What Screen Time Is Really Doing to Your Eyes, Brain, and Stress Levels

Transcript

Welcome back to the show. Today’s episode is such an important one because we’re talking about something that affects every single one of us every day. But most people still misunderstand this vision. For decades, we’ve been told that if you have 2020 eyesight, your eyes are fine. But as today’s guest explains, eyesight and vision are not the same thing. You can see the letters on a chart and still have underlying functional vision problems that impact the way you learn, focus, perform, process information, and even how you feel physically and mentally. Joining me today is Doctor Bryce Applebaum, a pioneer in neuro optometry and one of the leading voices in functional vision care. He’s the founder and CEO of My Vision First, a premier private practice specializing in diagnosing and treating functional vision problems. And the founder of Screen Fit, an online vision training program designed to reduce the damage of digital devices, improve symptoms, and help people build healthier habits and a screen heavy world. Doctor Applebaum is also the creator of Vision Performance Training, a groundbreaking approach that works to rewrite and optimize the eye brain connection. His work has helped thousands of people, from children and students to adults, postconcussive patients and elite athletes, restore clarity, improve performance, and build long term visual resilience. In this conversation, we’re diving into why eHealth matters far beyond just whether or not you need glasses, the signs you may have underlying eye disease or functional vision problems, and how so many issues can go unrecognized because they’re often mistaken for attention problems, learning struggles, or behavioral challenges.
We also talk about something that is so relevant right now screen time. Specifically, what increasing screen time is doing not only to our eyes, but also our stress response, cortisol levels, and mental health. If you’ve ever felt more fatigued, wired or overwhelmed, foggy or visually drained after being on devices all day. This episode is going to connect a lot of dots for you. And maybe most importantly, Doctor Applebaum shares how you can actually improve and rehabilitate vision, strengthen the eye brain connection, and take practical steps to protect yourself and your family in the modern world. This is a fascinating and eye opening conversation, literally, and one that I think every patient, every adult with heavy screen exposure and really anyone who wants to better understand their health needs to hear. So let’s get into it. Here’s my conversation with Doctor Brice Applebaum. So welcome back to the show. I have a different type of guest today. So I have a neuro ophthalmologist who’s going to talk to us about eye health, which is different than what we typically talk about on this podcast. Right. But he has some very fascinating information about how we can optimize our health based on our eyes and looking at screens and lots of different things. So Doctor Bryce Appelbaum. Thanks for joining me.
Such an honor to be here. Thank you for having me. And I just want to correct you. I’m a neuro optometrist, rather neuro ophthalmologist, which just from a structure versus function standpoint, makes a lot of what we’re talking about today make a lot more sense.
Than it does. Ophthalmologists versus optometrist optometrists would be the person who helps you see like vision correctly, right? And neuro ophthalmologist does more of like the muscle and things like that. The disease process.
I would say ophthalmology is more intervention of disease structure and more surgical intervention. Whereas, you know, we’re much more function, proactive approach and really training and optimizing the eye brain connection so that we aren’t struggling unnecessarily in this digital world that we’re all in.
Okay. So I want you to maybe start by telling people a little bit about yourself. Like, why do you do what you do? How did you get here? What’s your passion?
Love that. So I’m a functional eye doctor and my passion is unlocking potential for people with vision performance training, which is really recognizing that our eyes are connected to our brain, but that functional vision problems, our brain problems. And there’s so much that can be done for sports performance, for concussion rehab, for reading and learning, for eye turns and lazy eyes. When we take a proactive approach, and really, I’m a product of this work, as a kid, I was an absolute mess. I had an alternating I turn, I had poor depth perception, I had poor confidence, and I was really lost in space. And I attribute all my success in life athletically, academically and even interpersonally through this work and to vision training and went from being a reluctant reader to an avid reader. The last one picked for sports teams to a stud with athletics, and then from this insecure kid to a really confident kid because I turned my weakness or disability into a strength. And so now to be able to offer that to the world and to my own kids has been so wonderful and so grateful for this opportunity because when we know better, we can do better.
Yes, I love that most people in this space are here by way of being impatient or some issue that they had. I think it makes you a better provider. I think it makes you, you know, have a lot more empathy. And it’s just really cool to help people reach their potential. Right.
100%. And when you can resonate with their struggles, I mean, you can connect so much deeper and really help escort them to the place they deserve.
Yeah. So I think I want to start, I have a lot of questions, but let’s, let’s start with why, like, if somebody’s listening to this, like, why should they care? Like, why do I really care about my eyes? Right?
Because there is so much more to vision than just eyesight and eyesight. We need to look at as just a symptom. That’s what glasses are for. That’s our ability to focus light clearly. But vision is so much more complex. Vision is brain and how the brain is taking all the input from the eyes to know how to filter, organize, process it, makes sense of it, derive meaning, and then direct the appropriate action. And there are so many misdiagnoses and labels and missed opportunities out there in the reactive medical world that we’re in. But when you look at actual root cause and what causes so much unnecessary struggling, so often it has to do with how our eyes are working together as a team and how well the eyes, brain and body are integrating and processing that information. So anyone listening who thinks of a vision, they just think about glasses, contacts, or the ability to see. But this is so much more profound and has such deeper implications when we recognize what we’re talking about is brain function, and that there’s actually training for this brain function that can help support so many areas of life in pretty incredible ways.
So tell me about the training then, I guess what? Yeah. Because when I when you’re thinking, when you’re talking, like I training, I’m thinking like, are we like doing muscle movement workouts with our eyes or, you know, is it that we’re not looking at a certain thing. Or do we need to read books again? God forbid. Right? Like everytime I try to read a book, I’m like, oh, because I listen to everything. Like, what are you talking about?
Yeah. And I think we could talk a lot about what not to do and what to do, but with vision, performance training, what it is, is think of it as like physical therapy for the eyes, but really for the brain through the eyes, where we can kind of visualize our eyes as joysticks, we can tap into our brain to rewire the software to change how we’re using vision. And we work with lots of kids and adults with visual developmental delays that are impacting reading, learning, and academics. We work with a lot of people who have concussion, traumatic brain injury, stroke victims, where vision, not eyesight, is compromised. And then we can essentially rewire the brain to get back to previous level function. In so many cases, we work with professional athletes and teams who don’t necessarily even have vision problems, but they want to improve critical areas of performance to allow for more consistent and optimized play, and also work with a lot of people who don’t want vision to get worse as they age. And you know this, you know, oftentimes we think cognition declines as we age and vision decline as we age. And although those happen, that’s common. That’s not normal. And when we can take a proactive approach and really recognize what specific vision exercises to do, and also, you know, if needed a formal program, we can get older every year, but age powerfully when it comes to vision and not have to be so dependent on different glasses setups or different setups with our screens and things like that. So this is something that most people don’t even know about, which is why our work has kind of exploded in the last couple years. This is one of the critical drivers for happiness, performance, critical decision making, energy focus, productivity that most people don’t even have a file on.
Being able to see. And just make sure that your eyes are interpreting what you see to your brain. It makes all that difference.
And being able, well, not not to say to be able to process the world differently and to be able to understand sense of self and space and to have depth. Perception allows you to feel confident in space, to prepare yourself for when you’re driving or bumping into walls, recognizing when our eyes are working together as a team, we’re unlocking so much of our brain’s capacity, and everybody listening right now has their brains on overdrive when they’re on screens all day long, just trying to line, point, and focus the eyes that the ability to actually process information is completely compromised. And when we’re on screens, that’s causing nervous system dysregulation, it’s putting our visual system into a state of fight or flight. And when that happens, we literally shift and change how we think, how we attend, but really how we process vision and become really tunneled in. And that shifts how our brain then understands information and how well our brains are able to think outside the box and have different perspective on the world. So it’s way more than just seeing it’s really, how are we showing up in the world and how are we present? And that can be enhanced and trained with the right protocols.
It’s interesting you say that because part of my book, I talk about how our gut is connected to our entire body by way of our vagus nerve, right? And how a lot of times when you have stress or trauma, it really impacts your gut negatively because your gut will sense what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling, you know, and it will change how your hormones regulate and how they’re, you know, converted and how your thyroid hormone is converted, how your estrogens metabolism metabolized if your cortisol is high. And so it’s interesting, like I know that, but then thinking about like just, you know, what you’re looking at, it is an interesting point because if I am like staring at a screen for a long period of time, or when I’m working on things for like the podcast, right? The bright lights, my aura ring, and I’ll feel it too. It’s just like you’re stressed, you know, you’re more stressed than normal. And I never really thought about it other than, I mean, it’s true. It probably some of it is light. Some of it is just like staring. But it’s interesting.
And as humans, we’re not meant to be staring at screens all day long. And yet the average American in today’s world spends seven hours and four minutes a day on the screen. The average 8 to 10 year old in America spends six hours a day on the screen, and 58% of kids have their own device by the time they’re four. I mean, those numbers are nuts. And what’s undeniable is that when we are on screens, there’s a very different visual demand. Our focusing system, the inside muscles of the eyes, the accommodative system become locked up. Our eye teaming system has difficulty maintaining stamina and flexibility. And when our system is under stress, we either adapt or we avoid. The vast majority of functional vision problems are mal adaptations. They’re bad habits from this digital world that we’re in, and we now know what this is doing to cognitive development, emotional development, but also now vision development. And it is terrifying. Even just seeing how myopia is increasing at an alarming rate because of too much screen time, not enough time outdoors and being in the sedentary lifestyle. And that’s something that is only speeding up with time. And that’s where people really need to have the right information to know what habits are put in place and where to really emphasize balance in life.
So fascinating. So I think I want to start with, can you just explain to people like, you know, in a very easy terminology, what actually happens that’s different when we look at screens for a long period of time versus not? Or is this the same with like bright light, or is it just so.
There’s some parallel, but screens in particular, it’s not just the light, it’s the 2D plane, the visual demand, the contrast and the sensory input that our brain is having to filter. So we’ve got inside and outside muscles to our eyes. The inside muscles control our ability to make things clear and keep them clear. That lets us know what something is outside. Muscles control. Eye pointing, eye coordination that lets us know where something is that where in what pathway or systems need to be working in synergy. And what happens on screens is they almost turn into like a seesaw where we’re shifting between one or the other in terms of how we’re taking in space. And there’s different eye movements on screens required than, let’s say, reading a book on screens. There’s more of them. They’re more sporadic, they’re less organized. The brightness, the glare, the contrast does cause shifting in terms of our visual processing and can lead to other scary things down the road with inflammation and oxidative stress and all that comes from that. But this is way more than just the blue light. This is our visual system in a locked up state. So if everybody were listening, were to squeeze their hands as tightly as they can, after a few seconds, your hands start to hurt.
But if you let go and squeeze and let go, you can actually squeeze for much longer. Our focusing system is behind our pupil, so when we look close, it constricts and looks and goes small. When we look far, it gets big and dilates. When we’re on screens, our focusing system becomes locked up. And that tension over time is what contributes to difficulty with reading, writing, learning, and even myopia or nearsightedness. And yet, something as simple as taking regular vision breaks early and often disengaging and looking out into the distance when you’re on the screen and then coming back. That can allow for performance to be steadier for longer. But then truthfully, training the eye brain connection, having the right visual foundation in place in terms of visual skills and abilities that can allow us all to thrive in this digital world. But just like we exercise and strengthen our bodies, we need to be exercising and strengthening our visual system and the eye brain connection so that we can maintain so much of a higher level of function.
It’s so fascinating. So does wearing red light blockers or blue light blockers or any of that help or no.
Good question. It definitely can help. I would say in general, you’re paying for what you’re getting. So people who are using the $5 Amazon Blue light blocking glasses. Typically, those don’t do a whole lot, and blue light in general is critical, but that’s natural blue light from the sun outside and helps regulate mood and hormones and circadian rhythm. But artificial blue light that’s blasting our eyes throughout the day, that’s what causes a lot of the problems. And the ones that are amber or yellow block a much wider range of blue light. And typically those you want to be wearing in the evenings after the sun goes down. And if you are on screens in the evenings so that, you know, we’re not getting the wrong signals to our brain, but wearing those all day long often can disrupt things for many people. And then, you know, I see many people with very significant visual dysfunction. I see patients who can’t even be in fluorescent lighting without blue light blocking glasses on. So that’s a little different if you’re very sensitive to blue light. But we have these receptors on the back of our eye that respond to light that trigger the the release of melatonin when those are overstimulated. That’s what throws off so much of our hormonal regulation and circadian rhythm. So I would say in general, having good quality blue light protection that blocks a wide range and the harmful blue light is definitely helpful for screen time, but especially in the evenings.
So people that have, like I have a lot of patients who are like, oh, I have issues sleeping or circadian rhythm issues, etc. I talk to them a lot about sunlight and movement, but maybe I need to be talking to them about screen time, like how.
Hundred percent, 100% and sunlight movement getting outside. That’s massively important. And especially first thing in the morning and then in the evening, so we can get the right signals of time and space. But screen time, I mean, puts our autonomic nervous system into a fight or flight response in general. We’re doing that all day long. We’re in that stress state. And you know better than anybody, you know how we then secrete hormones and how our system regulates itself gets thrown off, especially in the evening. We should be not on screens for at least two hours before bed, and if we are on screens, you better have the highest quality bluelight filter there and still be taking a lot of breaks so that your system isn’t locked up for too long.
So a couple of things. That was one of my questions. How long should we be off screens before we go to bed? Two hours. Definitely.
And that’s two hours is is the ideal recommendation. But knowing, I mean, I’m realistic as well. I, I run three businesses. I’m on screens a lot. I have the right protection in place and I wear what we call digital performance lenses, which are glasses that have a really high quality blue light filter, but also have a specific therapeutic prescription in there that changes the stress response to near. So it allows our brain to actually use those inside and outside muscles of the eyes more efficiently. I am never on screens, especially in the evening without those on. So I think that’s that’s one easy win. But then doing simple vision exercises. Specific for these challenges based off of science can really help a lot.
How would one get these specific glasses?
So blue light blocking glasses that are just blue light blocking. There’s great companies like Truedark, Ocushield, but with the digital performance lenses, we actually we have those at my practice, at my vision first, we’ve been prescribing these for decades, especially for kids, but it’s something as simple as a very specific prescription that is therapeutic, not compensatory. So it’s not doing the work for you. It’s not creating a crutch that you’re relying on, but it definitely shifts how our brain takes in and processes information through our eyes.
So if you wore those, would they bother you at first? Because maybe your eyes have gotten lazy and it makes them not be lazy or.
Not at all. I would say normal glasses that are doing the work for you. Oftentimes when we get new glasses from an eye doctor, you put them on and then things seem off and the doctor says, oh, get used to these. Your brain can get used to them. But that is a clear warning sign. That’s the wrong prescription. And to me, the ideal prescription for everybody is the weakest lens possible. That’s the most balanced between each eye that allows for an improvement in performance. If performance isn’t improving, why are we wearing glasses? And really, we should be seeking out this 20 happy rather than necessarily 2020. We don’t necessarily have to see HD clear far away and at every distance. And really, you want to be at a place where we’re able to use the functional visual skills fluidly. And that’s more of an art form than, than necessarily just a science. But putting these on, I mean, putting digital performance lenses on it should honestly be the opposite. Should feel calming when you put them on because it’s helping relax some of the unnecessary struggling that’s in place.
Okay. And then you mentioned visual exercises coming up.
So that is vision, performance training. And there’s vision therapy, there’s vision training, there’s orthoptics, there’s vestibular therapy. There’s a lot of different treatments out there. What we have created is what’s called visual performance training, which is more of a hybrid of all of these, where it’s a holistic approach that incorporates movement and balance in vestibular input and cognition into the work. I have a practice in Maryland. We see people every week who fly in from all around the world for week long, intensive boot camps. We have a big local practice. Everything we do in office is customized. You’re working with a doctor, and it’s dialed in to specifically where you are in the right path to climb out of that. We do have options for this to be more accessible with an online program, and there are specific exercises we can talk about right now that can help support clarity at near for longer. And we could go over those. But really what this is, is arranging the conditions to raise to somebody’s awareness how they’re processing space, how their eyes are functioning so that they can learn what it feels like, what it looks like, and the depth that ensues when the eyes are working together, the brain’s turning on that information and then being able to reproduce that in different scenarios where we can simulate how you’re using visual skills in life in a treatment setting to eliminate a lot of the roadblocks that are in place. So we can actually use our brain the way in which it’s wired.
It’s very fascinating. So just it’s almost like going to the gym for your eyes.
We call our treatment rooms the eye gym. 100%. And for most, for most. Well, so for most people, it’s not eye muscle strength or length. It’s coordination. And I would say it can be incredibly hard. But with the right, with any good therapy or good treatment, if it’s the right sequence of learning, and if we’re able to find somebody’s threshold and get below it, but then learning takes place, then it shouldn’t be hard. It should be we should be successful with everything we’re doing, but it really requires the right sequence of learning. We rely heavily on high tech like augmented reality, virtual reality, and even eye tracking computers where, let’s say there’s asteroids floating around. You’re having your eyes point to the asteroid and the asteroid explodes. But if it doesn’t explode, that means where you’re telling your eyes to point is not where it is. There’s a spatial mismatch in place. We teach the person how to eliminate that, and then all of a sudden they can self-correct and self-monitor and also do really low tech stuff too, like wearing different polarized lenses or filters where one eye sees one image, the other eye sees the other, and we’re manipulating the images so they have to converge their eyes or diverge their eyes, or adjusting the positioning in space, and then teaching them how to self-correct where that mismatch was in place.
So kind of like PT, if you have a sprained MCL, you know, if they’re asking you to start squatting day one heavy weight, like no thank you, that’s gonna be impossible. But if we can then build the supporting systems in place, then by the right sequence of learning, you get to the place where you’re back squatting to where you were before. Same goes with the visual system. But really, this is tapping into the neuroplasticity that exists for vision for any brain at any age. We’re just all taught in school that there’s a critical window, critical period for vision development. And after age eight, what you see is what you get. That is absolutely outdated information and misinterpreted information. That’s for vision loss, not for vision gained. So if you or I were to wear an eye patch for six months and take it off, we’d still be able to see. If you take a six year old and give him an eye patch for six months and take it off, they literally have lost sight. But then if we can then recognize for what can be learned and reestablished, any brain at any age can be enhanced and optimized when it comes to vision and even eyesight.
It’s very interesting, and I never thought about how if you had spatial mismatch or anything going on with your vision or your brain, how it would change. I guess the rest of out of your outlook, but I guess it probably would and it would again, stress your body out, right? Like if your brain, if you think you’re doing something and your brain thinks you’re doing something, I mean, it would just it’s gonna change your, your stress response, your cortisol response. And then
when you have high cortisol, high stress, high insulin, it’s going to cause inflammation. And I’m assuming that inflammation in your brain is not going to help any of this. And so it’s probably just like a vicious cycle, just like your gut is. And it, you know, gets worse and worse and worse and worse.
100%. And while maybe you can’t always control hormonal changes, you can absolutely improve how efficiently the brain processes the world during those changes. So something like motion sickness, bumping into walls, knocking over glasses of water, hesitancy on stairs or escalators, having difficulty remembering somebody’s name when you meet them because you’re not seeing them, their name and that image in your mind. These are all functional vision problems and they can all be treated. But most people hear all of this and just assume that’s normal. Not normal. They’re just really common. Division plays a role in so much of how we show up in the world. And even, you know, something as simple as just reading. It’s one of the most complex neurological tasks, but the ability to comprehend what we’re reading retain it, be fluids. We’re not skipping words or losing our place. I mean, all of that is a very interwoven, intricate neural network that needs to be efficiently operating for us to get enjoyment and pleasure out of something like reading.
Yeah, let’s talk about that reading. So is it like, is it true, you know, Jim Kwik, I’m assuming. Right. He can teach you to like speed read. Is that true? I had an interesting conversation with my husband once, but like, and I know that when I was little, I had a little bit of dyslexia. So it was interesting, but I read pretty slow still. And when I read, I kind of read everything, but my husband’s like, I don’t read every word I like, you know? And he can read a lot faster. Maybe it’s just me, but is it true that you can teach someone how to like speed read and not read every word, and they actually understand what they’re reading?
I’m so glad you bring this up. So, Jim Quick’s a good friend. We actually talked about this last week. So dyslexia often is not dyslexia. And the reason I say that no one is born with the ability to read. No one’s born with the ability to use their eyes to converge, track, focus, or even with the ability to see in 3-D. It’s all developed through our life experiences and the right sequencing of developmental milestones. So it’s either learned appropriately through the right sequencing or learned poorly. And that leads to these imbalances. But when you ask a rapidly developing brain as a child to do one of the most complex neurological tasks of reading, oftentimes the input and the output are not fluid. And so people who speed read are typically people who don’t have the eye movement control to slow down eye movements, to accurately point and decode to every word. And their eyes and brain are working at different speeds. And somebody like Jim Kwik had a, you know, massive brain injury, and he developed speed reading techniques because he wasn’t able to smoothly, accurately, methodically control his eye movements across the page. So with literally tens of thousands of patients, we’ve yet to come across one where we couldn’t improve their reading ability. And we see a lot of people who come in for treatment, who have never read a book in their life and go through treatment. We identify what was causing those challenges and close the gap. And then they’re reading. I mean, we had even, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the name Ben Greenfield. He’s a big time biohacker. We had his wife come in for treatment who had never read efficiently, was deeply, deeply identified as being dyslexic. And it impacted her life in so many ways, literally in a five day boot camp.
By the end of the week, she was reading chapter books, and she’s now reading for pleasure. And for her, there was a big component of of the reading struggles that was functional visual skills and abilities that were not, hadn’t been developed the way that they’re supposed to. And even those who say dyslexia is a language based processing disorder, processing language starts with vision and starts with the pointing and convergence and alignment of the eyes for the brain to then decode. Put the letters together in the word the word into a picture, the picture into a story, and then reading is something that can be improved for anybody, but you have to do the right type of work. So somebody who is speed reading, if we can then train their brain to actually develop this, the accuracy of eye movements methodically across midline, and we can equalize the skills between each eye. So neither one is taking over. And we can eliminate the overshooting or undershooting. Then you span across the the line, get to the next line. You can be fluid and typically speed readers. Their speeding will. Their speed will drastically reduce as accuracy is built and then once accuracy is there, you hit the gas. And then we can start getting back to the point where we’re reading much faster, but actually retaining the information. So I would say for you, if you’re somebody who maybe uses reading as a sleeping pill to help you fall asleep at night because it’s so fatiguing, or you’re relying on audiobooks, that’s diagnostic for a functional vision problem at some level. And that’s just a matter of what does that look like? Obviously with the right testing, we can uncover that.
Yeah, that’s very interesting. So my husband is that person who’s always thinking faster than he can talk. So that’s probably why he speed reads, right. Like his brain goes faster than he can actually talk. And he’s, he does a lot of accounting stuff. And so interesting. That’s probably true. And also when I was little, I had a lot of vision problems and my parents didn’t realize it until I got a lot older. Right. I remember when I was like 8 or 9, I think I was in third grade, and they finally realized I had vision problems and I got glasses, I promise you. I distinctly remember the first time looking at a tree and realizing tree had actual leaves, like separate leaves, and I was like nine, like crazy. My vision was really bad.
Well, I’m going to correct you. Your eyesight was really bad. But often, I say is a reflection of vision, meaning far away, getting blurry and then adapting to the lens you’re in and needing something struggling to maintain the same clarity very often is tied to a near problem focusing, stamina. Focusing, flexibility. The system not having the ability to rapidly respond in real time. And then we’re essentially just feeding the symptom, but ignoring the problem. So that’s why things don’t slow down when we can actually address what’s causing that deterioration. We can always slow down the progression and in many cases, even stop it with the right type of intervention. And that’s becoming something that, you know, that myopia or far away being blurry and up close, being clearer. When we landed on the moon in 1969, a Fourth of America was nearsighted. That number right now is at 43, 44% and rapidly climbing. And it’s estimated that by 2050, 50% of the world is going to be nearsighted. And that’s because of lifestyle and environment. And there’s a genetic component. But with the lifestyle piece, we know not enough time outdoors, too much screen time and too much near work rapidly exacerbates and speeds up this problem.
What about bright lights? Do bright lights do it too? Or it’s just screens.
So bright lights shift autonomic function, but there’s not really a correlation with bright lights and nearsightedness other than we know, natural light outside from the sun helps change the signal for the eyeball to elongate. And so we want to get natural light, which has UV in it that can slow down that triggering response. But bright lights can often cause sensory overload and the brain having a hard time filtering input, especially if there’s a head injury or if there’s some sort of neuroinflammation, Lyme disease, other certain viral infections. Because when there’s systemic inflammation, then neuroinflammation gets tapped into the light. Sensitivity is is almost always related. And we can learn how to regulate our nervous system through vision. It just requires the right type of training to get to that place.
It’s very fascinating. So if somebody’s listening to this and they’re in their 40s and they’re like, man, I don’t want to have readers like everyone else because honestly, my doctor was like, you’ll need them eventually, so just come see me when you need them, right? Like, oh, that’s lovely. Is there things you can do to keep yourself besides staying off of a screen? Right. Or trying to limit your screen time? Like, are there certain exercises or things you can do to keep yourself from needing readers as you get older?
I love that you’re bringing this up. So there’s some anatomical changes that occur. The lens inside of your eye gets hardened as we age, and the fibers and muscles controlling it become more rigid and less flexible. But just like any system in our body, if you don’t use it, you lose it. And so especially in the early 40s, which is when most of these changes start to occur, that is the critical time to get proactive, meaning there are specific vision exercises that can be done to slow down and even reverse those changes. My wife at 42, literally like blew out the candles and she’s like, Bryce, I can’t read the back of the medicine bottle. Do something here with a specific sequence of vision performance training exercises. She reversed her age related changes and now has the focusing system of somebody half her age. And just like she exercises her body every day, she does the same for her visual system to keep and maintain her eyesight. So there’s a specific eye exercise that we’ve coined eye push ups, and we should do this together. But you do. I push ups every day. You literally will not need stronger reading glasses. Many people will get by with weaker powers, and some even get rid of them altogether. But the people that say that vision exercise doesn’t work, they’re the same people saying normal exercise doesn’t work. You got to do the right exercises, you got to know what to do. But kind of like somebody saying, I did, I’m going to do 100 push ups, 100 jumping jacks. To lose 100 pounds like that probably doesn’t work. But doing the right type of work to lose 100 pounds can work. Same goes with vision, the sunning and palming and a lot of stuff that’s on social media can be helpful for certain things, but that’s not going to get you to make massive changes. But something like I push ups. Can we do it together here?
Yeah. Let’s do push.
Ups. All right. So cover up an eye with a hand and then with your other hand, give a thumbs up like you’re giving somebody a thumbs up. I’m gonna look at your nail slowly. Bring your thumb towards your midline, keeping it clear the whole time until it gets a little blurry. Then it gets a little blurry. Stop. Make it clear. So think about stimulating your focusing system, looking really hard. Visualize your pupil getting small and constricting. You’re gonna hold that for five seconds. Then you’re gonna look out into the distance as far away as you can for five seconds. Relax the focus, look soft and kind of panoramic viewing diverged eyes. Then back at your thumb for five, distance for five. So this is a stimulation relaxation. Turn on, turn off. You want to do it the same amount of time. Right eyes, left eye. Most people realize one eye can hold the thumb a little closer than the other, which means under two eye conditions, which is most of life. You’re literally focusing your eyes a slightly different planes because the brain has this rivalry or competition where it’s not able to focus on both at the same place. So it’s adapted some. Let’s say you do this every day. You can move that thumb two millimeters closer after a week.
Millimeters add up to centimeters. Centimeters add up to inches. Inches add up to much larger space. And this is something you literally do this every day. You will not need stronger reading glasses, but most people don’t do it every day because they don’t know to, or it’s hard to stay compliant. We have found post Covid that there are protocols in place to actually reverse near related changes, which I would have said ten years ago that’s impossible, but we now do it with pretty much 100% accuracy with our adults who come in for our intensives, because we are forcing the brain to adapt, and we are forcing the brain to engage in higher level thinking and learn from what’s being done. And now it’s at the point where if this is important to you and you want to be proactive with the work, we have clear protocols that is, that are flipping the eye care world upside down, because all of my colleagues are saying, that’s not possible. What are you doing? And yet we have hundreds of data points to show it is possible, but you got to know what to do. And I say to my colleagues, have you tried? Because if you haven’t tried, you can’t say it doesn’t work.
How long do you do? I push ups with each eye.
So I would say for people listening who just want to see a shift to to make sure it sounds like I’m not talking crazy a minute a day each. I do it every day for two weeks. I promise you’ll see a difference. And even doing 30s each eye. I mean, this work compounds. So doing it more than that, doing it two minutes a day is going to be even better if we’re able to do specific vision training with lenses and prism and filters in office. It’s not just I push ups, it’s basically like doing curls with different dumbbells. You’re starting with a 5 pound, then you’re going to a ten and then a 15. We have different lens powers where we can have a little bit of stamina and flexibility, and then the powers increase a little bit more gets tapped into, and then the more we’re doing, the more we can recognize. Yes, there are age related changes that occur to structure, but we can Significantly slow down that deterioration and in many cases even reverse it. But then again, you got to do the work.
So if somebody’s listening and they already have glasses, they could do this. And it may lower the strength of glasses they need. Or if somebody is listening and they only need glasses when they read dinner menus, they could do this.
So I would say, I would say the person listening who just wears readers likely this is going to help. And in many cases, we need a lot more than just I push ups. And so I want to be perfectly honest. But anybody whose prescription is changing as an adult in the distance, that is a clear sign of a functional vision problem. Our prescription should not be changing in the distance unless there’s a problem in place. The near changes are more related to those structural changes. And if you do this every day, that’s not going to go downhill as fast. And if you do enough of this, it’s going to slow down and stop, at least in the short term. But you are countering age related changes for every other functional visual skill tracking eye coordination. Depth perception. Eye turns. Lazy eyes. Once that’s addressed, you’re good to go. You never have to do this again in the future. The one piece that does require clear maintenance would be the near related changes the presbyopia. And that’s something that, you know, if it’s important to you and it should be, then that’s something you can get Ahold of.
So I have one more question. And then I’m going to let you kind of tell people all the ways you can help them, but wonder if your eye twitches, right? Like some people say, it’s stress. Some people say, you know, whatever. Is that really? I’ve read lots of different things. If your eye is twitching though, is that really like over strained your eye? Or why would one eye just twitch?
So most people who talk about eyes twitching, it’s actually the lid twitching. So if it’s the lid, it’s usually only one lid at a time. And it’s usually the upper, but it can be the lower. That’s something called myokymia, which is often related to too much caffeine, not enough caffeine fatigue, poor sleep, stress on the system. If the eyeball itself is twitching, that’s probably more complicated and definitely should get looked at. But the twitching piece is kind of a clear sign of. All right, let me slow down what I’m doing here. And there’s something called quinine, which you can take in supplement form, or it’s found in tonic water that immediately comes that down. But I would say the twitching. I mean, if that’s what you experienced, next time it happens, try and think, is this my lid or the eyeball itself? And you can even look in the mirror and see it’s most likely the lid.
Oh, it’s only when I stare at screens for 9 or 10 hours and it’s really late and I’m tired. It’s self-induced for sure.
You know, as humans, we’re meant to be scanning the horizon for dinner and danger and exploring through nature, not on screens for 9 or 10 hours a day. And I’m not anti-technology. I am also on screens all day long. But I also have done so much visual performance training that my visual system is superhuman. But that’s because I set up the right system to function at its best.
Yeah, I’m going to need to get some of these glasses and do some eye push ups. You just wait. When you start writing this book of yours, you’ll see there’s a lot of a lot of reading and reading. Oh, yeah. And even in a short amount of time, right? You’re like.
100%. I’ve actually, I’ve, I’ve, we’ve got the outline out and I know exactly what it’s going to be. But yeah, the reading demand, there is no joke. And I know with, with your book how much love and effort and time went into it, I know I got to do that, but I at least have the visual system to, to crush it. I just gotta make it happen.
I’m jealous because I’m reading mine right now for audible. And it’s really hard. Like it’s once you read it for so long, you’re like, uh, but to your point, probably what I should do is like every 40 minutes or so, like get up and walk around.
And so I would say even 20, 20, 20, every 20 minutes, take a break for at least 20s and look at something 20ft away. So if you were doing eight hours of recording for audible, first of all, I’m so sorry. That sounds miserable. But do those eight hours and 20 minute chunks and you’ll notice you’ve got more stamina and you’re able to really be engaged for longer because you’re resting and coming back. And ideally, in those 20 minutes, get outside movement breaks, but that also disrupts flow. So even if it’s just like, look soft out the window and then come back. Those micro breaks are going to do wonders for performance over time.
Love that. So do you tell listeners like how they would know if they need you? Or how would they know if they have vision issues? And like all the different things you do, I know before this, you mentioned you do stuff with kids. I’m sure, you know, so just kind of tell people how they would know they might need you, they might have a vision problem and then all the things you love to do and how you help people.
Yeah. And I used to say that everyone would benefit from this work, but not everybody needs it. And the conversation is changing because of this screen time being, coming, becoming the new pandemic. I mean, everybody needs to do the right type of proactive work so that we can thrive in this digital world. So I think if we look at this as kind of like working out, if you go to a gym and you work with a trainer and it’s a customized program, with the right equipment, you’re going to get better results faster. But not everybody has access to that. So sometimes doing body weight work at home or home workouts can be effective as well. Very similar parallel with this. So no question the gold standard is working in office with a doctor board certified in this. And that never changes. And with that and with that case, you know, we see people every week we do these boot camps and it is better results faster. The more opportunity the brain has for learning with less time between the learning, the faster learning takes place. And that’s something where we’re very particular with who we have come in. We want 100% success rates, and that’s not the right protocol for every profile, but it works for many. And then we have, you know, for local patients, it’s not the same intensive frequency. But then we have an online vision training program called Screen Fit.
And screen fit is designed to teach the specific visual skills and abilities for life. We’ve had thousands of people go through it as young as five, as old as 89, with 100% of people who finished the first course seeing a reduction in symptoms. But again, you got to do the work. And so what screen fit is, is it’s 30 different lessons. Each lesson is a video of me describing an exercise. You then put the tablet or phone down. It’s not more screen time to treat screen time. And then you do the exercise. So no equipment is needed. And these are designed to give you different tools in your tool belt. So at a stoplight or in the bathroom or in between calls with patients, you’re doing your eye stretches or you’re doing your peripheral pointing. And with that right sequence of learning, I mean, this, this works. And we’ve had, we’ve got Marriott offering it to its own employees, a few other companies as well. And for Screen Fit, we’re actually going to give your audience a huge discount so that there’s no excuse to not do this. And so if they use code doctor Kasey it’s A DRCASSIE. That’ll get 40% off so give $200 off. You only have to buy it once for your family. Everybody can do it. It’s in the process of being turned into an app.
So it’s going to be gamified and a lot easier for compliance to be solid. But I created this right when Covid hit because I realized with my own kids, screen time was becoming a big problem. And then for the world, this is not going anywhere. We got to get ahead of this. And I’m fully aware that not everybody, most people, don’t have the opportunity to fly to us in Maryland and spend a week with us. So this is a great way to take to sprint across the start line and get going on the vision improvement journey. So that’s screen fit.com. Use code doctor Kasey $200 off. And then practice is my vision first. And we host a lot of really cool programs on there. And on social media. We’re always pumping out new vision exercises and reels on. Did you know that if you experience anxiety driving over a bridge or into a tunnel that’s related to vision, that’s treatable. Here’s what we do. And so it’s really a way to recognize vision is likely a piece of the puzzle for most people. That’s just a matter of how is that showing up. And most importantly, we all have the opportunity to turn vision into the dominant sensory system that it’s intended to be. That allows us to really show up in the world in a safe, healthy, and happy way.
That’s crazy. I hate bridges, tunnels, and heights. It makes me dizzy and, like, freaks me out.
Can we can we talk about that for a second? First of all, I’m sorry you’re experiencing that. You’re not trusting what you’re seeing. And we have two main processing pathways in our brain, one that responds to central focal visual input, and then one that responds to peripheral ambient visual input. When these are balanced, we can take in all around us and know where we are in space confidently and securely. But when they’re imbalanced, that’s when a lot of these these challenges happen. So on a bridge or in a tunnel, all of a sudden you’re aware of what you’re not aware of in the periphery, and you become even more vocal and you become locked in like you’re looking through paper towel holders with tunnel vision. We have ways to flip the light switch to access periphery, to open things up so that periphery can ground us in space. And then that mental health spiraling and the anxiety and the and the fear, you can pull yourself out of it. I’ve had patients tell me that this type of work has saved their life. Driving over a bridge where they’re like, oh my God, that’s so far down, what am I going to do? And then they realize, okay, do what they taught me. Soft gaze, open up side vision, diverge the eyes, and all of a sudden you can literally pull yourself out of that fight or flight response. And so often you mentioned dizziness. When motion sensitivity gets gets tapped into or there’s nausea or there’s kind of disorientation. That’s our visual and our vestibular systems sending conflicting signals that the brain can’t interpret. And with the right work, we can absolutely make it so that it’s no longer an issue. And especially people are motion sick as a passenger in the back seat, but not so much as a driver. That’s almost diagnostic. There’s a functional vision problem and one that’s likely treatable once it’s no longer hidden.
That’s crazy. Okay, I’m gonna have to maybe come to Maryland and.
Let’s hang.
Out. I also can’t be in the backseat of a car. It makes me sick. And my husband’s always, since he met me. Like you have the worst visual spatial. Like, I’ll be like, let’s put that there. He’s like, that won’t fit there. I’m like, yeah, well, he’s like, you have no visual spatial like.
Oh, and that’s, that’s a skill. I mean, so that shows up often in like fitting the suitcases in the trunk and being able to visualize it at a time where they’re going to go, or a lot of times clutter or losing your keys. One of the most common symptoms we find is people will say, I put my keys down and I can’t find them because I’m looking for them here and here and here, but I’m not looking for them here. Or when you’re talking to somebody, do you sometimes think about do I look at their left eye, the right eye, their mouth, but I’m not looking at their whole face?
Yes. I mean, that’s me too. I’m guilty of all of this because I’m always like, we can put every like, I’m just like, yes, it’ll all fit, you know? And my husband’s just like, also, like, I literally last night, I was trying to like, tell him we need to move this vase onto the shelf. And he looks at me, he’s like, that vase is seven inches taller than that shelf. Like, how do you know it’s crossed the room? No it’s not. And he’s like, oh my God.
Cassie, this, this is functional vision. This is visual spatial organization. And I say this with love. You are stuck in focal central processing. So you’re probably very detail oriented. You’re probably everything has a place and that is like the exact profile of somebody whose life can be changed when we actually shift into the other side and actually understand the space that exists. So we can navigate and operate in it fluidly.
Sounds like I need to do this because I’ve also picked up mahjong recently, and I don’t know if you know anything about mahjong.
My wife just started as well.
I’m terrible at it because you have to be flexible and you have to go with the flow. And I want to plan. And so it’s funny we’re talking about this because my therapist was like, you should have a hobby. So I get mahjong. And then she thinks it’s funny because she’s like, this is perfect for you because you’re so like, and this is a game where you can’t be like that. So maybe fixing my vision would also help.
So we, we have people who come to treatment with us for, for mahjong also for we work with professional gamers, professional poker players, alpine skiers, race car drivers, where depending on the task, there’s very different set of visual demands needed. But with mahjong, I mean it is visual memory, it’s visual processing, it’s visual spatial organization. It’s also being able to divergently think and plan ahead and then hold a bunch of different paths in place. That’s brain function. And any brain has the opportunity to be rewired and learn how to function differently. But you have to have the right learning take place to be able to get to that, that setup.
I mean, you should start a mahjong training program. I bet you would have people lined up to come figure out how to make their money.
We should. I mean, we’re really popular in the professional poker world now. Yeah. Because a lot of times it’s, you know, it’s taking in a lot of space. It’s a lot of these guys practice on screens with 20 different games going at once. And so they have to organize all this at the same time. I mean, that is one of the most complex challenges for our brain. But same thing with mahjong. Like to be able to quickly see an image and organize the flow of motor planning, visual processing. Let’s turn this into a vision training for mahjong. I love that.
You should also, my thought was because I work with a lot of athletes sometimes like kids. I’m assuming you could help. Like if, you know, got 13 year olds or 15 year olds or whatever that are playing football, I’m assuming that you could work with these kids. You know, some of these kids are really good and now they make a ton of money doing it. I mean, I’m sure that that could help them to playing sports, right?
So we’re all taught, we’re all told at an early age. Keep your eye on the ball, but never taught how. We absolutely teach how and especially for sports, it’s not a matter of knowing necessarily just where the ball is. It’s anticipating where it will be and being a step ahead and going to, you know, processing dynamic space in real time. I work with NBA teams, NFL teams, individual athletes. We have a bunch of Major League Baseball players in treatment. This is a no brainer, right? These are this is low hanging fruit, especially for sports and for a child who has trouble catching the ball but is better at throwing. That’s a warning sign. Somebody who turns their head away or when they’re swinging with a bat, they’re arriving early or late. I mean, that’s that time space continuum. Which vision is our first connection to sport. And yet most people don’t even recognize, well, we can train our vision just like we train the rest of our body.
So fascinating. I’m so glad we had this conversation.
I so appreciate you helping support my mission of just getting this out there to the world.
I mean, I really feel like now I need to start a vision. Anyways, let’s talk after. Yeah, yeah. I want to ask you three questions really quickly. I ask everyone at the end of my podcast this. People love it. Don’t overthink it. First thing that comes to your brain.
Hit.
Me. What is one food that’s most beneficial? I’m gonna ask you for your eye health and why I normally ask, what is one food that’s most beneficial for your health? But what about your eye health.
For me, no question. Eggs. Okay, eggs have lutein, which is great for the macula, which is our 2020 zone of our eyesight on our retina. If choline great for cognition and our superfood, most people, they would answer that question as an eye doctor. A lot of people think carrots because that’s just talked about from the past. And although carrots have beta carotene and that is helpful, there’s so much more that’s better. Eggs are my number one.
And do you have to eat the yolk? Because people ask me that egg whites, I mean it has choline.
But the yolk is where all the micro and macronutrients are. So definitely you don’t I mean the whites, you get more protein and maybe not as many yolks as whites, but the yolks is the sweet spot.
Okay. What is one thing that you wish you would have known about your health that you would have done differently 20 years ago?
Oh, sleep. Sleep is to me. I mean, it allows us to rest, to recover. And when our sleep is off, when we have poor quality sleep, our vision is off and off. And it can influence so many aspects of metabolic health and inflammation. And, you know, prioritizing sleep is going to help you show up in the world in such a more powerful place.
I love it. What is one thing that’s 100% free? Anyone listening right now could do to improve their eye health, which we you showed us how to do push ups.
Yeah. I mean, we could go over our ten things, but number one, vision breaks on screens, like without question. Start this today. Minimum 20, 2020. Every at least every 20 minutes. Take a break for at least 20s. Look at something at least 20ft away. But to really balance screen time with time outdoors, exploring three dimensional space, getting natural light in. That’s going to be huge, especially for kids whose brains and visual systems are developing even more rapidly.
Doctor Bryce, thank you so much. I know people are going to love this. It was fascinating for me too. And we’ll make sure we put everything in the show notes your links so everyone can get this visual test with the code doctor Cassie. And yeah, thank you so much.
Such an honor being on here. Thank you for the connection.
That was such a powerful conversation with Doctor Bryce Appelbaum, and I hope it gave you a completely new perspective on what vision really is. I know it did me. One of my biggest takeaways from this episode is that 2020 eyesight is not the same thing as healthy, functional vision. So many people are walking around assuming their eyes are fine because they can technically see while missing the deeper connection between the eyes, the brain focus, behavior, performance, recovery, mental health, overall well-being, and Doctor Applebaum really helped shine a light on how hidden vision problems can show up in ways most people would never think to connect. Things like learning challenges, attention issues, visual fatigue, headaches, eye twitching, screen intolerance, and even symptoms that affect confidence and day to day functioning. And in a world where all of us are spending more and more time on screens, this conversation also reminds us that eye health is not isolated from the rest of the body. It can affect stress, cortisol, the nervous system, regulation, and mental health in ways we absolutely need to be paying attention to. I also loved the hopeful message in this episode that vision is not always fixed or static, and in many cases, there are ways to train, support and improve the eye brain connection so people can function better, feel better, and perform better.
If this episode helped you take a minute to follow the show and leave a review, it really helps us reach more people and continue bringing you conversations that can genuinely change your health and your life. If you want to go deeper on your own healing journey, you can also check out my book Fix Your Gut, fix fixture hormones go to w w w dot gut hormone fix.com so that you can get the book and all the freebies that go with it. If you’re interested in working with Modern Endocrine directly and becoming a patient, you can check out our website at www.endocrine.com and click on Book a Discovery Call. We see patients via telehealth in 46 states or at our modern facility in Oklahoma City. And of course, if you know somebody who’s struggling with screen fatigue, unexplained visual symptoms, attention issues, post-concussive challenges, or just want to better understand the difference between eyesight and true vision, send this episode their way. It could be the missing piece they have been looking for. Look in the show notes for that code that we talked about. So you can get 40% off Doctor Applebaum’s screening program. And thank you so much for listening. I will see you in the next episode.