Improve Your Vision, with Dr. Bryce Appelbaum

You can make it so your prescription is not going to increase for a long time, and if anything, maybe even do more with less based off of doing the right work. Cognitive decline happens. Vision decline happens. They don't have to. You can counter it. But if you do nothing, then yes, it's going to happen.

If you want to live like you matter, ditch the pills, look great, and feel Freaking amazing. You're in the right place. I'm Dr. Wendy Trubo.

And I'm Dr. Ed Levitan. Welcome to the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast.

Where we empower you to live a vibrant and healthy life by optimizing your structural, chemical, emotional, social, and spiritual lives.

Hold on to your hats.

Hello, and welcome back to the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. We have an amazing guest today. I know I say that every day, but we do. We have Dr. Bryce Applebaum.

Well, guest and friend and a friend.

And part of our mastermind, and we're just delighted to talk to him. So he is Dr. Bryce Applebaum. He is a pioneer in neuro optometry. He's passionate about unlocking your potential through vision. He's on a mission to change the way the world views vision because there's more to vision than just 2020 eyesight. And he's developed really cool programs that retrain the brain to revise the eyes, and it impacts everything from ADHD to dyslexia to just your daily experience of life. So, Bryce, welcome. We're so excited you're here.

Such an honor to be here. Excited to hang out with you guys and talk about vision and empower and educate your audience.

So when we grew up, this stuff wasn't common?

Well, hold on a second. This stuff isn't common?

It still isn't common. I mean, we're you. You both know too well this reactive medical model that we're in where, you know, we're putting band aids on symptoms rather than hitting the root cause. I'm, of course, biased, but I would say with the eyes, there's more of a disconnect than any other part of the body. Everybody goes the eye doctor. They. There's this heavy pursuit of seeing the tiny letters all the way across that dark room on this small chart. And it's once you see those letters, with the right combination of lenses and glasses, and once you. We know the eyes are healthy, it's kind of like, see you later. But we pick up where that. Where normal eye doctors leave off in that the functional skills and how well our eyes are working together as a team. And that eye brain connection that's really what's responsible for everything we do in life. And yet, you know, no doctors are looking at this stuff. So it wasn't common. It still isn't common, even though this specialty has been around for 100 years. But I'm really taking it upon myself as the messenger to just stand on every rooftop possible and blast this stuff out there. And it's crazy, the unbelievable reception this has all been getting the last couple years, just because the world needs this stuff with screens ruining so many brains and eyeballs.

All right, so as a professional, how do screens ruin brains and eyeballs? And this will be taped for our kids, just so you know.

Well, and I'm really clear, like, I'm going to share what we all should do and then I'm going to share what I actually do with my kids. Because you all know the battles with your kids and when you tell them to not do something, that means they just want to do it more. So there's absolutely actionable steps we can all take. But screen time is the new pandemic. It's ruining so many aspects of, for kids, cognitive development, emotional development, social development, but now visual development, and then for adults as well. The average adult in America spends 7 hours and 4 minutes on a screen. The average 8 to 10 year old spends 6 hours a day on the screen. Those are average numbers. That's nuts. Yet screen time, it's been around for a while. It's not going anywhere. We absolutely can develop the right visual foundation to thrive in this world. But our brains are not developed to handle these demands. Screens present a different amount of visual stress from our environment. That includes different eye movements required to engage with screens. Brightness, contrast, glare that we all have to absorb and process. There's 2D versus 3D. There's blue light. There's just these sporadic signals that our brains are not meant to be able to filter and process. That's what's causing these challenges then, from a functional standpoint, the coordination of the inside and outside muscle systems. So to really simplify this, the inside muscles in the eyes, that's our focusing system, our combative system that allows us to make something clear and keep it clear. That lets us know what something is. It's a circular sphincter muscle, meaning when we're looking at a screen, it's locked in. So if everybody listening were to squeeze their fists as hard as they can, after a few seconds, your hands start to hurt. But if you're squeezing, let go and squeeze and let go and have flexibility, you can Maintain tension for a longer period of time. When we are on screens, our focusing muscles are locked in. And that tension over time, unless you're trying to get buff and lift weights, that's not a good thing. So that's really what's causing so many of the symptoms that are associated with screen time challenges.

All right, what are the symptoms associated.

With, what would you say?

Headaches, eye strain, blurred vision, fatigue, dry eye, light sensitivity, disrupted sleep technicians, decrease productivity throughout the day. I mean, I could rattle these off. It's crazy. The amount of symptoms and just kind of status quo that we all accept as normal, even though people don't even stop and think about, like, oh, wow, I have so much more energy on the weekends than I do on weekdays. And I schedule my important zooms in the morning versus in the evening. Or, you know, all the little things that just have evolved over time, especially post pandemic, that now are our new normal. And the biggest one is nearsightedness in myopia. I mean, that is increasing at an alarming rate because of screen time.

I have a lot of questions, actually. First of all, can people with glasses that have been with glasses for 20 years get off glasses?

How about 40 years?

Or 40 years? But in my case, I have the 50 year old. I have never worn glasses, but I'm starting to see a difference. I notice if I do eye exercises that it comes back pretty quickly, but I get lazy pretty quickly.

So much to unpack. All right, so what's your question, actually?

Well, can everybody.

I got it. I didn't get it.

There's a lot to unpack there.

It's a guy thing. He's got it.

Yeah, and I are on the same page here. All right, so glasses fix. Glasses help a symptom. Eyesight is a symptom. I'm not anti glasses. I wear contacts. I have a very high prescription. What your brain does with information, your eyes sends it and how it drives meaning and directs the appropriate action, that's what matters. So somebody's prescription that we get a pair of glasses, you put them on and take something blurry, makes it clear that then becomes your new normal. And then you go back the next year and they need something stronger because you've adapted to lens, you're in. And then you go on this vicious cycle far away. Blur is a symptom of often a near problem. The near problem may be a focusing stamina problem, a focusing flexibility problem, an eye coordination problem, whatever it may be. If you don't even acknowledge the problem and you're just feeding the symptoms. Then your glasses spiral and increase forever, or until they don't. If you acknowledge the problem and treat the functional issue that was hidden, literally, your prescription stops changing. In many cases, it reverses some. That's a different animal than as we age, because with the myopia, the astigmatism, the prescriptions, as we're younger, that's in response to not enough time outdoors, prolonged near work in the dark, and too much screen time. As we then age and we get older and all of us will be there in another decade or so, when we get to our 40s, we up close becomes harder, we start to hold things farther away, Arms aren't long enough. And then the first thing we do is we run to the CVS and grab an over the counter reader, Right? That's the equivalent of your knee hurts, you're jumping into a wheelchair. So you stop using the system. No, you figure out what the root cause is and you work your way back to fixing your knee and with your eyes. So as we age, our focusing muscles and the lens inside of our eye become more rigid and less flexible. But just like any muscles in our body, if we stop using them, we lose voluntary control. So people who say eye exercises don't work, they're the same people that say normal exercise doesn't work. Well, it works, but you got to do it. And you've said, ed, you've noticed shifts when you do stuff, but then when you don't, it goes back. And yet still it's not been this priority to you to say, this is more important to me than anything else. I have patients in their 60s, 70s, even a few in their 80s, who literally do work every day, but do not wear reading glasses or glasses at all. So any brain, if you don't use it, you lose it. That holds true for so many aspects of function, but especially visual function.

So essentially, there's a component of maintenance and care and keeping of your eyes that is similar to working out. Essentially, we just haven't thought of our eyes as a place that needs the care and keeping the same way that our heart needs the care and keeping. But it does. That's what I'm hearing.

And it's from a structural model where it's no just rely on glasses. And for people who this isn't important to them. You grab glasses, you get an eye exam, you get the right prescription, and all of a sudden something's blurry and it's clear. That's instant gratification and it's Kind of like, all right, well, this is what it is. But I think most of the time people don't know that things can be any differently. You know, I mean, this is. It's just a lack of education and especially with the right exercises. I mean, anybody listening right now could do the right couple exercises at home. And absolutely, if they're working with somebody and it's customized to where they are, you can make it so your prescription is not going to increase for a long time, and if anything, maybe even do more with less based off of doing the right work.

So the bottom line is eye degeneration is not inevitable.

Cognitive decline happens, vision decline happens. They don't have to. You can counter it. But if you do nothing, then yes, it's going to happen.

So now I have to ask, what are the few exercises to.

Hold on, you're skipping ahead. We haven't talked about anything. EDS. I know. Ed's like asking for a friend.

Well, I have a 10 minute routine that I do that. If I do it, it's like brushing teeth.

Okay, so what's a girl to do about it? Rice?

Well, so first of all, everything in moderation.

Yeah, but that's not real. I mean, for me, when I see patients, it's an eight hour day and I'm seeing patients. So moderation is sort of. I don't know how in this world we're gonna realistically say, don't spend more than five hours a day on the screen. We have to basically evolve the tips and tricks to keep up with the new normal. I'm sorry to be kind of confrontational.

No, no, I'm on the same boat. I'm not the old man on the porch raising my cane saying, screw your screens. Absolutely, there's stuff we can do. So you said eight hours a day on the screen with, with, with patients. Eight hours without looking up is very different than 20 minutes. Look up and come back and walk around. And so taking vision breaks simple stuff. Every 20 minutes, take a break for at least 20 seconds and look at something 20ft away. Disengage your visual system, look out a window if you can, and then come back.

So wait. Okay, wait. This is. Okay, so we spend a lot of time on, I would say what, 70% of our, 70, 80% of our patients are remote. So we're on the camera. But I could look out the window and make it look like I'm looking at the camera. I just look past the camera. Is that qualifying that? I'm still on camera, but I just. Instead I Look, literally, you know, my camera's here. I just look above it, look out the window 100%.

What we're doing right now, I have our screen minimized as small as possible because first of all, I know what you guys look like. I don't need to see this massive big picture of you. But then it allows me to look soft and look through the screen. At times, I have the refresh on my computer to have the screensaver come on as fast as possible because I don't want to be looking at all of these different icons and the thousand windows I have open. But I've also done years of vision training where I know how to let go of my focusing system and diverge my eyes and then bring it back at will so I can essentially put in more reps because my system isn't fatiguing, because it knows how to listen to itself and take breaks when we need to. But to really answer your question, brain training, vision performance training can get us to a place where we can spend hours on screens without symptoms, without problems emerging. But for most brains, you need to put in the work to get there. People aren't born in ridiculous shape. You go to the gym, you put in the work to get into ridiculous shape. To do what we're asking of our eyes and brains these days, we need to be in ridiculous visual shape.

If you do it every day, it actually works.

I mean, I've been talking on the last few podcasts about eye push ups, and the biggest complaint is like, well, I forget and there's no time. I said, pick a task that you do daily. And the podcast I was on said, well, I go to the bathroom number two, daily. I said, all right, let's call these pooping push ups. Every time you're on the toilet, put your phone away, that's going to help alone. But then do your eye push ups. And that's going to be at minimum, five minutes a day that you're doing.

What's an eye push up? What is an eye push up?

Let's do it now, everybody take one hand, cover up one of your eyes, take the other hand, and if you got a pen or pencil, you can use that. Otherwise you can use your finger. Hold your finger as far away from you as you can, make your finger clear, and then slowly bring your finger towards you, down your midline until it gets a little blurry. And wherever that point is, stop. And then hold it and try and make it clear. So you're going to look really hard. You're going to Focus. You're going to visualize your pupil getting small. You're focusing muscles right behind your pupil. You're stimulating the muscle. Hold it for five seconds and then look across the room as far away as you can for five seconds, then back at your finger for five seconds. So, Wendy, you pulled your finger down. You want to keep your finger exactly where it is. And you're literally doing a gross relaxation, stimulation. Relaxation, stimulation of the inside muscle response for clarity. To make this point clear, if you did this, maybe you can hold it at a certain distance for three seconds. Great. Tomorrow, shoot for four seconds. The next day, shoot for five seconds. If you then do it on the other eye, you'll notice that point in which the image becomes blurry is probably a little different. It's probably a little farther away from one eye than the other. Which literally means under two eye conditions. Your brain is having a hard time using both eyes together because of a binocular rivalry. It's essentially picking one eye to do more of the work than the other because it can't use both together. You do this for five minutes a day, two and a half minutes each eye, you'll notice that point can get closer. And you'll notice you have more flexibility. And this is kind of like doing air squats. Air squats isn't going to get you in a great shape, but doing air squats, you're going to have a stronger posterior chain than you would if you didn't do air squats. And so there's a lot of body weight stuff we can talk about, but ultimately, you go to the gym, you get better shape faster. But is that a good example?

Great example. But I have a question. If, hypothetically speaking, if you are someone who is corrected normally, do you do that with or without correction? Do you do this exercise with or without correction?

Great question. You do it in the way that you go through life. So I'm wearing contacts right now. I would do this with my contacts on, because I'm on a screen right now without contact, with my contacts on, without being in that other setup. If somebody's wearing reading glasses for everything up close, try it without those. It's going to be a lot harder. You're not going to hold your finger much closer. But if you put your reading glasses on, you'll be able to hold it so much closer. Either way, you want to build a wider range at any distance. So I would ultimately say do the one that's harder, knowing that you're going to be putting in more work. It may Be more frustrating, but it's going to be more bang for your buck. Second tip is blink more. As crazy as this sounds, the Average person blinks 15 times a minute. And we go to screens, it goes to three times a minute, which means literally your own tear film is going across the front surface less your windshield wipers are cleaning off the debris less your tears are then being produced in a more watery fashion and in a less viscous or oily fashion, your own tears evaporate faster than they could or should. Then we go down this vicious cycle that leads to an inflammatory reaction, the computer vision syndrome, the dry eye syndrome, that are just increasing at ridiculously high rates. So much of that's related to screenshots. Third tip, find an amazing functional medicine practitioner like Ed and Wendy, because addressing pay you later. But seriously, addressing systemic health and systemic inflammation will take a good chunk of the vision problems off the table. And then also from your perspective, if we're not addressing vision, we're leaving a big piece to a healing journey still on the table. But lifestyle, nutrition supplementation and the inner shifts that you guys guide your patients through though that can, can drastically improve quality of life in so many areas. Number three, like or sorry, number four, start eating with your eyes in mind and with intention. So green leafy vegetables are fantastic. They've got lutein and zeaxanthin which are really important for the sweet spot of our eyes, our macula, eating colorful fruits and vegetables, getting a lot of vitamins A, C and E, antioxidants. I think that alone can significantly improve a lot of what we're doing. And then number five, start climbing out of the area of disconnect that you're in with vision training exercises. There's simple stuff that we can do with our finger. Like we talked about the near, far focus or eye stretches and I have a lot of these on social media. We have an online vision training program, screen fit, that's made for the masses. There's high level stuff as well that you can work, you can find somebody to work with to guide you on this path for optimizing vision and brain function. But if you just sit back and are in denial with it, your reading glasses are going to get stronger every year. You're going to get visually tired, you're going to start to lose visual and brain capacity and it's never too late to make a shift. But the longer you, you wait, the, the higher of a mountain you have to climb.

I'd like to know what is your one piece of advice you would Want everyone to know about their eyes.

I would say if, if you have a headache, you may go to a neurologist. If your child is squirmy in the classroom, you may see a psychiatrist or learning specialist. If you're motion shaky, maybe you're seeing an ENT or an otolaryngologist, but with almost any symptom. My one tip is you need to consider that vision could be a part of the problem. And that's why I advocate putting your vision first. And that goes way beyond going to your eye doctor and seeing if you need glasses. So when you're at the eye doctor and they're telling you you're 20, whatever, say, great, thanks for telling me about my eyesight. What about my vision? What about how my brain uses this information?

That's literally like asking your electrician to do your plumbing. I think that is the. I wouldn't even ask my eye doctor that. She's lovely, she's amazing, but she's a mechanic making sure that my vision, I'm sorry, my eyesight is on track.

I completely agree. But enough people like you saying what about actually unlocking my potential or avoiding unnecessary struggling. Eventually she's going to look up and find and find somebody who does this work. Because most eye doctors do not have answers or solutions for the vast majority of problems that people are coming in with. And it's literally, it's, it's surgery, it's glasses, it's contacts, it's prism, it's telling you it's made up and doesn't exist.

Oh, gaslighting.

Especially with the 35 to 55 year old women. I mean, I cannot even tell you how many we see who are told they have mental health problems. Told this is all in their head because, excuse me, but no idiot eye doctor or no idiot doctor knows what to do or what to look for. And it is in their head. It's how their brain is using their eyes. But it takes a simple piece of equipment like a pen or pencil and looking at the conversion system and the tracking system and the focusing system and eye alignment. And in two minutes we could go through a really thorough screening test that says, okay, very likely you have a functional vision problem and one that can be treated.

Well said. Where can people find you?

They can find me on the Internet and also in Maryland. We're in Bethesda and Annapolis, Maryland on the Internet. My practice is myvisionfirst.com we see so many people who come from out of state or out of country for intensive boot camps because Just this type of work doesn't exist anywhere else. Screenfit you can find on screenfit.com and then Instagram is Dr. Brice Applebaum. But my ancestors tried to make life really hard. My last name is Appel, not Le, so that sometimes makes it a little bit challenging. But we'll put it all in the.

Show notes so people can.

Amazing.

Okay, I think I have two more hours of questions.

I know. I was like, we just scratched the surface here. There's a little bit more going on. But. But we have to complete one for attention span and two, because we have another commitment. But. But we can have him back.

You promise? You promise?

Yeah.

So appreciate this opportunity. You guys are amazing, and this dynamic is fantastic.

Thank you. It's fun.

It's fun. We wouldn't do it if it weren't. All right, Bryce, thank you for being with us. Thank you, the listeners, for joining us for another episode of the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. And, Bryce, we'll have you back. We'll dive in more and we'll get even more. Throwing down the gauntlets for vision.

We like it.

Would love to. And such an honor and a privilege to be with you guys. Thank you for having me.

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