56: Your Eyes Are Talking to Your Hormones – The Hidden Connection Between Vision, Sleep & Stress with Dr. Meenal Agarwal

So today's episode is with Dr. Meenal Aggarwal, who is a board certified optometrist, entrepreneur and leading voice on the Ibray connection I brain connection, pioneering a holistic approach that integrates science, mindfulness and lifestyle medicine. It's just, it is incredibly unique, the conversation we're having today. Through her podcast, uncover your eyes, she champions visual health as a key to cognition, longevity, and overall well being. Let's dig in. Welcome to Modern Thyroid and wellness, the podcast that explores the intricate dance between health, wellness and thyroid, unraveling the threads that weave our vitality together. I'm your host, McCall McPherson, and I'm so thrilled to guide you on this journey to optimal wellness. Meenal, thank you so much for being here today. I'm actually really excited to have this conversation for a couple of reasons that I'll unravel, of course, but you have a very, very unique and interesting line of work looking at the connection between our vision, our eyes, our brain, our hormones. We're just going to dig into a world of fascinating insights. So thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you for having me. It's an honor. Thank you.

Yeah, absolutely. So tell me a little bit how you ended up in this specific line of work there or this niche, because it is, it's particular and unique and usually there's a little bit of a story that goes along with that. So I'd love for you to share a little bit about your journey and how you ended up here.

Yeah, I mean, I ended up where I am today, being an eye doctor, because I was diagnosed with glaucoma when I was 11. And I think for me, obviously, having a doctor who truly took me seriously and whether it was symptoms or signs and didn't just equate diseases to the elderly, it meant a lot to me. And I think I wanted to be obviously that, that person that was there for others. And I think that's why even as an eye doctor today, I shift a lot into the functional side of it. A lot of us as optometrists are very like, it's textbook. This is what it shows, this is what it should be. And this is the treatment, whether it's drops, whether it's surgery. But I like to deal a lot with the preventative side of it, which is obviously explaining to patients how we can prevent those diseases from coming on, or the functional side of it is once the disease is there, let's see what other holistic measures we can take along with. Of course, if you need surgery or you need medication. But for me, it's looking at the holistic picture and looking at the eye, brain, body connection, because your eyes are the first places where we detect a lot of things.

Yeah, it's interesting. A couple weeks ago, I was having like a lot of anxiety and I'm like, is this my hormones? Is it perimenopause? Is it my stress? Because my stress is a little bit high right now. So I basically completely disconnected from my phone. And a whole weekend without it, my anxiety dissipated tremendously. I could not believe the actual physical impact that it had. It was actually. It was fascinating. So I'm kind of excited today into that concept. I'd love for you to chat with us. Most of us are walking around. We're spending all day on screens, whether it's our phone, whether it's our computer, the tv. We're kind of transitioning from one screen to the next. What are some of the obvious signs or maybe the signs we should tune into that? Tell us, hey, maybe we're having an experience of digital overload, or this is really impacting our nervous system.

Yeah, I love that you shared that story with me because I, I'm in the same boat as you. And my anxiety is, I believe, very much link to this overstimulation. And that's what it is. It's overstimulation. Being on all these devices, we're stimulating through the blue light and through the scatter, we're stimulating so many areas of our brain. Essentially, when we talk about the eyes, the eyes are just the vessel where that blue light hits, and then it goes straight to your brain, and that's where it's sending. It's changing your metabolism, it's changing hormone or having direct effects on your hormone levels, your sleep cycle and everything. And I think the signs of digital overload, the biggest sign is your ability to sleep. And there are so many patients who have insomnia or are taking sleeping pills. And there's an obvious sign that is that blue light. And we only need a little bit of it. We need a lot to cause disease, but we only need a little bit of it to mess up our sleep wake cycle and our circadian rhythm. And having that detox one to two hours before sleeping is so huge because once you get that blue light hit your retina, you are suppressing melatonin production. And that has been shown in countless studies. And you are not. Your body's not going to know that you need to sleep, and that's why you're so awake and so for me, the first step is the nighttime thing. If you want to be on it 10 hours in the day, sure. But get off of it at night. And then, of course, if you are on your devices, whether it's staring at a TV or a computer all day, taking those breaks is huge. So we have a rule of thumb in the eye world, and it's called the 20, 20, 20 rule. I don't know if you've heard of it. No, but it's every 20 minutes for 20 seconds. Just 20 seconds. Look 20ft or far away. So I love to tell patients to position their screens, like, especially if you're working from home. Like, I have a window. Right. Position it next to your window so that you're typing all day. And at least it's a reminder that your window is there, that you can look far away. Because when you look outside, it's. It's usually far away. So you just want to look outside and far away. That's. That's huge for our digital detox, just having those breaks and your body processes that pretty well. So I would rather, and, and it sounds funny, but I would rather you be on a screen for five hours taking breaks every 20 minutes, then be on a screen without breaks for three hours. Wow.

And so does that, like, calm our nervous system? Does it allow our eyes to reset a little bit? Tell me a little bit about what's happening. I would love to. Honestly, my windows, like, right here overlooks my garden. I've never done this before, but I definitely need to get on board. So, yeah, fill me and tell me a little bit more about the effects of that.

So firstly, it relaxes your eye muscles. So when you look at something up close, about 50cm, your muscles actually have to strain and flex. When you look at something far away, your muscles actually relax. So when you're flexing your muscles all day long, you are stimulating an elongation of your eyeball. And when you elongate your eyeball, you require stronger glasses or stronger near, and you become more nearsighted. So you need a stronger prescription to focus the light further back. So a, you're developing more nearsightedness. And we project that by the year 2050, 50% of the world will be nearsighted. And that's why we're seeing a lot of the rise post Covid when children were all on devices all day as well. So that's number one for us in the I world. Number two is the release, of course, of the scatter, the blue light. We know that we're getting a lot of digital strain without the brakes. If we're breaking that up, that is, that is more effective. So our eyes are signaling the brain in different pathways to increase cortisol, to change. Change hormone levels to make you more tired. There are certain pathways that are affecting your insulin resistance even. So that's why, again, in the day, okay. But if you're doing it at night, you're affecting that. You don't want your cortisol up. You don't want to affect your insulin resistance. And that's why we see a lot of, even patients with insulin resistance, we see sugar fluctuations and we see that directly in the eyes. So it all goes hand in hand. Your whole body is, is intertwined, but your eyes are, I always say, the primary vessel that we want to maintain that less strain in that vessel.

So. Interesting. So I kind of want to go back to the nighttime thing. So I'm, I'm a very poor sleeper. I also, like, like, my favorite thing is crawling into bed with my husband and like, watching a TV show and relaxing. Is that number one? Do you not do that at all? And like, is there any workarounds that we can do? Like, tell me.

Okay, so that's also my, my thing. So you know what? I shouldn't be preaching what I'm preaching, but I mean, for me, like, that downtime at nighttime where you can just binge watch Netflix is, is huge. So I will tell you, I try to give myself like at least a one hour gap because again, you're getting that blue light stimulation. I think the difference, like, we always watch TV back in the day, like before sleeping. But I think the difference is I truly don't believe it gives you that dopamine hit that TikTok does, where you're just scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. You can go endlessly, right? Also, we had commercials when we were younger, but it's a big dopamine hit, I find. And I don't know if you find this when I'm binge watching Netflix, because sometimes if it's a good show, like, and you're like, there's three seasons and you just started it and you want to complete at least two. And then you complete two and you're like, no, let's complete the third. And then it's like, 1am I am dead in the morning. Like, I am not only even if I wake up later, my cycle, my body, my hormones, I feel sluggish, I feel gross. It just messes everything up. And a lot of that is because you're not getting into the proper sleep cycle, the REM sleep, the proper. Where you're not getting that good quality sleep because your body has not fully suppressed the. It has fully suppressed the melatonin. Right. So that's a big thing. So I'm not going to say don't watch TV in bed. I don't want to take that away from you. But knowing your limits and giving yourself least some time before falling asleep. Because it is really hard to fall asleep after switching off the TV and just trying.

Yeah. And that's when you want to transition to like tick tock before you go to sleep. But then it's like the dopamine thing. And it's such an interesting point about when we grew up and we were watching TV1 too. I think the TVs were so much smaller and we weren't. So it wasn't so long that we were watching. At least for me, I didn't have cable. It's like, am I gonna really sit here and watch Golden Girls for four hours? No. We had very limited options. So we didn't really binge watch tv. We would maybe watch a movie. And then it was over and we were done. And then the whole idea of commercials is probably a built in. I break too.

You got it. Yeah.

Interesting.

And we don't have that now. And, and our kids like, they're like, they can't watch something with a commercial. And it's like for me to, I have to yell at them and be like, okay, that's it. You've watched one episode done. But it's, it's a, it's, it's hard for them. And I. You want to protect your eyes because your eyes are the window to the body. You know, have you ever heard that phrase where they're like that window to the. The soul or your body? And that's so true. Because the eye is the only place in your entire body there's no other doctor that can see your blood vessels on an examination.

Yeah.

You can go to any doctor and they cannot internally see your blood vessels. The eye is the only place in your whole body where I can check you for a routine exam. And I see all your blood vessels in the eyes. Yeah. And so a lot of times it's the first sign of different certain diseases, whether it's diabetes, blood pressure, cholesterol, plaques, sometimes the first sign of a stroke. So many things. Yeah.

Question, follow up question. I'm still stuck on the nighttime TV thing. So tell me about like the blue light blocking glasses. Are we really Getting much protection from them? Are they worth it? Is there certain types that are better than others? I'm like totally leveraging our entire conversation for me personally. I apologize.

No, of course. It's the hot topic. So, okay, so I want to talk about blue light. We talked about it in the aspect of circadian rhythm. First, let's just touch on it in terms of disease. So a lot of people believe that it's causing disease, so they're making their children wear it all day long. So forget about the nighttime, but just in the daytime. And I want to debunk that myth slightly. So it is not. I shouldn't say not, but it really has not been shown to cause disease. Disease. We need the intensity of blue light to be almost as strong as staring at the sun all day. For you to get that oxidative stress on your retina. By looking at computer for eight hours, you are not burning your retina. You're not causing oxidative stress. And a lot of the studies that have been done are on animal models or animal subjects, and they are using the intensity as strong as the sun. So when they show retinal damage, such as causing macular degeneration, which some have, that is on animal models with very intense blue light, none of us are going out there and staring at the sun all day. So we are not getting the disease. So if you are going to be using it for the purpose of the nighttime thing, like you have to be watching TV or on your computer for two hours at night and you want to use it.

Sure.

And then let's get into how, how much it filters. So blue light, the highest filter we typically see is 30 to 40%. So the amount that the coating or glasses are filtering is important. There's a lot out there that are advertised on the Internet, but they essentially only filter 10%. So who really cares then? Is it even worth it? But you want to get about 30 to 40%. A lot of times when you wear glasses, prescription glasses, and you get a blue light filter coating put into those glasses, a lot of them do filter 30 to 40%. So just confirm that. But a lot of them do. So if you're already wearing glasses, go ahead and do it. But if you don't wear glasses and you are just going online and buying these demi ones for 10 that are filtering 10%, 20, even 30%, a lot of times they don't have an anti reflective coating. They are just dummy blue light filter glasses. So on one hand, you're trying to filter the scatter that's coming from your screens because blue light has a lot of scatter. And so you're trying to reduce your digital eye strain and, and you're trying to help your circadian rhythm. But on the other hand you don't have an anti reflective coating on there. So you're getting a lot of reflections in. So it's like a trade off. So for me I would rather you just not wear, not wear them or just reduce your time before bed. I don't really need you to wear it all day. But again, if you already have glasses and you want it on, sure. Because forget about the nighttime. So at nighttime it affects your circadian rhythm. What do we care about in the daytime? We care about digital eye strain because blue light has high energy and it scatters a lot, it has a lot of movement. So we want to reduce digital eye strain, but if we're adding on all these reflections, we're counteracting it. But if you already have a good pair of glasses that has an anti reflective coating, why not add it on? There's no harm.

Got it. Okay, so cool. So interesting. I want to transition this conversation to something that's a little unique and you talk a lot about your eyes, digital strain, whatever it is impacting balance, coordination. What's, what's really interesting about this to me. And so I have a special needs daughter, her Name's Rosie, she's 10, she's autistic, but she has like a rare genetic disorder. So there's a slew of other things that go on as well. She has a little iPad, that's her words. Obviously a lot of autistic kids really like iPads and like she watches farm animal videos and she loves, that's like her favorite thing. But she also has balance and coordination issues that go along with her rare genetic condition. So I've never heard of this connection. I think it's so fascinating. I'd love for you to tell me about that. And I also want you to describe separate or if it's interconnected, I don't know, scatter, like translate that to like normal everyday people that maybe don't even know what that means because that's me for sure.

Yeah, so the concept you're referring to is we, I call it spatial awareness because that's essentially what it is. So we'll start from the beginning. But when you are looking at a screen or you know, something cookie cutter box where you're not looking at your surroundings all day for many days, many months, what's happening is you have light from these objects that are hitting your retina and stimulating your foveal photoreceptors. So these are photoreceptors in your retina that dictate your central vision. You also have photoreceptors in your retina that dictate your peripheral vision, which is you're surrounding that object. Typically what your brain does is it integrates it all and formulates the picture of whatever you're looking at. Your peripheral vision and your central vision, there's no severe distinction. Typically your peripheral vision, whatever's around you go slightly in the background, but not too much, but you're focused on your central vision. But they, they have a great amount of brain space that's processing both and those areas are slightly different. But if you are constantly stimulating your central foveal photoreceptors, those peripheral photoreceptors are going to get tired or just kind of feel like they're lazy. They're not going to get used to. And can they be retrained? I'm going to jump to that, yes. But we obviously are going to get lazy and they're going to have an issue. So they're not going to be processing what's around that computer or peripherally around that space. If your foveal photoreceptors are constantly being used, you're constantly going to keep putting what's in the center as the forefront and be only narrow minded or narrow focused we call that. So you have lost your awareness of your space, your spatial awareness. And a lot of that are, a lot of people are headed there and there's so many signs whether it's losing balance because you can, you can't figure out what, where your body is in position in relation to space. So sometimes you'll lose balance, you'll be clumsy, you'll spill coffee easily or you'll cross a street staring at your phone, not being aware that the car is coming slightly close to you when it's stopping. And you'll see a lot of kids that will be crossing the street outside high schools and they're staring at their phone, crossing the street. And a moment, sometimes the car will cross that white line slightly and they'll look up and they'll be like almost shaken. Like what's happening? It's because they're not aware of what's happening. And to process that peripheral side vision takes time. And I don't know if you've ever felt this, but when you're on a computer and you get up. So if you've been on a computer for a couple hours, then you get up. It's like, almost like, give me a second to get my balance right. You'll notice that if you're on it for a couple of hours, try noticing it when you get up. It'll be like, you won't just start walking, right? It'll be like, give it a second. And that second will be different. Could be minutes for some people. And it's because your balance is also in parts of those areas of your brain. Your vision is, is, is connected to your balance, all sorts of things. And you're not spatially aware because your peripheral vision hasn't been stimulated. And that is where the next kind of generation is headed because they're sitting on this cookie cutter box all day.

It's so fascinating because really, this is like the science we'll see in the future that you're just on the forefront of because this is all so new, like computers, big TVs, screens, iPads, phones, like that we're spending all this time on. We'll see these ramifications play out over the next several decades. But you're. It's so. It's amazing that you're talking about it now, because now is when we need to intervene. We don't want to wait until these studies come out in 20 years and kind of change the paradigm.

And McCauley, I want to, sorry, add that you were talking about your daughter and something similar happened to me. And this is how I got into this. I was just a regular eye doctor, working, doing my days, coming home, and I actually started to build my podcast and I was off work for health reasons as well for a couple of months. And so when I was off work for a couple months for health reasons, I was sitting on my computer so much more, doing my podcast stuff and trying to get it started that I would be on it like eight, nine hours a day. And I had never had that lifestyle because my lifestyle was going to work. Seeing patients where I'm not on a computer all day, it would just be finishing files at the end of the day for a little bit, but not a lot. And so for me to transition from being completely normal to two to three months off work where I'm sitting on a computer all day, I actually noticed a big change in me. I couldn't go into crowds, and when I went into crowds, I'd want to stay in the corner. And I'm a pretty. I'm an introvert, but I can be extroverted when I'm outside, and it was getting really bad to the point where I didn't want to socialize. My kids would call me while I'm sitting on my computer right where you see me, and they'd be calling me from the other side, and I would just ignore. And it was like my spatial awareness was tuning them out. And it got to a point where I was not talking to them as much. I was tuning them out. And that's when it hit me that I felt like I was being a bad mom. And I think that's when something is going on with me. And I went to a point where I was ready to talk to my family doctor. Do I have Alzheimer's or dementia? Because I felt like I had something. Couldn't be baby brain or brain fog that you have, because I wasn't pregnant. But there was something going on with me, and I couldn't figure it out. And I was going crazy trying to see, like, what's happening to me mentally. And then as I started going back to work, how is this disappearing, how it took months, like, how am I getting better? And that's when I said, like, the only thing that was different was me sitting on a computer for so much longer. What is happening to my brain? And that's how I started kind of wanting to educate people about this, because I just did it for two, three months. But how much of the world is sitting at home working from home, and how many of these kids are required to take laptops all day to school and then all day at home working on it? So that was kind of my story that I hope people can resonate with, and I. And I hope people actively make some changes.

And, gosh, what's so crazy about that is, like, as an adult, as a specialist in this field, it took you a while to figure that out. Imagine all the kids that will never be able to realize this unless their parents, their teachers, their coaches are empowered with this same information because they just can't tune in. They would have no idea. It's like, me with my anxiety, it's like, I've got to do something about this. It's so acute right now. What can I do? This is the one thing in my control. I'm gonna try it. Let's see. And it worked. Fascinating. Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that and thank you for your work in that regard, because I think it could impact kids and so many adults, too. Talk with me a little bit about hormones and the interconnection, and I don't know if it's bi directional if it's unidirectional. But talk to me about the interconnection between vision and hormones because this wasn't part of the conversation I was expecting before I started prepping for this.

Yeah, so I'm gonna mainly talk about menopause a little because that's when we have the biggest shift in hormones, so our hormones decrease. And the biggest or one of the main symptoms if you go and look at a menopause kind of checklist is dry eyes. And the reason it's so big is when you have your, your androgens, your estrogen decreases. That actually decreases your tear production and the oil production, the good quality tears that we get. And so we don't. We have severe dry eyes. And it's the number one symptom that women come to 40 plus I have dryness. And so that is the number one correlation we see. We also will see things like prescription shifts because the level of hormones you have has a direct correlation to your corneal, your corneal thickness. So we'll see swelling. And, you know, it's like after you have a lot of alcohol, it changes your hormones and it actually thickens your cornea. And so we will see people. That's why people go blurry after having a lot of alcohol. And so it's the same kind of correlation in, in lesser levels. But we do see vision or prescription changes. Similar to pregnancy. Your hormones have changed, so we will see shifts in prescription. So your hormones have a big impact on the retina in that respect. We'll see dryness and vision changes. Those are the top two that we see. Of course, if your hormones are affecting insulin resistance and all of those things, then we will see retinal changes like bleeding at the back of the eye and all sorts of things.

Interesting. Do you all see much in the regard of thyroid and eye changes too, like, because I know everything kind of dries up with thyroid conditions. I'm curious if that's part of your training, if how, how real that is and how much you see it.

Absolutely. So especially with graves and hyperthyroidism, which you're the expert in, but we will see inflammation of the tissue around the eyes as well as the extraocular muscles. So the muscles around the eyes, we can also see optic nerve changes, but basically it's a, you know, inflammation. And so what happens is it pushes in some patients, the eyeball outwards. And we'll see the lid slow, slightly retracted. So, yes, they'll feel dry because the lid is retracted, but we'll also see proptosis, which is the eyeball going outwards. So that's a big thing. We see an uncontrolled hyperthyroidism and with Graves disease. So a lot of times it keeps protruding or for that active infection or inflammation period, and then there's a calm down period. And when that calm down happens, a lot of times some of it goes away, but a lot of it does remain. And when it's not actively inflamed, that's when people can consider whether it's surgery for that proptosis or cosmetic surgery.

Yeah. And then thinking about, so I'm like 42 overnight. I feel like in a matter of three months, I'm like, so I can't go anywhere without my glasses. This morning I woke up thinking it was six o'. Clock. Got completely like ready, started doing my day. It was five. I just couldn't see it on my phone whenever I was like getting up. What is happening in like the perimenopause phase? Is it dryness? Is it like what, what's happening to make us all of the sudden lose our vision so quickly?

Okay, so I mean, I'm assuming you're referring to the close up vision that we all lose.

For sure.

So it's not just women. I want to put it out there. This is the one thing men get too, thankfully. Right.

So they need something.

Yeah. So we kind of refer to this as like the 40 plus issue. We're seeing it a lot earlier now with people being on a computer now. But back in the day when I started practicing like 18, 19 years ago, we referred to it as the 40 plus thing, where we call it presbyopia, where you lose your near vision because the muscles that kind of hold our lens in place, that flex when we look up close, lose their flexibility over time. So it's a natural degradation. It's kind of like the collagen in my knees is not the same as when I was 20. It's lost the. I have a harder time sitting on the floor. It's, it's the same idea. So we, we slowly lose that elasticity. So you start with a mild prescription, then it gets worse and it gets worse. So it is going to get worse. That's, that's part of all of us, I truly believe. I mean, we're all aging. The bottom, bottom line is we can not age. But can you slow that process down is the million dollar question.

Yeah.

And my theory is that if we are seeing that degradation earlier. So as eye doctors, we're seeing A lot of this presbyopia happen even in 35 now, when before I remember, like, I'd always be like, what's the oldest patient, what's the youngest patient? Like, we would kind of like make it a running joke. Like I had one that was 48 that just started. So we would see people 48, 49, starting Presbyopia, and now we're seeing people 30, I think. I had a 29 year old the other day and I was like, what's going on? I've never seen that. So it's always a running kind of thing amongst us. And what is the one thing that has changed? I mean, we can talk about everything, whether it's our sugar levels, our sleep cycles, but the one thing has changed is our near work. The next generation is doing a lot more near work. So when you look up close, there's another mechanism where muscles actually flex as well to see, to look up close. And you are flexed so much that you lose that elasticity faster. So not only is it called presbyopia, but it's now part of farsightedness, where you're losing that ability to focus up close and you're kind of getting a double whammy. And so we don't really know is this presbyopia that's early or is this farsightedness? And I don't think any of us can ever will ever know the culprit behind the eye and what's happening in there. But we know that you're losing the ability to look up close and read at an earlier stage. So yes, there's an aging aspect of it, but there's also an the aspect of being on your devices all day. So can we slow it down? I truly believe so. And the number one thing, I mean, of course there you can go to your eye doctor. Consider eye exercises where we're looking far away, all those things. But the number one thing you can do for yourself today is take those breaks every 20 minutes for 20 seconds. And that will help relax your eye muscles.

I love it. Fascinating. I had one more question. Tell me a little bit about cortisol, the interrelation between vision cortisol. Again, I don't know if it's both ways. I completely imagine blue light stimulates cortisol, but is there anything else like. Or just expand on that concept, how stress impacts our eyes.

Yeah. So when, I mean, it is a blue light pathway where we now kind of know we're awake because it's hit our retina and there's this pigmentation in some of our ganglion cells that get simulated and it sends signals to the brain and it to tell us we're awake, but it also sends via different pathways to increase cortisol levels so we get more stressed. So that's where like the whole hit comes. When you were sitting on a computer all day and you're getting that cortisol, you're going to get that cortisol rise and so you are going to get more stressed. Maybe that's going to trigger your anxiety. Maybe that's going to be, you're going to be more alert, you're going to be more hyper focused, more hyperactive. It's a whole loop. But that's essentially the main pathway that we're increasing our stress levels. And then there's interconnected pathways with insulin and sugars and cortisol, and that then feeds back to the eyes. And that's a whole nother loop where your sugar, your, your stress levels or cortisol is high. So it's increasing your insulin resistance and therefore your sugars are high and therefore affect your blood vessels in your retina. So there's all sorts of pathways, all interconnected.

Wow. So in closing, if you could tell listeners three things to do to protect their eyes, their hormones, their spatial awareness, balance and coordination as we age, obviously eye breaks is one for sure. I will be implementing that into my life. Absolutely. But tell us a couple more things that people can do.

Like you said, the eye breaks the 20, 20, 20 rule, where I also want to call it the digital detox. You know, getting off your devices at nighttime, but getting that morning sunlight. So I'm one of those people that I. Yes, I promote sunglasses because when you get that strong UV radiation in the afternoons, that's important if you're gardening for a couple of hours. But having that morning without your sunglasses to get that circadian rhythm kicking in is so huge. 10, 15, 20 minutes, that's all you need. So getting that morning walk, your digital detox and moving around. So for me, I know people will say, well, you're not a doctor that talks about like movement and longevity like that, but moving around is how you're going to gain your spatial awareness. So if there's no movement and you're sedentary sitting all day, you're not really looking around to gain that spatial awareness. So if we want to start with just those three basic things without going to an eye doctor, those are your, those are the top three things.

I love that. I love that. Tell listeners a little bit about where they can find you, any resources you have that is available to them, where you like to hang out on social media, all the things.

Yeah, absolutely. You can find me on Instagram, Dr. Meenal Agarwal I do have a substack newsletter there where you can subscribe in the bio that I put out a lot of information about spatial awareness and other eye topics. I also have a podcast called Uncover your eyes the Truth about health and Wellness. So you can find me on all platforms. And yeah, thank you for so much for having me.

Absolutely. Thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing your work. It's incredibly, incredibly important. And yeah, fantastic conversation.

Thank you.