December 30, 2025 - EyeClarity Podcast
Sam Berne (00:00.088)
I’d like to welcome you to Facebook live tonight. We’re going to go about 25 minutes, maybe a little longer. We’ll see how the questions are going. So I’d like to welcome everybody. I’ve been off for a few weeks, but it’s great to be back on. So if you’ve got questions, you feel free to type them in. Hopefully I’ll get to see them and I want to start off with a couple of announcements. First of all, I’m going to be teaching.
A two hour class on April 30th. It’s a Saturday and it will be from 10 AM to 12 noon Mountain Time. It’s one of my classes that people love because it’s going to be on. Well, a lot of different ways to improve your vision through color therapy, aroma therapy. We’re going to.
do some eye exercises and I’m going to teach you how to negotiate a healthy prescription of contact lenses or glasses with your eye doctor. That’s always a challenge, especially if you want to improve your vision. There are ways that you can talk to your doctor so that you can get what you need.
I’m going to take a couple of questions that people have emailed me and then if we get any questions from from the audience, I’m happy to answer those as well. So the first question that I’m getting tonight is one that I get a lot. It’s on mono vision. And what do I think of mono vision? This is with contact lenses and you know, what are the alternatives if I don’t?
like mono vision. So for those of you who don’t know what mono vision is, this is a prescription where the doctor is correcting one eye for distance and one eye for near. If you look at my hands right now, this is kind of the setup. So my right eye is the distance. I my left eye is the near eye. You can see that there is a
Sam Berne (02:24.297)
a change in the focal distance between your eyes. This actually sets up a couple of scenarios. One scenario is double vision because your focal lengths are different between your two eyes. Let’s say your right eye is corrected for distance and your left eye is corrected for near. What this means is that when you’re driving
Your left eye because it’s corrected for near is not engaging with the right eye. So a lot of times the brain shuts off the the eye that you’re not using and this is very disturbing because you’re now you’re now eliminating or at the very least reducing the
the integration between your two eyes. So the brain suppresses or shuts off the left eye because it’s the right eye. That’s the driving eye and that the same token if you’re using the computer or reading it’s your left eye that’s carrying the load and the right eye is focused somewhere out at 20 feet, but it can’t come into a near focus. So again, the brain is suppressing
the right eye so it reduces or in fact even eliminates the potential of binocular vision. This is disturbing because over time each eye is carrying more of the load than it should be and this can lead to eye strain eye fatigue and eventually it can change the structure the anatomy the tissue of the eye in a way where it can actually even lead
To a disease process, maybe things like glaucoma cataracts macular degeneration. So based on this description, it’s obvious that we’re not meant to correct our eyes in different focal distances, even though the doctor may think it’s convenient. It really sets up a situation where you’re going to be experiencing a lot of visual stress.
Sam Berne (04:47.63)
So it’s always better to correct both eyes for distance. And if you’re near sighted, one of the techniques that you can do is actually ask your doctor to under correct you slightly when you read the distance eye chart. instead of seeing 2015, you could see 2020 or even 2025. But the advantage of that is that your
Your eyes are going to be matching in the distance and because you’re under correcting.
You’ll be able to read and I have so many patients in their 50s and 60s 70s who are nearsighted by under correcting them a little bit in the distance. They’re able to keep their near vision. The the scenario is is when the eye doctor wants to over correct you for distance and you’ll feel it in your eyes and you can tell him or her. Whoa, this is too strong for me. Then you can.
get a slightly reduced prescription in the contacts and you’ll still be able to read without reading glasses. Now in the farsighted side of things, it’s a little trickier. But again, you know, if you do my eye exercises, you can regain your distance vision as a farsighted person and the magnification power that you need up close could be minimal. This is where again, you could use things like pinhole glasses or
Do my exercise the minus lens to blur. That’s the opposite lens prescription that a farsighted person would use. You can also do my convergence and divergence exercises to build more flexibility and versatility in the eye muscles. And this would be a way for you to continue to hold on to your vision based on, you know,
Sam Berne (06:50.598)
not wearing such a strong prescription, but the bottom line in mono vision is you don’t want to do it. You definitely don’t want to do it with a surgical intervention like Lasik surgery or cataract surgery. That’s going to be a disaster. know that’s not a popular thing in the room that some people love mono vision and they love Lasik surgery and more power to you. You know, I did a post recently on Tik Tok by the way.
I would get on my tick-tock feed because I do a lot of great 20 second videos on tick-tock. did this one on Lasik surgery and got about 350,000 views. Most of them were against what I was saying, which is that they think that Lasik surgery is a great surgical procedure. And you know, for some people it is, I was just putting a different perspective on it and
So it created a lot of controversy a lot of lot of talk back and forth, which I love. So anyways, that’s the that’s the situation on mono vision. All right. I want to take a question from Zizo. He’s asking about or she is asking about dry eyes. So dry eyes actually start in the eyelids. You know, I was giving a session today to somebody actually was my class. That’s what it was my intensive and somebody was
really surprised when I said dry eyes actually start in the eyelids when the eyelids become irritated when there’s inflammation. This is what creates a dryness in your eyes because it’s the eyelids that house the tears that produce the glands that produce the tears and so it starts with getting rid of
inflammation in the eyelids. Now, how do you do that? Well, it’s a combination of using natural eye drops during the day, blue blocking glasses if you’re using screens because blue light is going to dry out the eyelids even more, dry out the eyes. And then the evening, one of the techniques I like to use is a castor oil eye massage. You just take a little bit of organic castor oil.
Sam Berne (09:13.964)
and you massage it into the eyelids in the evening and you do the homeopathic eye drops and or the MSM eye drops during the day. Make sure to increase your fats and oils in your diet, reduce your visual stress, get natural sunlight. These are some of the techniques that I recommend in terms of healing the eyelids and hydrating the eyes with natural eye drops during the day.
Let’s take a question from Gabriella. was told by a doctor. Lasik is done only on one eye for older people cannot be done for both eyes. Well, I don’t know what your prescription is, but you definitely want to Gabriel. You want to match both eyes for distance. If you’re going to do lasik surgery now, maybe in your case, one eye is a lot more nearsighted than the other eye.
So by getting the lasik surgery in one eye, it will match the distance prescription so that your two eyes are tracking together. But the bottom line is that if you’re going to get lasik surgery, you want to have both eyes matching in the distance. So you’re seeing as similarly as you can. That’s really the bottom line. Now with lasik surgery, you may be more susceptible to dry eyes.
You may be more susceptible to floaters. You also may have a situation where the lasik surgery works for a while, but then your prescription starts coming back. And the reason why that happens is we want to blame the prescription just on the eyeball, but it’s not the eyeball that’s necessarily causing the prescription. It’s what our programming is mentally.
that causes the eyeball to change its shape that creates the prescription. Now, I know that’s a an advanced idea that we would think what what I think is going to affect my eye prescription, but precisely, you know, any prescription you wear is only a reinforcement of the programming on what you’re doing to your eyes. And if you’re nearsighted, what you’re doing is you’re tensing your muscles up and you’re pulling the world in.
Sam Berne (11:38.394)
as a way to adapt to whatever the environmental stress is. And so when you do the Lasik surgery, you’re only changing the eyeball. You’re not changing the programming, which is actually much stronger than the Lasik surgery in terms of influencing the prescription. So it’ll work for a while, but then it won’t. So I would be very careful about Lasik surgery. If you’re going to do it.
I would recommend doing my eye exercises afterwards. All right. Let’s take a question from Linda. it okay to take both resveratrol and grape seed extract? Both of those are really awesome supports for eye health. And the answer to that is yes, you can start with a low dose to begin with and see how your eyes and body respond.
But both resveratrol and grape seed extract are super great for eye health, eye circulation. And I don’t see why not you could take both of them. Let’s go to Bob. I have a eye distortion in one eye. The other eye seems really good, but the bad eye sees faces slightly stretched on the TV screen. It makes me completely mad. Nothing is sharp as is in focus as it should be.
Yes, I do wear glasses. was diagnosed with macular pucker a year and a half ago and had surgery to fix it. Whenever I go to the red when I go to the theater, it isn’t the same watching movies. It’s like covering the bad eye. Everything looks sharp and great. Okay, so I get the the the idea Bob. So first off you might want to take a look at my videos on macular pucker.
Basically the macula is the center part of the retina where we see detail and the vitreous which is the gel sac that sits in front of the retina begins to pull away from the macula area which creates a wrinkling in the macula. Now when you get surgery you’re apt to be getting scar tissue. So here
Sam Berne (14:01.344)
is a prescription for you. can’t guarantee it, but certainly this is something that I would suggest. You want to really load up on your carotenoids, meaning lutein, 16 milligrams a day, zeaxanthin, six milligrams a day, astaxanthin, 12 milligrams a day. These are essential ingredients for the macula. I would consider a saffron supplement.
a curcumin supplement. These also help in the micro capillary circulation of the retina. Saffron really helps feed the macula. I would also can consider a type of vitamin E called anato, A-N-N-A-T-T-O. Now, Bob, keep track of my content because I’m going to be releasing these three supplements. I’ve been testing them for over five years.
with my patients and they really help the retina, the macula and eye circulation. So I would add those three when they come on my web store. Make sure you’re wearing blue blocking glasses. I would consider a an ant digestive enzyme called serrapeptase. Sarah, Sarah pep tastes has been shown to help remove scar tissue in the eye.
I would use my 15 % MSM eye drops four to six times a day. I would also consider doing a castor oil massage in the evening, evening on the eyelids. These things are going to help heal the vitreous, which could reduce the pulling on the macula. And then finally, I would do my eye exercises, Bob.
One is called the animal eye chart. The other is the yin-yang peripheral vision exercise. You need to do some physical eye exercises to increase your peripheral vision between your two eyes, which will stop distracting you on the difference. two maculas are showing you. So you’ve got to do a combination of eye exercises with all of these nutrients.
Sam Berne (16:22.466)
And if it still is not happening, contact me at appointments at drsamburn.com and we could do a telemedicine session and I could maybe give you some more pointers. But there are things that you can do from a macular pucker standpoint. And I know it’s a bummer, but these are some of the things that you can do to reverse some of the symptoms you’re having.
Can I use coconut or olive oil instead of castor oil? Well, you can, but castor oil has a specific function that it really is a wound healer, reduces inflammation and it absorbs really well into the eyes. So if you don’t want to use castor oil, another approach would be to use iBright Tea.
You can brew it up, let it cool, put it in a mason jar in the refrigerator, dip a washcloth in the iBright tea and place it over your eyelids with your eyes closed. If you don’t want to do iBright, you could do chamomile tea. That would be another one that you could actually put the tea bags over the eyes. But doing some kind of a compress on the eyelids is really helpful.
for reducing some of the inflammation. So you can use herbs if you don’t want to use castor oil, but you need something. You need something. So anyways, I hope that that’s helpful. Thanks for the question. Carol is asking if I’ve had laser surgery on a tear in the retinal wall. Is it okay to take seropeptates? Yes, it is. Will it affect the surgery seal? No, it won’t.
I would also add the 5 % MSM eye drops. I would also hydrate your retina quite a bit. And again, the same protocol where you’re using lutein, zeaxanthin, astaxanthin, curcumin, saffron, and vitamin E, the annatto vitamin E, these are all really great for improving retinal, the retinal structure.
Sam Berne (18:45.794)
And I also would consider doing my end palm hum exercise. This is a relaxation exercise. I would make sure you’re wearing blue blocking glasses for all your screen time because you see when you’re exposing yourself to blue light, it’s drying the eyes out. It’s like going to a tanning salon and it’s really drying things out in a way where your retina needs hydration.
It needs nutrients and hydration and in adding all of these things, you can start to heal the integrity of the retinal wall, the retinal cells and that that would be the the protocol I would suggest. All right, let’s go to Margaret. She’s got a stye. So with a stye, I would definitely consider doing some natural eye drops like okay.
Optique or similiacin along with the 5 % MSM. I would do some kind of a evening compress. Maybe with Ibrite tea. You could also drink the tea. You need to massage the eyelids. Maybe with castor oil now with the sty. It can be very contagious. Whenever you’re touching your hands on your eyelids, make sure you’re washing your hands completely. So you’re not giving yourself a bacterial.
Infection drinking the eye bright tea along with using it as a compress and doing those hydrating eye drops during the day. Eventually the style will will move off maybe in five to seven days again, boosting your eye nutrients using blue blockers taking a rest from all of your screen time. Now another thing to consider with the style.
Is your digestive health? you getting enough probiotic support microbiome support? Is there any stomach issue? What is your digestion like because the eyelids mirror on an acupuncture level our stomach our spleen our gallbladder our liver sometimes actually going to get some acupuncture. Now you won’t get the needles around the eyes, but even doing it away from the eyes. Remember the meridians.
Sam Berne (21:12.512)
run from the bottom of the feet to the top of the head, getting some acupuncture can move out lid congestion. I’ve seen this quite a bit. So there’s a lot of natural things you can do to reduce the stye, support it by hydrating your eyes, using natural remedies on the eyelids to make sure there’s good circulation and good tear production and stay the course.
Sam Berne (21:42.284)
Okay, Sandy, I’m not sure prokara ridges on your eyes. Is it affecting your eyesight or your vision? Is there any, you know, is there deterioration in how you’re seeing? What’s your inflammation like in the eyes? What’s your eye pressure like? I would need more information before I can make a comment. But here’s the here’s the situation. If you’re not having any symptoms.
If you’re seeing things really well, then you do the proactive things like hydrating your eyes during the day, making sure you’re getting enough eye nutrients and I am all in on using, you know, using food as medicine to heal your eyes again, mostly plant-based rainbow diet antioxidants supporting your microbiome on a gut level.
These are things that are super important thyroid health, adrenal health, making sure you’re getting enough fats and oils, blue blocker protection. mean, these are things by being proactive. You are reducing the risk of eventually developing something that will explode into an eye disease. And then there’s the surprise. Oh my word of this come from well, a lot of times these disease processes
have been brewing for quite a while. And it’s just that now you’re you know, you’re going to the eye doctor and he or she discovers it or even you’re having some symptoms like cloudiness or haziness or eye pain or eye inflammation or high eye pressure. These things usually have been brewing for quite a while. So this is where if you follow my content
And you do the things I suggest and recommend and this even goes for the type of optical system. look through glasses contacts. You want to be careful that you don’t go into optical systems like progressive lenses or mono vision or just even an over correction in your prescription because these things over time are going to cause your eyes to go south.
Sam Berne (24:05.664)
All right, so Paula is asking, you’re making a comment, you’re asking your eye doctor to make glasses without a stigmatism correction. What would be something I can say to him as why I want a pair of glasses like this? I plan on saying I just want to experiment at home only. Well, sure, and you could say that you want a prescription without a stigmatism because you want to try to reverse the stigmatism and you’ve learned.
that by wearing a prescription that doesn’t have astigmatism, you’re reducing the reinforcement on what your astigmatism glasses are doing. And you have to assure your doctor that you’re going to only use these in non demanding and non threatening situations. And if you do that, you have a chance, you have a chance to get a pair of, you know, glasses.
without the astigmatism and you know, it’s going to feel weird when you put it on because what astigmatism glasses do is it warps your vision. It gives you a warp at distortion that you get used to and so when you get a non astigmatism prescription, you’re now looking through a lens that’s not warping the world but because you’ve been so used to the warp you’re going to go. This is weird, but it’s actually the way it’s supposed to be so.
As you continue to wear the non astigmatism glasses perceptually, you’re going to start to get used to the the the unwarping that the astigmatism is causing. Remember astigmatism is a twist in the eye. It also could be in a twist in the body. So getting some body work craniosacral roughing, you know, something that will unwind your body’s twist or asymmetry is a really good thing to do.
If you’re going to embark on the astigmatism journey of reduction. Now, another thing, and this came up today in our, in our class, there is an eye exercise that reduces astigmatism. And this is called the animal eye chart. You can Google it. It’s on my website and download the eye chart, print it out, follow the directions. It’s a stretching exercise, just like stretching your eye in a clock.
Sam Berne (26:30.348)
This will help release the muscles so that they they start working in a more balanced way. Remember, we’ve got six muscles that attached to the eyeball and in astigmatism those eye muscles are not working equally. Some of them are working more than the other which creates a misshape in the in the eye. This is what creates astigmatism. So by getting some body work and then not wearing the astigmatism glasses.
You release the twist in the body. You release the twist in the eyes. It can happen pretty quickly and you’ll start noticing that you see things very clearly with the non astigmatism glasses. So good for you. It definitely works and you know, I appreciate the question. Alright ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to call it a night. It’s been a pleasure to be with you and I will see you next week. Thanks again for your questions if.
I didn’t answer your question. Send it to hello at drsamburn.com and I’ll be very happy to answer your questions. All right. Have a great week everybody. Take care.
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