Eyes: The Window to Health and Early Diabetes Detection: 34

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast. I am really excited to share my guest. I say that every time, but I am always excited to share my guests with you because I think we're going to have a really awesome, uh, conversation today with Dr. Gulp about eye health. And he has been working for the last several years on a documentary that we're going to discuss in detail. And then also of special interest to my audience specifically is he does some work, um, with eye health and diabetes. And so, you know, I don't like to get too doom and gloom with these things, but my gosh, if saving your sight isn't a good enough reason to work on your metabolic health, I don't know what is. So anyway, all that said, welcome. You can share a little bit about yourself beyond what I just said, beyond what's in your bio, how you got into being passionate about eye health and what led you to spend 2 years of your life traveling around the world to make this documentary.

Well, you know, thank you for having me. You know, I'm so excited that our documentary, it's called Open Your Eyes, is now on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, iTunes, Google Play, YouTube movies and documentaries. And I think, you know, people realize that the eyes are important, but they don't realize the connection between the eye and systemic disease. So the purpose of making the movie is to have the population, the public at large, realize that the— through the eye, we could diagnose disease much sooner than a lot of times that they could be diagnosed, you know, from going to your internist or your family practice, especially when we're dealing with vascular disease. Because when we look into the eye, we could see at 10 microns or less, so we could see the capillaries, the really small capillaries. So as you know, capillaries go from your toe up into your brain, and we could tell a lot by looking at the capillaries in the eye. In fact, you mentioned diabetes. A number of years ago, when I got this special camera to image the blood vessels in the back of the eye, the capillaries, I would see these little outpouchings. And at the beginning, we didn't know what it was, uh, and then— but because I'm very interested in functional medicine, and I've been up to a lot of the IFM conferences, and I spent a lot of time taking lectures from Mark Houston, who you might have heard of, who's an integrative cardiologist, and vascular disease, I put two and two together and I realized it was probably— those were microaneurysms and they were caused from insulin resistance. So we did a pilot study to see if these microaneurysms were related to insulin resistance. And sure enough, when we did fasting insulin labs and 2-hour insulin, it correlated very well with microaneurysms. So by looking in the eye, we could see if you're on the spectrum, if you have this type of camera, We could see if you have these microaneurysms and if you're on the spectrum of diabetes, so either very early before you get diabetes, so nutrition could be recommended, lifestyle change if we see these microaneurysms, or whether or not you have frank diabetes based on the current way of diagnosing fasting blood sugar over 125 or A1c at 6.5 and above. The labs are looking in the eye, we could see close close to 300 systemic diseases. The eye is very complex. So from the front of the eye, even looking at the eyelids, all the way back to the optic nerve of the eye and the movement of the eyes, there's a lot of different diseases, from autoimmune disease to vascular disease, that we could see by looking at the eyes. So the eye is, as they always say, is the window to your soul. But really, now that the technology is so good for the eye doctors, is becoming the window to your health.

That, that is absolutely fascinating. I have never heard this thing. Did you call it— you called them microaneurysms? Did I get that right?

Right, the little tiny aneurysms in the capillary, little outpouchings that we could see. And it's because the insulin is causing, you know, it's causing the blood to, to actually clot a little bit and sludge a little bit.

Wow, that is— and again, I know I hate to get so doom and gloom with some of this health stuff sometimes, but it is such a It's such a frustration to me as a person who focuses on all this stuff and tries to help people, you know, get over their sugar addiction and at least start moving towards a version that can help get their blood sugars under control, is that I think a lot of people, a lot of doctors in particular, not eye doctors necessarily, but like traditional doctors, they kind of slough over. Like they might see somebody's, um, their blood sugars kind of going up over the years and getting to that point where maybe it's like, hey, maybe I should say something, but it doesn't seem like they do, or they don't tell you these very real consequences to letting it go on. Like, okay, you're getting these microaneurysms now, but if you let it keep going, blindness might be down the road. Am I— I mean, again, not to be so doom and gloom, but that's a pretty bad outcome.

Well, I mean, you know, I think what happens is because of the standard American diet, the SAD diet, and, you know, most people have insulin resistance and, you know, and the doctors are like, you know, Well, this is kind of the new normal. Everybody's is pre-diabetic, you know, at least 50% of the population. Last time they did the study is either pre-diabetic or a diabetic. It's more than 50%. So I think the doctors, you know, instead of telling every other patient, you know, you have all these problems, and to say, well, I'll just wait till they actually are diabetic, then start treating them. But of course, obviously, the, the, the The doctors find that they don't have time and they have to work with the patients that are real sick. So, but, but the bottom line is, if you could prevent people from becoming diabetic and you could save not only their eyes but get saving them from having cardiovascular disease and cancers, all the things that high insulin and high sugar cause, you know, before the sugar goes up What happens is insulin goes up first and the person becomes insulin resistant. And elevated insulin is just as dangerous as elevated blood sugar. It just happens, it just happens first. So the doctors is just so busy taking care of the sick patients, it's like they don't have time to take care of the people that are kind of getting sick. And if you look at the money spent, the 75 of the dollars are spent on people that are already sick that have preventable disease, but only 3% of the dollars are spent on preventing disease. And of course, you and me and, you know, people involved in functional medicine want, want to change that because we want to see if we could prevent people from being sick. But of course, it's so complex because, you know, there's so much lifestyle, it's diet, it's stress, it's, you know, it's, it's exercise. It's so much involved in it. And, uh, but it's really Really, it's, it's simple, but it's not easy.

Yeah. And I think to just clarify your point, and you have so many good things that you mentioned there about the insulin. And for people that aren't as familiar with this, it's funny. A lot of people outside of functional medicine really won't order fasting insulin, but it's actually a very easy, inexpensive test. I have a source where I get— go lab. I think it's like $29 and they throw in HbA1c too. I mean, it's not super expensive. Now I realize not everybody might have an extra $30 to spend on their health, but if you are worried about that, it's a test that you can get. Easily enough, and I can put that link in the show notes. Um, and then the second thing that you said is that the problem with our healthcare system, right? Like doctors only have maybe 10 minutes with their patient. And so if you're doing okay and you're not diabetic yet, then yeah, I can see how that system really— and this is not nothing new to people that listen to this podcast before, we kind of talk about this. Um, but I love that people like yourself and other people more involved in functional medicine are starting to see this and starting to make changes. Um, but before we move on to talk about your documentary stuff, I did just want to go back to one question that I had when you mentioned that special camera. If people would like to be able to seek out a doctor that has this, could you say the name of it and like how they might find out if that's something there? Because it sounds like you could get all sorts of wonderful health insights with your regular eye exam, right?

So you want to ask for retinal imaging or OCT angiography. Those are the, those are the tests that could pick up these microaneurysms.

Okay. I have to call my eye doctor immediately because I'm really interested in this and she does have some specialty equipment, but I'm not sure if that's one. Um, but anyway, back to your documentary. So you actually spent at least 2 years is what it said in your bio, traveling from 2017 to 2019 to make this film. First of all, I'm curious. I'm, I'm jealous that you got to travel all around to do that for work, but often work travel is not as fun as some people will know. And, uh, So where did you go? What were you trying to find out? Who were you talking to? What are all of the things that were involved in that 2-year period?

So, yeah, so we were in Costa, you know, we were in Costa Rica, in Nicoya. So that was one of my favorite places because we got to work with the centenarians and we wanted to see, you know, the centenarians, why they're living so long and how it affects their eyes. And are they getting the same eye diseases that we're getting in the West? You know, and the main eye disease that we see for blindness over the age of 55 is macular degeneration. And what we found is that these people are living over 100, but they're not getting macular degeneration because they're living, you know, they're eating, you know, real food. You know, they have their food from their yard, or they have a chicken that they're slaughtering and eating the chicken, you know, once in a while, and, you know, growing different types of vegetables. And so most of the food that they're— or all the food that, you know, they're, they're living in the jungle. The food that they're eating is, you know, obviously food that, that, that is totally foreign to us because it's totally non-processed. So because of that, they're living longer. Another thing is that they spend all day out in the sun, you know. They don't have air conditioning and what we have, you know. It's hot there, and they're in the sun getting sun. And, you know, we're always told by dermatology to stay out of the sun because we're going to get skin cancer. And here are all these people living out in the sun. You know, obviously, you know, they get a— you know, it's gradual where they, they get the sun in. They're not going to go out in the sun for 14 hours day one, but they, they, you know, they kind of— they get used to it. And the sun is very nourishing. You know, Jack Cruz is— who's in the film— has talked a lot about the importance of the sun. I was also in Canada, and we talked to Jason Fung, who, you know, Jason Fung is— has made fasting, uh, very popular. And he's expert on insulin resistance, and speaking to him, it was really, it was really terrific. Uh, we were in Budapest where we talked about, uh, myopia control and why the kids in the cities are becoming near— myopia is nearsighted where they need glasses to see distance, but they're not getting it in the, in the, in the rural areas. You know, it's about 4 times more common in the cities than in the rural areas because they're not looking at cell phones and, and digital devices, and they're spending time outside. 'Cause we know for myopia, to decrease the risk, you gotta be outside. And of course the digital devices increase the risk of becoming nearsighted. So, you know, so we've been to, you know, and I was throughout the United States and, you know, interviewed Jeffrey Smith about GMOs and, and Kerry Gilliam about GMOs. So we kind of try to tie everything together. And it really was a fantastic journey. And certainly as a doctor, I learned a lot as well, interviewing all these, you know, famous physicians. And it certainly was a lot of fun. And people that have seen the movie, they really like the movie. It's entertaining. It's science. We call it scientific entertainment, and it's good for all ages. You know, we have something in for kids because there's animation in the film a little bit, so the kids kind of like that. And then we have the centenarians, so the seniors like it. So we have something for everybody. And of course, there's a lot about nutrition nutrition and health and, you know, trying to get— trying to get your— trying to improve wellness.

Yeah, and which is my favorite topic, and I can't wait to actually watch this film. I wanted to do it before we met, and— but it happened kind of quickly, and she scheduled you right away, which was awesome. But then at the same time, I'm like, oh, I didn't get to watch it yet. But that's on my list of to-do things. And for everybody listening, it should be on your list as well, because some of the people and things that you just mentioned in that film I think are going to be so amazing. Um, the one thing I wanted to visit because this has been a topic that's kind of hot in the health and wellness space lately is the, uh, you mentioned about getting sun on your skin because that's our biggest source of vitamin D, which is a huge, um, protective factor from things such as viruses. And I won't go into any further detail about that, but getting real sun on your skin without sunblock is very important. And recently I've become more aware that getting sun on your eyes is really important for circadian rhythm. I have light eyes, I get headaches really easy. So I've always been a person to wear, um, sunglasses in the sun just to kind of protect my eyes because that's what we were always taught. But more recently, when I go outside, I'm trying to spend at least half an hour to an hour outside without sunglasses on just to kind of help reset circadian rhythms. And also maybe there's possibly other benefits that you could speak to. So any, any commentary on that?

First thing with the sun, and also you get, you get increased nitric oxide from the sun and causes vasodilation. It's very good for the, you know, But the best time to get the sun is to get the morning sun as soon as the sun is rising, because the melatonin is made in the morning, and then at night is when the melatonin is released. So the blue light actually helps make the melatonin. It gets stored and then released at night. So certainly having, going out in the morning without sunglasses for an hour or so, uh, absolutely there's nothing wrong with that, you know. And infrared, you know, whether it's on the skin or where it's coming from, uh, is— it's about 42, 43% of the rays of the sun, and it's very healing. So, and, and, uh, when, when the blue light is coming into— coming into our— and setting the circadian rhythm That is, you know, certainly very important to help people sleep. Now, one of the things that I do is I always drive with my sunroof down just to try to get some direct sun if I wasn't able to be out in the sun that day.

Now, those are some great tips, and I just want to mention that I just had a little technical glitch on my side, but when I came back, you were still talking, so I'm hoping that all of that got recorded. But if not, well, I'll Do my best to fill people in, in the middle. Um, but we were talking about the effects of sunlight on circadian rhythm, which is really important. Um, the other thing that I think that was interesting that you mentioned in traveling around for this thing, first of all, it reminded me of Weston Price. And I don't know if you're definitely familiar with his name, I'm sure, but for people that don't know, look him up. Really interesting. He was a dentist. He kind of did the same thing, traveled around and tried to learn from from indigenous cultures about why they weren't experiencing all these teeth issues. And it's funny to me that doctors that are focused on like sort of one specific area of health are the ones that end up really illuminating all of this extra stuff that we didn't know before. Like, like you were talking about with the vision and being able to see the microaneurysms. But what about the kids of the— I mean, as soon as you said, the people that are watching this on video, this thing, this device in my hand has so many names. Negatives for health, um, and apparently eyesight being one of them. Um, I've also read some people talk about how it's affecting posture and cervical spine issues from people looking at their phones all the time. What was it about being able to do it there? I think you said that might've been Prague or where Budapest, but—

Nicoya, Nicoya, Costa Rica.

Oh, Costa Rica. What was it about that area that allowed you to Um, when going back to the kids and the eyesight, or even the centenarians also, how were you able to distinguish that that was exactly it with the urban versus the country? I mean, I would assume kids in the country still have some of that, or are they just too busy doing chores, or why wasn't that the same for them?

Yeah, I think in, in the, in the country they just can't. I think it's more economics, you know, they just can't really afford the digital devices, or otherwise they would have it. I mean, it's been a couple, you know, took like 2 and a half years to make the film and getting the film out because of the pandemic. So that took a little bit. So things may be a little bit different, but they don't— most of them did not have any kind of digital device or cell phone. And they're outside playing soccer. And they're doing, you know, the things that I wish our kids would do. You know, when I was a kid, my mother used to yell at me, come in and stop playing outside. Now we're yelling at the kids, go outside. It's like, you know, get off the computer games. And when it went out before, you know, uh, I got a little distracted, but I wanted to say there's a separate— this separate pathway in the eye. It's called the SCN, uh, and, and we have the vision pathway, and then we have this SCN, which is part of the circadian rhythm. And that's what happens when we go outside and we're exposed to the blue light, to go through this SCN pathway to make the melatonin. But to go back to Costa Rica, you know, but when we were in the city in San José, the kids did have digital devices. And, you know, they were in about 40% of them were myopic or nearsighted compared to about 12, 13% in the real very rural areas where we were filming.

That's any practical advice that you can give as far as, I mean, I'm assuming just taking a break instead of looking at this thing so, so frequently. But, um, I haven't noticed that I work on the computer all day. I write and I do this stuff and I'm very bad about taking breaks to where I think you're supposed to like look at somewhere else and focus your eyes on something far, something near. I mean, any practical advice on how often that should be done and can we really counteract the negatives of these devices that are like our lifeline these days?

Yeah, I mean, we talk about this in the film. I mean, we use something called the 20-20-20 rule. Every 20 minutes, look greater than 20 feet for 20 seconds and stand up. So I tell my patients every 20 minutes, you know, look out, stand up, look out the window, because sitting too long, you know, the eye bone's connected to the toe bone. It's also very bad for your heart, you know, you can increase your risk of having a heart attack by sitting all day. So, uh, I mean, and there's studies to show that So every 20 minutes you gotta stand up, look out the window, give your eyes a break. And because, you know, you get this digital device syndrome where your eyes are getting very tired, you're looking at blue light, you're looking at blue light and it's just blue light. You know, when you're outside in the sun, you're getting a wide spectrum of light. So when you're looking at the digital device, it's always 12 noon. That's what it's like you're looking at, 12 noon. So if you're looking at digital devices, Many people, especially at night, it's going to keep them up. They're not going to be able to sleep because it messes with the circadian rhythm like we were speaking about before.

Right. And that's one thing that most devices now— I used to have a program on my Mac called Flux where it would, at sunrise and sunset, shift to red. And what I've done since then is just because of the proliferation of all of these devices, I have all of my devices just to block it all the time. So it's this kind of funky red hue, but I've just I've just gotten used to it and I'm fine with it because I want to just not affect my circadian rhythm negatively in that way.

So I think that's really good. And there's also blue— and there's also filtering glasses, blue filtering glasses that you could get when you're looking at the computer all day to help filter out some of those rays. And we know that it definitely helps with sleep in a lot of people. People. Now, you know, there's some controversy. Does it help with eye strain? You know, I think it does, you know, but you know, it's about 50/50. Some people it does, some people it doesn't. And does it help decrease the risk of macular degeneration? Because that, that was a big selling point in, I believe, in Europe. And the company that was making those claims got themselves into trouble. But there may be some truth to that, but we won't know for many, many years. So, but in lab, you know, and some rodents is indicating that they could be some damage to some of the cells in the back of the eye from staring at these blue light computers all day. But again, we're not gonna know what's gonna happen until we have some more studies. And, you know, it's a kind of a controversial topic, but I do have to say that when I have a patient that has early macular degeneration, I recommend they do have blue filtering lenses because it's not gonna hurt them. Them and it may help.

Yeah, and it's such an easy thing to do. And I also have a great resource for that. Actually, it's a gentleman you may want to connect with at some point. Really interesting background and he is very specific on making his lenses to really, you know, it's not an Amazon product. Let me just put it that way because I think there's varying qualities of these things. But I feel like the two of you might need to connect at some point.

I mean, because of the computer, it's 455 nanometers. So it really has to— you really have to know the lens, what it's absorbing. Is it absorbing at 455 or is it just absorbing at 400 or up to 430, but you're not getting the 455, then you're not really getting the benefit that you need.

Right. And that makes perfect sense. 'Cause if you're gonna wear them anyway, you might as well make sure that they're effective for what you're actually trying to prevent. With the macular degeneration, do you have any specific other tips, whether it's nutrition, whether it's exercises or anything that people can do? I mean, I was stunned by that stat that you threw out something about how many people and getting it relatively young, like it starting at age 50. What, what can we be doing to help with that?

Yeah, so macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness, and there's a lot that we could do to decrease our risk of macular degeneration. So first thing is you wanna get your eyes examined to see if you have any early signs of— there's a family history. And even if you don't have early signs, there's a special diet you could go on, and there's certain supplements that you could take to decrease your risk. So first, let me start start with the supplements, uh, because that's easy. But you, you know, supplements are supplements. You want to supplement with diet. But lutein, zeaxanthin, and meso-zeaxanthin are very, very important to decrease your risk of macular degeneration. There's a very good product called MacuHealth which will help, uh, which has those three in it. And depending on how well you absorb the lutein, the zeaxanthin, the meso-zeaxanthin, you can decrease your risk. There are studies to show depending on how well you absorb it. If you absorb it really well, you could decrease the risk of macular degeneration over 90% with zeaxanthin, lutein in the 70s. And by taking the combination of lutein, zeaxanthin, and meso-zeaxanthin together, together it's a synergistic effect. Vitamin D— there's been studies with over 77,000 people to show if you can get your vitamin D in, in a protective level over 50 nanograms per ml is probably the magic number. You could decrease the risk by over about 40%. Omega-3 fish oil, uh, taking fish oil, you know, good quality omega-3, could decrease about, about 40%. Exercise decreases somewhere around 40, around 40%. So there's a lot of things that you could do. Now, of course, you want to eat foods that have, that are high in lutein lutein, zeaxanthin, and meso-zeaxanthin. There's really not a lot of foods with that. So your body, we need to convert lutein to meso-zeaxanthin, which is dead center in the macula, which is a part we call the fovea. So there's meso-zeaxanthin dead center, then there's zeaxanthin, and then there's lutein. So we want the lutein to be able to convert to meso-zeaxanthin. Unfortunately, there's a percentage, a small percentage of people, Different studies, maybe about 10-15% of the people that have trouble converting from a lack of enzyme. So that's why I like that supplement that has the 3 in it. But foods that contain lutein are kale, collard greens, eggs, the dark green leafy vegetables, orange and yellow peppers. Zeaxanthin has some of those in that also, but the best for zeaxanthin is something called goji berry. Berries. So you probably being in the health field have heard of goji berries. They're very popular in Asia for health. But you know, it's actually very— it looks like a dried out— it looks like a raisin, a red raisin, and it's sweet. And eating it with, uh, maybe some raw cacao and some coconut and some nuts, you could actually make a nice trail mix. And nuts also have been shown to decrease your risk of macular degeneration. But the goji berries are very high in zeaxanthin, xanthin, also very high in amino acids and has more vitamin C than, and then oranges. So, and then you want to eat a, then you want to eat a diet of real food, you know. You don't want to eat processed food, you know. 63% of the American diet is processed food with inflammatory oil oils. And, you know, you talked about Weston Price before. A good friend of mine, Chris Kenobi, who's an ophthalmologist, actually gave up being an eye doctor to really study ancestral diets and how it affects the eye. And he's very interested right now— him and, uh, Dr. McColgan are writing a book together, I understand, on inflammatory oils. But then there's the sugar and the processed grains and the trans fats. Uh, so all these things are— make up the 60%— 63% of the, of the American diet, which is a processed food diet. So you want to get rid of all the processed foods. You obviously— smoking increases the risk of macular degeneration 3 to 4 times. I think most people know that smoking is bad for them, and seems like there's less people smoking now. Obviously, if people have a big belly, you know, they're insulin resistant, they have that big belly, there's a 2 times greater risk risk of having macular degeneration. And if you eat high glycemic foods, also there's double the risk of cataracts and macular degeneration. And trans fats, there's a 3 times. So again, we want to eat foods with high omega-3s. We want to be on an anti-inflammatory kind of paleo-type diet. You know, there's a reason our teeth are the way they are. So, you know, so that's— so grass-fed meat or organic turkey and chicken, you know, mostly plant-based, you know, 3:1 vegetables to fruits. We want to drink— we want to make sure we're hydrated. I did a great podcast with Gerald McColgan on structured water, but we want to make sure if we could structure the water, add some frozen blueberries to the water so the water gets more gel-like and we could, we could absorb it a little bit, a little better, uh, you know, so we want to add spices because macular degeneration is an inflammatory disease. So we want to do things that decrease inflammation, just like almost all chronic diseases come from inflammation. And we're finding that gut health, you know, the microbiome plays a role in macular degeneration. I had a great interview with my podcast with Alessio Fasano, Giano. Uh, I interviewed him and we haven't played it yet, but we're going to play that soon. Again, vitamin D3 and with K2, of course, because you don't want D3 alone because of the increase in, you know, vitamin D. Getting vitamin D over 50 nanograms per ml does a lot of great things, from decreasing your risk of cancer and, and hypertension and diabetes, but also raises calcium. We don't want that calcium to go blood vessels. So by combining it with vitamin K2, can redirect the calcium into the right places. So, and as I mentioned, exercise is so, so there's a lot of things we could do to decrease our risk. And of course, getting your eyes examined, looking for these little spots in the macula called drusen, which are these little inflammatory markers to show that the tissue in the back of the eye is breaking down, and it may increase your risk, and it will most likely increase your risk of getting macular degeneration when you get older. So, you know, it, you know, depending on how you define macular degeneration, even in optometry and ophthalmology, you know, is it macular degeneration once you lose your vision, or when you have just these little drusen? You know, we have different classifications. So, but the bottom line is is if you take the proper supplements, you eat the proper foods, you could really lower your risk of getting macular degeneration.

I think that— thank you for all those really, like, concrete tips that people can put into action immediately between the supplements, between the way that you eat. And I think the beautiful thing is that most of those supplements that you mentioned, most of the practices that you mentioned, are all things that we all need to be doing for greater health. Anyway, everybody that's heard this podcast before has heard me talk about all of those things for the most part. So, um, I'm glad to hear that, you know, at least the things that we're doing for our health for the most part— I mean, I'm sure there are some instances, but, but are not in conflict with each other. Like what you're doing to get metabolically healthy is going to help keep your eyes healthy, is going to help keep your arteries healthy. So it's all wonderfully related. It's just getting yourself to create those new habits that is really the challenge for most people. Right, absolutely.

Um, I'm sorry, go ahead.

Oh no, you go ahead.

No, I was going to say, when I talk to patients, I'm surprised because patients always want to know what they could do from a nutrition point of view to help their, to help their health. Many doctors say, yeah, then they're not going to do it anyway, they're not interested. But they are interested. Patients are interested. And And, you know, over, you know, dry eye, macular degeneration, diabetes, they're all nutrition-related and the things that we deal with a lot. And over the last, I don't know, 10 years, I've always said, do you want me to teach you the cause of the disease, or do you want me to just give you a drug and let's call it a day and treat the cause, treat the symptom rather than just treating the cause? And I've only had one person tell me, nah, just give me the drug. I don't care about what caused it. Because of my dry eyes.

Yeah, I don't know if doctors give us enough credit sometimes. People always say that to me, like, I've been— I mean, I've been low-carb. I started with low-carb and then I went to keto, and it's been over 5 years for keto, over 6 years for low-carb. And people always say it's not sustainable, and I'm like, I just— I'm like, I don't understand what you're talking about. Like, it's perfectly sustainable, but it does require a mindset shift. It does require some habit changes. And, and that, for me, and being from a psychology background, I understand that that's quite often the most challenging part to get over. It's like people know what they need to do, it's— but creating those new habits to support that is a whole different thing and probably a longer discussion for a different day. But I wanted to make sure— well, before we go about your podcast, I did have one other very selfish question for you. And it's something that I only recently learned about because another podcaster, Dr. Paul Saladino, said he'd been using these contacts at at night and so that he gets up in the day and he goes surfing and his vision's great all day and he just puts in contacts at night. And I was thinking like, why have I never heard of this before? But then I read your bio and you mention it right there. Um, can you maybe— I just feel like a lot of people don't know about this and it could be something that is— I don't know if they're like necessarily healthier in a way or if they just improve. I think it definitely improved my quality of life. I'd just love to hear your thoughts on those since it's something that you work with.

I assume he's doing Ortho-K, so he's probably nearsighted. So he sleeps with these contact lenses at night and it gently reshapes his eye, and then he takes them off in the morning and now he's not nearsighted anymore and he could, he could see. Instead of doing LASIK and removing the tissue, it's just moving the tissue into a mold and moving it to the side. And because by doing that it's changing the refractive whatever. And I certainly do a lot of Ortho-K. And so I do it mostly with kids, you know, because it decreases the risk of them becoming nearsighted. It slows it down up to about 70% of the progression of nearsightedness. So we could catch the kids early, uh, we start them on Ortho-K, and we could decrease their progression of myopia. So that's probably what, what he's doing. He's doing Ortho-K. So he's nearsighted, he's sleeping with the lens lenses and to re, you know, to reshape his eye to decrease his myopia during the day.

Interesting. I'd never heard of that, so thank you for adding some further description to that. Now, before we move along, I want to— so you kind of shared briefly where the movie is available, but maybe you could revisit that, where people can find you. Are you active on any social channels? And of course, the podcast, people will definitely want to check that out. I think like kind of a broad health and wellness similar to this show. And your last thing that you're on some alternative kinds of media channels where you discuss some things that we shouldn't talk about on YouTube. But if anybody is interested in that sort of thing, and if you hear this, you'll know what I'm talking about. I want them to know where to find you there as well. So that was a lot of stuff, but hopefully you can throw them all together.

Yeah. So again, our movie is on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, iTunes, Google Play. And if you go to YouTube, uh, movies and documentaries, you could, you could watch it there. Again, we've been getting some great reviews, so I think people really love it. I— it's called Open Your Eyes. The name of the movie is Open Your Eyes. And then I have a podcast called Open Your Eyes with Dr. Kerry Yellb on YouTube and all the podcast stitcher, uh, Spotify, SoundCloud, all the, the typical podcast places where you find podcasts. And about half of my podcasts have to do with the eye, and we interview optometrists and ophthalmologists, uh, and vision scientists. And we do great topics from sports vision. So for people out there who are very interested, who are sports fanatics, where they play baseball or tennis, you can improve your, your ability to play sports by doing certain exercises to exercise optimize your eye with people. And we have experts, the biggest experts on sports vision. And then, you know, we have typical contact lenses and experts in glaucoma and myopia, how to decrease your risk of myopia. So we have all types of different experts in the eye field. And then I interview people in functional medicine, and I've gotten to interview some of the greats such as Dale Bredesen, who wrote The End of Alzheimer's, and, uh, Joel Kahn, you know, a cardi— a vegan cardiologist. And so we've, you know, uh, Gerald Pollack, I've interviewed him with, you know, on Mortar, which was, you know, some of the, some of the great interviews. So I have a lot of great interviews on that. And then of course I have on some alternative media where, where we talk a little bit about some— I have a podcast where we talk about some things that are more controversial, which really shouldn't be controversial, but we do. And I have some very amazing guests that everybody has heard of them if they've watched Joe Rogan.

Okay, awesome. Well, and I don't— you know, it's funny, I, I want people to really just hear this, is that in this space, in this health space, and then kind of like a lot of the stuff that we talk about with biohacking and, you know, these alternative diets that are more meat-based, carnivores, these sorts of things,, and things in relation to the pandemic, which I don't think there's any further need to elaborate on that. But people are legitimately getting censored from YouTube and Instagram. I have seen it myself personally, uh, people that I follow in the health space. And it's really sad to me that, you know, we're losing our ability to question as scientists. Like if you're a scientific-minded person or you are an actual science Part of your job is to question the status quo and to question what information is being put out in the world. And all of a sudden, all of that is getting, you know, taken away. I really worry for our freedom of speech. So when you see these things or when you hear these things, you know, we should all be more aware of it and certainly more like just letting people know that it is happening and it's not a conspiracy theory kind of thing. It's legitimately happening. So anyway, I am glad you found some platforms where you can continue to discuss these things and continue to learn from people without fear of it being taken down. So anyway, did you say the actual names of those? I can add them to the show notes, but the names of the places they can find you.

Yeah, Bitchute and Brighteon.

See, I don't even know about either one of those yet, so obviously I need to get on there. I just want to thank you so much for sharing your time today. You're obviously a very busy man with some amazing projects going on, and I appreciate you taking the time to share this with my listeners. Um, thank you so much, and I hope to talk to you again in the future and keep up with what you're doing.

Well, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

You're welcome. You too. Oh, okay, I'm sorry, I was just trying to end the recording there, but I—

there we go.