Ditch Your Reading Glasses: Natural Vision Solutions with Claudia Muehlenweg

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I'm JJ Virgin, PhD dropout. Sorry, mom turned four time New York Times bestselling author. I'm a certified Nutrition Specialist, Fitness hall of Famer, and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe. But I'm driven most of all by my insatiable curiosity and love of science to keep asking questions, digging for answers.

And sharing the information that I uncover.

With as many people as I can. And that's where you come in. And that's why I created the well beyond 40 podcasts to synthesize and simplify the science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive. In each episode, we'll talk about what's working in the world of wellness, from personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism to powerful aging and prescriptive fitness. Join me on the journey to better health so you can love how you look and feel right now and have the energy to play full out at 100. Don't miss an episode. Subscribe now@subscribetoj.com to start unlocking your healthiest, most energetic self. If you've been wondering if it's possible to ditch the glasses even if you've been using them for years, you are going to be super excited about my guest today, Claudia Muhlenvig. Claudia actually has ditched her glasses twice in her life and she is going to share how she's done it. She's the founder of Naturally Clear Vision Institute and the creator of the Naturally Clear Vision Method where she helps her clients see clearly naturally by addressing the root cause of their blurry vision. Hint, hint. It's not because you need glasses. Instead of using symptomatic treatments like glasses like contacts or surgery, which can actually, as I always suspected and she confirmed, make your eyesight worse for the long term. So we're going to be digging into what are those factors that could be contributing to your poor vision and what you can do to turn this around in as little as five days. Yes, it's true. You are going to want to follow Claudia on her different channels. I'm going to put that and her free guide@jjvirgin.com Claudia spelled C L A U D I A and I'll be right back with Claudia Muhlenvag stay with me. Hey, it's J.J. here.

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All right, Claudia, I know we've been waiting a long time to do this show because you are determined to get me out of my glasses. And hopefully today will be the inspiration. So I am thrilled to have you here, and I'm gonna see if I can pronounce your last name correctly. All these years, I just put m. Claudia Muhlenweg. Weg.

Oh, you did it in German. J.J. there.

Getting there. Okay. I should be able to do this. I've got a bunch of German in me.

I didn't even know that. Well, thank you for having me today. I'm super excited about this.

Well, this is such an important episode for every woman over 40, because what is the percentage of women over 40 that end up having to wear readers or something like that? Do you know?

Yeah. In the developed world, about 80% of not just women, but men, too, right? Over people over 45. Need some kind of help with near vision.

Wow, 80%. Incredible. You've got a great market. All right, well, let's talk about you first, because this all started because you were wearing glasses in school. I was, too, for you. It led you down a career path. It just made me kind of a bully in school because all the boys would tease me. So you've gotten out of glasses, though, twice in your life. So how did you do that?

I got my first prayer at age 3, and I was bullied and teased in school, too. So I was already determined as a teenager to get out of glasses. Right. And I tasted this freedom briefly when I was about 15. And the boys would be, you have pretty eyes. And I used to be teased, like, you know what the bad words are? And I got a book on this method, and I used it. And I was out of glasses for almost basically my 20s, and then basically till my mid-30s, when I was in a really challenging marriage that ended in divorce, was back in glasses. And after a few years of doing this and realizing how quickly my vision got worse, I was like, wait a moment. I've done this before. I can do it again, even though I'm over 40 now. And I did. So it's. There's a lot of things that go into that, and I think we can talk about it today. But both times in my life, I was under severe stress when my vision. I missed one part. Sorry, One part I didn't talk about. So I was 15. I was out of classes and then high school exams. Right. Studying. I was not good in school. Study, study, study. Vision got really blurry, and that got me determined to do something about it because I never wanted to be back in glasses again.

So you said. So I think back to school when I was getting teased, I got teased for all sorts of stuff. Being the tallest kid in class, wearing glasses. It was just like, game on. But I went and got contact lenses. You did something else. So what did you find that helped you get rid of these glasses?

What I found is that I had to relax. I really noticed immediately the more stressed I was, the worse my vision got. So I basically got this idea that vision changes. Just like our blood pressure, our blood sugar levels, everything in the body constantly changes. Right. So I got that connection to when I was stressed. I was staring. I was, like, staring at this. Like, not the screen back then, it was books.

Yeah.

Like the deer in the headlight. And when I relaxed and learned to relax my eyes and move my eyes, vision was clear. So I immediately got the difference, that kind of sensation of what I was doing, how my stress levels were, how was I feeling, did I feel confident, did I feel scared? All these things had a big impact. That was basically what I learned. And also peripheral vision, which was a big thing for me because I started playing handball, and that's really helped me also get my vision better. You're outside, you're moving. You have to look at your peripheral field, not just that tunnel vision that you get when you are in that stress mode. So those were the things that I really realized. And then I just had to do specific practices for near vision because I was farsighted. So I always had trouble with the near point and how the eyes work together as a team. I had, like, a missing depth perception. So I got hit in the head a lot with a ball initially because catching and throwing I was really bad at. But they still wanted me on the team because they didn't have enough girls back then.

Yeah. Remember that. I never. I was always on the boys team because I was so tall, but I couldn't catch well because I couldn't see. So, same thing. You said a couple important things, and, like, I'd love to unpack, but the first big question around that is, you know, you said 45 plus, 80% of us need some type of corrective, something to correct our nearsighted vision or what is it? And you said both men and women. So I know it's not just straight. I would think it's an estrogen problem. But what is the magical thing that happens at that time period that starts to shift our vision?

Well, the eye doctors tell you the lens is getting thicker or more, less flexible, and that causes all the problems. But we know that the eyeball is a soft tissue. It has very strong muscles around it, six extraocular muscles, and then the lens has a muscle, too. So basically, we need to also practice our eyes at different distances. Right. When we just. When we don't, like, we lose a little bit of flexibility. I mean, you work with strength, right? You work with fitness. Our bodies change. We get wrinkles. There's no. We can't pretend nothing changes. That's not.

No, we're not getting wrinkles.

My point is we do change, right? We have to work, you know, with fitness. We have to work harder to keep the strength, you know, so same with vision. Like, we do lose some flexibility in our eyeball, but again, we can keep that up just like we can keep our strength up. Right. And you're the master of teaching that.

Yeah. And yet this is never even talked about. And I am convinced, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. So I still remember I was in my mid-40s, and I was on a plane going to Italy, and I was holding a book way out in front of me, reading the book, and the person I was going to Italy with looked over and said, try these, and gave me his readers. And it was like, wow. But it also was like, wow. I felt like from the moment I put those readers on, my eyesight just went downhill. Now, I've tried to find proof everywhere, because they're like, no, that's a myth. Eyeglasses don't make your eyesight worse. But how? It seems like it would make you lazier anyway. So is there any truth to that idea that when you start to wear these reading glasses, it makes your eyesight worse?

I think the science goes back and forth, but when I talk to my clients, they all get frustrated, because exactly what happens. You start with a plus one, and then you get to the point where you need a plus one and a half, and then you need a plus two. And eventually, here's the bad thing that happens. And that's why I call Redus a gateway drug. You always had great distance vision. Maybe you had 2020 vision. 2015. Maybe not us. Right. But most people are like, I always had eagle eye. And then all of a sudden, a couple of years into work, or maybe three, four, five years, depends on how quickly you use the readers. All of a sudden, your distance vision is bad, and now you need glasses for driving, and you don't even have 2040 clarity anymore, which is a legal limit for driving. And then you're stuck in bifocals or progressives, and you have no clarity at any distance. To me, that is super scary. You're really handicapped at that point, right?

Yeah. I will tell you, it was interesting. I grew up with glasses, and my doctor told me that when I got my period, my eyesight would be 2020. Didn't happen. And I always wore contact lenses. And then I had babies. And I remember my contact lenses after I had Grant would not work. And I just thought. I didn't really give any thought to the fact that maybe I didn't need them.

And.

And I go to the doctor, he goes, you have perfect vision. Why are you getting these contact lenses? And so up until the time on the plane, I was fine. And then from the moment on the plane down, it's just another reason to blame that guy, another thing he did it just feels like my eyesight has declined. And this is the big question for someone listening who's been wearing readers for maybe a decade or more. Is it just. Is there anything we can do? Is it just too late? You hear about things like Lasik. I will share with you that our buddy, Dr. Ronnie Bonick, like, I would never do Lasik. And. And I go to these big eye doctor conferences, and none of the eye doctors do Lasik for themselves. And I'm like, that's all I needed to hear, you know? So is there really something you can do now? Is there really hope to be able to get out of glasses, or is it just kind of, you know, managing it so you don't have to get thick ones?

Two things. The earlier you start, right, the better it is. Then you can prevent them. I got out of glasses twice. There is a level of how nearsighted or farsighted you are, right? There is a level of where you like somebody with a really strong prescription, but you can always improve. I mean, I give you an example. I worked with a woman, she was in her 70s. And I always teach people to read prescriptions, first of all, to understand what do all these numbers mean on your eyeglasses prescription, she had those progressives, and she had about plus two and a half for distance and about 5:75 for reading. And I said, well, just try it out. Go to the drugstore, get some, like, whatever the strongest thing is. They have like three 25s. She did that. She's like, you know what? That works. I can read everything. So basically, diopters is the measurement of the strength of the glasses. Just like pounds of weight, for instance. They only work for a specific distance. And when you start with readers, you wouldn't have looked up in the distance with those readers, everything would have been blurry. You understand? So basically, only use glasses when you absolutely need them and use the weakest glasses you can. That's number one. And you teach meditation, and you teach all these things. But really, mindset is also so important. Do I do a task that I hate? Is it something I love to do? Because that has an impact on what I call the strains and gains. When I notice already as a teenager that my vision varied, I'm like, what makes it better? What makes it worse? What are the things, the tasks, whatever the light levels, whatever all these things are, makes my vision worse and what makes it better? Because we know you teach the parasympathetic nervous system. All these things are really important to understand. What upsets me and we might not notice that because we are so used to having that stress. Right? We are so used to having chronic stress that we're not even in tune with how our eyes are affected by that. And everybody that takes my course is like, wow, now I understand the things, the habits I have. Like, blinking is one of those simple things. People with poor vision don't blink. They stare at the camera like I used to do. I used to be really good at that.

Hasn't tech? I want to get back into some of the things that can make eyesight get worse, but I would think tech is not helping it.

It's not. And here's. But here's the interesting part. I was teaching a three day event last fall for three days. We did like 28 hours on the computer, right? Every one of the 200 participants improved their vision. But you need to know what you're doing.

Wait, how do you, like, how do you know they improve their vision?

Well, if they post that post in the chat, like, I read this, but I don't need my readers. For instance, people told us, in three days, yeah, after the first day, the second day. And even my team who worked really hard behind the scenes, one of them is nearsighted, one of them is farsighted. And they're like, my vision. Like the guy with a reader. So he's like, I don't need my reading glasses. When I read the chat, it was really interesting.

Wow.

But the simple thing is the blinking, like when we look at screens, studies have shown that we blink maybe two to three times per minute. Like we literally stare at the screen. Right. Versus when we look at somebody. If you have ever done eye gazing with somebody, right at the events, you look into each other's eyes.

Don't you hate that exercise more than anything?

No, I love it. But I always feel like this. And then you feel like really intimidated. And then I start blinking and then everybody relaxes. Because blinking also slows down. Time the sensation, not really. And it lubricates our eyes and it prevents. So it keeps your eyes loose and relaxed. So blinking is one of those simple things that people with normal vision always do a lot of, but they don't think about it, right.

It's like, how would you be able to, you know, because the minute you're aware of blinking, then you're aware of blinking. Like, it would be great to go back and maybe it's watching an interview or something and go, how much do I actually blink per minute? Cause I heard you talking about this. I'm like, how the heck. Like, the minute you were aware of it, I'm like, now I'm aware I'm blinking, so I'm in a blink. And you say that the average person is blinking two to three times a minute. And how much should they be blinking.

Every two to three seconds. But I'm saying when they look at screens. So when we look at another, when we like, you know, when we like with a friendly person that we like. Right. We automatically blink more. Because again, it's creepy. If you look at somebody with kind of hard. It's just like you get immediately goosebumps. I actually got goosebumps just saying that. It's just. You know what I mean? It's that hard stare. When we have, like, Cyril, Colin always have this hard stare. It's like, it feels very scary.

Well, and I would think if you're even doing video and stuff, it would be creepy to watch someone not blinking. Like, it'd be better. So first thing is to pay attention to how much you're blinking and blink more.

Yes.

Right.

So that's the first one which I would think you'd need to become aware of because it's an autonomic move. So you wouldn't know that you were doing it unless you paid attention to it. So that's the first thing. Now, the stress piece of it. And it's amazing to me that you figured out at 15. Like, I didn't even know what stress was at 15. Right. Although nowadays kids are under major amounts of stress, which is really concerning. But, you know, what is that role that stress has in your eyesight and how quickly. I mean, are you just putting in some things like meditation practices? What are you doing to help correct that?

So I put the dots together because again, I was out of glasses. 15, 16. Right. Like, for two years. And then all of a sudden I was taught the high school exams. And I remember sitting in a train and having that, like, you were in the plane. Right, I was in a train take. And I looked at the book and everything was super blurry. And at that moment I had that total panic attack, like, oh, my God, I'm losing my vision again. I'm going to be back in glasses. And then I found this book. And that was back in the day. That was in the 70s. We had to, like, search.

You went to the library.

Library. And I bought this book written by a woman in California, which is the funniest thing. Anyway, I was doing those. I call them relaxer sizes now, but I would be sitting in the train like moving my eyes along the lines. Basically you learn how to relax your eyes. Movement is one of those things. Not mechanical, just like. But looking at things and moving your head along and noticing these versus trying. When we stare, we try to see a big picture clear at once. When the eye anatomy, we have a tiny spot in the retina called the fovea where we have perfectly clear vision the further away things are. If I look at you right now, I see my room, my house, I see but I don't see that clearly. I'm aware of those things. So when I did these practices, also sunlight exposure, I wouldn't wear sunglasses anymore other than extreme like skiing. But learning some of these things, peripheral vision, movement, it just immediately my vision would clear up when I did these things.

Okay, but back to stress before we go to those things. So first thing you did was connect the dots. Did you do something specific to manage the stress or did you go after other things to improve the eyesight or did you do both?

I don't think I was like you said, I wasn't aware that much of stress. In a way, like right back then we didn't talk about stress. But I realized in that moment when I did those relaxer sizes that my vision got better. So I realized I was focusing. I wasn't meditating back then. I wasn't doing any of that. But I was reading book about Zen Buddhism and the art of archery. I was like in the book, I think it's called the Zen and archery or something. But it was all about letting go of the effort. And when I realized, you know, like effort we say a lot of times, you know, no pain, no gain, like we have to work hard. It wasn't. I was preparing for school, I was reading, I was studying. I wasn't like saying, oh, I'm just going to wing it. That wasn't the case. But I also realized that I had to let go. I had to prepare. But then I had to let go and trust that things work out. That was a big thing for me as a control freak.

I wonder if they looked at that 80% if the control freaks were. If the 20% were people that just were like, it'd be interesting look and go. Are the 20% Zen Buddhists meditating people versus the 80% are like drivers?

I don't know that. I know that they looked at people in developed in the third world countries and they only had 60% of press per year. Which is that old age site where you lose that near vision. Right? It's called post Biopia versus the developed world. So I think there is also a connection with studying, education, doing a lot of near work. And our eyes can look up near, but we were never meant to look at something close up for eight to ten hours a day. Right? Artificial junk light that we exposed. So light is a big piece. Eyes are light receivers. Natural light is just so important for everything from hormones to circadian rhythm to sleep and, and for healthy eyeballs, right? So now we have these LEDs, we have all these bad lights now that really have an impact on our vision too.

Well, let's go back. So I also wonder with third world, are they just not. It's just not as accessible. Whereas here it's like the minute your eyesight goes down at all, you're in the grocery store and there's the readers. It's like it's so accessible.

They had that eye doctors, basically they know their data. But when they looked at the same third world countries, there was India, Brazil and Africa and I don't know exactly the state in Africa, but when they went into the cities it was the same rate. So there was higher education. Like I said, more of that brain powered stuff that we were doing, more.

Reason that we need to get back to being out in nature and calming down and not working so much. Note to self. All right, so over to sunglasses because you whipped that one out there and said I don't wear sunglasses anymore. But I've always heard that we're supposed to wear sunglasses to protect our eyes from the sun. So what's the story there?

Okay, so eyes are light receivers like I said, right? Our eyes, I'm talking about first of all, healthy eyeballs, right. If that's not the case, then please wear sunglasses. Or if you're skiing, like when I went skiing, or like extreme bright conditions. I'm talking about our daily, normal lifestyle lives. We have pupils, they go really big when it's dark and they get very small when it's bright. That's our built in sunglasses. When we eat a healthy diet and we get enough of that lutein, we eat the dark leafy greens, we eat the fruits and vegetables, all the stuff that you're teaching, we have a healthy diet, our eyes actually absorb the blue light. The biology is pretty amazing that we have, right? So again, extreme conditions are different. But when you always wear sunglasses like I used to do on overcast days, your pupils never, they never learn to react to light, right? They just stay behind these dark glasses all the time. And it really affected my night Driving like the bright headlights. I actually almost gave up night driving. And when I learned to reduce my light sensitivity, Right. And now night driving doesn't bother me anymore at all. And I hear that from so many of my.

It almost reminds me of being like a thermometer or a thermostat and that one of the challenges we have in modern life for our metabolism is that we set our thermostat. Like, I just walked upstairs to my office and I go, thermostat set at 72. So we don't have to regulate our temperature. It's easy, right? And it seems like the same for your eyesight. So all of a sudden, you're just keeping it steady the whole time. Your eyesight, Your eyes don't have to work to adjust to differences in light. So then when the lights go down, they can't adjust because you've taken that process out. Is that a way to interpret that?

Exactly. I mean, we have the pupillary reaction. They do that sometimes. We know eye doctors. They shine a bright light into your eyes and see how quickly does the pupil close. Right. So we need to practice that. Right. Our eyes need to be exposed to these different brightness levels. So that makes total sense. And for me, that was a game changer. Do I still wear sunglasses? Sometimes, Like I said, if it's extreme conditions, it's snow, it's a blue sky, right? That's different. And if you ask somebody listening, and your pupils, you have some. You take some kind of drugs or you got atrophine in the eye from the eye doctor visit, right. Your pupils are wide open. And then please wear sunglasses because that can actually damage your eyes for sure.

So walk us through, because you talked about junk light, and I look at light in terms of regulating our circadian rhythm and being for health. How would you walk someone through light exposure? What they need to do in terms of being in front of screens, like getting up in the morning and seeing the sunlight. Like, what would you take someone through for a good, healthy eye behavior during the day?

We definitely want that light in the morning from the natural light. Right. I recommend going outside, even right before the sun rises. No sunglasses. Just get light into your eyes and actually get it onto your skin. We now know how important it is for hormonal health to get all these things.

Well, what if it's still dark when you wake up?

So what I do is I just got some of those salt lamps, right. I usually actually don't turn lights on in my house. I mean, it's different. If I had to put on makeup. Right. Of course we have to put light on, but do as much as you can. And like dimmer light or no light or use these salt lamps up some really orangey low, low level lighting. Right. So dimmer light, no bright lights in the ceiling to kind of mimic the sunrise, which is also more that horizon level. And it's warmer light. So that's what I would do. That's what I do now. I don't turn any bright lights on.

Have you seen those Philips hue lights where you can, you can use them program on your phone so they can mimic normal circadian rhythm.

I have heard of them. I haven't seen them yet, but that sounds like a really cool technology.

Yes, they're very cool. Okay, so first thing is you're trying to use natural light, or at least if natural light's not out yet because of the stupid daylight savings time, then I can't see daylight savings time. It's like, could we just get rid of this thing anyway? Then you're going to use either Philips Phillips lights or salt lamps or something. So it's not that direct overhead blaring light. Okay, next step.

And one thing I want to talk about. Studies have shown that infrared light is really helpful to rejuvenate the mitochondria in older retinal cells. And guess what? That's all for free. Included in natural light. We don't have to buy these expensive devices. I mean, just getting sunlight during the day at different times. I like to do it in the morning, the evening, and then during the day also. And sometimes I just walk up and down my driveway or go in the garden. Little things. If you work in an office, just grab your lunch out of the car, do something just to. Right. We can do these things for ourselves. Even if you get five minutes, it really helps.

It's like a five minute exercise snack. A five minute light snack.

There you go. I love that.

I think one of the biggest things that we need to be doing is getting outside more. It is a great reason to have dogs because they have to go outside. So guess what? Go with them.

So, you know, the funny thing is when I actually, I used to smoke cigarettes, which is the worst thing you can do for your eyesight. But I'm from Germany and we all smoked cigarettes. But when I moved to the U.S. initially, we always found time, even if we worked in the 12th floor, we found time to go outside and smoke a circuit. Right. So sometimes I think like, think like a smoker in terms of taking that break. Not like smoking cigarettes, right? Because it's true, right? We always. That time when anybody that ever smoked, it's like, you know, you do it. I don't know.

I've never smoked. So there you have it. I'll take your word for it. You know why? Because my dad was a huge smoker and he would, like, put us in the car. You'd never do this nowadays, but we'd all be locked in the car with the cigarettes and it being so ill that I can't. If someone is on the freeway and they are smoking in a car next to me, I can smell it and I get an instant headache because I have that memory of it.

And it's really bad for your eyes. Cataracts, macular degeneration. Smoking is the worst thing. So please don't do that.

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So we talked about morning. Well, what happens then as we get into the evening with light. And along with that, like the junk light that you're talking about, you're not just talking about overhead light. Like, what are we doing about the screens? Do we need those glasses during the day to protect our eyes from the screens? What should we be doing there and how bad is it?

I use software. Apple devices have night shift mode, and I usually have my screens a little yellow, so I don't get that much blue light. I don't think it's a big deal, to be honest, with the blue light. What we don't want is blue light after sunset in the evening because that does mess up with our circadian rhythm. But I have my screen set to that dimmer light and then more yellowish. So there's lots of software. There's Iris, there's a software, there's Flux. Flux is free. I think Iris costs a little bit of money, but there's software now. I hate putting glasses on my face, period. The only time I use these kind of orangey glasses are in the evening if I do watch tv. And my TV doesn't have any fancy screen settings. So I put the orange glasses on to watch TV sometimes in the evening, but that's it. I don't really know.

Is TV a bad? Like, it's funny. I never ever used to watch TV until I met Tim and Then we became like hooked on Netflix things. How bad is that in the evening?

I mean, I don't think it's that bad. I mean, it's again, are you staring at the screen? Are you sitting really close?

I blink a lot.

There you go.

Is the room also, here's the thing too, right? When we, when we have that light in our eyes, our pupils get smaller, which is a good thing. But if we sit in a dark room and the only thing that's on is the TV and everything else is pitch black dark, or the computer for that matter. The pupils open up because it's dark. We want the peripheral field. This is the thing that happens with computers and glasses. People that wear glasses. We have that tunnel vision. We have this over focus on what's ahead of us versus being aware of the whole room around us. Does that make sense? So having maybe salt lamps, having some orange lamps. You don't want to sit in a completely dark room and only have the TV screen on or the computer screen on. So you want to match the lighting of the screen to your environment, if that makes sense.

So speaking of that, what would be the best way to set up like your workspace? Because I would think that's where we're spending the majority of our time is workspace in front of a computer. What are some tips to set that up so that it's the most eyesight friendly situation?

I'm sitting here in my kitchen right now because I love sitting in my kitchen and my computer would be too low if I just put it on the counter. I have two yoga blocks under my laptop right now so that the top level of the computer is at eye level. You want the top of the. You don't want to look down. I see that a lot with computers, with laptop, right. We look down. And if I were to type now, I would have to need an external keyboard. Right. Because otherwise, right. The posture, you want the elbows at a 90 degree, the arms so that your wrists are relaxed, the shoulders are relaxed, that you can look straight about 2ft distance. It depends a little bit on how big your screen is. But what I see happen is when people are farsighted and they sometimes they're really far away and people that are near are like. For those of you listening, we want to find that about 2ft distance. That allows us to relax our eyes, but also not too close or too far away from the screen and have good posture that we are looking, that we are straight. We're not doing the forward head posture, which is a real Problem.

Is there a certain amount of time should you be taking a break? I want people taking a break and moving. But for your eyes, is there a certain amount of time that you should say at this point you need to go do something else for a little bit?

Yes. Here's my favorite tip. So eye doctors love to throw out the 20, 20, 20 rule, which I think is super catchy. That means every 20 minutes, get up for 20 seconds and look 20ft in the distance. And I'm like, who is going to set a timer on their phone? Right? So I always recommend set your computer up if you can. Right. If you walk in the cubicle, it's different. But if you can set. Set your computer up in front of a window so that literally all you have to do is like, I can just look out. Really, it's easy. I don't have to get up. I mean, I like movement, too. Don't get me wrong. I have a standing desk that I can easily make go up and down, a balance board that I'm standing on. So there is always a little bit of automatic movement. I'm not moving a lot right now in this recording because that can be distracting. But when I'm working, I'm moving. I'm on the balance board, or maybe I. But I look out in the distance all the time because I'm right in front of a window, not against the wall, which is right. Does that make sense so that you can easily find me without any rules or timers? Because honestly, yeah, yeah, that won't work.

I want to get some practical advice. And I know you also have a challenge and you have guides, so we'll talk about that too. But before we get there, I think we've covered most. Are there any other, like, silly myths out there or misconceptions that we haven't addressed?

I think one of the myths is that your eyesight cannot get better. That it's just like you're just doomed to get worse and worse. That's one of the myth I do talk about in that it's all based on your eyeball. And if your eyeball has any faults, basically 90% of our vision happens in the brain. The retina is actually an extension of our brain. So when we look at perception, because I see people with the same prescription, and one person can read this line on the eye chart and the next person can read another line. How aware are we? How much are we paying attention? Eyesight can only happen in the present moment. Foresight, imagination. It's like future thinking. Or back, like hindsight, memories, all that is important in vision. I work a lot with the brain in terms of, do you have a visual memory? Because our visual cortex lights up the same way. If we think about something or we visualize, then when we actually open our eyes. Sometimes people have problems with memory, and imagination is always based on memory. I work a lot with that stuff too. Yes, healthy eyeballs, blinking, breathing. We need good breathing, that the brain gets the oxygens we need to release tension in the neck. I work a lot with myofascial release so that the lymph can flow and all that stuff, right? But we also need to work with the brain and our perception, right? Like, what do we actually know? What do we actually see?

That is, I think one of the things when you think about this, this is what I'd love to walk through is again, most people listening, myself included, would go, all right, well, this is just part of aging. It's normal, right? I always hate that it's normal. I'm like, okay, well, normal. Like if you look at what's out there, you would say, oh, it's normal to lose your muscle, gain weight, get depressed, do. Like, that might be normal, but that doesn't have to be you, right? That might be what's happening out in the world. But we know that you can actually put on muscle as you age, that you can have better energy, you can do all this stuff. And it sounds like eyesight's another one of those things. The question is, because this has been. My belief is that, yes, that's true, and it takes a lot of time, but what I'm hearing from you is actually a lot of the habits that you need to put in place to have better eyesight are the habits that you put in place to have better. A better health, metabolic health overall. And then are there some specific things that you need to do for eyesight? And how much time does that take to do?

Here's the thing. When somebody starts working with me, there is always a bigger time investment. Like if you learn to do a different workout or you change your diet initially, you have to learn, how do I replace this with that? You have to read ingredient labels. You just have to learn stuff. And then it becomes autopilot. You know exactly what to buy, you know exactly what to make. And the same with vision. Like I do. I don't even like the word exercises. But a lot of the exercises we teach is about light, able to tolerate light eye movement. The saccadic eye movements happen automatically. But we can improve Them just like, we can improve blinking, how we can improve breathing. So a lot of the things I teach are just like things that you initially do, these kind of quote unquote exercises to basically know what's the difference between being relaxed and seeing, letting things come to you. Eyes are light receivers. We're not grabbing things with our eyes. Right. So initially, I would say 10 to 15 to 20 minutes a day is good. I don't spend any time on any of this. I just use my eyes well all day long because I know what to do, you know, does that make sense? So you can the whole day, like when you're driving, you can do blinking, peripheral awareness, like you, you know? Yeah. Does that make sense? Maybe something. Some people need to do certain exercises, how the eyes work together. Like there's fusion exercises, you know, that might be more of a thing where you actually have to designate a little bit of time, a couple minutes to do something. But compared to your workout regimen that you do every day, I'm like, holy crap, I don't have time for that.

Well, you should make time.

My point is, like, you know, we don't have to spend 30 hours, 30 minutes or an hour every day on IX exercises at all.

That's good.

Oh, gosh.

Let me see if this comes back to me when you said that is there. So it sounds like there's different things that need to be corrected, but they won't be the same for everybody, which would make sense. It's just like, if someone's coming in and they want to age powerfully, well, maybe they need to add more steps. Maybe they need to do resistance training. Maybe they need to up their protein. Maybe they need to get themselves to sleep. So is there an initial assessment that someone goes through to say, is it that my eyes are not working together well, or I don't blink? Like, how do they know Know those things?

Yeah. First of all, I always teach. You know, if you have an eye doctor prescription, right. What do all these numbers mean? What do that assess? And then we also check your vision. I mean, there's an eye chart. You don't see it right now, but a traditional Snell and eye chart is a great way to check your visual acuity. When we talk about eyesight, that's what we mean, visual acuity. How sharp can you see something? And you can literally just measure that yourself. Like, sometimes people are shocked that their vision is way over corrected with the glasses. And sometimes they can barely drive with the current glasses. So we have to look at all these Factors. Then we look at like astigmatism, which is one of those things that a lot of eye doctors put in the prescription. But if it's very minor, it doesn't affect your vision. And astigmatism is linked to posture. So again we're tying together. Like what? I look at the prescription, I'm like, are you right handed? They're like, oh yeah. How do you know? I'm like, well your left cylinder astigmatism is worse. You must be looking a lot to your right so that your left eye is further away from the focal point. We look at all these pieces. What is your binocular vision, which is how the two eyes work together so that we have depth perception. I find that a lot with older clients or people that have so called monovision correction where one eye looks near and one eye looks far, that their eyes never work together. So they have very weak depth perception which leads to tripping and falling and bad balance. We look at night vision like what's your night vision ability? Your peripheral vision. So we train that by blocking the central vision. There is an assessment in my group online programs, everybody kind of learns how to do them themselves because what's your dominant eye? We have a dominant eye just like we have a dominant hand. We even go into emotional things. That's a big piece too. What is your right eye personality? What's your left eyes personality? Like? How do they. Do they like each other? Do they. You know, it's. We don't stop that because people were like that's too woo woo. But then everybody's like, wow, this is so interesting. I'm learning so much about my eyes and you know, they don't want any exercises. Sometimes people are really surprised because our eyes can tell us a lot what they want and need.

If it is interesting how it feels like a field that's really hasn't caught up with the times. And I know that there's so much that you can see through the eyes just in terms of diagnosing diseases. And it's just kind of doesn't feel like we're using any of what we now know to our advantage here. Myself included. Tell me about this will be the last thing here. And I know you won't like this question so much but I would love and maybe it's just pull out a person or two, but I would love to know what someone could expect. Someone coming in who wears glasses maybe has for five or 10 years and would love to be able to either reduce the prescription or toss them all together. Maybe just have to use them here and there. You know, what would they expect to have happen as they go through the program? How long would it take? You know, what are some initial things they'd notice? Like take me through sort of. Because I would imagine that's a pretty typical client that you see.

Yeah, I work with clients. I would say most people fall into either nearsighted or farsighted category. Really quick nearsight, you see good up close, but distance is blurry. And then we have people that have farsighted, they can see the distance better, but cannot read the small print. Right. My natural vision program is a 12 week program and we have had people that really got out of glasses completely in 12 weeks. Somebody just told me that just went back to the eye doctor and did the test again at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Now they're cleared, they don't need glasses for driving anymore. We have people in any age from like 30 to 70 to 80 reducing diopters. We had somebody with a very high.

Level of what you just said, reducing something with a D. What was that?

Yeah. So basically somebody reduced all the way from a very strong nearsighted prescription four diopters down, which means think of losing weight in a way they improve. Everybody is in weaker glasses at the end of 12 weeks. Depends on, like I said, a nearsighted person might be able to now be on the computer without glasses or read without glasses, but they might still need glasses for driving. But we always improve quickest at the distance. What we better at. So for you to try to read small print in candlelight is not as realistic as being able to not need glasses for, let's say being on the computer or for reading. You know what I mean? Like we improve step by step because like I said, glasses are only good designed for one specific distance. And we break everybody from progressive glasses which lead to kind of. Here's the thing, progressive. If you wear progressive glass or bifocals and I see you on the computer with your chin up looking through the lower part, that creates tension in the neck. That is related to astigmatism creation. Because they assume when you look straight, you look in the distance and when you look down you're reading. But guess what, computer, you look straight, but it's a near point. So now you're doing this and people fall downstairs because they look down and they look down at their feet and that's not reading distance. So we get everybody into separate pairs or not using glasses when we don't need them. That's important to improve. It's like you have to be willing to let go of some of the control in certain areas where maybe there is a little bit of blur when you go on a hike, let's say on the computer, you need clarity. We don't want to strain our eyes. But where do you really need to. Where can you let go of some of that super sharpness for it to improve? We need room to improve. Quick thing. You can't improve your strength and your flexibility if your arm is in a cast. We need to get out of that cast of the full strength prescription and slowly step down.

That's a beautiful way to explain that one. That makes a ton of sense for someone listening to this who would love to either toss their glasses or at least not have to use as heavy a prescription or use them as often. What are some options? How do they work with you? How do they find you? And we're going to put all of this information@jjvirgin.com Claudia C L A U D I A But what, walk us through what the options. I know you have a YouTube Wednesday live class. You do? What all are you doing?

So the first thing I usually recommend, I have a guide called 10 Habits, Right? That gives you 10 healthy habits. Some of the things we talked about. It goes in depth into the things you can do that get you started. That's a free guide that I have. That's a good way to get started. I have an Instagram, I have a YouTube holistic vision coach. I'm known as the holistic vision coach on Instagram and YouTube. So I have great content there. And I have, and you talked about this a little earlier, a five day training. I don't call it challenge, but it's kind of like think it's a five day free event. And I call it see better in just five days. Because your eye doctor might say this doesn't work. You're like, claudia, I don't know if I believe you. I always say, don't believe me. Don't believe your eye doctor. See for yourself. And in five days people have improvements. And now they're like, wow, I get it now. I understand that this is possible. And what I hear over and over again, there's hope. There's hope.

Five days. How much time each day for five days? And what is it? What is like tell me a success story in five days.

Okay, so the time, the trainings are all like a couple of minutes long. The prerecorded trainings and then we Go live every day for like an hour and a half, right? Where we go, like where we coach people, where we practice things together. So for the five days, I would say like an hour to 90 minutes for that. Each of those days, if you want to participate in all the life coaching days, which I highly recommend, a success story is that somebody said they immediately didn't need their glasses anymore for looking up close at the computer. They were like, I can't believe it. I can see the computer clearly. The biggest thing is that people notice that their vision changes and that they can do things to make it better. That was the big thing I noticed at 15, right? Like, okay, my vision changes. I didn't realize that. My doctor told me my eyes are just bad eyeballs, right? I just have to wear glasses. And now I'm connecting the dots that when I do that, when I get the sunlight, when I rest my eyes, when I blink more, whatever, all the little things that we're learning have a big impact on how sharp I see. So that is basically right. That sensation of like, I can change something.

Thank God you didn't believe what they told you. It's a bigger thing, though. Think of it, Claudia, how many times we're told stuff and it changes the trajectory of our life because we believe some limitation instead of going, oh, no, I'm not going to go with that. Look what a shift it has made for you. And I know you've helped thousands of people now have naturally clear vision because you just weren't going to take that as truth. So I think it's super exciting. And again, we're going to put everything@jjvirgin.com claudia and that's not a lot of time to invest when you think about what it can reap for you. Like, it's not. Yes, very cool. Plus, it's free. So we'll have the free guide. We'll link to the training, the free guide, and all of your different social channels and your YouTube show. So everybody can toss their glasses or at least reduce their use.

Exactly. See better as you get older, not worse.

Perfect. Powerful aging, powerful eyesight. Need them both.

Yes.

Yes.

I love it.

Foreign.

Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure you look and feel great and are built to last. Check me out on Instagram, Facebook and my website, jjvirgin.com and make sure to follow my podcast@subscribetoj.com so you don't miss.

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Don't forget to leave a review. Your reviews make a big difference in helping me reach more incredible women just like you to spread the word about aging powerfully after 40. Thanks for tuning in and I'll catch.

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Hey JJ here.

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