May 2, 2023 - EyeClarity Podcast
I was a guest on Dr. Robert Wiles radio show. He is a sports podiatrist, they call him the sports doctor, and we had about a 15 minute lively conversation about optometry, concussions, brain injury, and so much more. Enjoy the show.
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
eyes, sports, doctor, concussions, vision, world, glasses, talking, holistic, baseline, guests, optometry, sam, physical therapy, body, worked, athlete, sorts, visual, problem
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@drsamberne.com.
Hey everybody, its Dr. Sam and I’d like to welcome you to another EyeClarity podcast. Well, today I was a guest on Dr. Robert Wiles radio show, and he is a sports podiatrist. They call him the sports doctor. And we had about a 15 minute lively conversation about optometry, concussions, brain injury, and so much more. So everybody, thanks for tuning in, leave a comment on Spotify or my website. And I look forward to seeing you again.
00:38
Dr. Sam Berne. Welcome to The Sport’s Doctor
00:42
Thanks, Dr. Bob, great to be here.
00:45
Give us some background on yourself. And you can throw in a definition of holistic optometry while you’re at it.
00:55
Sounds good. So when you go for an eye exam, you know, the doctor has you read the eye chart, and you get the Reading 2020. That’s a measurement of your eyesight. But vision is how the eyes and the brain and the body work together. So eyesight is only one part of vision. So as a holistic eye doctor, I look at the eyes as an interrelated, interconnected part of the body. And there are things that you can do to improve your vision even as you get older. And that’s kind of the difference between the regular eye care, they just say your eyes get worse as you get older. In my, in my practice, people get older and their eyes get better.
01:39
At you know, we see truth for years on the sports doc, the doctor, hand eye coordination, all sorts of eye exercise for some commentators talking about enhancing performance. Regardless of the sport, there’s a lot of exciting information in that side, you know, besides the run of the mill, I can’t like you said, there’s so much more involved, even as a diagnostic tool, I don’t like podiatry when many times we might see diabetes for the first time because of a foot symptom. You also might see it when you see the eyes, right?
02:16
Exactly, because the eyes have one of the highest metabolic needs of the body, highly concentrated with those tiny blood vessels. So it’s one of the entry ways into the body like the foot. And you can pick up disease very early. And of course, in diabetes, this is a real vulnerable area, I’m talking about the retina. So you know, if you have glucose levels that are off the charts, or you’re pre diabetic, you’re going to see it in the eyes, it’s going to be one of the first places and then you can treat it by doing some holistic things if you want to.
02:56
Well, you talk about embracing your body’s ability to strengthen, healing balanced. And again, we talked so much about holistic medicine, I would have complementary medicine and so many different topics, and the sounds I could fit in Absolutely. With a big emphasis on prevention, as well as awareness and education.
03:19
You know, it’s being proactive, you know, just with diet alone, the eyes in the brain make up about 2% of the body weight, and use 25% of the food intake. So if you’re cut out processed foods and sugar and mostly gluten, and you eat, you know, the colorful vegetables and berries, getting enough healthy fats in your diet that in itself can keep your eyesight healthy. And well as you get older.
03:52
You know, it’s so common to see children younger, younger ages routinely with glasses of glasses. Now it’s styling, you know, some way. But do you feel that? Is the introduction of corrective eyeglasses too early? Or are we really paying big attention to prevention?
04:12
Well, when you get glasses as a child, what it’s doing is it’s reinforcing the problem that’s causing the need for glasses to begin with. So you know, again, back to the holistic perspective, I find the cause and treat that and we know that the eyes originate from the brain. And so if you do eye exercises, not only are you changing the brain, but you’re also changing the eyes. And of course the other thing that’s going on with kids is screen time. So the more screen time they have this is really wreaking havoc then with COVID where schools were just online. I got so many complaints from parents and kids about eyestrain, eye fatigue, red eyes, blurred vision, dry eye and so on. So I think the screens are another factor that we have to look at in terms of helping kids and
05:08
the whole mental health angle in so many different ways. In all ages, the biggest topic, it’s interesting, no matter where my guest is, from, whatever their vocation is, from anywhere in the world, they still everybody’s concerned about mental health. And the social media is, again, it’s such a challenge, to say the least. And then again, the screen effects on the eyes and whatever that’s got to be a whole new world, I would imagine.
05:38
Well, more and more research is coming out about the damaging effects of the artificial blue light, it’s a chaotic frequency. And first of all, it messes with our circadian rhythm if we’re staring into the screen after 6pm suppresses the melatonin as you know, but it also can dry the eye tissue out and you know, in severe cases, it can start to cause things like macular degeneration and cataracts. So we need to protect our eyes.
06:07
To have you want me to pay attention to that, as well. As you know, you talk about the eyes and the brain, the eyes and the brain. We feature so much information on the sports doctor on the world of concussions with experts all around the world. Want to get one of your perspectives. When we come back, everybody’s talking. Everybody sports doctor, go to my website, sports doctor radio.com, if you will, radio shows you for that years, all sorts of topics, local guests, national guests, international guests, endless array of topics working to whatever you would like to go over newspaper articles, magazines, great information, a lot of excitement within VT magazine, a lot of excitement, the upcoming documentary where our children play the whole world of youth sports we have 1000s and 1000s of followers. And you can follow me at sports doc COC radio, on Twitter. I can’t tell you how many guests we get from both Twitter and LinkedIn. Over the years. We’re speaking with Dr. Sam burning the holistic optometrist. Again behavioral I help. I wanted to ask you, Sam, again about your thoughts with the world of concussions and the the whole eye connection.
07:28
So I’ve done researched and published on traumatic brain injury and vision. I’ve also worked in hospitals, written articles. It’s a huge problem today in sports. I mean, it’s not just the NFL, but what happens is when we get hit in the head, it reverberates into the nerves and muscles in the eyes. Now the problem is, we don’t pick these up on an MRI. So you’ve got the soft symptoms, like blurred vision, double vision, memory issues, balance issues, you know something’s wrong, but the traditional eye exam misses it. So when you go to somebody like me, we’re testing things like visual tracking, visual focusing, visual reaction time, peripheral vision, depth perception, and we’re looking at how the visual system has been impacted. And then once we get the diagnosis, we can do physical therapy on the eyes to repair the damage that’s occurs from these traumas, concussions, and so on.
08:33
Yes, just last week, we had Mike Tia, he’s the CEO hit check, which is the whole go for nap a system of having a baseline available for any particular athlete, whatever the sport happens to be. So if there is an incident involving head trauma, they can have something that we look at. And again, this idea of the whole eye effect. What’s the best website for information Sam on you, your writing, and your whole world?
09:06
Dr. Sam berne.com I have 1000s of videos that are free on there also written blogs. You can also find me on Facebook and tick tock Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube. I do tons of
09:23
interesting doctors. Yes, we talked with optometry and AI experts ophthalmologists, again high performance I had a whole group of racecar drivers talking about their hair dye and vision training. But the idea of eye protection in youth sport I would think was not paying nearly enough attention to that. What are your thoughts?
09:48
I totally agree. I mean, I think when you get hit in the eye, it’s it really causes a lot of problems you know, circulation issues and and double vision blurred vision. You’ve got to use protective eyewear, especially with kids in their playing in contact sports, it’s a no brainer. You know, we recommend it all the time for people.
10:10
You know, the three words are stressed all the time on the sports doctor for decades, is awareness was talking about what are we talking about here education, regarding learning about and the topic, whatever it happens to be the positive action. And this fits right smack in the middle of that when you think about zazz. The majority of kids regardless of the sport, where they’re running and jumping, and doing all sorts of things. I just don’t see many goggles, enlisted someone with glasses. They get many prescriptions or whatever. Are we making progress there?
10:48
I think a little bit, you know, especially in sports like lacrosse and squash and racquetball. But you know, in basketball, or football or baseball, no, I don’t think we’re making enough inroads there. You’re right, it takes education and being proactive. And, you know, we need to do a better job of PR getting that stuff out there.
11:14
In the field, like we were talking the term baseline, having a baseline, like you talked about the kind of visual analysis you might be doing to establish these different connections. Again, I bring several different effects, and be able to have that is another one of the baseline. So if there is, again, some sort of trauma, and, again, concussion is a gigantic concern, all sorts of questions, when is it safe to go back, we’ve come a long way baby, but we still have a long way to go. That might be another idea for your world, which is having that baseline available for athletic directors and coaches. Hey, we start
12:00
a whole new thing a lot, you know, this, this starts another protocol, we already have the concussion protocol, now we need to bring the vision piece into it. And that could actually be part of the baseline, and whether or not you know, when an athlete can actually go back into competition.
12:19
You know, getting older, and a lot of the changes in the changes in different different concerns. And the idea that, again, the eye exercises should be a routine part of what we do. And then that’s another real challenge in that it was a different guy sessions. That’s how much I remember seeing in the past. I know, I had anybody talk to me about I exercise.
12:48
You know, we don’t, we don’t really emphasize it in school. But you know, in my own vision, I had very bad vision. When I was a child, I was very myopic. And I met a doctor who did this physical therapy, and I completely reversed my myopia. I don’t wear any glasses and 30 years later, so I’m a living example that you can do it and the eyes and brain have a plasticity. That’s the thing. And if you offer them new experiences, new pathways, you can improve your vision. And I think it’s coming more into things like occupational therapy, physical therapy, in some of the private schools, in sports. But I think in regular eye care, we’re so geared towards looking for disease and using pharmaceuticals and drugs and surgery, that there’s no place for exercises.
13:40
God bless America. One of the challenges in so many different areas, which is you know, you have American medicine, which is a pill surgery, doctor visit and then you have the whole eastern holistic world. And you know us years ago, we would talk about acupuncture, we would talk about mindfulness, Mind Body, medicine didn’t have to spell it. I think they come along how is the general medical world pay attention to your perspective, regarding eye care, or the optometry and ophthalmology world?
14:18
Well, I think it’s slowly changing because in the grass roots, the patients are asking for it. And because there’s so much emerging in the area of nutrition, functional medicine, acupuncture as you say, by the way many of the meridians in the body go to the eyes and so liver gallbladder you know those affect the eyes quite profoundly Yes. Emotional tapping. Yes, we
14:48
feature a lot you know, again, again, those points to make positive changes in the body. It’s funny years ago, they would say alternative men Listen to now we go you and start more arguments. So somebody that, you know, they say, Hey, what about complimentary? And I think, you know, that makes so much more sense. And again, in the area of high performance, I think again, this is something that seems to be paid more and more attention. You know, thinking about the guy in the batter’s box or whether it’s hitting a ball or moving in different directions. The whole life acuity is the things that can really be improved.
15:28
Oh my god, I’ve worked with baseball players, golfers, volleyball players, wide receivers, you know, it’s all about reaction time keeping your balance, tracking the ball while you’re, you know, up in the air. So there’s no question that sports vision is a huge, you know, it’s a huge support for athletes that want to you know, play at a higher level.
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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