November 2, 2021 - EyeClarity Podcast
Today, we are talking about the brain. I go over some key ways to increase your brain health and we talk about how that affects your eye health. You can use this information to increase your brain, eye, and overall health naturally. Enjoy the show. If you want more, sign up for my newsletter at: www.drsamberne.com.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
neuroplasticity, talk, eye, parasympathetic nervous system, patients, brain, work, nervous system, sleep, research, started, plasticity, period, treating, improve, hospitals, access, physical therapy
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.
So another piece to neuroplasticity is the health of the nervous system, we’re going to talk a lot about the nervous system today. There are two main components of the nervous system, the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. The sympathetic Nervous System is our active state. The parasympathetic nervous system is our passive state. It’s our relaxation. And for most people, we’re spending so much time in the sympathetic nervous system, that there’s no time in the nervous system that we’re in this rest or settle, period. And of course, when do we heal, we rejuvenate. And we rest in that parasympathetic nervous system state. Okay.
All right, so let’s talk a little bit about some of the research that has been done over the years. And they need to bring in these researchers Hubel and Wiesel, David Hubel, Torsten Wiesel, they came from Harvard, from Johns Hopkins. And they did a lot of research in the area of neuroplasticity and vision. And they had some very interesting results. These studies showed how the visual system and the visual information processing would be affected by impeding an eye patching an eye and they work with kittens and how they did this study. And what they did was, they would suture one of the eyes, and they found that there was a significant drop in the visual development, which affected these kittens throughout their entire life. And they also said that, as the cells are responsible for processing, visual information, they were raised distributed to favor the eye that was unimpaired. And this was a this particular aspect, the critical period was something that I doctors, you know, they practice and they said, This is why you have to get, you know, the cataract removed in kids very early, or if you have a lazy eye, after a certain period of time, you can improve it. And there was a lot of debate in that particular area. But then, in the early 90s, there was another PhD, neuroscientist, Greg record wrecking zone.
And he actually did some research which showed that you can change the eyes, you can change the adult brain, and that this critical period isn’t really true. And this is what we’re going to access today. Where, you know, if you have a certain condition going on, even in the adult brain, you can improve it. And I think that, you know, again, if you go to certain ophthalmologists, they might say, well, once you reach age seven or eight, you’re out of that you’re in that critical period. You can’t get any better. Dr. Rick unsewn said no, no, no. And you can actually change even into old age. Now there’s some things that you have to do in order to set the conditions but it can be done. So here’s a research paper that I published back in 1990. And it came from the work that I did at some of the hospitals where I treated patients with severe traumatic brain injury. It’s an interesting story because I attended after I graduated, got my degree in optometry, I spent a year at a place called the gazelle Institute. And the gazelle Institute was started by Dr. Arnold gazelle, who started this clinic in 1948. It was affiliated with Yale University was up in New Haven, Connecticut. And when I attended this, this program in 1986, it was a program on how to evaluate children from a more holistic perspective. These were kids that were along the spectrum disorders. And it was a great program.
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I mean, one of the things that Gizelle taught us is that whenever we do an eye exam, we’re not just treating the eye But we’re treating the whole person. And you know, that particular thread has stayed with me my entire career. For those of you that follow me on the social media channels, I’m always talking about when there’s an AI problem, there’s a systemic, metabolic and energetic reason why we see it in the eyes. And since the eyes and the brain are so married together, a lot of times we see things in the brain that again, have some systemic or metabolic relationship. So I graduated the program, I started my practice in Philadelphia, and I affiliated with a holistic doctor, but the way our business relationship was is I had to get my own patients.
And I had a terrible time trying to do that. Because back then, and I would say, even today, in in Philly, there were about five ophthalmology hospitals surrounding our office. And so there was a really strong, conventional flavor to eye care, it was very difficult to get patients. So I went to one of the local hospitals, and in the outpatient clinic, there was a physiatrist, who I knew. And I said, you know, I’ve got this, this physical therapy that I do with people, could I come in and work with your severely trauma traumatized patients brain injury stroke? And he said, Sure, yeah, you know, come on, in. And within three months, I had gotten such great results. By applying these physical therapy techniques. It was it was my entry into neuroplasticity training, that I got a contract at that hospital, three other hospitals, got a staff and so I started to do research. And this particular paper lays out the the research that I did over a few years, where I would do a lot of physical therapy stimulation that included the eye Brain Body, we worked with the vestibular system, who worked with color therapy, we did cranial sacral.
And as people developed a better focusing mechanism in the brain, what we found was, as they actually were able to regain not only their vision, their brain, their movement, it changed their posture, it changed their cognitive skills. And it was, it was a landmark study that I published in one of the conservative journals. And it really raised the eyebrows of a lot of, you know, more conservative practitioners who said, wow, we’d never heard of this before. And it kind of launched me into kind of the bigger circle of talking about neuroplasticity. Now in terms of neuromodulation, which I want to talk about, what hormones what modulators in the brain can you access to improve neuroplasticity? I’m going to save that for class number two, November 13. But one of the things I can say about another aspect of increasing neuroplasticity is your sleep and taking the NAPS every day. And there’s a lot of research out there showing that if you sleep better, you get to access better plasticity.
Now sleep is a huge topic. And I’m gonna, I’m gonna put this out there right now. I’ve decided to organize a second in my second annual health summit online health summit. Some of you on this call. Were in that summit that was this past January. And I’m going to do it again January 14 to 16th 2022. And I’m going to invite a sleep coach specialist to come on and talk to us about what are ways that you can improve your sleep, because sleep is part of that parasympathetic nervous system access, where we learn to rest where we are learned to relax, even taking the nap every day for 10 to 15 minutes, has been shown to help our plasticity potential.
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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