April 23, 2025 - EyeClarity Podcast
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Keywords
eye health, vision therapy, sunlight exposure, full spectrum lighting, color therapy, iridology, holistic health, eye strain, light therapy, wellness
Summary
In this conversation, Dr. Sam Berne discusses various aspects of eye health, including the importance of eye coordination, the benefits of sunlight exposure, and the role of full spectrum lighting. He also explores light therapy and color therapy, emphasizing their impact on overall wellness. Additionally, Dr. Berne explains iridology and how it can provide insights into a person’s health. He concludes with practical advice for maintaining eye health and resources for further learning.
Takeaways
• Eye strain can be alleviated through specific exercises.
• Natural sunlight is essential for eye health.
• Full spectrum lighting can improve mood and reduce stress.
• Color therapy can help balance energy and emotions.
• Iridology offers insights into genetic health tendencies.
• Eye health is interconnected with overall wellness.
• Regular check-ups with an eye doctor are important.
• Mind-body connection plays a role in vision issues.
• Light therapy can aid in healing and relaxation.
• Practitioners can benefit from training in holistic eye health.
Sound Bites
• “My left eye is shutting off.”
• “Light is basically a food.”
• “Color therapy is so amazing.”
• “We attract what we need to heal.”
• “The eyes never lie.”
•
Chapters
00:00Understanding Eye Strain and Coordination
02:58The Importance of Sunlight for Eye Health
05:54Full Spectrum Lighting and Its Benefits
08:58Exploring Light Therapy and Color Therapy
15:51The Connection Between Eye Health and Overall Wellness
19:54Iridology: Mapping Health Through the Eyes
23:06Final Thoughts on Eye Health and Resources
Sam Berne (00:00.238)
Can you provide an example of how this works for a specific condition? All right. So let’s say somebody comes in and they’re having eye strain and their eyes are getting worse. So there’s a test that I can do which measures how well their two eyes are working together. So this is vision. They read the eye chart a distance very well. So there’s no problem with eyesight and 20 feet.
But what I’m finding is that when they look at the certain picture their brain is suppressing the left eye. So the right-handed the right eye dominant. Okay, so we we are able to identify that the left eye is suppressing and the right eye is doing more of the work unless you do a test like that. You’re never going to discover that issue, but it means that the right eye is carrying the load. Okay, so there’s a great exercise that I recommend called
This the brock string. This is a string if you can visualize it. It’s got three beads and a string and you tie one end of the doorknob and you spread the three beads. So the first speed is about 12 inches from the eyes. The second bead is 24 inches. The third bead is say 36 inches. So one end of the string is on the doorknob. The other end is at the nose and the first bead say is here the second bead the third bead.
This is a great way to have them focus both eyes at the first bead and they might say something like, my goodness, the left string is fading out on me. When I look at that close bead. now understand that my left eye is shutting off. So we ask them to go into their breathing to blink to feel their body to relax into it. now the left string is coming in with the right string. I see if I relax now, my two eyes are working together.
Now I look at the second bead. my this left string is shutting off again. If I relax and blink and breathe and maybe I have to touch the bead now that left string is coming back and then I do the third bead and then the second bead in the first speed. So I’m going to do this exercise for one minute three times a day and what will happen over a few days that left eye starts to turn on and when it turns on it will start to work with the right eye.
Sam Berne (02:22.402)
So after about a week, the person says, you know, I’m working on the computer. Now. I’m not getting that eye strain or red eyes. It’s going away two weeks. It’s going away more three weeks. Wow. I’m actually able to work for a whole hour. My eyes feel really good. So that is a very simple way to discover on my left eye is suppressing. Let me bring it back in after three weeks. Now my two eyes are working together. I’ve got vitality back into my eyes. So that’s
one example of a physical therapy exercise.
a general thought if someone was again highly motivated, what should our relation with the Sun be? Is this something where you’re saying get sun in the early morning? Are you saying get 20 minutes an hour six hours 12 hours? What would be perfect if someone was motivated regarding our relation with sunlight? Well, just the general mainstream person what I would say is that getting third 30 minutes of natural sunlight in the morning as long as it’s not
triggering a blink reflex. So you don’t have to look directly in the sun. Even if it’s cloudy outside, you’re still getting the sun. You can wear a hat. You can you know, you don’t want to look directly at the sun go walk. You know, that’s a good time to do it. The more advanced people I would say end of day is also great. We get color therapy at that time because usually around sunset. Sometimes we get the different colors and our eyes need different colors.
Red is more stimulating. Violet purple blue green is more relaxing. So that would be a way to get color therapy, but I think we’ve been taught to be afraid of the sun. I think there’s a lot of fear out there and I think it’s really overblown. Yes, UV and high amounts can change the lens health, but we actually need trace amounts of UV. One of the people that I love mention this book.
Sam Berne (04:25.249)
John Ott, it’s called health and light and one of the things I talked about was something called malillumination just like malnutrition and what he would say is that we’re not getting the proper light diet. You know, I remember an example of this in my office. I had a very busy office and I had seven people working up front. know, they were processing all the insurance claims and there was always a lot of conflict and fighting and you know, just
bad vibes. So one weekend I went in and I changed the the light bulbs to full spectrum fluorescent lights and I didn’t tell the staff so about a week later, you know, we had a meeting and they said, geez, you know, did what did you change? We’re feeling so much better in the front office and I told them and they said, that makes sense. Now we’re now in natural full spectrum lighting and our bodies are less stress. We’re more open to it. So
Full spectrum lighting is like full spectrum living and we need to get away from artificial light. We need to get away from the digital and we need to go into a space where we’re getting the natural sunlight. Is it bad if you’re a gardener and you spend all day outside? Is that a good thing or a bad thing to your eyes? Well, if I was a gardener, a forest ranger or a lifeguard, I would certainly be investing in a good pair of sunglasses.
And a lot of it depends on my, you know, my skin health, how sensitive I am to the sun. I think using sunglasses is actually a really good thing. I think you want to get a good neutral brown or neutral gray, pay a little bit more and get a high quality sun lens. But again, we’re talking moderation. You get that natural light in the morning 30 minutes.
You know, I know for me, I like to hike. sometimes today was hiking with my dog and for part of the time I was wearing sunglasses because I was right in the sun and then we were up at a stream playing up there and the sun was indirect. So I took my sunglasses off. I do a lot of skiing. I ski up in Taos and I wear sunglasses, you know, I go out in the ocean and I wear sunglasses. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Sam Berne (06:51.146)
I think what it is is you need to feel your body and give your eyes and your body what it wants talk to your eyes. If it’s too bright, it’s perfectly fine to wear sunglasses. If you’re driving into the sun wear sunglasses. Now where you are the sun isn’t quite as extreme as where we are in the desert Southwest. So I might wear sunglasses a little more than say where you are. But if you’re sensitive protect yourself. There’s nothing wrong with that.
But the fear part of it changes the neurochemicals in the brain and that’s where the issue comes in. You know, I want to have good levels of serotonin dopamine and oxytocin. I want to embrace the sun and I also want to be sensible about it. As soon as I go into my fear, what happens? My cortisol levels go up my dopamine and serotonin go down. So be aware of what your mind is doing and understand that
Basically, we’re heliocentric. We go towards the sun just like the plants and then we just have to moderate how much and how long.
And if we every day want to take a three or four hour walk outside, we seem to like the sun. We don’t really want to wear sunglasses. Are you comfortable or are we doing damage to our No, we’re comfortable with that. We’re comfortable with that. And you know what? You can always check in with your eye doctor and eye health see what’s going on with your, you know, your macular health and your lens. I’d recommend routine exams so you can monitor that. So if you start developing a cataract, you can go, okay, why is that? it because of the sun?
Is because of my sugar. So, you know, I think it’s really important to check in and go to your doctor, whoever that is and just get get a baseline on what is going on in your health. I know a lot about health. I know a lot about nutrition, but I do not prescribe for myself. I go to doctors and they tell me what I need. So I am not, you know, an ego about that saying why no.
Sam Berne (08:58.124)
I go to people because I don’t know what I need.
Well, I think you know, we’ve got the LED conversation and that’s the blue light. I would say in as many cases as you can get full spectrum lighting, you know, kind of depends again. Like if you’re in an apartment and you don’t get a lot of natural light, I would probably focus in on getting more full spectrum lighting. That would be my intention. You know, if you live in a place where you’re getting
natural light in the windows then it’s it’s less of an issue. I think that you know again a lot of it depends on the toxicity of where you live and you know go from there. That’s how I would navigate that. Well what it what it means is my primary would probably be incandescent and getting full spectrum.
You know, there’s things called the aught lights. You can go online and now they’ve got a lot of different full spectrum lights. I would probably move away from LEDs if I could. Another thing you got to consider is winter and again, if you’re sensitive sad, I would get yourself a full spectrum light box where you’re treating yourself with that. That’s another piece to the puzzle but full spectrum incandescent and
See what you can do.
Sam Berne (10:46.252)
Okay, one more time, full spectrum, what does that mean?
Say full spectrum on them or not? Yeah, you can you can you can again go online type in full spectrum light bulbs and see what comes up. Sometimes they’re compact fluorescence. Sometimes they’re incandescent. They come in different ways. But the reason why it’s full spectrum is that you’ve got again, you can eat food artificial food or fast food. That’s like the the light that is artificial light.
Or you can eat a full spectrum food diet and light is basically a food. It’s just in a different form. So you want to look for the term full spectrum indoor lighting. That would be what you want to look for and see what see what comes up. You know, I think that’s a really good thing to think about.
Thank you. In terms of light therapy, have you…
Sam Berne (11:57.929)
No, we haven’t really discussed it. So there’s two ways we can talk about it. One is photo biomodulation, which I know some of your, you know, your folks have talked about the benefits of red light therapy, not so much for the eyes because it’s too bright. One of the things that I have developed are actually I call them red exercise glasses. So they have the 670 nanometers in the lens.
That’s a pair of glasses and you can control the brightness of the light source that works really well. So that’s one form of the red light therapy. There’s also another form of light therapy where you’re using all the colors of the spectrum and you know, we want to put down blue light. But once you get up to like 475 nanometers, that blue light actually is really good to re release trauma and also it stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system. There’s a
color therapy treatment protocol, which I’ll share with you. We actually did it the other day. You can either get this do this by getting all the main colors of the spectrum Roy G Biv in glasses and the way it works is you’re going to treat yourself with the rainbow of colors. So you start off with the red glasses. You put them on you ask yourself. What do I see and how does it make me feel and that particular red?
May stimulate the root chakra. It may bring up some memories again color and light trigger the hidden energies behind the eyes. That’s one of the things that that’s why color therapy is so amazing. You wear that for two minutes. Take that off. Then you put the orange on same thing. What do I see? What do I feel and the feeling the emotion is very important to connect to it again two minutes move to yellow and the green then the blue green then the blue.
Then the violet. So if you do that spectrum of rainbow colors, I did research on it using a special energy field camera and chakras when I was at the Esalen Institute and we did a study where we measured people doing that very treatment before we measured their energy and then after and we found their chakras were much more lined up. Their energy fields were much bigger and their acupuncture meridians were much more balanced. This was
Sam Berne (14:25.523)
getting light into the eyes. This is how we did the study. So doing this energy color therapy every day and then you could combine it by using aromatherapy. We in my trainings, we use seven different aromatherapy oils that match the colors and we can also add sound to it. So you can add sound healing. So by doing that, it’s working on the energy of the body, the energy field and it’s a way to really kind of clear out
all the disharmony if there’s a color or colors. You don’t like you probably have a color allergy. So that color you want to treat yourself a little more so that you would release whatever the the disharmony was and then you’d be more full spectrum yourself because whatever wherever you’re not receiving that color, you’re probably attracting that life experience into your life.
That’s kind of what we do. We attract what we need to heal. So the color therapy in that way works really really well. And again, you can get these glasses on Amazon or you you can look for a rainbow color machine. It’s wonderful. You can also do with each eye separately. You can also intuitively say, I think I need green today. So you could do 10 minutes of that if you’re in eye pain or you’re dealing with traumatic brain injury. I would do a blue or blue green.
That helps reduce trauma. If you’re low energy or you want to cleanse your liver, I would do a yellow or yellow green or an orange. So, you know, you can work with it intuitively. You can do all the colors. You can start with the indigo violet and work your way back to the red if you want 30 day challenge do it for 30 days and you will see differences in your vision, your awareness, your consciousness and it’s a it’s a really cool way.
to balance your health. Thank you. Your lecture title, The Eyes Never Lie, suggests a strong link between vision and overall health. In your experience, what is one of the most surprising systemic conditions you’ve identified through an eye examination?
Sam Berne (16:44.424)
Depletion in the body, depletion of minerals and B vitamins. There are certain visual coordination tests which require pretty heavy-duty eye muscle focusing, eye muscle sustaining. And when people start going into double vision in these tests and their resiliency is low,
And I look at their iris readings depending on what the markings say. I can pretty much tell they’re probably going to get osteoporosis or osteopenia. They’ve got a lot of inflammation in the digestive tract. Their pancreas is not working very well. Their liver and gallbladder are not working well. Their connective tissue may be weak in certain areas, which leads to things like hernias and
You know, hiatal hernias and hemorrhoids and things like that. So there’s so many levels and layers that you can look into the eyes and you can see all the mapping systemically, metabolically, even spiritually. And from that you can start asking questions and fill in the blanks and then come up with a protocol to help the person. That’s why I call it whole health. It’s not just the eyes.
Yes, the eyes are going to benefit but the whole health is involved. Again, that’s part of my naturopathic optometry hat that I wear. What is iridology and is that something that you believe in with?
Give a full breakdown on your health. that something you believe in or support? Well, I got trained in it certified in it. So yes, so the iris, you know, if we think of reflexology the feet, know, you there’s a map on the feet. So the iris over, you know, hundreds of years of different doctors categorizing. have a picture right here. This is
Sam Berne (18:55.537)
This is a map of the iris and this was invented by in this country, Bernard Jensen, who was a naturopath. And so I’ve studied with his, you know, his family and you know, it’s kind of obvious that the iris because of all the nerves and all the, you know, the connections that has been mapped out way before me, iridology.
And by the way, we don’t diagnose and we don’t treat with iridology and the goal is not to change the color of your eye or the pigment that anybody that says that that’s not really iridology. Herodology is analyzing the colored part of the eye. take very detailed pictures put it up on a big monitor and from that we can be proactive in talking about different health patterns and you know, we ask history so
Maybe it’s not affecting them, but there’s a genetic tendency. So the right eye is the father lineage and the left eye is the mother lineage. And so we can tell was there diabetes on the father’s side was there thyroid issues on the mother’s side. So based on you know, the genetic tendencies and what I call nurture points. So nothing is wrong here. We’re not diagnosing cancer or whether somebody is pregnant or anything like that.
We’re just looking at nurture points. and then based on that using herbs using functional nutrition using color therapy and many different my in my toolbox. It’s another tool that can help us really individualize a person’s treatment.
Could you if someone was on a computer, could you look at their eyes through the computer and understand their health? Sure, sure. I mean I could both on how the eyes look and also how they’re using their eyes and also the responses they’re giving based on certain prompts and probes. So for example, if somebody is near sighted, I’ll have them put on a far sighted prescription prescription.
Sam Berne (21:11.333)
And I’ll ask them what’s your belief system on blur and nine times out of ten. They’ll be in a hypervigilant state attitude wise and I’ll say that’s the reason why you’ve become nearsighted because of your hypervigilant attitude. So when did you start wearing your glasses? And so the the healing part of that is can I give them an exercise? So in a non demanding situation?
They’re spending a few minutes relaxing into the blur and when they do that their hypervigilant attitude relaxes and then their eyesight clears and it becomes like wow, I see that I’ve been doing this to myself. It’s that programming behind the eyes that creates the eye problem.
Thank you. How far should we be from our TV and just TV damage?
Sam Berne (22:09.127)
Yes, the the size of the screen matters and how close we are. I think you need to be at least six to eight feet away. You don’t want to be squinting. If you have a higher risk of eye problems, then I would probably get a blue protection lens for the TV. This means like cataract surgery or macular degeneration or you’re just concerned about the blue light and frequent breaks.
So as long as you’re far enough away from the TV, you’re fine. And then whether you want to wear blue protection, that’s kind of individual based on what your your health situation is like. What if we have these new large 75 85 inch TVs? Is that concerning you? It depends on how close we are to the TV. But yeah, I mean, you’ve got EMFs. You’ve got blue light.
So you need to protect yourself by sitting farther away from it. So you’re not as bombarded by the energy that comes off those. I mean the way you could check it is get yourself an EMF measure and just see what’s coming off the screens and that’ll tell you.
Sam Berne (23:28.761)
Okay, so Dr. Byrne, why don’t you share your overall final summarizing thoughts of what you want to share with us or leave with us regarding eye health and then also how we could stay in touch with you to have a website book. Do do consultations? What’s the best way to follow up? Okay. So the first thing is is that if an eye problem comes up and you go to your family eye doctor.
Definitely take somebody with you as a witness so they can take notes because it’s going to be a scary situation whenever we have some health issue come up and whatever they say you want to make sure that the overall goal would be okay. My mindset is I believe in mind body medicine. I believe in holistic health. So can my doctor give me something?
in that genre to help me with that. Now, if they cannot do that, then the best case scenario is you get the information and you go, okay, I’m going to start working on this. on my website, drsamburn.com, I have over I would say 400 free videos. Okay. And if you go to learn
the drop down menu and you click on podcasts, for example.
You see the categories you can scroll on that and click on anything that you would like and that will take you to video blogs written blogs podcasts and that’s all free. There’s no charge for that. Now if you want more exclusive content, what you can do is you can go to my membership site. So I guess if you click on Dr. Burn again.
Sam Berne (25:35.011)
Okay, see where says join membership. So that I set up for people where that’s exclusive content. It’s not on social media. I’m creating new stuff every day and you know, join our community. I have a practitioner side and I also have a you know, just a layperson side. You can get seven days free before you have to commit. You can quit at any time.
My customer service is really good, so if you have any problems, we’re very honest, we’ll whatever you need, we’ll help you with. So that would be another way you could connect with me. And the third way is that if you want to do a private session, even if it’s on Zoom, you can. Usually what I recommend is sending some iRecords to me and then I can look at those and then we can do a Zoom appointment.
And of course, if you’re local and you want to travel here, we can do that as well. Last thing, if you’re any kind of a practitioner, I’m doing practitioner trainings now and you don’t need to be an optometrist or ophthalmologist. You’re just going to be more of a coach and we gear it towards what your professional background is. Massage therapy, occupational therapy, naturopathy, acupuncture, whatever.
I need to share this information. I’m on the shady side of the mountain. I’m not going to be here forever. I need to pass this information on to health practitioners. The eye doctors aren’t interested. So this is why I’m going this route. So you got lots of ways. I’m also on Facebook Instagram, Tik Tok and YouTube. I put out a podcast once a week. I’ve been doing that a long time. So lots of ways to to get a hold of me.
There you go. Fantastic. Dr. Burn really really appreciate you sharing this. really like we’ve stumbled on some great information. So yeah. Well, thank you. Thanks for what you’re doing. Good luck and wish you a great spring and summer. Okay. If we could unmute everyone so everyone could thank Dr. Burn themselves.
Sam Berne (27:58.549)
Awesome. Thank you so much. Okay. Thank you again. Doctor. I really appreciate it. You got it. Bye bye. Thank you.
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