July 26, 2022 - EyeClarity Podcast
Macular Degeneration is a growing problem that more and more people are dealing with. So, I wanted to share this session I did recently where I share my protocol for dealing with Macular Degeneration and how you can build up your macula health to help mitigate problems down the road. Enjoy the show. If you want more, sign up for my newsletter at: www.drsamberne.com.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
macula, called, create, vitamin, health, retina, vitamin e, liver, saffron, omega, add, important, capsule, eye, xanthan, fluid buildup, fat soluble vitamins, chinese medicine, zeaxanthin, milligrams
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 want to bring you in on a session I did recently with somebody who was diagnosed with macular degeneration seems to be going around more and more people are developing macular problems, whether it be wet or dry. So enjoy the show. And here we go. Here’s where we begin, I’m going to give you a little anatomy lesson. The macula is the center part of the retina. And it’s made of mostly cones, color vision. And it’s also the place where we see detail now makes up less than 1% of the entire real estate of the retina. So you’ve got 99% of the retina cells that aren’t macula. And the key here are a couple of keys. Number one, the macula, because it doesn’t get direct blood supply running through it. It relies on its nutrient accumulation indirectly. And it’s a vulnerable area for getting enough nutrients. And if it doesn’t get enough nutrients, two things happen. Either the macula dries out, and that’s the less serious kind, or the macula begins to accumulate fluid behind itself. Because it’s so starved, that it begins to create fragile blood vessels, temporary blood vessels to help feed itself. But the problem with that scenario, and the condition is called angiogenesis, when you start creating these fragile blood vessels, this is when you can get a bleed. And it has to do with ultimately a couple of things, your glucose levels in your blood.
So if you have moderate to high glucose levels, you have a higher chance of these blood vessels forming and bleeding. And number two, there could be other toxicity factors that you’ve been exposed to things like mold, Candida, leaky gut syndrome, inflammation, head trauma, heavy metal toxicity, just to name a few that create this, this fluid buildup in the macula. Now, some other things that lower our macular health is the constant exposure of blue light emitted from either LED lights or your screens. In fact, it’s become so prevalent, that the blue light, if you’re not protecting the macula, will add to this syndrome of a drying out. Or again, going more to the wet side, the fluid buildup. So to be proactive in this is the name of the game. Because once you start in with the injections, which they only do for the wet kind, you are now in the dependent system of the allopathic medical people. And the pharmaceutical drugs create many side effects, including scar tissue, inflammation, blurred vision, and so on. It’s it’s a symptomatic control for a short period of time, but it’s not really getting to the root cause. So the first thing I want to say is that it’s very important for you to include a few essential nutrients. And probably the best way to do that is at least for three minds, to start taking, taking some I generated formulas, and you’re already taking a lot of things to begin with. So we need to be selective about what you may take. So there are three essential ingredients that protect the macula right off the bat. Two of them are plant based and one of them is marine based.
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So the plant based ingredients are called carotenoids. And you may have heard of them. One is called lutein. And the other is called Xia xantham. So these are pigments that come from the plants that actually coat the macula and deflect both the UV light and the blue light. And you should be taking 16 milligrams a day of lutein alongside six milligrams a day of Xia Xanthan and then adding the marine carotenoid, which is called Asda Xanten. And you can get that either through seafood wild cod salmon, any kind of Pink’s seafood, or I’ve created a micro algae type supplement, where it’s very concentrated and there you would take somewhere between six and or 12 milligrams a day of acid Xanthine. So to repeat 16 milligrams a day of lutein six milligrams a day of Xanthine, and six to 12 milligrams a day of Astra xantham. Now here’s the rub. lutein and zeaxanthin are fat soluble vitamins, along with another very important vitamin for the retina, vitamin A. And this is where people get tripped up. And it’s not talked about a lot, except if you study functional medicine. And that is this. The liver produces bile.
And the gallbladder stores the bile. And Bile is very important in your ability to be able to absorb the fat soluble vitamins that feed the eyes like vitamin A, lutein and zeaxanthin. So either if you have a challenged liver, you don’t think you’re producing the bile, your gallbladder is compromised. My suggestion would be when you do these fat soluble vitamins to include a supplement called bile salts. And you can get these anywhere. And you take the bile salts after a meal, and it helps you absorb the fat soluble vitamins. So what I suggest, just out of simplicity state sake, is to take two capsules of my vitamin one capsule of my Astra xantham formula. And then there’s a few other things that really helped boost macular health that are under the radar among the conventional eye doctors now they’re not under the radar in terms of Jama or some of the more medical journals. So number one is a form of vitamin E, which is from a plant a tree called a natto. A and then a TTL. And I’ve been able to develop a liquid formula that you take as a sublingual. Now, the vitamin E goes way back to 2001 and 2006 when the NIH did a study, which is called the Arab study that was 2001. And in 2006, they repeated the study and it’s called the errands to and in that study, they found that there were certain essential essential ingredients that reduce the risk of macular degeneration. And vitamin D was one of those ingredients. However, the vitamin E that they were promoting. There has been a new and improved plant based vitamin E. We call it tocotrienol, which is much more absorbable. And it has a higher protective quality in the retina and the macula. And that’s why I moved away from the traditional Vitamin E to this liquid form of vitamin D called a natto II, which again, you can get through my webstore.
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In addition, there is another ingredient and the studies have been off the charts in terms of positive effects with the macula. And this is a spice which I know you’ve heard of called saffron. The saffron has a very high potency of antioxidants. It’s got some pigments in it that can actually really boost your Macula health. That saffron is very expensive. And I used to preschool I have it as an essential oil, but it burned when you put it on your face. And it was also very expensive. So I was able to create a saffron in a capsule form. And it’s really, it really rocks, it’s really good. So I would add that to your regimen. And so the summarize it would be the annatto II, which it’s a liquid that you you take through your mouth, the saffron capsule, and then the acid Xanthan and then the eye vitamin which has lutein, zeaxanthin, vitamin A zinc. Zinc is another important trace mineral that helps in the absorption of vitamin A bilberry, which is an herbal formula that helps improve the circulation in the retina gingko which also helps the vascular health and taurine, which is an amino acid that’s been shown to improve your optic nerve health. So you’re getting all of that in the eye vitamin formula, it is a powerhouse. So it’s based on what I you’d have the answers here to the two capsules, a day of my vitamin is going to have everything in it except the Astra Xanthan and the the annatto, vitamin E, or the saffron, those are add ons that I’ve created later. But if you do those things, it’s going to start feeding the macula. And you’re going to stave off any starvation that occurs in that very small concentrated area where the cones are packed together, which creates that detail. Now that’s one there’s some there’s some other things too, that I want to check off my list to tell you about. So many years ago, I studied Chinese medicine and acupuncture.
And this was unheard of as an optometrist to enroll in the Doctor of Chinese medicine perm, and I never became a DLM. But I wanted to learn the relationship and the connection between the internal glands and organs to the eyes, because they’re 12 Major meridians that start at the top of the head and go to the bottom of the feet. And those meridians help us if the if the energy is distributed equally, or in a harmonious way, we have health, we have wellness. But when we get a disease, there begins to be an imbalance in the meridians. And this is what creates both the symptoms, and you know the physical diseases. So in acupuncture, we’re not really treating the disease or the symptom we’re rebalancing to create health again. And that’s the difference between a wellness model and a disease based model. And my my approach with eye health is yes, we can label the disease and the diagnosis. But let’s apply wellness model techniques. So that we treat not only the symptoms, but we’re treating the cause. And when you treat the cause, not only did the symptoms go away, but also you get better. So in acupuncture, the liver rules, the eyes, the liver meridian, and the macula and the liver
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talk to each other. So by understanding liver health, this is a way for you to begin to balance out whatever is going on in the macula. Now, you’re not going to get that from your ophthalmologist, because they’re looking at you as miraculous as retinas and they they aren’t getting the overall integrative connection, that in Chinese medicine which has been around for 1000s of years. They’ve proven that there’s an interrelationship in the body, everything is connected. So I spotlight the liver for you. Because there may be a time when if you’re not 100% healed. You could do something like a liver cleanse That’s and a great herbal remedy for that would be either milk thistle goldenseal. And you could go to a local herbal herbalist and either get it in a tincture, get it in a tea however you you can, and do around have maybe a week or two of a liver cleanse. It’s nice to do in the spring or the fall. So that would be another thing. Just some other things I want to spotlight here green tea has been shown to help eye health and I circulation glutathione. The master antioxidant in the body, and it’s actually produced in the liver helps us detox and it also helps us with cardiovascular health, regular circulation, so on and so forth. So you’ve got your trace minerals, zinc, selenium, selenium, chromium, and another one that’s very important it’s missed is magnesium.
You know, most people are deficient in the magnesium trace mineral and that is responsible for so many cellular chemical reactions in the body. And one of the reasons why we’re all deficient in magnesium is because of the depletion in the soil. Another thing I want to bring in is your dental health. So if you’ve had multiple root canals or mercury amalgams, you might consider looking for a more holistic type dentist like a biological dentist, some of my colleagues in biological dentistry, dentistry really see the carcinogenic influences that you know, regular dentistry is doing. So it doesn’t surprise me for sure. So, you know, these are some of the main you know, the main broad brushes that I would suggest, obviously, omega three fatty acids are also very important. And you should be getting a good dose of those a B 2000 milligrams a day as a starting point. I think that omega three is anti inflammatory. It supports the nerve health, eye health and brain health, I would add one more cardiovascular health. So you want to get a very high quality Omega three, make sure it’s got a good amount of what we call DHA. You’ve got DHA and EPA in the Omega threes. The DHA is really essential, even more so than the EPA most most omega threes do that one of my favorite ones is a company called metagenics. And they put out what we call an Omega Genex 1000. So you get a good bang for your buck for the capsule size. As you’re getting a lot of Omega three in each capsule. They test their omega threes, you know, we don’t produce Omega three. So, you know, we have to get it from either food sources fish, chia seeds, walnuts, a little bit from flax. But generally because we don’t produce Omega three, we have to make sure we’re getting a good amount.
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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