Macular Degeneration is the leading cause of blindness and I’m seeing more and more people diagnosed with a more serious kind, so I wanted to take some time to provide you with the latest information on how to prevent and reduce Macular Degeneration through a holistic lens. Enjoy the show.

If you want more, sign up for my newsletter at: www.drsamberne.com.

If you have any questions, submit them to hello@drsamberne.com or you can now text me! Text ‘Join’ to 1-844-932-1291 to join the community and ask your questions!

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

macular degeneration, macula, red light, retina, wet macular degeneration, eye, nearsighted, lutein, reducing, dairy, vision, talk, coming, milligrams, fluid, omega threes, check, podcast, part, book

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 it’s Dr. Sam and I’d like to welcome you to my EyeClarity podcast. Before we get to today’s show, you can always text me your questions 1-844-932-1291 Or send me an email hello@drsamberne.com.

I’ve got a couple of great workshops coming up in March in Southern California. I’ll be in San Diego March 5, LA March 7, and Santa Barbara March 12 doing my famous masterclass. I’m back doing that again in person. This is a great way to work with me one on one, if you’ve got an issue that you haven’t been able to solve. Register Here.

And I’ll be doing some book events. As you know, my new book, Vital Vision is coming out the end of February, we’re in a pre sale right now. So if you want to order the book, you’ll get a discount. And there are also some events happening. You can sign up and we can do an online workshop that’s going to be happening in April. Also, you can get some coaching one on one sessions with me if you buy the book, and I’ll be doing a gathering in Santa Fe in September. This is gonna be a small group at my geo-dome. So if you’d like to register for that, we’d love to have you.

Preorder the book here OR learn about my book events here.

Hey, everybody, welcome to my podcast today. I’m doing some mountaineering. And in fact, I’ve

02:27

got some I’ll show you my shoes. So I got some cleats here. So I’m going to be heading up the mountain.

02:37

But I wanted to get this information out. So here we go. Hey, everybody, it’s Dr. Sam, and I’d like to welcome you to another podcast. So today, I want to give you the latest information on how I’m working with macular degeneration. And macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness I’m seeing more and more people diagnosed with a more serious kind of macular degeneration, which is the wet. But if you get this diagnosis, it can be kind of a wake up call that you need to do some different things with your eyes and with your body with your health. And I want to give you the newest and the best information. So a little anatomy lesson. The macula is the center part of the retina. It has the densest part of cones, where we see detail and color vision. And for people that are say over 6570 This is when macular degeneration can start occurring. But it’s probably been hovering around for quite a while. And this now has reached the the part where it’s now coming to your visual awareness. So the first thing to note is there are a lot of things that you can do. I know more and more doctors are talking about the air IDs and the air IDs to formulas. This is from the NIH study back in 2001 and 2006.

And whatever brand you go with, if you start taking things like lutein Xanten as to Xanthan, I think that that would be a good step in the right direction. Now dosage, I would recommend somewhere around 16 milligrams of lutein, about six milligrams of xanthan, and about four to six milligrams of acid Xanthine daily acid Xanthine is the marine current Noid and so we talk about foods. Think red, orange, yellow, green mean vegetables, this would be for your lutein. And your Z is Anthon. And you know, this time of year, wintertime, you can do things like sweet potatoes, and squash. Also kale and spinach. And of course, the cruciferous vegetables are really important as well. Avocados are high on my list. Also, if you eat cage free eggs, there’s a lot of good lutein and eggs as well. So however you want to get it, you want to start in on the lutein, zeaxanthin and ask the Xanten. And another key factor here in your macular health, is to recognize that about 50% of the retina is made of fatty acids. Therefore, the omega threes are so important. And you’re looking at taking probably around 2000 milligrams a day, you can check in with your doctor, get a good high quality Omega three, and start taking that making sure you’re reducing inflammation.

One of the things that the Omega threes do in all fats and oils, healthy fats and oils, is they can be helpful at reducing inflammation. Now another thing that people talk to me about is blue light. And it is true that blue light, over a period of time, can dry out your eyes, it can damage some of the cells, the tissue. And so getting some kind of blue protect lens, at least for part of the day, especially late in the day or into the evening is a good idea. I don’t want you using progressive lenses. You know, when you split lenses and use bifocals and trifocals you’re actually putting more stress on the macula is to do more of the work. And when I share that with people, it becomes such an epiphany to them, that the optical system glasses that they’re looking through, is actually creating more stress on the macula.

They they have a wake up and they go Alright, I need to use a single vision lens, whether it be for distance, whether it be for the computer, and or reading now, it’s going to depend on whether you’re nearsighted or farsighted. And if you’re near sighted, you might be able to read without any glasses, depending on how nearsighted you are. And you can also get a reduced prescription and a reduced distance prescription and use that for the computer. Your eye doctor could prescribe that for you. nearsightedness teaches you to focus exclusively on the macula. It’s like a tunneling of your vision. So I would start working on reducing your myopia through my eye exercises, and engaging more peripheral vision. That’s the name of the game. So you’re not relying on your Macula to do everything.

Remember, the macula is or less than 1% of the real estate of the retina. And yet if we’re used using bifocals or trifocals, or we’re nearsighted, we tend to be very Macula centric. And 99% of the real estate is what you need to engage with. Okay, last but not least, I’m going to bring in my colleague Glen Jeffries, the Jeffrey’s lab and his research on red light. If you don’t know about this, you should. Dr. Jeffries and his team did a study with people with retinal degeneration problems and drusen. And he had them look at Red Light daily, morning dose of red light over a 12 week period. And he found that there was a 22% increase in their visual acuity after 12 weeks. Why red light because red light helps stimulate the mitochondria and the mitochondria live in every cell in the body but they’re in a very high concentration in your retina and macula. Think of it this way.

The retina has the highest metabolic need of the body and the macula has the highest metabolic need of the retina. Let me say that again. The retina has the highest metabolic needs of the body and the macula has the highest need metabolic need in the retina. So what this red light does, when you sit and receive the red light and you only need to do it about five minutes a day and you want to do it in the morning. You have a good chance of increasing mitochondria function which produces ATP, which gets rid of oxidative stress and inflammation. And it gets rid of something called our O S. And this reactive oxygen molecule will increase as you age. And it’s one of the issues that occurs in all retinal degenerations. Another part of the study, which was fascinating to me is that this red light, reduce drusen drusen are those fatty deposits that accumulate in the retina. And if they start impinging on the macula, you’re going to have some issues with macular degeneration.

So I would check out the red light. All right, last but not least, I’m going to talk about the more serious kind, wet macular degeneration, where you get edema and fluid behind the eyes. And this is a very serious condition. The only way to really work with this from an allopathic point of view is to get monthly injections, which can help dissipate the fluid temporarily. And it works. But there are side effects. So if you are diagnosed with wet macular degeneration, stay connected to your eye doctor, stay connected to the injections, and then you can start instituting some of my things if you choose to. But it’s the long game if you’re going to do that. So a couple of things to check out would be are you diabetic, or pre diabetic, people with what macular degeneration tend to have issues with glucose, they’re not metabolizing it very well.

Number two, with wet macular degeneration, there may be some underlying either inflammatory disease in the gut, or heavy metal toxicity exposure, pesticide exposure or mold exposure. Now this gets a little heavy, because now you’ve got to seek out a naturopathic doctor or a functional medicine doctor and do some additional testing. But I want to make a key point here. Your gut health is directly directly related to your eye health. And if you’ve got any kind of digestive issues, it’s going to affect your eyes. And one of the most vulnerable areas is the macula.

12:22

The last thing I’ll say about what macular degeneration I’ve actually done a written blog, nine things you can do to reduce wet macular degeneration, you can Google that it’s on my website is the relationship you have with dairy. Now, this doesn’t apply to everybody. But think of it this way. When you develop what macular degeneration, there is an imbalance in the fluid in your body, specifically in the eye. And dairy, for most people creates more mucus, and it heightens more congestion. And I’ve had a number of people where they’ve gotten off dairy. And this has reduced the wet macular degeneration. So I’m only sharing it as an observation. I know some people love their cream their milk. And so maybe you need to start looking at more coconut based things. There’s a wonderful coconut based yogurt that I love using where I can get a lot of probiotics that way, and I don’t have to do dairy. So that’s something to check out. So keep following me. And if you’ve got questions, you can always text me or email me. I’m happy to help if I can. And I want to thank you for tuning in today and coming on this great walk. Take care of everybody. Until next time

13:50

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.