How to Get Back to 20/20 Vision

Having vision issues or wanting to improve eye health? Listen/Watch this next episode for natural ways to protect your eyes from fatiguing.

1:22 - Beneficial Foods for Eye health
3:28 - Herbs that help vision, Lutein
4:45 - Anthocyanin foods
6:20 - Protect eyes from Blue light technology
7:40 - Quit Smoking and wear glasses
8:55 - Get Regular Eye exams
9:50 - Eye muscle exercises

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Transcript

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD: 0:06

Today we're gonna be talking about eye health and how to improve your vision. This is The Dr. Lam show. We're here to talk about integrative medicine and empowering you to take control of your health. We hope that you find our show useful. So please hit the like button and subscribe to the podcast and to our YouTube channel. I'm Dr. Carrie Lam family medicine physician. And I've completed fellowships in functional and metabolic medicine, and I'm passionate about nutrition and lifestyle medicine.

Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD: 0:34

I'm Dr. Jeremy Lam. I'm an internal medicine physician and I'm also board certified in anti aging and regenerative medicine. Today, we're going to be talking about eye health. So to start with, let's talk about how the adrenals can affect your eye health?

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD: 0:55

You can see that our whole family actually wears glasses. So this is a very important topic for us, but not only for us, but a lot of people that are dealing with adrenal fatigue, or have genetic eye health issues. A large population of our world wears glasses. And so we will be talking about the diet and foods and supplements that can you can take in order to help improve your health. Let's begin with the foods that can support your eyes. Dr. Jeremy, tell us how a poor diet can deprive you of the proper nutrients that your eyes need?

Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD: 1:34

The first type of foods that are good is foods there are rich in xanthine. That's one of the most powerful antioxidants found in nature which has carotenoid pigments, which is extremely important for your eye health, and protects your eyes from bacteria and inflammation. So having some extra xanthine rich foods in your diet such as salmon, trout, shrimp, or other sea creatures can help with supporting and boosting your eye health. If you are vegetarian or vegan, then you can take care of your eye health by having some algae or algae supplements in your diet.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD: 2:23

There are also berries that are high in xanthine like Billberry, they're very small and closely related to the blueberry, and helps with good vision. It's nutrient rich and is beneficial es[ecially for nighttime vision by producing a pigment. The other nutrients that are also very good are vitamins - B1, B2, vitamin C, and vitamin K and some minerals. Trace minerals like magnesium are very important to eye function. And it's critical that they all work together. It's not one just single magic pill. Recent studies found that combination of these supplements and minerals and vitamins can help to improve eye health. Another thing that are very good for our health is coldwater fish like salmon, sardines, herring because they have higher amounts of omega threes compared to omega sixes. So make sure that you're buying them from organic sources with less heavy metals in them, especially mercury and try to reduce any vegetable oil intake like corn oil or vegetable oils because they can increase your omega six levels causing inflammation. A lot of people know that orange and yellow colored vegetables are great for your eyes with high carotenoids and vitamin A which are very vital to your eye health. But I have known people who ate too many carrots and turn themselves orange so definitely don't do that too much. I know your body has the ability to get rid of them. So carotenoids are great and lycopene can also be found in tomatoes. These are all foods that you can try and supplements that you can try with some advice. That's another one Dr Lam.

Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD: 4:34

There are herbs that help with good visions such as rosemary, Gingko Biloba, and they hold a special place because they've exceptionally high content of lutein. Lutein is a type of carotenoid that's found in many leafy green vegetables. Taking in a lot of lutein is going to help with supporting your eye health.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD: 5:07

These foods not only has high antioxidant, anti inflammatory, properties, they can also help filter out the damaging UV light. So, lutein rich foods have been shown to reduce the risk of cataracts, and macular degeneration and slow the progression of these disorders. However, it does have some blood thinning property. So don't take too much. If you have a blood thinning or blood clotting issues, always double check with your doctor because it does enhance blood flow through the body and circulation. And so you have to always be careful when taking these types of supplements. What are some other food types that are rich in anthocyanins as these are powerful antioxidants that can also help remove harmful radicals from the body Dr. Jeremy?

Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD: 6:00

So foods that have that are you know, black currant, chocolate, and some nuts as well, along with leafy spinach, greens, kale, collard greens, so they all have a lot of that pick chemical, which is going to help support your eyes and help them stay healthy. Other things that are also good is making sure you get enough sunlight. Because you wouldn't really think that sunlight is good for eye health, but it is. It's the source of life. And we know that sunlight can strengthen the eyes by triggering the release of dopamine and dopamine as our feel good hormone. And so that increases when your retinas are exposed to natural light. Studies have shown that natural light boosts dopamine, by being exposed to sunlight, are almost 50% less likely to develop macular degeneration. Most of us spend our time indoors with artificial light and air conditioning and we're all glued to our computers. So it's making sure that we get outside spending some time outside absorbing that sunlight to help our eye health as well as increase our dopamine levels.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD: 7:26

Of course, there's a limit, definitely don't look at the sun directly, because the UV light comes from sunlight. So you want to protect yourself from that. As we spend most of our time on our screens, our phones, our TVs, and our computers, the artificial type of blue light rather than the broad spectrum of sunlight affects the eyes. So if you are on your screen every hour, try to take a break, set an alarm on your phone, look outside or look at something green. The color reen has been shown to be oothing for your eyes. Also, in rder to give your eyes a break rom technology and from the lue light there are ways to rotect yourself from blue ight. Buy blue light lens lasses, or blue light screens o protect your eyes, e pecially if you have problems s eeping at night. And so there a e ways to help rest and relax y ur eyes if you have to work on y ur computer all day. And so I a ways find it nice to give m self a break and look at s mething natural something g een every hour or so to give m eyes a break.

Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD: 8:47

Another thing to help decrease your risk of eye disease is to quit smoking. Cigarette smoke can affect our eyes because it contains over 4000 different chemicals, most of them being toxic. And the smoking not only damages tissues around the eyes, but the actual eye itself as well. Collagen causes them to break down weakening of your eye muscles. And so that's our fourth tip which is to avoid smoking. Another tip is to wear glasses, and especially glasses that have UV protection because it protects from the UV radiation protecting your eyes. UV rays can cause a lot of damage to our eyes leading to cataract and macular degeneration. And so when we do go outside, make sure that we have UV protection with our glasses.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD: 9:59

Our Sixth tip is to make sure that you go and get regular eye exams. When was the last time you went to your doctor? Well, you should not only get eye exams, but also regular physicals. In terms of looking for visual acuity, sometimes if you have diabetes, they will definitely be looking at your dilating eyes in order to make sure you don't have neuropathy or retinopathy which is damage of the inside of your eyes. And so, otherwise, if you wear glasses, make sure you get new glasses every year. Make sure your macula is doing fine, the blood vessels are not constricted, that you don't have any glaucoma and that your vision is doing well. And so getting regular eye exams are very important. Because you'll be surprised how you can actually find something if you go to your doctor annually. What's our next tip for vision health.

Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD: 10:58

The next step is to exercise your eye muscles. There are simple techniques that you can do to relieve the eyestrain. And that can be practiced anywhere in public, you know, when you're taking the bus or when you're standing in line or you're at the post office,

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD: 11:15

There are some exercises that you can do. Like I said, when you're taking a break from work, instead of staring at a screen, look at something farther away, or something green, and then coming back to your screen. Other ways you can do is just giving yourself eye massages like little facial movements and training your eyes also, so near and far, then near and far. You can really try to do those types of exercises in order to build up eye muscles because muscles need to also be used. So these are definitely ways that you can do it. If you're just tired, close your eyes and do some visual relaxation techniques, meditation and breathing in order to preserve your eye health. If you have any other exercises that you'd like to do, or relaxation techniques, definitely comment down below and we would love to hear from you. Don't forget to hit the subscribe and the notification button to get our our weekly Dr. Lam show podcast and YouTube channel updates. So if you are looking for foods that are high in antioxidants, that are not only from supplements, think about having good green, dark green leafy vegetables, because they are very high in antioxidants, especially vitamin C. You can get them through citruses like oranges, limes, lemons, and berries that we talked about. And then rosehips are also very high in vitamin C if you want to prevent oxidation that can happen in your eyes. But if you are still having some issues and you don't know what to do, you've gone to senior doctor and it's still not working well for you. I ask that you call us at 714-709-8000 so that we can see what's the underlying root cause of your vision health and, and help you take control of that. Thank you for being here with us today at The Dr. Lam show. We hope you find this information helpful. Like I said again, subscribe to this channel so that we can bring you more great content. And if you know anyone else who might want to hear please share it with them. We're here to empower you to take control of your health.

Unknown: 13:45

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