Podcast 231: Lecture

February 17, 2022 - EyeClarity Podcast

LASIK Surgery has been a hot topic in my world lately and so I wanted to take some time and explain my view on this elective surgery. In this episode, we will dig into what LASIK is and why I don’t suggest it to my patients. While it works great for some people, it just treats the symptoms and focuses on fixing your sight, not your vision. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions, I would love to hear from you. Enjoy the show. If you want more, sign up for my newsletter at: www.drsamberne.com.

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SUMMARY KEYWORDS

lasik surgery, eyes, prescription, lasik, tik tok, refractive surgery, talking, blurred vision, procedure, quick fix, eyesight, experience, near sighted, people, laser surgery, play, coffer, called, put, article

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, its Dr. Sam, I want to welcome you to another EyeClarity podcast. Well, today, I am going to be talking about the pros and cons of lasik surgery. This is a surgery. It’s called a refractive surgery, the surgeon reshapes the cornea, and it helps you get rid of your prescription. The reason why I’m talking about this today is that I recently put a post up on the platform tic toc. And I came out against LASIK surgery in this video. And the reason why I came out against it was due to 1000s of patients that I’ve seen over the years that had difficulty adjusting to this refractive surgery. And so I shared my point of view, which was that there are two types of prescriptions that we deal with the prescription that’s in our eyeballs. And the prescription in our brain, our mind our body that creates the prescription in the eye. Another way to say it is that we want to blame faulty vision on the eyeball. But it’s not the eyeballs fault. It’s the programming that we’re doing to our eyes, that causes the prescription to begin with.

Well, the firestorm that I created on Tik Tok was amazing, I would say 95% of the comments, were so negative against what I had to say. And it was great, because it really got people to think. And, you know, they, they talked about why they loved LASIK surgery and why it works so well. And how can I, you know, say such a thing, when when they had such great results. So some of the things I might say in this broadcast, might be a little offensive to you, as it was to the Tick Tock community. And my apologies. That’s not the reason why I put out my content. These are direct experiences that I’ve had. And I get to see people who’ve had the mistakes who’ve had the problems. So I’m not making it up. Definitely, there was a segment of the the post that really spoke truth, at least through my experience. So I want to address LASIK surgery a little more deeply. And you be the judge. I’d love your comments, you can email me at hello at Dr. Sam Burns calm. And I’d love to get into a dialogue with you. You don’t have to agree with me. That’s not the point. I actually love different points of view.

So when LASIK surgery, usually it’s done for people that have moderate to high amounts of myopia, astigmatism. And there’s some things that can go on with LASIK surgery, such as eye pain, intermittent blurred vision, or recurrent have the the old prescription coming back in the eyes, where you need glasses or contacts, halos around lights, double vision. So these things definitely are part of the terrain of what happens in this elective surgery. But it is a quick fix. It certainly will get rid of the prescription in the eyes, at least for a while. Now in my Tiktok community. There were people that said you know they’ve had the surgery a long time. And they had kept their 2020 perspective. And so I want to I want to talk about 2020 for a minute. Just because you have 2020 That’s a measurement of your eyesight. That doesn’t mean that you have good vision. Vision is how the eyes and the brain and the body work together we start developing our ability to process information and move our body through space when we start creeping and crawling, crawling and walking and talking and catching a ball and riding our bike and later learning how to play baseball or tennis or ski or draw.

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So it’s a very A dynamic skill set. And just because somebody sees it clearly, it doesn’t mean they know how to use the hardware properly. And in fact, whenever you do any eye surgery, in my opinion, I think that you should do some physical therapy afterwards to encourage your brain to be able to integrate the new input that’s now in our on the eyes, whether it’s cataract surgery, laser surgery, or lasik surgery. So, with LASIK surgery, yes, you do get that clear eyesight, at least for a time. But what ends up happening is that sometimes the body prescription or the mind body prescription is stronger than the LASIK surgery procedure. And this is why the eyes start to revert back to the pre LASIK prescription.

For others, they need reading glasses. And that’s kind of odd for near sighted people because the part of the visual system part of the visual experience for near sighted people is their adeptness to be able to see well up close. So there was an article that was put out in the New York Times in 2018. And the title of the article is called blurred vision burning eyes. This is this is LASIK success. And I’ll put this link in the notes along with the TIC tock video that I did. And then this article the author’s talked about how people actually had chronic issues with their eyes post LASIK, probably the biggest issues that they had were dry eye halos around lights. Some people had intermittent blurred vision. And there was an interesting quote in the article. And it was from a former employee of the FDA. His name was Morris Waxler, retired senior FDA official who regrets the role he played in lasix approval over 20 years ago. And in fact, he and another lady Paula coffer have started an advocate, laser group. And it’s called LASIK complications.com 10 reasons not to have LASIK surgery.

So I think it’s, it’s fascinating when we get into these conversations, and people who spend money on this procedure, which it’s a pretty expensive elective process procedure, that they’re going to defend it. And that’s exactly what happened on Tik Tok, and more power to you. You know, my goal here is to create a container and a forum for people to be able to talk about their eyes and vision. I know in mainstream I care. It’s really about correcting you with the best possible 2020 eyesight using a lens and telling you that your eyes are only going to get worse as you get older. And things like physical therapy for the eyes is something that’s not going to work for you. I get that. But I’ve devoted my whole career to this perspective, this specialty. And there is a very small but very interested group of people who are tired of the same old thing. And they’re tired of being treated just with symptoms. And by the way, laser surgery is another symptom based technique. It’ll give you the quick fix for a while. And it works for certain types of people. But before you go into it, you want to know about the side effects, what the effects are. Was it what it’s all about? So I’m really open to the conversation. I’m not saying that I’m right. I’m not saying that I

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have the only point of view. But it is a point of view that I do think needs to have a voice and that was my point on Tik Tok and this podcast and my content that sometimes I put out information that goes against, say, the mainstream and what they’re promoting, but I definitely have a, a background in being able to support it, whether it’s through science or clinical experience. So, I’d love to hear from you. If you’ve had LASIK surgery if it went well, if it didn’t go, well. A lot of the patients that I see those are the people where it didn’t go so well. And no, that’s why I’m here. So I want to thank you for tuning in for today. And until next time, take care

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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