Improve Your Vision, with Dr. Bryce Appelbaum @drbryceappelbaum

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.

I know do. And we're trying to persuade. Just as full disclosure, we're trying to persuade Bryce to move to Boston. So can you see yourself?

No pressure.

That's the way where you start.

But can you see yourself living here?

Listen, I haven't put this out to the world, but 100%, yes. My wife is from New England, and like, like you all know very well, so much of our network, friends, and family are all up in the Boston area, so we need to be able to. To soil in our roots in other places. And she's talking about it daily, so we'll see what happens.

Oh, a happy wife, happy life, Bryce. Just.

Just for the record, you know, I keep hearing that there's got to be some truth to that.

There is somewhere.

All right, so tell me.

Like, well, the first thing is I'm actually excited about this because I get to chat with you once in a while, and I get little snippets, so. And I'm really looking for the deep dive, and this is a cool opportunity, so thank you.

Absolutely. Let's do it.

All right, so how'd you get into this? Let's start at the very beginning. Like, why this field?

I am a product of this field. So when I was a kid, I was a. I was a mess. I was lost in the classroom. I was on the soccer field, just totally overwhelmed. And I had all of these visual developmental delays, which meant my eyes didn't work well together as a team. I had trouble focusing my eyes. I. Poor depth perception, and it really just made me feel like a turtle, like, retreating to my shell in so many aspects of life. And Fortunately, I was offered this life altering treatment with vision training and also sensory integration based occupational therapy and did a lot of work for a long time. But I attribute all of my success in life, athletically, academically, even interpersonally, to what was done for me and what I did to retrain my brain to be able to allow this, this confident, cool kid to come out that then evolved and grew and developed beyond that point.

I mean, I'm surprised because I always think of, well, you're a little younger than me, right? How.

But you're, you're 31, right?

Yeah, 30, 31, going on 55. But when we grew up, this stuff wasn't common.

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

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 to 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 we know the eyes are healthy, it's kind of like, see you later. But we pick up 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 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. And those are average numbers. Like, that's nuts. And yet screen time is, you know, it's been, it's been around for a while, it's not going anywhere. And so we absolutely can develop the right visual foundation to thrive in this world. But our brains are not developed to handle these demands. So 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, you know, just these sporadic signals that our brains were not meant to be able to filter and process. So that's what's causing these challenges. And 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 fist as hard as they can, after a few seconds, your hands start to hurt, or 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're 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 subjects associated with?

What would you not say?

Headaches, eye strain, blurred vision, fatigue, dry eye, light sensitivity, disrupted sleep tech, neck, decreased 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.

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

Well, so first of all, everything in moderation.

Yeah, but that's, that's not real. I mean, that for me, like when I see patients, it's an eight hour day and I'm seeing patients. But so, 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. Like we have. 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 a screen 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.

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 1000 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.

So every 20 minutes, look up for 20 seconds and.

Or all the time you're going.

You're. You're like, I'm still, like, in the how. What's going on? Like, you talked about dyslexia. How is it affected? And you're. You're talking about treatment already.

I'm like, wait, I love this dynamic, by the way. This is amazing.

But we're literally just talking about. You're looking at a screen too much. So in the moment, what can people do?

I understand, but I want to know how dyslexia helps.

You want to come back to it?

Come back to it.

Okay, we're going to make a comparison.

Actionable. Take homes of. Here's five things we all start doing today. So we can do that at the end. We can do it. Whatever you like. I'm going to let you guys lead.

I think we want to do it at the end.

At the end.

So we gave one teaser, and now you got to wait till the end.

That means you have to listen to the whole podcast. So there.

Well, well done.

Fast forward every 10 second.

All right, dyslexia. This is going to be. This is going to ruffle some feathers, and I want to double down on it. Dyslexia, by definition, means difficulty reading words. I have yet to find a patient out of tens of thousands of patients where we couldn't improve their reading ability. So what that means is dyslexia is an incomplete diagnosis until hidden functional vision problems that cause the exact same symptoms and challenges are ruled out first or treated first. So it's not like somebody's born with a portion of their brain missing that allows them to read. Right? I mean, as silly as that sounds, I think that's what many people really stand on a mountaintop. Believing and reading is something. Again, we're not born with it. It comes through learning from our life experiences. It comes from the development of our tracking system, our conversion system, our focusing system, our visual processing systems, the development of depth perception, the ability to use the Eyes as a harmonious team and the ability for the eye brain connection to be efficient and fluid. When the language centers and the visual processing centers and the auditory processing centers are not communicating effectively, or we haven't allowed the airplanes to take off and land in the right places, through the developmental milestones and the sequencing that's needed, then reading can become the most daunting task. I had two people in town last week for intensives. We do these intensive boot camps for people from out of state and out of country, and it's a lot of work, but it's ridiculous results. The father runs a nonprofit for dyslexia. His daughter has dyslexia. He has dyslexia. They've moved around the country and are now in Florida because of this school that's specific for dyslexic learners that she's now a student at. In a week's time. They're both reading by the end of the week.

And they weren't reading.

They weren't reading before. The daughter was skipping words, losing her place. Words are moving and going double. She had a hard time even comprehending what she was reading. I would argue that wasn't dyslexia. It was just a label slapped on symptoms, behaviors from our medical system.

I mean, here's the problem, Bryce. Or challenge that Dyslexia, as we know this, is near and dear to our heart because one of our kids has essentially the worst form of dyslexia you could basically have had.

I'm going to challenge this.

Well, it has processing speed issues, has issues with retention, storage, and retrieval, and it's called dyslexia. But it's really this sort of sin. It's not just one thing. Sure, she sometimes reversed her letters, but it was a bigger issue. And she's out of school for kids with dyslexia. But where was I headed with that?

Let me. Can I ask you a question?

Of course. And she had glasses, by the way. She had those prism glasses to help her see, which helped.

So without even saying anything else, there is a visual component to your daughter's reading challenges.

That is true, Absolutely.

So, you know, it's. You both are brilliant doctors. You know, more than 99.9% of the population. All of those areas of opportunity that you shared with processing speed and retention, we can arrange the conditions to establish that, to teach that with the right type of visual brain training. Yet the medical model would say, no, these are just temporary endpoints or these are labels. And so we got to figure out special ways for her to take in information, whether it's auditory processing or certain reading programs like Orton Gillingham, which bypass some of the visual stuff. I mean, prism glasses is moving. Those are moving the world to where her eyes are, because her eyes, there's likely some sort of spatial mismatch. And like you said, this is not eyesight. This is vision. This isn't the ability to see. This is the brain's ability to process the information the eyes are sending it, filter it, organize it, and then know what to do with it. And any brain at any age can be improved and enhanced in terms of that ability.

So we actually went to a provider.

That'S similar that looked obviously not as good as you.

No, obviously not good.

Well, we didn't know you then.

I want to be in Boston for many reasons. But one of the reasons is there are three providers that I know of that are doing much better care than everybody else in the Boston area. And yet still in my opinion, there's so much left to be desired based off of their treatment models.

Right. We actually went to New Jersey.

Even better.

But that being said, just so I Understand, out of 100 kids with dyslexia, they all come to you are 100% cured or are they. All of them are improved. I hear that. How. How many of them are cured and how long is that.

Is that a permanent diagnosed also?

Yeah. So I would. I would say it depends what cure looks like. I would say 100 or 100 out of 100 are improved. And in terms of doing enough work and the right work with the right motivation and the right compliance reading cannot be a weakness, in my opinion, for 100 out of 100.

Okay.

Which again, is. Is a bold statement and it goes against the entire medical model. But when we see it over and over and over again and we have programs in place that can be rinsed and repeated for every different profile to customize training to. For a child, teach the vision development that didn't take place on its own, or remove the roadblocks or maladaptations that have emerged. Or for somebody who's has an acute event where they've acquired some sort of brain injury and then they're having to tap back in and re. Establish order. It really stems from not using the brain the way in which it's wired. And I believe there is neuroplasticity for vision at every age, for every brain, if we know what to do. And what to do is something that. There's a big disconnect in my space on what that Looks like.

So how does. But there's obviously a genetic component to this because it does get passed down.

But think about it. We say your genetics are 10% of your life and the other 90% is what you do about it. So.

Right.

But. So genetics plays a role in a few areas, but not in a reading ability area. In my opinion. Genetics is strabismus or amblyopia, which is. Strabismus is the medical term for an eye turn. Amblyopia is a medical term for a lazy eye. There absolutely is a genetic component to those. But something like nearsightedness or myopia. It's genetics and its environment. We can't control who the parents are. But environment plays massively more of a role with vision, especially with kids today because kids are being exposed to screens at earlier and earlier ages. They're being asked to read earlier than ever before. When the system is presented with stress and it doesn't have the foundation in place to meet those demands. We adapt or we avoid. So avoidance of reading. We know what that looks like. And then maladaptations are bad habits. Those then become more and more embedded with time because the demands visually in school and in life increase every single year. But if the root challenge is still there, it just becomes more your normal.

But dyslexia definitely runs in families.

Well, but Price is saying.

Well, so up until 5, I've been in practice for 16 years. The first decade of my career, I was so careful with what I said about dyslexia and visual processing. And a very clear. Like, we don't cure dyslexia. We cure the vision problems that make it hard to read. And I would say now that's still accurate. But so much of dyslexia is not dyslexia, just like so much of ADD or ADHD or autism are not these labels. But they're becoming more and more prevalent because we're more aware of them. But also we have more of the triggers and challenges that are causing these changes and bad habits.

So this is a dumb question. I apologize ahead of time because in our field it's also similar. But if this is so profound and it's been around for 100 years.

Yeah.

Why is nobody.

Absolutely so. And. And I think I'm assuming you're talking about like the treatment to close the gap. Right. Yeah, there's. This isn't like physical therapy for a sprained mcl where if it's grade one, you get a dozen sessions. If it's grade two, you get two dozen and depending on where you go, it's kind of the same work everywhere. There is not consistency on what vision training looks like. You don't even have to be board certified to offer it. And nowadays you don't even have to be a doctor for what people are calling vision training. There's OTs, PTs, speech therapists, teachers, coaches, trainers, health vision coaches doing this, doing vision work because the need is so great. And in the vast majority of these cases, it's ocular motor work, which is tracking and kind of X axis work, which is important to do. And it's impacted for many people's lives. But life takes place on the Z axis, which is the focusing system, the eye coordination system, the depth perception. And you need to have the ability to utilize lenses and prism and high tech and filters and things that are really only unique to our profession to be able to implement those and establish programs and protocols to fix these problems. But then even on top of that, our model, let's say, is very holistic. We are integrating cognition and movement and balance and vestibular input into all of the work from day one. Because vision doesn't operate in isolation of these systems. A lot of what we do is based off of what was done for me to fix my problems. My father was a developmental optometrist, my mother was an occupational therapist. They had no idea what to do with me and literally created a practice around what they did for me. And we've just doubled down on that and evolved it over time. And now it's, you know, what was done for me in years, we can accomplish in months for kids and adults with a much higher ceiling. So to answer your question, Ed, there's not consistency in what this looks like. So that's why we see so many people from out of state and out of country. Not because there's not eye doctors around, but what we do we call visual performance training because it's very different than the old school vision training, vision therapy, orthoptics, visually enhanced occupational therapy, sensor integration based training. I mean, there's lots of different labels around different treatments, but one of the many things on my list is I want to be training doctors in our protocols so that more of this can be commonplace depending on where you live.

I have a lot of questions actually, but go ahead.

Well, I'm going to change the subject or do you have a question on this topic? Because I want, I want to talk about ADHD and.

Well, I'm, it's. I'll ask my question that you could, which is really more. Well, it's brought, it broadens it up. First of all, can you, can people with glasses get that have been on 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've 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, I didn't guess there's a lot.

To it back there.

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

Yeah, and I are on the same page here. All right, so 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 eye sends it and how it drives meaning and directs the appropriate action, that's what matters. 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 the 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. So 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, 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 could be any differently. You know, I mean, this is. Yeah, I don't think 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. If anything, maybe even do more with less based off of doing the right work.

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. I know, it's like asking for a friend.

So.

Well, I have a 10 minute routine that I do that. If I do it, it's like brushing teeth. 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 a minimum five minutes a day that you're doing. Or every time push up.

What is an eye push up?

Let's do it now. Okay, 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, 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 into 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. 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 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're going 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. Okay.

How does all this relate to brain function? Because, you know, we've talked about dyslexia. You've sort of alluded to adhd, you've alluded to cognitive decline. How does it all relate?

Vision problems are brain problems. Our eyes emerge from our brain and utero. The retina is part of the brain, and so how our brain functions is a direct reflection of how our vision is functioning. And if we can't focus our eyes, we can't focus our mind at the same way we would otherwise. Our ability to keep our mind focused is deeply embedded in our ability to keep our eyes focused. So we've talked about ADHD a couple times. I mean, it's not like there's a blood test that says, yes, you have adhd. It's based off of symptoms and behaviors. And more than two thirds of the symptoms in the classification for ADHD are the same symptoms. For hidden functional vision problems, we see three different groups of people. We see people who have been told they have ADD or adhd. They come and work with us, visual attention drastically improves, they stop taking their meds, and then all of a sudden they're functioning better than they ever have without any support. I would argue that group did not have ADD or adhd, but they were given A stimulant or they were labeled based off of whatever criteria and it wasn't accurate because we didn't rule out vision first. We see another chunk of patients where there's an identified functional vision problem. We treat the vision problem. Their sustained visual attention for near tasks or any task improves, yet they still have ADD or ADHD because of whatever reasons that caused that. But their visual attention was improved.

They got a functional medicine workup too, right?

No, I mean come to us for that. Are you doing it or no?

I would say my biggest referral sources now are functional and integrated medicine docs. So most people are coming in already having that done. That is a huge piece to the puzzle. And everybody should have a functional medicine evaluation. And knowing that you guys see such a large percentage virtually, I think that's fantastic. Which means anyone listening who's not one of your patients needs to be one of your patients. And then that third group is people who come in and they say, I want to see if vision is contributing to this. We had a story that came out in NBC and then another one next couple weeks in CBS that is a simple title of is it ADHD or is it your eyes not working well together as a team. And as you know, there are certain people who just their brains work differently than others. And I would argue there's just a lot that can be done with nutrition and supplementation and lifestyle modification and looking at the gut health and all the stuff that are your bread and butter. But you know, we need to be putting our vision first and looking at vision as a contributing factor. Especially knowing that there's so many reasons why functional vision problems are more prevalent now than they've ever been.

This is really cool because I'm thinking of at least 10 people, maybe send it your way.

It's such low hanging fruit when you know what to look for and then the stuff's no longer hidden and then it's like, oh, my neighbor, my child, myself, whoever. There's so many aspects of life that we all struggle through that have an underlying visual component that's treatable. Motion sickness, poor eye contact, trouble catching balls, or being the last one picked on sports teams. Reluctant readers preferring audiobooks rather than reading on their own. Scattered clutter around the desk and not being able to find things in your environment. Dizziness, nausea, vertigo. I mean, there's so much out here that has a portion that's related to our dominant sensory system, the one that's supposed to be guiding and leading rather than interfering.

I have a patient question. Can I curbside you because I have a patient who had brain surgery for, I believe it was a benign tumor and then had multiple concussions. And I would say she's better than she's been, but she's gone to a lot of people, and she now has intervention fatigue. She's like, oh, I've tried everything. So I'm assuming you get this a lot. Like, I've tried everything. As we're talking, I'm thinking, okay, I really should send her to you, because she can't. She generally doesn't have a life where she's on a screen because it's too uncomfortable, overwhelming, since you're overloading too much. But I will say, over the last five years that we've been together, she's been able. She couldn't use the portal at the beginning. It was too visually awful for her. But now she's able to send me a message and send an email, but she doesn't do it a lot. So is that the kind of person when they've tried everything and they've had multiple interventions? Do you often see success in the.

Gap where they're living without you even sharing anything else about your patient? I can confidently say that this work or me, I can change her life. I can get her back to where at least a better place and functioning is less. So chaotic. Vision's represented in every lobe of our brain. There's more areas of our brain dedicated to processing vision, not eyesight, than all of the other senses combined. And two thirds of the neurons coming from our eyes are coming to our brain, originate from our eyes. You can't have a brain tumor or one concussion or multiple concussions or all of these like your patient has had and not have vision be involved. It's just a matter of at what level and when that happens. Exactly like you're describing. Screens become terrible. The glare, the brightness, the sensory overload becomes too much. Malls and grocery stores. She goes in and is just like, oh, my God, get me out of here. The junk lighting in all of life becomes unbearable. And, you know, when our visual system is under stress, our pupils widen and we get this tunnel vision effect, which means she's always under visual stress. She's locked in like she's looking through paper towel holders all of life. And how great is that that you're seeing this needle be moved with the work that you're doing in terms of being able to message you now and being able to probably maintain better eye contact and have some sort of thoughts that are starting to have some coherence to them. But vision should tie together all the pieces of the dysfunction here. Our average patient has seen four and a half specialists looking for a solution before they come to us. That is a problem. That's a problem with the medical system where I would say we know so much more about head injury now than we ever have, and we have so much more to learn. I mean, if you've seen one head injury patient, you've seen one head injury patient. Everybody's different and everybody sees differently, so everyone should be treated differently. And from that standpoint, I'm sure she's seeing an eye doctor. The eye doctor is probably finding glasses that are going to make her see the tiniest letters far away or up close, but not even looking at how the eyes are working as a team, and especially for a patient like that, we want to shoot for 20 happy, not 2020. Seeing HD clear is very likely going to be way too strong for her. And getting to a place where she has comfort along with clarity, that is enough is going to at least make things comfortable. But ultimately, she needs to learn how to use her eyes to rewire the software of her brain to get back to previous level of function. And I'm a firm believer, especially with head injuries or concussions, with the right work, right motivation, and right compliance, you can get back to previous level of function, in many cases a better place. But you got to know what work to do.

Do you have a list of things that you recommend for people who have. I'll call it two categories. Either they've had a concussion and you want to put them on a supplement regimen that, that helps them recover or in general for people's vision. Is there a set group of supplements? I'm basically asking two questions in one.

Yeah. So 100%. First of all, anything that's good for the brain is good for the eyes, because our eyes are part of our brain. For concussion, we have a, what we call a brain boosting bundle. So a top six supplements we recommend. But out of those six, I would say there's a top two, in my opinion, which are game changers. And everyone needs to be on if they've had a head injury or even if they haven't. Number one, Omega 3s. I mean, we need to load up our brain with what it's actually made from. And really high quality matters more than anything else. There's a neurologist here in Maryland who's done a ton of research on omega and brain injury, probably more than anybody in the world, and he Recommends a ridiculously high loading dose of 9 grams for anybody who's had a head injury, whether it was last week or 10 years ago. Nine grams for two weeks and then going down to six grams for the weeks after. I personally think that's probably way too much for most people, but ultimately enough that it like you're giving your brain high doses of what it needs to heal. So Omega 3s are huge. And I have found, honestly, in the last year, glutathione has been incredible. But specifically gluterol, which is a transdermal spray. So a version that you're spraying this. Thank you.

We're interviewing him next. We're literally interviewing him. Yeah.

Tell him I said hi. He is.

I will.

And literally, like that's. Neither one of us have been told or being paid for this. Every single one of my patients who's had a head injury, I'm like, I don't like to judge people. I'm judging them. If they won't take my recommendations and take literal. It's unbelievable. Antioxidant and like the amount of brain fog that's cleaned up immediately for head injury is fantastic. And then we have a whole list of others. But you know, nutrition wise, anything that's bad for us is bad for our eyes. So the seed oils, the gluten, the dairy, you know, the whatever is going to be causing this inflammatory reaction. It's going to show up in the eyes as well.

What if you. So we're coming to the end of our time, so I want to be mindful of making sure that we give people the top five tips.

Now we're ready. Now we're ready.

And, and also one thing that I would say I'd like to know, what is your one piece of advice you would want everyone to know about their eyes?

Which, which one do I have to say first or the one piece of advice?

Pick one thing that you would say. Okay, what's the one piece of advice you want people to, to know about their eyes?

Okay. 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 sick, you, maybe you're seeing an ENT or nodalaryngologist, 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.

But enough, 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 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 you know, 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.

Okay, now let's go to the five things, five tips.

All right, so we got the 20, 20, 20 rule. That was the first tip. Second tip is blink more. As crazy as this sounds, the Average person blinks 15 times a minute. When 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. So your own tears evaporate faster than they could or should. And then we go down this vicious cycle that leads to an inflammatory reaction. So 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 Wende. Because addressing.

We'll 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, like, 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 life in so many areas. Number three, like or sorry. Number four, start eating with your eyes in mind and with intention. So we talked about some of the supplements that are great for brain health, but for eye health, in terms of foods, 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. 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 kind of are in denial with it, your reading glasses are gonna get stronger every year. You're gonna get visually tired, you're gonna start to lose visual and brain capacity. And it's never too late to make a shift. But the longer you, you wait, the higher of a mountain you have to climb.

Well said. And where can people what you look like you have something to say, go for it, you're good. 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 and like I shared a few times, 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. Bryce Applebaum. But my ancestors tried to make life really hard. My last name is App El, 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. Amazing.

Awesome.

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 we have to complete one for attention span and two, because we have another commitment. But we can have him back.

Can I ask a request?

Yeah.

Next time we hang out or this weekend, whenever. Can we talk about your child with dyslexia?

Totally, totally.

We can, but she's probably going to be coming to you for a week, so probably with. With me with it.

And maybe me, because I've been nearsighted for. Since I was 12.

I mean, I can. I'm 42. I can confidently say I'm not going to wear reading glasses.

Oh, throwing down the gauntlet. Okay, we'll have you talk about it.

We could do enough work to get there. So appreciate this opportunity. You guys are amazing, and this Dynam 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. We'll get. We'll get even more. Throwing down the gauntlets for. 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.

Likewise, Sam.