198. Dr. Bryce Appelbaum: Your Eyes Are Connected to Everything—Focus, Balance, Brain Health & Aging

What if your eyesight is 20/20—but your vision still isn't working the way it should? Dr. Bryce Appelbaum specializes in functional vision and the connection between the eyes and the brain. In this conversation, he explains why seeing clearly is only one piece of vision—and how the brain's ability to process what we see can influence reading, focus, coordination, balance, motion sickness, athletic performance, and everyday life. We also explore what hours of daily screen time may be doing to our visual system. Our eyes and brains weren't designed to spend all day focused on a screen inches from our faces, and Dr. Appelbaum explains how sustained near work can contribute to eye strain, headaches, fatigue, and visual stress—especially in children. In this episode, you'll learn: • The difference between eyesight and vision—and why 20/20 vision doesn't tell the whole story • How screen time may be affecting the eye-brain connection in both children and adults • Why reading difficulties, poor focus, clumsiness, and motion sickness can sometimes have a visual component • The connection between functional vision problems and symptoms associated with ADHD and dyslexia • How concussions and traumatic brain injuries can disrupt visual function • Why vision, balance, spatial awareness, and healthy aging are closely connected • Three simple vision exercises Dr. Appelbaum recommends for training focus, peripheral awareness, and eye movement We also discuss the 20-20-20 rule, functional vision evaluations, vision therapy and training, reading glasses, neuroplasticity, and practical ways to give your eyes a break in an increasingly screen-dominated world. If you spend hours every day staring at a phone or computer—or have a child growing up surrounded by screens—this conversation may completely change the way you think about protecting and training your vision. Learn more about Dr. Shah: Website: drshah.com https://drshah.com Clinic: next-health.com https://www.next-health.com/ Instagram: @extend_podcast and @darshanshahmd Learn more about Dr. Bryce Appelbaum: Website: myvisionfirst.com https://myvisionfirst.com/ Instagram: @drbryceappelbaum Thank you to our sponsors! Next Health Longevity Summit: Head to next-health.com/summit https://www.next-health.com/summit to get tickets to our first ever Next Health Longevity Summit happening September 12th at the Conrad Hotel Nashville! Timeline: Timeline, powered by Mitopure, just dropped in price. Check it out using the link shop.timeline.com/DRDARSHANSHAH https://shop.timeline.com/DRDARSHANSHAH for up to 20% off when you subscribe! IM8: Try IM8 with 30-day moneyback guarantee. Get 10% off your first order with code DRSHAH at check out im8health.com/drshah https://im8health.com/drshah

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Before we get started with this episode, I'd like to invite all of you to the first ever Next Health Longevity Summit, happening in Nashville, Tennessee, at the Conrad Hotel on Saturday, September 12th, 2026. This is an all-day summit where you're going to be hearing from some of the best speakers in longevity's medicine, including Dr. Vonda Wright, Dr. Luisa Nicola, many of the podcast guests that you've heard here on the Extend Podcast, and of course, I'm going to be there, curating the entire day. We also have incredible vendors coming, so you can try the latest technologies in health, wellness, and longevity. Go to next-health.com/summit and buy your ticket today. We only have 400 spots and

• 0:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  they're going quickly. That's next-health.com/summit. I look forward to seeing you all there. Welcome to Extend with me, Dr. Darshan Shah, a podcast dedicated to cutting-edge science, research, tools, and protocols designed to help you extend your health span. Having become one of the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21, and trained and board-certified at the Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board-certified surgeon and longevity expert. Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results when it comes to your health span. We are living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system, no longer focused on disease management, but achieving optimal health and vitality. Join me as I interview

• 1:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  world-renowned experts, offering you a step-by-step guide to proactively avoid disease, and most importantly, extend your health span.

• 1:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Welcome to Extend, the podcast dedicated to helping you live longer and healthier. Today, we're going to do a deep dive into a topic that impacts every aspect of our daily existence, but it's often misunderstood. It's the topic of your vision. I'm hosting Dr. Bryce Appelbaum. He's a leading neuro-optometrist and internationally-recognized authority in what's called functional vision and vision therapy. Dr. Appelbaum is board-certified by the College of Optometrists, and he's an adjunct clinical professor at the Southern College of Optometry. He's the founder and CEO of My Vision First, a private practice specializing in vision therapy and rehabilitation, and he started an online program called

• 2:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Screen Fit. Dr. Appelbaum has worked with hundreds of professional athletes across various sports, transforming raw talent into honed performance through the science of vision. He's also used his vision therapy to help people with diagnoses such as attention deficit disorder, and even dyslexia. Get ready to redefine what you thought you knew about your eyes. Dr. Appelbaum unpacks the critical distinction between eyesight and vision, and how optimizing your eye-brain connection can enhance your reading, learning, sports, and overall quality of life.

• 2:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Dr. Bryce Appelbaum, this is going to be such a fun conversation, something we've never talked about on the podcast, actually.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  Love that. Thank you for having me. Excited to be here.

• 2:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thanks for flying out and making this happen. This is so exciting. So, for those of you who don't know you that are listening to this podcast, Dr. Bryce Appelbaum practices in Washington DC, and he has a very interesting practice involving the eyes. So, tell us a little bit about your practice and what you do.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So, it's actually in Bethesda, Maryland, which is like 25 minutes outside DC, but I would say we're more of a practice for the brain than the eyes, because when we, you know, most, I'm an eye doctor by training and identify as a neuro-optometrist or a functional eye doctor, but I look at vision problems as brain problems, and really way more than just the ability to see and, you know, having eyesight corrected with glasses or contacts, more what does the brain do with all the information coming in through the eyes, and how do we improve performance by optimizing the eye-brain connection for reading, for learning, for sports, for driving, for all activities of daily life.

• 3:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow. And I think that's something like, most people don't normally think about, like, obviously, like, our eyes are connected to our brain, you know, and that's why they, that's why they work, because we can see, and that's as like, as far as it goes. And if you can't see, then you see an eye doctor like you to get your eyesight corrected, right? Either with glasses, or contacts, or laser, and that's as far as we really think about that connection.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  And I would say that's just where it starts, right? And we pick up where normal primary care, normal eye doctors leave off. So, you know, I say, I think there's a clear distinction between eyesight and vision that we have to just set, set the stage for. Eyesight is our ability to focus light clearly. So, eyesight is a symptom, and like you said, that's what glasses or contacts are for, but vision is entirely brain, and how does the brain gather information from the eyes, organize it, make sense of it, drive meaning, and then direct the appropriate action. And very often, eyesight is a symptom or a reflection of vision or of brain function. And people listening, whose prescriptions are increasing every year, especially as an adult, that's warning bells all around that there's a functional

• 5:02Speaker 01

  vision problem, causing adaptation, or dependence on what we're, the lenses we're in, needing something stronger to maintain that same clarity because of all the visual stress that's in our world that we're trying to navigate and make sense of.

• 5:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Ah, I see. So, the eyesight deteriorating is just a symptom of vision issues. Are there other symptoms of vision issues?

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And I think there's many other reasons why eyesight deteriorates, but I would say especially in today's world, where screen time is this new pandemic.

• 5:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, can't wait to dive into that with you.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I mean, it's causing stress that our eye-brain connection isn't equipped for. We're not meant to be staring at screens all day long. And so, the two options when we're under stress is to avoid, or to adapt. We know what avoidance looks like, but these adaptations to all the near demand, near stress we're under, is really the root cause of so much of our "prescription," in air quotes, changing, because it really means our focusing system, our eye-teaming system, our eye coordination systems are not functioning the way they're supposed to. So, to answer your question, symptoms, I would say, some of the simplest ones to recognize of a hidden functional vision problem, struggles with reading. So, skipping words, losing your place, words going into and out of focus, becoming blurry, double, not remembering what you're reading, getting to the end of

• 6:18Speaker 01

  one line and not knowing where the beginning of the next line is. And, you know, for adults, that can be using reading as a sleeping pill, because it's so taxing or fatiguing, or relying on audiobooks rather than reading with your eyes. For a child, that can show up as difficult, looking like they're not paying attention in the classroom, or avoiding reading, or having performance in school not even come close to reflecting intelligence or potential. And, you know, other areas that maybe people wouldn't recognize are vision-dependent, motion sickness, especially for somebody who's not as motion sick as a driver, but way more as a passenger when they're reading on a phone, we could unpack that, trouble catching a ball, bumping into walls, knocking over glasses of water, having a hard time spatial

• 7:02Speaker 01

  organizing a trunk, tripping over changes in elevation, not trusting what you're seeing. And that's something that for any brain at any age, we can train the eye-brain connection to be able to show up more securely in space, to understand where we are located in space in relation to other things, and to avoid struggling unnecessarily in so many areas of life.

• 7:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So, like, being a klutz and being clumsy could actually be a problem with this eye-brain connection?

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And if we think about tripping over our feet, or over change in elevation, or just not being secure in space, depth perception, our brain's ability to know where something is and anticipate where it will be with movement, well, no one's born with that. That's all developed through our life experiences, through the right sequencing of developmental milestones, and learning how to use both eyes together. If that's not learned well, you're gonna have a hard time learning how to ride a bike, you're gonna have a hard time catching balls, you're gonna identify, like you shared, as being a klutz or being clumsy, when in fact, it's often eye-brain-body integration is not fluid.

• 8:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, this takes the whole question of poor vision so much deeper, because, like I said before, I think most people just think about getting glasses if this is an issue, right? But there are other ways to look at this, and that's just one symptom, and one treatment algorithm for just one symptom, right?

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 8:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And, you know, just like everything in medicine, we just go for, what do we have a treatment for what symptom, and let's do it, right? But getting down to the root cause of what's actually going on is what you're doing.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  And this is such a parallel with your amazing work with functional medicine, right? Like, taking a proactive approach rather than a reactive approach, figuring out what's causing the unnecessary struggling, the symptoms, and then you address that root cause, wide-open playing field for the future. And as an eye doctor, I mean, I was trained, like all eye doctors, how to manage vision decline. And how to intervene when there's eye disease and to look at structure, which all are important, but what about function? And what can be done proactively to enhance and optimize vision? Especially when we know that there is neuroplasticity for every brain at every age, especially when it comes to vision. Yet I was taught in school that's not possible. And that's still being taught because the textbooks need to be rewritten.

• 9:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah. I was not taught in school anything about this. I mean, I think it was basically different optic neuritis and other optic nerve disorders as far as like, this is what can affect vision and that's it. And then it's not really like how your brain develops this eye-brain connection that was at any level of focus. So, you know, we already talked about screens as being one of the reasons that potentially this connection between what your eye is seeing and your brain interpreting it can become an issue, right? But what are some of the other things developmentally that can become problematic in fostering a strong eye-brain connection?

• 9:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, also problematic, I mean, there's so many developmental milestones now that many doctors are saying and specialists, oh, they're not even needed anymore. I mean, crawling has been removed from one of the clearest developmental patterns and protocols that's in place. And we often see kids who skip over crawling or walk too soon having fragile eye coordination and developing a lazy eye, emboipia, or an eye turns for business because they haven't developed the bilateral integration and the core foundation from which we develop vision from. And so the world goes from being static to dynamic and then all of a sudden you're not ready. But what's scary is the visual demands of life keep increasing every year of school and into the workplace and beyond. But often we can't keep up with the demands, especially if there's a gap

• 10:37Speaker 01

  between where we're operating and then where we could be. That gap just gets wider unless intervention is done.

• 10:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  So, you know, learning to read is super important. And we talked before about that being one of the most complex neurological tasks that we're asking a rapidly developing brain to engage with. But when you're struggling with learning to read, not only is school harder than it's supposed to be, but you start to internalize that and think you're you're different or not smart. And then you start to avoid it and then you rely on roundabout ways to gather information. But that can change the outcome of your life, right? When you're avoiding reading and there's so much that can be done to avoid a lot of those challenges and to reestablish function when it hasn't been learned naturally.

• 11:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right. I mean, it's such a, such a huge part of my focus right now in raising our kids is how much are they reading, right? Because kids just read a lot less right now because there's something much easier they can pick up and just watch like an iPad, right?

• 11:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, you wanna hear a crazy stat?

• 11:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  The average eight to 10 year old in America

• 11:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  spends six hours a day on screens.

• 11:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, that's absolutely true.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  And 58% of kids have their own device by the time they're four years old.

• 11:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  Like, we're not meant to be staring at these 2D devices inches from our face, blasting high energy light at us for hours on end

• 11:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  and taking in all the colors and brightness and contrast and stimuli. Our bodies are not prepared for that. And our eye-brain connection was developmentally in place to scan the horizon. For dinner and danger and explore through nature, we're not taking those same skills that are clashing against modern day demands. And it's causing a lot of challenges and problems for people, not just cognitively, emotionally and developmentally, but now visually as well, where we're not learning how to develop vision the way that it's intended to.

• 12:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And I think that's true for even adults. Like, how many times a day does an adult look out into the horizon or look far away from what's immediately in front of them?

• 12:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's, it's, it's gone down, I'm sure, very significantly since our caveman years, right?

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Have you noticed on the, on the way here at the airport, like, walking down with all the sensory overload and the lights and the brightness, the amount of people that are just walking with their phones glued to their faces?

• 12:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  I mean, we're, kids aren't even developing the interpersonal communication skills that are needed to maintain eye contact, to read facial expressions, because it's all being presented on this 2D device. But it's also, their world is being tunneled and constricted to this little box.

• 13:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, exactly, right. And you're, and I could imagine also, like, you're not being trained to use your peripheral vision as well anymore.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  Right, and periphery is what grounds us in space. And the normal fight or flight response with vision at least is that our pupils widen and we get stuck with this tunnel vision. So periphery collapses. And evolutionarily, that's to protect us for the saber-to-tiger coming at us, where you're blocking out all the noise and deciding, do I need to run or is this gonna be dinner? But that's the same stress response that's, that we're all experiencing on screens. Which means when we're at work all day, or when kids are reading on screens or just engaging with screens, their nervous system is under a fight or flight response, which means we're making critical decisions as adults for our families, for our profession, for our livelihood in a stressed state.

• 13:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  And what's so cool is you can train the eye-brain connection to have balanced central and peripheral processing and how to not, and to have the foundational skills necessary to handle screen time. But for most people, we don't get there naturally. We've got to do that, the work, just like we train our bodies and the muscle systems and all the other systems we're training. We can train our visual system to thrive in this world.

• 14:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, this is totally new information for me. So I'm excited to hear the how. But before we do this, I want to talk more about the, kind of like the why as well. So, you know, I think that raising children, right? I, I want to give them like the why can't I be on screens eight hours a day, six hours a day, right? And I'm curious, like, what's your rule around screens at home too? I'd love to know.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  And with three young kids, like, you know, anything we tell our kids not to do, they wanna do more, right?

• 14:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  And I think it for sure starts with the parents being, modeling the right type of behavior. If you're yelling at your kids not be on their, their screen and then you're on your screen all day long, like, that sends conflicting signals.

• 14:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  For sure. They tell me that all the time, like, well, you can't use your computer either. Like, I'm working, but they don't care. They don't know the difference.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  And I've tried, well, my brain's different and I know better and I've done the work and it's, they still don't listen.

• 15:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  They don't.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  So, my kids, so my, my rule is however much time you're on a screen, at least that much time, if not more, outside. And taking a ton of screen breaks, so never more than 20 minutes without a break for 20 seconds, looking something 20 feet away, but for them, without taking a break. So in my house, they, all three kids can earn two screen time experiences throughout the day, but they're only 15 minutes. And most importantly, they're wearing what we call digital performance lenses, which are glasses that nobody knows about, that has a very specific therapeutic prescription in there that changes the stress response to near, makes it easier for the inside and outside muscles of the eyes to work together. And with a high quality blue light filter as well, but this is a protective mechanism so that screens are less harmful.

• 15:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So wait a minute, what are these glasses called?

• 15:54Speaker 01

  We call them digital performance lenses.

• 15:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Digital performance lenses.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  But they're low plus, low magnification lenses. And we have about 10,000 data points to show what is the weakest amount that is the most beneficial to allow for balance between the eyes and the eye-brain connection. And for about 80% of people, it's a very specific prescription that is therapeutic, not compensatory, meaning it doesn't do the work for you. It doesn't make this, the, the image clear and then you become dependent on it. But it's almost like a spot if you're lifting weights. It ensures the right form is in place and that internal response to the near stress is different than it would have been. And for many kids, they need more than that, but at least from a protective standpoint, I mean, this is, these are game changers.

• 16:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So they, they wear these the entire time they're on the screen? And is this something adults can wear too?

• 16:41Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And so for, for anyone would benefit from this setup. Sometimes it has to be customized. And if you have refractive error prescription, there's some math involved and it's a shift. But it's basically making it so that the focusing system, the internal muscles of the eyes responsible for clarity, the accommodative system, is more like an old school camera lens that's on autofocus rather than being stuck on manual focus. And then ultimately, you can train the brain again to control that system fluidly. But this is a nice safety net that a lot of, a lot of kids and adults can, can benefit from.

• 17:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's fantastic. So, what does this work out practically for your kids at, you know, at home?

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  As far as number of hours on a screen, if they're taking a break every 20 minutes and going outside.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  So my, my kids will be the last one of all their friends to have cell phones.

• 17:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, same as mine, for sure.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  And we know better, right? They have their own tablets, but again, it's limited.

• 17:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yep.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  But rule of thumb for anybody listening, the bigger the screen, the farther away, the better in terms of vision, but also disengaging and allowing for flexibility in vision breaks. And so anyone on screens for any particular amount of time should be taking regular vision breaks. So we talked about the 2020 20 year old, but I think on top of that, getting natural light, ideally going outside, getting a movement break. Movement de-stresses our visual system and allows us to engage our periphery, which again, grounds us in space. So for, for my kids, I mean, they're just, they're not gonna have gaming systems like all their friends. They're not gonna be just buried on YouTube all day long. And at first it was a fight and now they realize they're not winning this fight.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  So it's something that, unfortunately, my wife is on board because having a united front, you know, makes a big difference for your kids.

• 18:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, exactly. They're always pushing the limits with this. So it sounds like they probably are on screens maybe like an hour or two a day at the most, right?

• 18:32Speaker 01

  Oh, way less. So they're on, at least at home when we can control.

• 18:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Never more than 30 minutes for near screens.

• 18:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yep.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  And we do allow them to earn TV time, but it's 30, 45 minutes at most. And my kids are, I'm blessed that they're all very much into sports and into dance. And they've all done vision performance training, so they can almost get an advantage in those areas. But the balance is really what's key. You know, balancing movement and ability for vision to guide movement like it's intended to with outdoor time, with natural light, that then, you know, contracts against the artificial junk light inside and the screens that we're trying to avoid as much as we can.

• 19:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's awesome. I wanted to talk about a few other things that, you know, you also work with, specifically attention deficit disorder. Let's talk about like, how does a visual system participate in this disorder? Like, why do more people than you be thinking about the visual system if they've received a diagnosis of attention deficit? And is it the same for children as adults?

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Love that we're bringing this up. So. Any change in eye movement is a change in attention, whether it's voluntary and voluntary. And if you cannot control your eyes and their ability to focus, then you cannot control your mind and its ability to focus. And unfortunately, we are in a reactive medical system where labels and often misdiagnoses are slapped on behaviors without again, addressing the root cause. But so many of the symptoms and behaviors of ADHD and dyslexia and other learning disabilities are so similar to those of hidden functional vision problems. Fifteen of the 18 most commonly associated symptoms on the diagnostic criteria for ADHD also are the same symptoms of functional vision problems. And I always joke and say it's not like there's a blood test that says you have ADHD.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  It's based off of how you're showing up and behavior patterns. And I'm not, ADHD does exist, but it's really a brain that isn't well regulated and that often doesn't feel safe in space. And so with ADHD, I mean, we have hundreds, if not thousands of patients to go through treatment, identified as being, as having ADHD, and then finished treatment, no longer needing medication. They can focus, there's no more brain fog and there's clarity. We have many who still rely on medication, but they can function way better. And then there are a few cases where ADHD isn't related to vision. But again, vision is a direct reflection of brain function. So if your brain is overwhelmed and if your brain is on overdrive trying to align point and focus,

• 21:06Speaker 01

  it's going to be a lot harder to attend. And especially somebody listening who feels like their focus or their attention or their child's is worse with a sustained near visual concentration task, desk work, reading, writing. That's a clear warning sign that there's probably some sort of functional vision problem associated. But I would say, in my opinion, ADHD is an incomplete diagnosis without addressing or ruling out vision first. And that's not eyesight. That's again, how the brain is using vision and organizing and processing what's coming in through the eyes.

• 21:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So interesting. So if, you know, there's probably thousands of people listening to this right now who has a child diagnosed with ADHD or they have the diagnosis themselves as an adult, how do they find someone to have this mindset around the ADHD and do a little bit deeper dive into potentially even offering a performance visual training?

• 22:00Speaker 01

  So I think for most parents, it really, you gotta trust your gut instinct. And if you can tell that your child is super smart, but not achieving at the level that they deserve or that they're capable of, or there's different behavior patterns with different tasks or different experiences. If it doesn't all add up, there's something else involved and it's likely vision, our dominant sensory system, not guiding and leading like it's supposed to. So this is way more than just a normal eye exam. You want to do a functional vision evaluation and you ideally want to see somebody who's board certified in vision development and rehabilitation. There's not many of us, but there absolutely are some of us. And there's a wonderful organization, COVD, the College of Optometrists in Vision Development, who board certified doctors in the space.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  You can type in your address. It'll give you a search radius based off your address of practitioners nearby. From an evaluation standpoint, you go to somebody board certified, you're gonna clearly get a good sense of exactly where things are. Treatment's a little different because there's not a whole lot of consistency yet on what this treatment looks like. But at least to know, okay, my intuition was right. My child's got an eye coordination problem. Maybe a convergence insufficiency. And then they're unable to align point and focus their eyes up close. Or maybe they have a tracking problem or a focusing problem or a visual processing problem. And then at least that is going to be contributing to the inattention and in many cases, contributing massively. And this can be so empowering for a child or an adult, turning a disability, a weakness into a strength.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  And that can really be such motivation moving forward when you take something that was really hard and turn it into something that you're pretty good at.

• 23:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Changes the kid's entire mindset, probably.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  And people avoid things that are hard for us, like we talked about. Like if reading is hard, you're gonna try and find other things to do and not put yourself through that unnecessary struggling.

• 23:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hi, Dr. Shaw here. I want to take a minute to talk to you about cellular health. So in my clinics, I've actually seen 30-year-old people with cells that look like they're pushing retirement. And I've also seen 60-year-olds with cells that look like they're 40 years old. So what's the difference? It's really about how fast their telomeres are breaking down. Your cells, you see, are like phones and they have limited cellphone battery. Poor sleep, stress, processed foods, all of these things can drain that battery way faster than it should. So this is the reason why I partnered with IM8. IM8 powers that cellular battery. It's not just another multivitamin. It's a comprehensive 92 ingredient formula designed specifically for cellular health and longevity.

• 24:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

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• 25:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You don't have to be one of them. Try IM8. I actually have a discount secured for you if you go to drshah.com/Im8 or go to im8health.com/discount/drsaw and you can get 20% off with my discount code, drshaw. You can also find the link below.

• 25:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Can we talk a little bit about something else around reading, dyslexia?

• 25:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  How is that involved in this model?

• 25:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, so dyslexia often is not dyslexia. And even the people who say dyslexia is a language-based processing disorder, decoding language starts with the eyes. So a child who mistakes the word was for saw or is writing a P, a D, a Q, or a B, which are all the same symbol in different orientations, often that's a visual processing problem and the brain not being able to organize space and active reading. And no one's born with the ability to read, right? It's all developed through our life experiences. I've yet to find a patient out of tens of thousands who we couldn't improve their reading ability. So again, ruling out functional vision problems

• 26:33Speaker 01

  should be the first thing we do when reading is difficult. And I would say there's a lot more awareness being raised now on what can make reading challenging. But typically, when a parent notices their child struggling with reading, there's neuropsychological evaluation that's put in place. There's learning specialists. There's all these other supports that are being offered. But you're gonna keep hitting a wall in terms of performance until your eyes can align, point and focus, and track the way they're supposed to so the brain can process that information fluidly.

• 27:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So interesting. And then, you know, I also think about the other kind of big bucket of vision problems, which is just getting old, right? Like I think, you know, myself, you know, after, it's like, it was like two days after my 40th birthday, I was like, what, I can't read anything. I need to get reading glasses. Yeah, exactly. My arms aren't long enough anymore. And it just kept getting worse and worse to the point where I needed reading glasses, which then turned into surgical correction with lens implants, et cetera. And so I kind of went through the whole, you know, the whole thing. And then I heard from a friend of mine that he was going through the same thing as well, you know, getting older, not able to read. And he went through vision training and he ended up never needing surgery, never doing anything.

• 27:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And I was like, why didn't you tell me about this earlier? So, yeah, I mean, like, talk to me about this.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  And this is gonna raise a lot of eyebrows, especially for the practitioners listening. So there's age-related changes that happen to everybody. The lens inside of our eye becomes hardened. The muscles and fibers controlling that lens become more rigid and less flexible. And then like you described, you know, the drill in your 40s, you blow out the candles and all of a sudden arms aren't long enough and you gotta do something. That's the equivalent of, and the people who grabbed the over the counter readers, the first chance they get, that's the equivalent of saying, my knee hurts, I'm gonna jump into a wheelchair. You're not using the system. And the whole, if you use it, if you don't use it, you lose it mentality applies here. Anybody can prolong the need for reading glasses, doing the right type of work. And when you train your focusing system with flexibility, with stamina, with the right work,

• 28:40Speaker 01

  right motivation, right compliance, you can actually kick that can way, way far down the road. My wife at 42, all of a sudden, literally on her birthday, was like, Bryce, I can't read the back of the medicine bottle, do something. And we put her through 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. But just like she exercises and strengthens the rest of her body, she does the same with her visual system every single day. And so I would have said, pre-COVID, seven years ago, what we're talking about now is impossible. That's what we learned in school. There's no way to do anything about it. And I can confidently say now that we have incredible success, especially the people

• 29:24Speaker 01

  who fly in for treatment for our intensive bootcamp, becoming less dependent on reading glasses, oftentimes reversing a lot of those changes, not even needing glasses. But it requires very specific protocols. And once that's in place, if you don't do anything about it, then age is going to go up, is going to go against you. So you have, that's the one system or the one problem with presbyopia that you have to maintain and keep doing the work.

• 29:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  And for people who, that's not important to them, or they're not motivated, that's not for you. But if it's, if that's the opposite, I mean, we can age gracefully and vision doesn't have to decline and cognition doesn't have to decline, even though both of those happen, that's not normal, that's just very common.

• 30:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  So this is the type of thing that we're really raising a lot of awareness around. And for the doctors who say vision exercises don't work, they're the same people saying normal exercise doesn't work, right? You gotta know what to do, you gotta do it, and you have to have the right mindset. So somebody trying to lose 100 pounds by doing 100 jumping jacks, that's not going to move the needle. But doing the right type of work and being guided by somebody who's board certified, knows what they're doing and not just following what's on the internet, there's clear protocols and paths to take where you can see the changes and the proof is in the pudding.

• 30:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And just like your analogy about muscle loss too, it's like, you know, as you age, you have to be more, more intentfully, is that a word, intentfully?

• 30:49Speaker 01

  Let's make it one.

• 30:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly. You have to, with great intent, train your muscle, otherwise you will lose it at a much quicker rate than when you're in your twenties, for example. It's the same thing with your eyes. You have to maintain the training in order to, in order to maintain the vision, is what you're saying.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  Sarkopenia as you age, right? You need to eat more protein, you need to focus on strength and muscle, even though that's important when you're younger, it's that much more important as you age. And I would say the same applies to vision, if not more so, because as we age, we become, we move less, right? And we do less and our world becomes more sedentary, which then allows the functional visual skills to become locked up and tunneled. And then that's just going to exacerbate the problem unless you do something about it.

• 31:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah. You know, you mentioned a second ago about neurodegenerative changes and even like Alzheimer's. What you're talking about with vision and our interpretation of what we're seeing tied into neurodegenerative disease?

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And especially with dementia and Alzheimer's. I mean, some of the earliest signs are spatial localization problems and people remembering where they, forgetting where they parked their car or being disoriented in space. Not only can we measure depth perception, we can actually train depth perception. And there's such a high correlation with cognitive decline and visual processing and visual decline, along with auditory issues, right? I mean, if we can get our brain to filter all of the sensory input coming in more fluidly, more efficiently, you can function better for longer. And, you know, there's even structural changes within the eye, within the lens of the eye

• 32:28Speaker 01

  and certain layers of the retina of the eye that have very specific changes that mirror many of the changes seen with Alzheimer's even. And that's something that there is research and there's a lot more coming out on that. But vision is, and the eyes are really the first window into brain function declining, especially with something like Alzheimer's.

• 32:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hmm. So you're saying that training your vision could be part of the solution to avoiding or delaying Alzheimer's disease?

• 32:55Speaker 01

  And that can be, should be. And 100%, I mean, we have patients who, early onset Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and certain scary diagnoses that can significantly improve function. And maybe there's still, you know, decades of, of poor choices with nutrition and with environment and supplementation, things like that. But we can at least allow function to stay steady for longer, in many cases even improve, even though other aspects of structure are declining.

• 33:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Interesting. So, you know, I think about some of our patients that we have, we do genetic testing on everybody. And when someone gets the diagnosis of being APOE4 positive, either with one or two alleles of it, it's a very scary thing. And we always tell them like, don't worry, this does not mean you're definitely going to get Alzheimer's, but you are at increased risk. So we have to start doing everything right. And, you know, that involves, like you said, cleaning up your diet and exercising. But now I would love to even, you know, talk about eye training as being a potential part of the solution. And it sounds like, from what you're saying, it could be an important part of the solution.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And I look at vision therapy, vision training, or what we call vision performance training, which is more, more of a methodology and a more of a kind of comprehensive holistic approach that incorporates movement and balance and cognition and vestibular input into the vision work, because vision doesn't operate in isolation of these. Think of it as using the eyes as joysticks to tap into the brain, to rewire the software to change how we're using vision. And it's arranging the conditions to raise to somebody's awareness how they're functioning, what their eyes are doing, to then learn how to self-correct, self-monitor, and learn what it feels like, what it looks like in the depth that ensues when both eyes are pointing and acting like they're in the same place and the brain's turning on to that information, and then recognizing how to keep that as we're adding movement and as we're adding

• 34:40Speaker 01

  balance and thinking tasks. Because the more work that's done and the more integrative the work is, the more it becomes a part of that person. And I used to say everyone would benefit from vision training, but not everybody needs it. I can't say that anymore, especially with this digital world where everybody needs this. And I can confidently say in the next handful of years, training vision is going to be the new frontier with longevity, anti-aging, and it's already becoming that with biohacking.

• 35:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I love it. Yep. The listeners get to hear it here first.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  100%.

• 35:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Let's talk about a little bit, you know, about something a lot of people are suffering with is vertigo and, you know, the resulting headaches and migraines that occur and even like perfectly related to that, like motion sickness. Does visual training have a role in those?

• 35:29Speaker 01

  Big time. So often, there's a visual component to motion sickness and vertigo and disequilibrium. When most of us kind of think, oh, it must be inner ear related, very often it's the visual system and the vestibular system sending conflicting signals that the brain can't interpret.

• 35:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  So the vestibular system, I describe as like our internal GPS system and the roadmap of life that lets us know which way is up and down and left and right, allows us to orient ourselves in space. Somebody who's, when they're driving, way less, way less motion sick than when they're a passenger in the backseat, they're allowing motor planning to take place and able to integrate central and peripheral processing more easily. But when we're in the backseat, we're on a tablet or phone, we're getting the signals from the eye movements required to read or be on a phone that we're safe and we're static, yet our vestibular system is activated and we're in motion. And all of a sudden, you get in this fight or flight response, disequilibrium emerges, and then, you know the drill, you want to get out of, out of the situation. Vertigo and certain migraines should be diagnoses of exclusion, right?

• 36:31Speaker 01

  And so often, I mean, motion sickness is so much more prevalent now than it's ever been. And I would say about, at least from our data, 80 to 85% of motion sickness has a visual component that's treatable. And that is a overwhelming majority. And so with the right feedback of priming the system to regulate the sensory input from these two systems, we can retrain our brain to change how we're using vision, but to establish order for a lot of this disorder. So there's no longer confusion up here and then chaos in life.

• 37:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, interesting. And then, you know, the other kind of bucket I think we should talk about too is concussions and traumatic brain injury. You know, a lot of kids are getting concussions now sadly, you know, whether it be in football, soccer, whatever have you. And there's definitely a visual component to every concussion that occurs as well.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And I love that you bring this up because most people hear the word concussion and assume, oh, that's just for professional athletes, right? National Institutes of Health, a mile down the road from my office in Bethesda, Maryland, says 28% of Americans have had at least one in their lifetime. And most people don't realize that their present day symptoms or struggles can be tied to or connected to this prior accident. So maybe it's you hit your head on the countertop, at a playground accident when you're younger, but you never got the eye-brain connection checked. Vision is represented in every lobe of our brain. And more, there's more areas of our brain dedicated to processing vision than all of the other senses combined. And two thirds of the neurons entering our brain come from our eyes.

• 38:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Really?

• 38:02Speaker 01

  You cannot have a head injury and not have vision be impacted, it's just a matter of at what level. And so the common symptoms, the sensory overload in crowded environments like the mall or grocery store, the light sensitivity, the strained eye on screen, strained eyes on screens are so common. And I'm a firm believer that with the right motivation, right compliance, and of course the right work, you can return back to previous level of function, maybe even to a better place with pretty much every concussion. And my practice now, without even trying, is over 50% concussion and TBI related. And I can, excited to share now, we're actually doing a clinical trial on vision performance

• 38:42Speaker 01

  training with certain stem cell protocols actually speeding up recovery, that's the hypothesis compared to without. But we now have data, we have studies, we have research about the visual consequences of a concussion and that vision therapy or vision training can drastically speed up the recovery and the return to learn, return to play and return to life that we also desperately need.

• 39:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow. Stem cells are being given how in conjunction with this?

• 39:10Speaker 01

  Uh, in pill form from a company, do you know Stem Regen?

• 39:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Very well, yeah.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  So we are partnering with Christian Drapeau and I'm really excited because it's hard for most people to fly around the world and get very expensive treatment that's more localized and this is more diffuse. So we'll see what happens. I mean, we've had incredible success with MTBI and with stroke and concussion, but I always want to do, want to search for the fastest and best ways to increase quality care and get people back to where they deserve to be faster.

• 39:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. To your point, there's not many of you guys around. So yeah, I'm sure people listening to this are like on that website, uh, COVD, right? You said?

• 39:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Finding a practitioner that probably doesn't have one for miles and miles. So I can't wait to dive into with you, like, how can people access this kind of treatment? But before we do that, say I'm a patient that had concussion, having visual symptoms or vertigo, or even like dyslexia. And I come to your office, I'm like, I heard the podcast. I, I know you can help me with this in not, in a way that I didn't really think of before. How do you work me up?

• 40:14Speaker 01

  So testing is so crucial and the whole test, don't guess matters for everything. Our functional vision evaluations are two hours long and we're looking at everything. Tracking, focusing, depth perception, eye teaming, visual processing, but we're looking at things in really unique ways. So taking the tracking system, for instance, we'll evaluate it in three dimensional space, we'll evaluate in 2D space. We've been evaluated on a screen with eye tracking software that'll show as you're reading a paragraph, here's the percentage of time your right eye's on target. Here's the percentage of time your left eye's on target. Here's how many eye movements you're making. Here's how many times your eyes are backtracking and then do a similar analysis following a moving target or jumping from one place to another. So we can kind of lift up the hood and see exactly how the brain

• 40:56Speaker 01

  is functioning. And then treatment needs to be customized for best outcomes. And so we have our first session of treatment based off of the testing.

• 41:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, okay.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  And then everything else is based off of the patient, the responses and how hard or how we're able to push them. The model of my practice is we have doctors working with patients and in the treatment rooms at all times because it allows really good quality control, but you want the person who knows the most about all this there to adjust the level of demand so that higher level thinking can be tapped into rather than just getting better at an exercise.

• 41:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  But all customized and then, you know, office-based learning with home reinforcement. We rely on a lot of tech like virtual reality, augmented reality, eye tracking software, also with a lot of really low tech things, but almost like a cross-training approach. Where learning could take place in the real world, a virtual world, and in a 2D world so that we can simulate how we're using vision in life, but in the treatment rooms. And then I also recognize most people don't have access to somebody like me or to come to us. And so we have an online vision training program called Screen Fit, which is designed to teach the specific visual skills and abilities needed for life. And we've had thousands of people go through it, as young as five, as old as 89, with 100% of people who have

• 42:10Speaker 01

  finished the first course, seeing a reduction in symptoms, which is crazy.

• 42:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's crazy.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  And it's kind of the equivalent of like body weight work at home instead of going to a gym. It is better results faster going to the gym. It is better results faster going to somebody who knows what they're doing in office.

• 42:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  But not everybody can access that. So this has been a great way to just make this more accessible for people.

• 42:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Screenfit.com?

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 42:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 42:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

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• 43:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  up with my kids. So if you are looking to support your body and want to feel younger from the inside out, my friends at Timeline are offering you a 10% discount on your first order. Go to timeline.com/drsah to get started. That's timeline.com/drsah. Your future self will thank you.

• 43:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Take me through the experience of like being in your office. What does one of these sessions look like? Like, what are we doing?

• 43:45Speaker 01

  So we know no matter how great our treatment is, if it's not fun, especially for a child that don't want to come back. So our model is we are doing, we're doing about between four and six different vision procedures and always tapping into the focusing system, the accommodative system. So that could look like somebody's doing a near task with different lens flippers where one side of the lens asks them to stimulate their focus, the other side asks them to relax their focus and we're having them flip back and forth between two different sides for X amount of time. We'll always do work on the tracking and ocular motor control system. So that could be pressing as many lights that flash in a certain amount of time and then writing their score down, but we can set it up so that only one eye

• 44:29Speaker 01

  sees certain lights on one side, the other eye sees certain lights on the other side and we can manipulate the world to match where they're operating and then guide them to where they need to be. We always do binocular activities every session, starting from the beginning, which is kind of against a lot of what the old school vision therapy, vision training, uh, fathers and mothers of this space, you know, preached because we really need the feedback of how to balance both eyes input from the brain and when depth is tapped into, how to reproduce that. And when we lose depth, how to be able to pull it back. And then we do a lot of work also on visual thinking and visual processing. So our work is about, sessions are just under an hour, so about 50 minutes long, but then it's kind

• 45:11Speaker 01

  of like going to PT. You show up for your sessions, you do stuff at home, the more you practice, the faster you see changes. We work with some really complicated patients. I mean, we have people with strabismus or with eye turns, learn how to straighten their eyes as an alternative to surgery.

• 45:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  We do a lot of amblyopia work where that's the medical term for lazy eye. And the old school treatment, which is still preached by pretty much every eye doctor, is eye patching.

• 45:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  And the theory behind that is there's a good eye, there's a bad eye, cover up the good eyes, the bad eye has to work. But we now have the research to show and prove what we've known forever in this specialty, that amblyopia is a two eye problem showing up in one eye and it's a brain problem showing up through the eyes. So if you address on a brain basis, very different outcomes. And you're already taking a fragile eye coordination system and asking it to then not function by covering an eye.

• 46:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  Much, and not even, you know, to mention the emotional toll that takes, especially for a child going through life with an eye patch on. There's such greater outcomes with binocular work for amblyopia. And then we see a lot of stroke, a lot of brain injury. We also see a ton of professional athletes and people who just want to get advantage with vision. So I'm a firm believer, everybody's visual skills and abilities can be improved. It's a matter of whether improving them does anything to improve life, but training that sensory system can allow for such better outcomes, more consistency with play, with life, and also can open up so many doors in terms of achieving at your potential when you've eliminated the roadblocks that are preventing that.

• 46:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. Wow. And so people that come to you and then spend like an hour doing this training with you. And then I think some people come to you for like extended periods of time, like they'll come and do like a week bootcamp as well, right?

• 46:58Speaker 01

  So we do, every week we see people from all around the world who come in for this intensive program. It's a three-month program that starts with five days in office and we have a bunch of mutual friends who we've worked with and so cool to hear the stories of what can be accomplished when there's more opportunity for learning and less time between the learning, the brain has to adapt and has to learn. Um, and so those, you know, we see, I think this week alone, we've got somebody from Saudi Arabia, the UK and Canada with us. And then for our local patients, you know, we prescribe a specific number of sessions and then they're coming in twice a week or more or less within home reinforcement. But when people are local, this bootcamp approach for many conditions can achieve

• 47:42Speaker 01

  way higher levels of, of improvement in terms of what we're accomplishing.

• 47:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Awesome. And then?

• 47:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  These same people I'm sure are going home and doing Screen Fit, is that right? When they're at home using the Screen Fit program?

• 47:54Speaker 01

  So, Screen Fit really is intended for people who don't have access to this work.

• 47:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, okay.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  So, when we've worked with somebody for most conditions, other than the presbyopia we talked about, once the brain has been rewired, once the maladaptations are eliminated as options and you're using your brain the way in which it's wired, you really don't need to do a whole lot of maintenance. And that's assuming you finish the work and things are automatic, unconscious and efficient, then it's yours to keep. But if you only do a little bit, then yes, you need to maintain it. But Screen Fit, we usually, it can be a maintenance program for somebody who wants to keep up what they're doing, but it's specific exercises that you can bring to life at a stoplight, in the bathroom, at a sports event, and then they're washing with your child's. And they're simple exercises that can have profound impacts with the right sequencing and work that goes with it.

• 48:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it. Yeah, you know, one of the things that I was taught a long time ago was when you're in front of your computer, every 20 minutes or so, just look up and look out the window and focus on something far away, right?

• 48:51Speaker 01

  Huge.

• 48:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  And, you know, there's even something like eye pushups, which we talked about, can help maintain better flexibility with time. But taking those vision breaks and diverging your eyes, disengaging, having panoramic viewing, looking out a window, like you shared, that is so key for performance being more consistent with time. And those of us who are on screens for 10, 12 hours a day, you're really not looking up, your visual system is locked in. And that tension over time, if you're trying to get buffed, that's a good thing, but for the visual system, you don't want tension over time. That's what contributes to headaches, eye strain, brain fog, decreased productivity throughout the day, and reaching for that third or fourth cup of coffee when coffee's not going to do as much as when we can actually attack that eye-brain connection.

• 49:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So, is there like a protocol for the people listening to this podcast that they can do just simple things that they can do every day, or maybe a few times a day that can help protect their vision and specifically their vision and brain connection to help them maintain good vision for the rest of their life? You know, not necessarily treating anything, but just a good maintenance protocol, okay? Give us something like that?

• 50:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, I'd say let's have it be a four-pronged approach.

• 50:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  So, nutrition, and you know more about nutrition than most people, but you know, the certain, whatever you're eating and putting in your body in terms of instructions to function that's ideal for brain health, that's going to be good for eye health. Supplements, also important, lifestyle modification is important, good quality sleep in there as well, so you can rest and recover, but then training eye-brain connection. So, let's do a, should we do a top three exercise?

• 50:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Let's do a top three.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  So, top three, let's do them together. So, first one, eye pushups.

• 50:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  So, cover up an eye with one hand, and then with the other hand, give a thumbs up like you're giving somebody a thumbs up. You want to look at the nail on your finger, and then you're going to slowly bring that nail towards you until it gets a little blurry. And when it gets a little blurry, stop, look really hard, try and make it clear, think about stimulating your focusing system. You'll notice the pupil gets really small, lock it in for five seconds, and then you're going to look out into the distance as far away as you can for five seconds. You're going to relax your focus, look soft, think about panoramic viewing, diverging your eyes, and back at your thumb for five seconds, back in the distance for five seconds. So, this is a gross stimulation-relaxation, stimulation-relaxation of the focusing system. You want to do it the same amount of time, right eye, left eye. Many people listening will recognize one of the eyes can hold the thumb a little closer than the other, which means under two eye conditions, which is how we go through life,

• 51:20Speaker 01

  your brain is actually focusing your eyes in slightly different planes, because it's likely too hard to focus them at the same plane because of a binocular vision dysfunction or binocular rivalry. So, you do this every day, you'll notice that that thumb can get closer, and even holding, being able to get your thumb two millimeters closer in a week. Millimeters add up to centimeters, centimeters add up to inches, inches add up to much more. You do this every day, you literally will not need stronger reading glasses.

• 51:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  Many people even get by with maybe a weaker lens, and some people get rid of them altogether. And again, if you don't do it every day, it's not going to stay that way, you're not going to see the benefits. And so, that's a really profound one that can help pretty much everybody for stamina and flexibility of the focusing system. Next one, I would say peripheral pointing is wonderful. So, this is a great way to access periphery like we talked about, which can ground us in space. So, with this, you want to look straight ahead, pick something right in front of you, don't move your eyes away from that, and then you're going to notice something off to the side, again, without moving your eye there, and then you want to point to where you see what it is you're looking at. And when you're pointing at it, when you're ready, make the eye movement over and see how accurate you are. If you're right on the money, great, bring it down, go farther out. If you're off, then try and re-fixate and come back.

• 52:31Speaker 01

  And so, you want to do it to the left, to the right, to the diagonals, you're essentially painting and opening up your periphery. And I've had patients say that being able to access periphery, finding that light switch that you can find with peripheral pointing, has literally saved their life.

• 52:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hmm.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  And if you think about driving into a tunnel or over a bridge, and all of a sudden you're aware of what you're not aware of, and you become tunneled in, and it becomes really scary and not safe, that's the normal stress response, but we can pull ourselves out of that by accessing our periphery.

• 52:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  And periphery is really the key to being able to localize what's in front of you centrally. You can do this on a walk, where you notice the house to the left, the mailbox to the right, but without intention, you can't see them both at the same time. So, that's a really good exercise to do.

• 53:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Nice.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  And you can do it one eye at a time, but if you do it with both eyes, it's a little bit easier.

• 53:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  And then the third one, let's say eye stretches. So, cover up an eye, you're going to look as far up to the ceiling as you can, hold it for five seconds, as far down the floor as you can, hold it for five seconds, all the way to the left, to the right, and then diagonals, up and left, up and right, down and left, down and right, and that wasn't five seconds, but you want to do five seconds on each?

• 53:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 53:38Speaker 01

  Same thing, right eye, left eye. All three of these really help regulate your nervous system through vision, but are simple habits that you really don't have too many excuses to not be able to do unless it's not important to you. A lot of the athletes we work with have pre-game rituals, that they do specific vision exercises for them to prime their system to achieve. We have a lot of patients before the workday or in between Zoom calls do some of these. And it's just taking that first step across the start line, and then when you start to notice, oh, well, maybe my headaches are a little better, maybe I'm less strained, or things are a little bit clearer, hopefully that gives enough momentum to look into this further, to recognize so much can be unlocked in terms of performance and potential when

• 54:22Speaker 01

  we really tap into vision and get it to be that dominant sense that it's supposed to be.

• 54:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I love this. This is so fantastic. It sounds like you can do this in like five minutes a day.

• 54:30Speaker 01

  I mean, even two minutes a day is better than nothing.

• 54:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  Ideally, like, yeah, five, six minutes a day would be awesome.

• 54:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, no, this is fantastic. And I also think that, you know, the thing we talked about earlier, every 20 to 30 minutes is taking a break and focusing out somewhere else and...

• 54:44Speaker 01

  And set a timer, and if you can, get your screen near a window like yours, so you can actually look out and look into the distance and come back. I mean, that's something that much more intention has to be put behind the visual ergonomics for life.

• 54:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And you get the side benefit of just reducing stress, and maybe you take a little walk and do a quick exercise snack in at the same time, right?

• 55:07Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And if you're really wanting to be proactive, get some air squats in and some pushups. And, you know, it's, for people who say it's disruptive, you take a certain chunk of time and break it up into small intervals, you're going to perform better for longer than if you're just locked up for that extended period of time.

• 55:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right, absolutely. I think also it reduces fatigue as you're working and it improves your focus as well. So, this is all good stuff, it's all beneficial for your long-term vision, for your eye health, your stress levels, all of it, so...

• 55:38Speaker 01

  And this can influence circadian rhythms and hormones and so many aspects of stress and vision. And they all say the eyes are the window to the soul, but vision really should be tying together all the other sensory input from all the other systems, but allowing us to show up in life and in space at our full, full potential.

• 55:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And I think also the compounding benefits of maintaining good vision, you know, one of the biggest reasons people deteriorate quickly when they get old is they fall down, right?

• 56:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  They've lost that spatial perception, they've lost their balance, and their bones are also brittle at the same time, and they break a hip and they end up in the hospital.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  And then it's so downhill from there.

• 56:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, it's completely downhill.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  I mean, this is, if you're not trusting what you're seeing, it becomes really hard to navigate through space, and so many falls as we get older are avoidable, and we can prevent the avoidable ones when you can step off a curb and know exactly where that depth is, and when your visual midline is coincident with your body midline, and even just like hesitancy over escalators or stairs, or not seeing the car person coming in from the side because you're walking around like this. I mean, think about even the longevity that you can tap into when you're not going downhill because of something catastrophic that happened.

• 56:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right, right. Yeah, so many benefits, I love this. Well, this was an incredible episode. I, you know, have so many great takeaways from this, and it's such a new topic too, so incredibly happy to have you join us here, and I'd love for my audience to know where they can learn more from you, because I'm sure there's a lot more to this.

• 57:12Speaker 01

  And so grateful for you bringing this conversation, not just to your community, but to the world, because this is a much-needed conversation. So, thank you.

• 57:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, of course.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  So, practice is MyVisionFirst, MyVisionFirst.com, that's our brick and mortar and kind of houses all that we're doing. We talked about ScreenFit.com, I think we're going to give your audience, if you're cool with it, a big discount.

• 57:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, wow.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  We use Dr. Shaw.

• 57:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 57:34Speaker 01

  And we give 40% off, so $200 off, so it makes it almost like there's not much of an excuse to not do it.

• 57:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 57:40Speaker 01

  And then I would say, we're on social media, Instagram is probably our best resource, and it's Dr. Bryce Appelbaum, but my ancestors wanted to make life really hard for us, so Appelbaum is spelled A-P-P-E-L, not like the fruit L-E, but you'll find us if you go on there.

• 57:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, oh, wow, thank you, thank you. This has been fantastic, and we'll link to all of those in the show notes for the listeners, and we look forward to having you back on another time in the future.

• 58:03Speaker 01

  I love it, appreciate the conversation.

• 58:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. Please remember to subscribe if you liked this episode, and give us a good review, and share a link with your friends. It really helps us support all of our efforts. I also want to remind you that the information shared on this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Please consult with your healthcare provider or physician before making any decisions or taking any action based on what you hear today, especially if you have any underlying health conditions or on any medications. Your doctor knows your personal health situation the best, and it's always important to seek their guidance.