball player. And as my reputation started to grow in the desert southwest, I actually got some professional athletes.
These were retired athletes, who were really curious even though they had retired, and I remember one of the NFL players who came to see me his name was Don Meredith, and he was a former star for the Dallas Cowboys. And so dandy Don was like retired. He was in his 60s when I met him, but he was a golfer, I believe. And so you know, I would I would just watch his vision and help him and we would talk a lot about the NFL and it was really fun to have him in the office. Another famous person I had was jazz music musician. He was a flutist and his name was Herbie Mann and Herbie was a world renowned jazz musician. Of course, my wife is a professional flutist, so it was great to you know, kind of share that experience with her and with Herbie and I think they met each other. But anyways, HERBIE had glaucoma at that time. And so I helped him through some hard times. And he was just a really cool guy, really great guy. And then another famous person that I treated, who still lives in Santa Fe, and he is like one of the best clarinetists in the world. His name is Eddie, Eddie Daniels, and my, my father, who was a big jazz musician was thrilled that I knew Eddie and Eddie and I became friends and did some eye therapy with him.
And, you know, he’s still putting out some amazing music, if you want to check him out on Spotify. But I still was very interested in sports vision. And I still was interested in the NBA. And one of the things that I loved doing was going to these sports camps, these basketball camps. And one of the camps I attended, you know, and this is where you’re kind of an older guy, and, you know, you’re looking at these, these great athletes or coaches was at the Omega Institute, I went to a camp that was being run by the NBA coach, Phil Jackson, of course, Phil was at that time, he had just left the Chicago Bulls, and he was now getting ready to coach the LA Lakers. And so, in taking his cat camp, you know, he had a more spiritual vent on basketball. And so it was meditation. And we did these really interesting movement things and of course, great stories. But it still taught, you know, it got me interested in well, of course, in the NBA. Things like peripheral vision and I hand coordination and being able to shoot three free throws consistently. Were all things that I thought about, and I was working with more college athletes. So I never worked with the NBA players. But in my mid 30s, as I had moved to Santa Fe, and I was still quite a good basketball player. I decided to do the fantasy basketball camp with Magic Johnson. And
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that was kind of a thrill because it was in Maui. And at that time, I took my wife who was my girlfriend at the time, and of course, she was really impressed to go to Maui. And so I got to, to hang out with magic and Jerry West and Kurt Rambis. And it was really fun to be in that fantasy camp. It was amazing. And I ended up being the MVP of that of the final game, which was a real thrill. And so I became a Lakers fan and really, really enjoyed the Lakers and then when Phil went to the Lakers, you know, it was all always kind of just a fan really connected with them. And of course, we fast forward, we had the Kobe and Shaq era. And now we have the Lebron era. And we’ll see what happens if, you know as this goes to press, if Kyrie Irving is going to come back and play with LeBron. But I really enjoy, you know, working with athletes and in my own athletic career, just really found that connection and sports vision and, and performance, and still talk about it. You know, in certain instances, when it comes up, even though for many of you, you know, I don’t really speak a lot about my interest in the sporting world, because there’s so much in health and healing and some of the other things that I’ve worked with in terms of autism and so on.
But I thought I’d give you a glimpse of that in, you know, in my interest, I’ll probably talk a little more about it as we move into the NFL, because I have helped some college athletes, especially at different positions, and it’s been fun to see their evolution. And of course, you know, it’s kind of interesting in the NFL, how traumatic brain injury is affected, the what we call the CTE syndrome, and I’m very concerned about that. And of course, I talked to parents who want to know about traumatic brain injury and brain health, especially in the younger kitties, who are starting in sports and NFL um, you know, I I had a few concussions in my sporting career and you know, it’s been something that I’ve done a lot of body work and cranial sacral therapy around my brain and and other you know, oxygen rich type therapies to improve my to improve my brain health, but it’s definitely when you play sports. This is one of the things that can happen and you know, when you love something and you want to do it this sometimes you know, there’s risk involved. So thanks a lot for listening today. I appreciate your attention. If you’ve got any questions, you can always email me at hello at Dr. Sam byrne.com. And I know I’ll be speaking more about this subject. And until next time, everybody. Take care.
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