May 11, 2022 - EyeClarity Podcast
Digital time is inevitable in life, but today I am sharing some tips on how to use your digital devices while staying healthy. Enjoy the show. If you want more, sign up for my newsletter at:Â www.drsamberne.com.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
magnification, eyes, lens, vision, glasses, distance, called, screen, corrected, computer, reading, cervical spine, muscles, doctor, blue, light, lenses, drugstore, headache, inches
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, in optics, there is a trend in the eye care field, which I’ve seen for many, many years, which is as follows. What the eye care field likes to do is like they like to give split lenses, maybe in what they call bifocals, or, in your case, it’s an invisible bifocal. So there’s a gradient. And I’m going to do a drawing here. And I’ll show it to you. And basically, the, the only part of the lens that’s usable This is, we call this like a progressive lens or a invisible bifocal, all of this is scratched out on the sides, you can’t use that lens, the only part of the lens that’s usable is this tiny sliver down the middle, now the top part is going to be distance, the middle part is going to be computer, and the bottom part is going to be reading.
And as you go down the lens, there’s more magnification that they put into the lens, it is probably the single most detrimental optical system that you could look through, like if you wanted to say, how do I make my eyes worse, in an accelerated way, then where are those because whenever you split the vision into these different gradient parts, now your brain has to direct your eyes through that segment of the lens. So you’ve got to do that. And then on top of that you’re focusing say on the screen, or let’s say you’re driving even though none of us have for driving or not. But what it’s eliminating is the most important part in your vision, which is your peripheral vision. So when you put those progressive lenses on, you are actually going into a straitjacket with your eyes, there’s there’s just a real limitation and how much vision you can access. You basically have to tunnel your your eyes. So when you tunnel on a nervous system level, what you’re doing is your creating a an increase in your stress, both eyes stress and body stress to try to aim your eyes through these different compartments. And it is the most deteriorating aspect of why people’s vision goes downhill. It’s it’s a really, it’s a really accelerated way to lose your ability to see.
02:58
So in that case, you will just get two glasses, one for reading and one.
03:01
Well let’s go a little deeper here. Yeah, so you’re in a situation where you’re farsighted. So let’s let’s talk about that from a more holistic perspective. So in farsightedness most people that are farsighted, there are a couple of different definitions. One aspect of the farsightedness is those are people that see well in the distance, and they’re kind of visionary, they see the big picture. And when they start losing their muscular focus flexibility in the lenses of the eye, these are the tiny, they’re called ciliary muscles. That usually means that they’re losing their near vision so they reach for a magnification lens. Now when you reach for a magnification lens, what’s happening to the muscles is they’re losing their responsiveness. Because things are bigger things are, you know, there’s no effort on your part.
But what it begins to do to the muscles is it makes them unresponsive and flaccid. And this is why when somebody starts wearing a magnification lens, and they wear it for a period of time and then they take it off and they go you know, I can’t restart my eye muscles. I’m not seeing
04:26
how it’s helped. It’s not that was not able
04:27
to refocus, right, you can’t refer back and forth. I couldn’t switch back exactly because of how it felt
04:34
because the the magnification shuts off and muscular responsiveness, so functionally, okay. So then at that point, usually when you go to, again, a regular eye exam, and I don’t know how these people work it I mean, in some offices, you sit behind a machine called a phoropter, which has got lots of lenses and that either technician of the doctor’s, you know, flipping the lens, which is clear, one or two, that would you had, okay. So you don’t really know, you know, it’s like, it’s this artificial environment, one or two, one or two, you know, and so you have no idea. And let’s say you’re walking into the office, and it’s a day where he’s, uh, you know, I got so much stress, and I didn’t sleep well, or whatever. So you choose this lens, and you get it, and you put it on and maybe make you a little nausea, nauseous, nauseous, Dizzy, or something isn’t right with it, and you go back, and the doctor says, Well, you know, just get get used to it.
And so with that, with that message that you receive, Oh, get used to it, what you have to begin to do is you shut down your body’s awareness, to be able to accommodate to some optical idea that some doctor is giving you and on top of that, you’re being forced to make a choice, when probably neither of them are the lens that’s going to keep your eyes from getting worse, or improving your vision. And then on top of that, if you’re having a day, you know, the lens you get in that particular time period, fixes your vision, in that moment of time. So it’s, it’s kind of insanity, because your visual system is a dynamic, flowing movement, you need to be able to shift back and forth, you know, and be able to see in the distance come in to near accommodate flexibility, versatility. And the mind is part of this, the brain is part of this, the body is part of the so at this point, you’ve got whatever you’ve got, and it’d be good to know what those are.
But here is the first step that I would recommend for you. And what it would be is, whatever digital device you’re using, either it’s a laptop, I’m assuming, or a desktop. The desktop is a different conversation, but let’s say a laptop or a tablet, or even your phone. You can go into any drugstore, and they have a rack of magnification lenses. Whether you’ve done that or not, no. And you, you take your device with you, and you look for the lens, that’s going to make things clearer for the device without overpowering you without creating nausea. So in other words, there’s two criteria. It looks clear, and it feels good in your body. Like how does this make me feel? And so you want to get to a point where I feel comfortable, I’m not overcorrected.
And with I can see things, clearly, I don’t need to strain because people think, well, I should get something under corrected, make me work harder, that actually creates more strain. So we do physical eye therapy, you know, outside the time when you have to do your screen time, or when you need to see things clearly, in the in the balance point is somewhere in between, you know, it’s clear, and it feels good. My intuitive sense with you, I have no idea what the prescription is good to see the numbers, you might start with like a plus 1.0 or plus 1.25. And, you know, see if you can see your screen time like the laptop or the tablet, and see if that would work for you on the phone as well. Now, the thing that you have going for you with the digital stuff, is you can always increase the size. And by doing that, then you’re reducing the amount of magnification you have to look through. And so you don’t want to start going higher on the magnification. You know if your your text is really really small. Pat yourself a break, you know you want to make it so
09:25
my other question that. So today laptops and phones both give you settings where you can make the font bigger is the same thing as getting a screen that sits on top of the you know two, because you could definitely change the size of the font to make it a little bit bigger so you could see. So I don’t know if I could do that. Or if you think that there is still a benefit from putting a screen on top of like the screen.
09:56
Or when you say put a screen on top of a screen. What do you mean by that?
09:59
I magnification. Like you’re saying the clear scope?
10:03
In other words, putting glasses on over your eyes?
10:06
No, no more. I’m talking. So you’re asking me to go to the store and get this clear screen to go on my laptop? And on my phone?
10:16
Screen? No, no, not a clear screen, get a pair of glasses.
10:18
Oh, pair of glasses,
10:21
yeah, magnification. But you want to get a minimum magnification, that single vision. So you’re not dealing with a split lens. So that here’s the here’s the deal. The bigger the bigger the window you look through, the more vision you’re using, and the more relaxed your eyes are going to be.
10:40
That makes sense. Yeah, so yeah, so we’re basically saying that because my eyes were somewhat limited. With range, it caused some fatigue and some stress, let’s now translating into maybe vision decline,
10:53
correct. But it’s not just that it’s the, it’s the optical design of splitting the vision into different compartments, and recognizing the only part of the lens you’re using is the center part, right in the middle. So you’re eliminating, like, 90,
11:14
get a pair of glasses for looking at a screen, right? Then
11:19
you’re gonna, you’re gonna choose it, right. And you’re gonna have to feel your body and see it clearly. And I’m saying, you know, could be somewhere around a plus 1.0 plus 1.25, I don’t know, you know, we don’t know what your, I would imagine, you know, you’re throwing out a number of points seven, five. It might be that that’s I don’t know if that’s distance or computer or we don’t know. But the combination of making the screen, the font bigger, will lower the amount of magnification in the glasses. And there’s another very important point that I need to share with you. And that is that I learned this many years ago, you know, I had an opportunity. When I was training, when I was learning a holistic approach to vision. I was on the East Coast in Philadelphia. And there are about five Holistic i doctors along the northeast corridor. And they were in their 70s. When I met them, I was 28 years old man, I was so lucky. And I would just be like a sponge, when they would have their study groups and things. And one of the things they taught me that is gold, is that even if one eye is different than the other, that if you prescribe the same lenses for each eye, it encourages the two eyes to start working together, even if one is slightly blurrier than the other. Whereas when you go for a mechanical I examine the correct one eye for this power, and then another eye for this power, it reinforces the discrepancy
13:12
got it makes the difference wider.
13:15
Yeah, exactly. Audit it may it spotlights the difference, because there’s so this is why it’s going to work out great for you. Because we do want the same lenses.
13:28
That was one of the questions I was going to ask you. So in the past, when my vision has not declined, I actually used to live in New Jersey, not far from Philadelphia, I went to school and fell in Philadelphia. And I remember my my ophthalmologist, my doctor there at the time, he kept my vision really the same the entire time and I went to him because I just would get headaches from studying for too long or, and then I just cannot really do my work because my eyes my headache, you know, it stops me from doing that. And I do remember that on the left eye. He’s always kept it like blank. Like there’s not he never did anything with my lazy eye. Because my lazy eye was very cooperative. Okay. And it worked really well. And when he tested it, and I always wondered why he did that now they started correcting my left eye. And that’s when things kind of gone really bad now that I’m thinking back about it because now I have, you know, a lens that does both that that has a prescription in each eye and they’re different from each other. So that’s probably the challenge.
14:30
Oh, you know, so so I can tell you that when the two eyes are focusing differently that your there’s going to be strained. Yeah, you know, I think that you know, there are many reasons of why we get headaches. Keep them in your case, and the first place I would start would be getting a lens that’s symmetrical to encourage you to I to work together, I think you’d get it was such a, it was such a great thing to learn. And when I can I do that with people, of course, I’m watching their body’s response when I give them a lens, but I think you could probably do it. And you know, you can always email me and say, and I’m getting a headache, blah, blah, blah. But this is why I think this is going to work for you to get a single vision lens, least amount of magnification, where your eyes can see clearly and your body and your eyes feel relaxed, that you’re not over corrected. Okay, great. And so then there, you would just wear the glasses when you need them, because this is another myth. And I think you already know this, the more you wear glasses, the weaker, your eyes are going to become more you need
15:52
them. That’s exactly how I started, my eyes started feeling really weak. And now I can no longer read without my glasses. And the longer I wear him, the less I can see without him,
16:01
there are exercises that I want to show you that can help you regain. And we’ll go into that in a minute. Now the other thing that you can consider, let’s do this in steps, step one would be just go get the real, you know, the glasses of the drugstore, get that figured out. And I do think that blue light that emanates from the screen, dry, dries your eyes out, and it also creates high strain. So a way to deal with that would be number one, there’s a blue light setting on most computers and phones and things. So you want to get that night shift turned on. Number two would be if you think that the blue light is affecting you, there’s a company that I like called Aki shield, oh cu Shi ELD. And they sell screens that you can put over your device that reduces the blue light exposure. And so that would be number two. And then number three, you know, once you get the prescription from the drugstore, and you you know you’re wearing it for a bed and you like it and it’s working for you, then you could consider having a you know, a pair made up. Now the whole glasses industry around blue light, I, I did some research, I’m a kind of an optics person. So I developed the blue blocker doesn’t make the screen darker, that’s what an orange or yellow tint does. What I developed was called a blue blocking filter. So basically a blocks the damaging blue light that I put the filter on the inside part of the lens. So a blocks the blue light, but it doesn’t darken things, it doesn’t distort the color. So you could get those through my web store, you could you could either send me a frame, or you could buy a frame, you know, we’re running sales all the time. So that you know you could do it’s not expensive and but that would come after you go okay, I like this prescription.
18:26
Yeah, find something that works first works
18:29
first. And then and then we can take the next steps. But I you know, I have blue blockers that I use after six o’clock at night. And
18:41
so during the day, it’s okay to be exposed during the
18:43
day, it’s fine, you know, the sunlight, and I know you’re in Seattle, but the sunlight has blue light, and we do need an amount of blue light, it balances our circadian rhythm, and so on. It’s more of the high energy blue light that comes off of our screens and see after 6pm The blue light tricks the pineal gland to stop producing melatonin. And so that affects the sleep and those kinds of things. So, you know, just know about it. I think right now the first step would be let’s get you into single vision lens that you like that feels good. And, you know, Park these progressive lenses. I mean, you it’s okay to use them a little bit like let’s say you have to go into a store and you’re you know, you’re back and forth. And you want some magnification help. But clearly not is such a I mean it also has a an effect on your cervical spine. Because you’re you know, you’re always which part of the being a cranial sacral therapist. I’m all always releasing the cervical spine. And the cervical spine is very connected to the eye muscles, the neck is very connected to the eye muscles. So releasing the spine, the cervical spine in the neck actually relaxes and gives more vitality to the eye muscles. So
20:20
I have a question about the single vision glasses from the drugstore. So if I if I go pick them up, I’m looking what what distance? Am I looking to test with those? Is it like a computer screen distance or?
20:32
Like? Well, it’s it’s it’s thinking about your current ergonomic setup when you’re using your computer. So you know, usually
20:42
reading or when I’m reading, reading, so the
20:45
distances for the distance for reading is actually the optimal distance is measured from the knuckle, under the chin to the elbow. That is the there were studies that were done that showed when was the stress level on the body reduced. And this is called the Harmon distance. And it was developed by this engineer scientists from Ohio State, I think our old Boyd Harmon. So you don’t want to be bringing it closer you want to have that. And again, it’s different, you know, you might be 12 inches, you might be 14 inches. So you don’t want to bring you know, you don’t want to be bringing your phone in here, because the EMFs. And so you know, you want to be out there, that’s the reading distance. Now with the computer. Generally speaking, it’s somewhere between 18 and 22 inches. Usually for you know, a laptop, now you get into a desktop. That could be you know, four inches away, but then you can really make the screen the letters larger. So you know that point. Either you need less magnification or no. And the thing you want to be careful about I’m glad we’re talking about this is the prescription that you use for reading is too much magnification for the computer. This is another thing that causes our eyes to deteriorate, because we’re paying too much magnification at that computer distance.
22:20
So the computer distance, so the reading distance was not called to elbow that’s between 12 and 14 inches and the computer was what 18 inches, you said
22:29
18 to 22 inches depending.
22:34
Okay, so I’ll just I’ll test those because this is what I struggle with a little bit like how, what is the healthy distance?
22:40
Yeah, so that’s it 12 to 14 inches for reading 18 to 22 inches for computer. So you can take your tape measure in, take your computer in. And you know, for 10 or $15, you’re gonna get a lens that is going to serve you better than you know what, what, unfortunately,
23:03
and we’re saying here that optimize it for reading to stress and to make it feel good in the body. Yes. And do I get another one for the other distance for 18 to 22. Or just let that be natural get to?
23:14
Well, I think experiment, it may be, you know, what’s interesting about that is that if you start doing some eye exercises, you might find that you just get the computer glasses, but you’re able to read, especially, you know, if you make the phone a little bigger or which would be great. So let’s say you decide on 1.25 for the computer. And if you make the font a little bigger on the phone or the tablet, or you have good light on your book, that that might work also for reading and the computer. So you don’t need two pairs of glasses, or you get a second pair that’s like if I have to look in a medicine bottle or you know something like you know, like it’s five point or seven point and then you would only use those for that particular circumstance. So you’ve got some wiggle room here. And if you start doing the vision, physical therapy that I’m going to teach you, you could actually start to reverse the need for the magnification lens.
24:19
Yes, the some of the exercises on your website have done a little bit I actually felt pretty good. I could read my computer screen so the computer screen is the first I got corrected very quickly. Yeah, my mic my laptop was like I just did not need glasses anymore for reading. It kind of improved a little bit but then it declined again. I think I just didn’t really know what I was doing. I wasn’t targeted with my exercises with my work. I just I just feel that if I’m on the right regiment I should be able to recover where the math has become kind of as needed. I didn’t I have a headache. I’m doing too much reading today. I need it but I don’t want to be reliant on it now I can’t really see if I forgot him at home I can’t fill out a form right the pharmacy and that’s a problem right
25:05
yeah it’s very disempowering at that at that point
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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