See Better Naturally: Insights from Holistic Vision Coach

Hi everybody, I'm Dr. Sanda Moldovan, periodontist and nutritionist. Welcome to the Holistic Dentistry Podcast, the show that gives you the tips and tools to detoxify your mouth for a healthier body as we explore together the root cause of disease. Remember, you're not healthy until your mouth is healthy, so take care of it in the most natural way. Thank you for joining me for another episode on the Holistic Dentistry Show. I am super excited to talk about the eyes today, the holistic approach to eye health and what you can do about it to get better vision. And with me today is Claudia Mullenweg, known as the Holistic Vision Coach. She and I met through our Mindshare Mastermind group, and I'm super excited to have her today. She's the founder of Naturally Clear Vision Institute. She's leading the natural vision improvement movement through her Naturally Clear Vision Coach certification program and her consumer courses and memberships. Claudia, I'm so excited to have you with us on the show.

I'm so excited to be here with you, the holistic dentist. I love it. Yeah.

And you know, you got to see well, whether you're a dentist or hygienist listening to the show, you've got to see well and Even if you are a consumer, you're a patient, you've got to see well to do good oral hygiene. Either way, we must see well. You actually wrote and were co-author of the anthology, A New World of Seeing: Practice and Perspectives of Natural Vision Improvement. Is that— when did that get published or how can people find that?

So that book is on Amazon. It got published in December 2024. And it's basically myself and 42 other colleagues. And we wrote about all the aspects of vision. I talk about myofascial release. I use massage balls to actually help people release tension in the body, which really affects your vision in major way and not just the jaw and the neck. And 42 other people, we talk about from emotions to different vision conditions to different techniques. So it's a really great compendium. I would say more geared toward professionals, but it's not written in a way that if you're not like an eye doctor or something, you wouldn't be able to understand it. Right. It's— but it's not assuming that you know nothing about vision. It's basically guiding you toward the different aspects.

Yeah. So I'm curious, like, how did you get to do this work and be so passionate about it?

Well, I first of all, I want to say that you guys have really figured out how to talk about prevention, right? We learn from an early age we have to brush our teeth twice a day. I mean, you and I are both from Europe. There was no such thing as flossing when I was born. We know we had like scrub, but we kind of were trained that we had to do this 2 times a day. Later on, when I was little, there was no teeth cleaning, but we basically got this idea like we have to take care of our teeth. And, you know, funnily enough, Dr. Sanda Moldovanova, when I was little and even into my 30s, I was so trained from TV commercials that when you get older, all the teeth fall out. I saw all these commercials on German TV when I was little for like, you know, the denture cleaners. It was basically all these people over 60 had like no teeth. And so I kind of asked someone, asked my dentist, does everybody lose their teeth? And they said, no, if you take care of them. But I feel with vision, we believe that idea that as we get older, like everybody loses their near vision, everybody gets cataracts. That's basically like nothing we can do. And I think that's the message we get told. And the reason I'm so passionate about it is really because I got my first pair of glasses at the age of 3 years old. And I'm born in the '60s. And back then there was no Harry Potter. There were no geeks. It just wasn't cool to wear glasses. In fact, I was the only kid in my class and I got teased and bullied. And so from that age on, I was like, you know, as I got a little older, I was like a teenager. I was like, there has to be something you can do. And then I discovered the original method, the Bates Method, and I realized how you can actually make your vision better or worse. And obviously I figured out how to make it better. And yeah, I'm passionate about it because I see so many of my friends and family get into reading glasses and bifocals and lose their vision basically as they get older.

Yeah, you're right. We don't do any prevention really for the eyes.

No.

Yeah, maybe some vitamins once in a while. Maybe somebody takes some vitamins, take some lutein and zeaxanthin for the eyes. But tell me, like, can people really get rid of their glasses?

Absolutely. Again, this also depends. I want to be very clear. It depends on what is your vision condition? How old are you? You know, how long have you worn glasses? But what I do say, anyone at any age can improve their vision. So I had people in their 50s get a correction of their driver's license for glasses after 40 years. I had people in their early 70s, you know, get from a stage 3 cataract to a stage 1.5. People with early cataracts completely eliminating it, avoiding corneal transplant surgeries. I mean, I've seen, I'm always actually always amazed of what's possible. Sometimes I'm even like, really? Like, you know, I didn't expect people to improve their visual field when they have glaucoma where you get the, you know, where you lose your field because I'm always very careful about making promises. But we have a lot of, just like with our teeth, right? We have a lot of choice. About how well we see as we get older. It's like it's not just all age and genetics, which of course have an impact. Yeah, we can't pretend that doesn't happen, but we have a lot of choices on a daily basis how well we see. That really is not just age and genetics.

Hmm. Interesting. So do you see clients?

Yeah, I have switched to just online programs, to be honest, because I found that people in online programs or in group programs, let's put it that way, in group programs, there is more of that peer-to-peer support. And there's also more the accountability. Because I used to work with people in person or privately only, right in the beginning. And then what happened is like other things come over, priorities. And unless, you know, when you have a tooth, teeth that hurts, you're not going to be like, ah, I'll do that later. But when it comes to vision, there's a lot of times we kind of prioritize other things that are more urgent. You know, even though it's very important to us. And I got kind of frustrated with them. Like, can I move my session to next week or two weeks? And that's, And I got to the point where like, this is wasting my time. And not that I didn't get results with the people that were committed, but overall I see way better results in group programs. And that's why I'm switching. I'm not teaching private sessions anymore.

Yeah. But sometimes group programs are nice because you get a community and people get to support each other. And how you get somebody from, let's say, wearing glasses, like, um, -2.5, let's say, how do you get them through the program? How long does it take for somebody to see results or at least see an improvement?

Well, the improvement can happen in one day. It can actually happen in a few hours.

Wow.

How to get out of glasses— a 2.5, just for everybody listening, that's a level of nearsightedness where you have about, you know, you have about a little bit less than half a meter of clarity and then everything beyond that is blurry. So you could be working on somebody's teeth with perfect vision, but then you wouldn't see them when they're coming in, when you're in the waiting room and you try to find your patient.

Exactly.

So here's the thing. The first step is that I always start with everything is like figuring out how, first of all, our vision varies. Like notice what I call strains and gains. Like when is your vision best? When is it worse? Some people immediately say, oh, when I'm on the computer, it's not as good, or when it's dimmer light. But I want to dive deeper. Like, is it like what tasks are you doing? Is it maybe different when you FaceTime somebody than if you're doing your taxes, or like, what are the things that make our vision better or worse? Because our vision is just like our blood pressure, our blood sugar, our pulse. Like, it varies with the nervous system and our state. If we are more stressed, our vision will be more— will be worse. When we are more relaxed, it will be better. And for people to tune into, like, what are those kind of strains or stressors, and what are the things that make them feel more relaxed. And then they kind of like, oh yeah, I notice like in the morning my vision is better, in the evening it's worse, or when I'm doing this or that task, or I'm sometimes even meeting people that you don't like, right? You literally don't want to see them and your vision gets worse or you feel strain or tension in your head or something like that. So that's the first step that we start with.

But what is the actual problem with wearing glasses? Let's say your vision starts to get worse. I remember I was in college, right? I was reading too many books And then all of a sudden I'm like, oh, I need glasses now. So what's the problem with starting to wear glasses and not actually correcting it?

Well, so glasses don't correct anything. Obviously the second you take them off, your vision is gonna be like it was before. In many cases, it's actually worse. That was something that always drove me nuts. When I took the glasses off, my vision was way blurrier than it was before I even put them on. And glasses actually mask the actual reason that your vision got blurry. So with glasses, I've not seen anybody improve their vision with glasses. In fact, over time, you know, there's going to be a quarter diopter, a half a diopter, whatever diopter added here or there. Usually people get into bifocals, then astigmatism develops and their vision, they lose more and more of their vision. So glasses kind of create a problem long term. And maybe for a long time you have, it's constant and nothing is changing. But I always see people, their vision rapidly declines when they start wearing glasses. I've never seen it get better. And also glasses have a huge distorting factor. So when you're nearsighted, a glass— with glass— and I have glasses here that I bought on Amazon for those of you watching. I was actually farsighted, but I put these on. These are -6, and you can even see like how my face— like, my— like, basically it makes everything look like a fishbowl. Like, it makes everything— and it creates this illusion that everything behind the glass is perfectly sharp. And everything outside is very blurry and people get kind of a tunnel vision effect. But our vision is naturally different in the periphery than it is in the center of eyesight. In fact, the further away from this tiny, tiny center of the fovea and the retina you get, the blurrier or less well you can see. And so there's an effect of people straining their eyes and using their eyes in a wrong way that is not based on the anatomy of the eyeball.

Makes total sense. So contacts, are they any better than glasses?

The one thing that's better about contacts is that they do allow you more that peripheral field, right? So contact lens wearers usually don't have that kind of tunnel vision, you know, but we haven't talked about this yet. But glasses are measured in diopters, which is the strength of the lens, and a diopter is based on a distance and actually on meters. So what you need for reading is not what you need for distance vision or the computer. And what I teach my students, that's kind of step 2, is like breaking your glass, not physically breaking it, but giving the bifocals that many of my clients have, or progressives or multifocals, different names for the same thing. We kind of divvy them up into a distance pair and a near vision pair so that you really only need— use the correction that you need, right? And with contacts, usually leave them in all day long. Like, we don't— we wouldn't change from like looking at the computer for 8 hours a day to driving. And especially I want to say with myopia, people get corrected for distance vision and now they're wearing something at 2 feet distance that's designed for 20 feet distance. That is creating a strain in the eyes. And when you're young, you can, you know, we can pull all-nighters, we can do all kinds of stuff. But as we get older, then you will see that things will get more blurry and you get headaches and all these frustrating side effects of wearing glasses or contacts in this case.

Yeah. So how, how do you— are there exercises involved with your program?

Well, I don't like the word exercises. I, if anything, I call them relaxercises. But yes, some things you could call exercise. So we have to look at the different factors. First of all, we all get into weaker glasses like we figure out, we measure farsighted folks. I can usually tell, go to the drugstore if your eyes are pretty similar. If they're very different, that doesn't work. You know, and we're like, we have people with +5-something near vision readers from the eye doctor be like, oh, the +3s are totally fine. I can read everything. Maybe not the tiniest print on the supplement bottles. So we want to reduce, right? That's the first step. And then the second level is like getting into like understanding like the components of good vision, which is light, rest, and movement. So we want to like rest the eyes. We want to reduce light sensitivity. Our eyes are light receivers, just like our ears are sound receivers. And so we need to make sure that light sensitivity, which is very common in nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism, which are all the three refractive errors, right, that are related to the bending of the light through the cornea and the lens. So we want to make sure that that gets reduced. And then the third aspect, movement. There's four different types of eye movements, and we can improve all of these eye movements, which is healthy for important for healthy vision.

Very nice. Vision decline, a lot of people think it's unavoidable, especially with the amount of time that we're looking at screens today. Is that true, or can we do something to help our vision while we're looking at computers?

We can definitely do something to help ourselves. And in fact, I always tell this anecdote which surprised me so much. So I created a 3-day event at the end of '23. It was basically a bonus for somebody that bought my program. So we spent 30 hours, a whole Friday, a whole Saturday, a whole Sunday on screens. Obviously this was all trainings and vision improvement and techniques, and we did the things together. And people said after the 30 hours, I, I can't believe it, I don't need my readers and my vision is so much better. And even my team, some of my team members, you know, don't have perfect vision, and they're like, I can't believe it, this is like, my vision is so much clearer. So this was after 30 hours on the screen, but of course we took taught people how to use screens. And we also were doing vision activities. And I don't, again, not so much exercises. Also, we had some talks in there, educating people on certain aspects, but it was like very much an interactive 30, like 3 full-day workshop. And yes, everybody improved their vision. So it's screens are, screens are not great if we don't know how to use them. And most people use them totally wrong. That's for sure.

It's so true. Now, What are the dos and don'ts for good eyesight?

So one of the don'ts is what people with glasses often do is what's called staring. They're like looking at that like with a hard stare. They're trying to see that whole picture at once when our little tiny fovea in the retina I mentioned earlier can only see the size of a pinhead totally super sharp and clear. Now it doesn't mean that a centimeter or like a half an inch away from that isn't well seen, it's much better to see than what's something on the side. But we need to constantly move our eyes. So that's absolutely important, right? So staring, one simple thing I always teach everybody is blinking. Blinking is so important. It lubricates the eyes. Many people complain about dry eyes, especially as they get older or like hormonal changes or, you know, the air conditioning or the fans or allergies. All these factors can contribute to dry eyes. And we only need 10 seconds of not blinking to kind of tear up the tear film, actually gets little holes in that. So, and that protects the cornea. And then it's, you're at a high risk for inflammation or infections of the cornea. So blinking, and also blinking when you stare, and the second you blink, it's almost like, you know, you kind of get out of that kind of daydreamy zoning out staring. So blinking is one of those simple things that is, That is important. Don't, I would say, is like always wearing sunglasses. I definitely feel like sunglasses, there is a good point when to use them, and it's extremely bright. If your eye, if your little pupils don't constrict in bright light, which healthy eyes do. So if you have a brain traumatic brain injury or you're taking medications or drugs and your pupils are big and wide, then in the sunlight you definitely want sunglasses. Or if you're like skiing or if you're on the ocean, But in day-to-day life in the city, we actually— our eyes are perfectly well equipped to tolerate sunlight. And we now know, we now recently been hearing from the new science how important sunlight is, not just for vitamin D, for hormones, for circadian clock, for sleep. And it's also really important to help the eyeball grow to the correct size and not get elongated like it does in myopia, for instance. So light is one of those other things. I can give you a whole ton of things, but I— let me pause here.

I know, I love it because I was I was just listening to Jack Kruse talking about, you know, how important it is to let sunlight in through the eyes. And another thing, when we're wearing contacts, actually all my contacts throughout the years had UV blocking, and now I'm wearing less and less contacts, although I am wearing them today. But when I'm outside, I just choose to wear my glasses, not my sunglasses, my regular, because I wanna get that sunlight through the eye. Also, you know, because we have this melanin type of receptors, you know, in the brain. So we've got to get that UV light through our eyes.

It's so interesting. I've been talking about that for, I don't know, over 10 years because, you know, we get actually more sunburned when we wear sunglasses because the brain doesn't know what the heck is going on. It thinks it's like evening or like, you know, close to sunset. And in fact, it's the middle of the day when we wear these dark goggles. So, yeah. I love it.

That's pretty interesting. Now, what are some of the things that people listening can do right now to improve their vision?

So, you know, I have probably like 10 dos and don'ts. But one of the things I do want to mention also is this, you know, this— everybody gets at some point into so-called bifocals or progressive glasses. And when I ask my clients on my masterclasses or webinars, you know, when you first got them, did you rip them off your face? Like, oh my God, I get so dizzy, I trip and fall because it's just so progressive. For those of you that don't know, bifocals is the old-fashioned way. My dad had bifocals. You saw that hard line in the middle of the lens, but it basically assumed that when you look down, you're reading. And so it had the correct diopter strength for your distance— near vision, sorry, for your reading vision. And when you looked up on the top, it has the distance vision. So Progressives are the same way. They're just gradated, so they don't have a hard line. They're just more like it kind of smoothly goes from one level to the other. Now, the problem with these glasses is that in most cases, unless you're driving— driving is one of those few exceptions— you might be looking straight ahead at your computer, but it's close, it's not far. So what do people do? They tilt their chin up. You see that on Zoom calls all the time. You see people like with their chin up.

Yes, yes, yes.

Or when you walk down a flight of stairs or you're hiking and you're looking down, that's not reading distance. That's like depending on how tall you are, higher risk for falls or tripping. And also these glasses are really expensive. So the reason I'm saying that getting out of those $1,000 glasses is there's also a correlation to astigmatism and head posture. So let me explain. Our eyes, you know, we have 6 extraocular muscles around the eyeball and we want them all to be equally strong and flexible and movable, right? We want them to be like, just like a biceps and a triceps. We don't want one leg to be super strong and the other one really weak, right? We want like a balance. So when we are habitually having weird head movements, like tilting our head up to use progressives or other strange movements that we might be making, and are we moving just the eyes? That correlated in 85% of cases to a so-called functional or postural astigmatism. And I teach people to get out of these glasses, remove the astigmatism correction. Obviously, you know, we have to be very clear that this works for that person or reduce it so that they can learn how to move their head and their eyes together. Our eyes, we were always meant to move not like a robot or like an owl, the birds, you know, they— we, our eyes have ability to roll around, but really we see best when we look at things straight. So when I'm seeing something in the corner, I'm not going to be like moving my eyes to the side. I'm going to turn around and look at the thing straight on, right, to see it. Yeah. So, so progressive glasses is the first thing we're getting out. And that's what I'm saying. If needed, depending on your needs, some people just need one pair. They just maybe they just have presbyopia and all they need is really near-vision glasses or computer glasses. They can often go to the drugstore and get those, you know, very inexpensive. Maybe if you're nearsighted, maybe you, depending on how nearsighted you are, you might not need glasses for reading. But maybe you need sunglasses for driving or for— of course, for driving you will need glasses, but for like computer, maybe just a little bit, maybe just a -1 or something like a little bit for computer. And so we do that first. We make sure that everybody— so when you're listening to this, like those progressive glasses are really not useful. They're convenient. Yes, but they cause all kinds of partial issues that will relate to more tension, more neck strain, more eye strain. Pain, and again, astigmatism. So that's one thing that I recommend. And then basically, don't wear your glasses when you don't need them. Like, maybe you're farsighted and it's okay for you to walk or go on a hike or ride a bike or go in the garden without glasses. Or maybe you're nearsighted and you can hold a book or read a book without glasses. Maybe you hold it not like to your nose, but even if you hold it a little bit closer than reading distance, that's still better than always having your glasses on at all times when you really don't need them.

Yeah. Now I know people listening are like, oh, I want to improve my vision. I mean, who doesn't, right? Because it usually gets worse, not better. So how can people work with you?

So I have, I have a free download, but I also have a free 4-day training that I run a couple of times a year and it's called See Better in Just 4 Days. And I'm doing it for free. And I've created this to basically— because I hear these like, I don't know if it works for me. I'm beyond— I'm like, you know, I'm— there's no hope for me. I hear all these things. I'm too old, you know. And I always say this: don't believe your eye doctor. Don't believe me. See for yourself that this works. And so it's a 4-day training, little prerecorded videos. They're very short. It's very simple things. And then every day we go live and I coach you. You can win prizes. So that's a really easy way to get started with something that doesn't take up too much of your time.

Fantastic. Who doesn't? I mean, 4 days is a perfect amount of time. So I'm going to post the link in the show notes underneath for people that are interested to try a free 4-day class on how to improve your vision. Any last-minute words or something that we haven't talked about that you'd like to mention?

I think I just want to remind people that they have so much choice over how well they see as they get older. And really understanding your vision better, knowing that your day vision is very different than your night vision. I hear all the time, I'm having trouble with night driving. And if you live in the United States, you're basically dependent on driving. You know, your freedom is dependent on that. And reducing light sensitivity is not just good for not needing sunglasses. It's also important for night driving in the city so that the headlights don't blind you. Like, once you understand how your eye anatomy works and how your eyes work and how we actually see in the brain and how many factors go into that, and that goes well beyond the eyeball, educate yourself. And then every day, the little choices you make, you mentioned good diet or the supplements, you know, you make the choices every day. You know, are you smoking? Are you having high blood sugars? All these, all these things cause age-related eye diseases, and we don't need to believe that there's nothing we can do because it's really up to you with your daily choices how well you see as you get old. I love it.

That's super empowering, Claudia. Thank you so much for being with us today. This has been super informative, I'm sure, for everybody listening. And definitely go and check out Claudia's website that's posted in the show notes. And thank you everyone for listening to today's show on eye health and what you can do to improve your vision. For any other topics that you'd like to listen on, please go ahead and send me a message on Instagram, or you can comment on our YouTube channel. Until next time everyone, stay healthy. Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please make sure you check out the show notes for any links mentioned in the show. If you like today's show, please invite your friends to listen as well. That would mean a lot to me. Do you have a question you'd like me to answer? Message me on Instagram @drsandamoldovanova. This is Dr. Sanda Moldovanova, and remember, your mouth is the gateway to your health, so take care of it in the most natural and best way possible.