BITESIZE | How to Train Your Eyes & Rewire Your Brain for Better Focus & Less Stress | Dr Bryce Appelbaum #676

When we think about improving our health, we often think about changing our diet, increasing how much we move, improving the quality of our sleep and lowering stress, but how many of us think about ‘working’ on our vision? Every day, many of us experience symptoms like brain fog, fatigue, headaches or poor concentration – and never realise that our eyes might be playing a central role. In today’s Bitesize, pioneering neuro-optometrist Dr Bryce Appelbaum explains why our visual system is about far more than simply how well we can see. Many of us don’t realise just how much our vision influences how we think, feel and perform. We explore the surprising connection between vision and stress, and Bryce shares some simple, practical exercises we can all use today to better support our visual system and our wider health. Show notes and the full podcast are available at ⁠https://drchatterjee.com/576⁠ Thanks to our sponsor ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://drinkag1.com/livemore⁠ Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts ⁠⁠⁠https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore⁠⁠⁠ For other podcast platforms go to ⁠⁠⁠https://fblm.supercast.com.⁠ DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:01Rangan Chatterjee?

  Welcome to Feel Better, Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of inspiration, insights and practical ideas to help you live well and thrive. Each episode brings you some of my favorite moments, useful tools and inspiring ideas from the many incredible conversations I've had on my podcast. In today's Bite Size, pioneering neuro-optometrist Dr. Bryce Appelbaum explains why our visual system is about far more than simply how well we can see. Many of us don't realize just how much our vision influences how we think, feel and perform.

• 0:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  And today, we explore the surprising connection between vision and stress. And Bryce shares some simple, practical exercises we can all use to better support our visual system and our wider health.

• 0:59Rangan Chatterjee?

  The visual system may well be one of the most neglected areas in our health, for our health.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  I know I'm biased. That's not maybe. It 100% is.

• 1:10Rangan Chatterjee?

  But no one's talking about vision or the visual system. That's a problem, isn't it?

• 1:14Speaker 01

  It is a huge problem.

• 1:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  So in terms of symptoms that might indicate we've got a functional vision problem, what would you say they are?

• 1:23Speaker 01

  So absolutely, it starts with reading and screens because so much of our life is stuck up close. And so somebody who avoids reading or is losing their place or skipping words or skipping lines or not remembering what they're reading, or their attention seems like it drains so quickly with reading. Those are clear signs of something with the eyes not working as well together as a team as they could or should is in play. But then eye strain and headaches and tired eyes and dry eyes, those are all absolutely issues with vision where the stress of what they're asking of them, they're no longer able to meet the demands of.

• 2:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  What about things like brain fog or just general fatigue in life? Or even things like burnouts? Do you think vision problems can play a role in those things as well?

• 2:15Speaker 01

  I think vision is a direct reflection of brain function. And so if there's fatigue cognitively, if there's brain fog, if we're tired or we're losing productivity throughout the workday or throughout just the day in general, very often vision is playing a role in what's taxing the system. And when you think about functional vision problems as being brain problems that are manifesting through the eyes, our vision can only withstand what our brain is asking it to do.

• 2:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  But there is so much more to vision than just eyesight. Vision is how our eyes move together, converge, track, focus, process information, how we derive meaning from the world around us and then direct the appropriate action. So eyesight is a symptom. Eyesight is how well we can see at a certain distance. Eyesight is glasses or contacts. Vision is brain and vision problems are brain problems. And there are so many solutions and fixes out there for vision problems that extend way beyond just getting new glasses or new contacts. So somebody who notices far away keeps getting blurrier or their eyesight fluctuates throughout the day.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  Sometimes it's clear, sometimes it's blurry. The more tired they are, the more reading they're doing, the more fatigued they are, the more their vision changes. That is the symptom of some underlying vision problem. And so often in today's world, that stems from the focusing system, the inside muscles of the eyes not being able to withstand stamina or not having flexibility or not working together like they're supposed to, or the outside muscles of the eyes, the eye coordination system. Each of these systems becoming fatigued or becoming burnt out the more that you're asking of them. And then eyesight starts to change because the visual system and the eye-brain connection

• 4:14Speaker 01

  is either damaged or not functioning at its potential.

• 4:18Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's amazing how many different systems and symptoms in the body can be related back to problems in our visual system.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay. You mentioned a few, you know, fatigue, difficulty reading, difficulty staying focused and concentrating. You mentioned others to me over the course of the week.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  It seems like many of us have now adapted to a world of screens.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:44Rangan Chatterjee?

  Where everything's near, you know, reading books even, I guess. But everything's near, near, near, near, near. And we've, many of us, myself as an example, has lost some of that ability to look out into the distance.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  That flexibility.

• 4:58Rangan Chatterjee?

  That flexibility. And you said something, when you saw me on Monday, I was stuck on manual focus, you know, which is really interesting. So can you even separate the visual system from the rest of the body? Because I wanted to talk to you about stress and the visual system today. You're basically saying that we're living in a highly stressful visual world now. Right? We know that if we're looking at a horizon, the sea, we're on a beach, we're on holiday and we've got that soft peripheral vision where we can just see as far as the eye can see. We know that that actually is a way of activating the parasympathetic nervous system. So you're switching off stress, promoting relaxation.

• 5:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  So it kind of stands to reason because all of these things are bidirectional. You said, when I came to see you on Monday, I was locked in this manual focus. I had tunnel vision.

• 5:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  So my eyes were in a state of visual stress. To me, it's kind of an obvious follow-on that there would have been stress in my life out with the visual system. Because I just don't see how you can separate the visual system from your nervous system.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  You can. And your eyes are part of your brain. They emerge in the first trimester from the brain. They're only part of your brain you can see without things getting messy. The human visual system under stress, when the autonomic nervous system is in that fight or flight response, our pupils widen and we lock in with this tunnel vision.

• 6:32Rangan Chatterjee?

  And it's meant to do that?

• 6:33Speaker 01

  It's meant to do that, to protect yourself for danger that's coming at you so you can react. You're blocking off everything that doesn't matter other than that saber-toothed tiger coming at you so you know how to react and get out of harm's way. To a T, this is what's happening with our world that's now been brought within arm's length. When we're on screens, our vision, our thinking, our attention become tunneled. And for the average American adult, they spend seven hours and four minutes a day on a screen. The average American eight to 10-year-old spends six hours a day on a screen. That's average. But what that means is we're promoting stress and the stress response and shifting how our brain is functioning.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  So people are making critical decisions for work under a state of fight or flight. People are not able to divergently think or think outside the box or aren't able to have the patience that they deserve when they come home to see their family after work. Because literally you're tensed up and you're locked in all day long.

• 7:37Rangan Chatterjee?

  It changes who we are, right? A lot of people don't realize that when you're stressed, things are meant to change, right? You, as you say, you are meant to have tunnel vision.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  You're not meant to be empathetic and seeing the other perspective, right? You're dealing with the immediate threats, right?

• 7:54Speaker 01

  But if you can be intentional and pull back.

• 7:57Rangan Chatterjee?

  Exactly.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  And we'll talk about things that we can all start today. But you mentioning being on the beach and looking out to the horizon and activating parasympathetic tone. I mean, having that balance, it allows you to be more present. It allows you to not react without being intentional and actually thinking before you react.

• 8:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  I'm just so happy right now, Bryce. I can't even tell you because

• 8:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  we've done this intensive work, but I can feel day to day that my experience of the world is different. So.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  That's so great.

• 8:28Rangan Chatterjee?

  Even though we're having a conversation here now, I can see what's on that wall, right? I can see the picture there. I can see the red time clock. I can see the plant there, right? I don't think six days ago I was aware of that stuff, right? And even if I was, I wasn't aware that I knew. And so this is just a great real-life expression for me that what we did in your clinic this week is already having real-world application.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  And it's such a joy to watch and I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to work with you. Your excitement is what everybody should be feeling going through this. And most of our patients, you know, it's along the same lines here. You are in a constant state of fight or flight visually. I don't know about other areas of life. And periphery, like you mentioned, is the key to everything. Accessing periphery and looking soft and taking in the world and getting into less of that sympathetic state. Evolutionarily, vision is intended to guide movement. And our visual systems are billions of years old. And they've evolved from scanning the horizon for danger and dinner

• 9:43Speaker 01

  and the saber-toothed tiger coming at us and exploring through nature. And with this delicate balance between intricate near work with our hands and then lots of distance exploration, to now collapsing all of that for all this near work that we're doing. And we haven't, as a species, yet evolved to have the visual foundation to handle all of this input that's coming at us from so many directions all day through our crazy, busy lives, that often have these 2D devices inches from our face blasting high-energy light at us for hours on end.

• 10:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, it's interesting. We understand, many of us, that there's a mismatch between our evolutionary heritage and our modern world.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  And for many years, people who are interested in health and perhaps listen to podcasts like this one will know that there's a mismatch in our food environment. The food environment in which we've evolved and the food environment in which we now reside is very, very different. And unless we address that mismatch, it can have consequences. But you can make the same case for the visual system, right? We're now using our eyes, yes, on screens, but in very, very different ways to how we used to. And this is another mismatch that needs addressing. And by us not addressing it, it stands to reason that this is why we're having all

• 11:10Rangan Chatterjee?

  kinds of downstream problems from the mismatch, the fatigue, the lack of focus, the headaches, the migraines, the motion sickness, you know?

• 11:20Speaker 01

  What your brain does with the information your eye sends it, how it filters it, processes it, organizes it, and then directs the appropriate action. That is what I look at as my purpose to help really solidify for all of our patients and make it so that you're not limited in life based off of vision. And in fact, vision's giving you an advantage and allowing you to find better happiness and consciousness because you're able to use your brain the way in which it's wired.

• 11:51Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. So let's get some practical exercises for people who perhaps just want to know what they can do immediately. So yes, for those people who are that way inclined, motivated and have the resource to do so, yes, there is this deep dive five day intensive with you and your team, which of course, the truth is, most people in the world are not going to have access to.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Absolutely not.

• 12:15Rangan Chatterjee?

  And are not going to be able to do that or even have the motivation to do that.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:19Rangan Chatterjee?

  But in terms of practical stuff that people, that they can immediately go, you know what? I want to do something for my visual system. What are some things that they can kind of do immediately?

• 12:31Speaker 01

  There are simple exercises that everybody should do every day, just like you move your body, just like you go out on a walk. We should all be doing a near far focus activity. We should all be doing eye stretches. We can talk through that. We should all be doing peripheral pointing and we should all be taking regular, consistent vision breaks when we are on screens.

• 12:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  So the 202020 rule at a minimum, which means at least every 20 minutes, taking a break for at least 20 seconds and looking at something at least 20 feet away, but getting up, getting away from that locked in screen where when we're on a screen, literally our focusing system is under tension over time. Unless you're trying to get buff and you're at the gym, tension over time is not what you want for muscles of your body, especially your eye muscles, because that is what causes eye strain and fatigue and headaches and light sensitivity. And your visual system, I mean, if everyone were to squeeze their fists right now and squeeze them as hard as you can, after a few seconds, your hand starts to hurt.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  But if you were to let go and come back, you could do that for much longer. Your focusing system is under tension when you're on a screen. And just the same way your hand aches with extended squeezes, extended screen time causes headache and eye strain and that locked up visual system.

• 13:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, it's kind of interesting. One of the most amazing things that I'm going home with following five days with you is just a deep increased awareness.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 14:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yes, I've learnt skills. Yes, I've got exercises to do, but I just feel that I'm so much more in tune now with my visual system, my eyes, the tension in my eyes. I mean, I think many people will be having tension in their eyes and they don't, they're not even tuned in to it. They don't even know what that feels like. And I think you and your team were really great this week at, throughout the exercise, you know, what does that feel like? Or what does it feel like here? And it's what Helen has always done with me as my movement coach. It's like, what does that feel like? Really to try and empower me so that I don't need her, right? So I can start to feel, oh, that's what it feels like.

• 14:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I had a very light work week this week on purpose because I knew how intense this week was going to be. But I did have a Zoom call after our training on Wednesday. Got back to the hotel and I was on it and I tell you, I could feel it. After 15 minutes, I thought, oh my God, my eyes, my eyes are tight.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:08Rangan Chatterjee?

  And without telling anyone, I just raised them to the top of the screen. I went out wide, all the divergence that we've been practicing this week. And I just felt it all release.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  Oh, so good.

• 15:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  Then I came back to it, which, which is awesome, right? And then I think, how many Zoom calls have I done where I've been there for an hour or an hour and a half, constantly looking at the screen, focusing?

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  I mean, that's exhausting, isn't it? Yeah. I don't tend to get symptoms like a headache or eye strain that I'm aware of, but you definitely feel tired sometimes after these calls, don't you? But if we just follow through the train of thought about the stress that has been put on our visual system every day, and many of us don't have the tools and skills to deal with it, we're going to be tired, stressed out, frustrated, tense. Of course, when we finish work and then try and interact with our children or our partner or our parents or our friends or the people at the supermarket, we're trying to quickly buy our food on the way home.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Your fuse is shorter, you don't have the patience.

• 16:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  Exactly. Exactly. So it really is this massive thing that actually, although I went intense this week, you can actually address quite quickly with some simple things, right? So what's different between screens and reading books?

• 16:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  I know there's a blue light issue, right?

• 16:36Speaker 01

  And let's even pause on the blue light for a second.

• 16:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  Entirely different visual demands on a screen than on a paper book. First of all, there's a closer working distance. There's different demands on those inside and outside muscles we talked about, the focusing system and the eye convergence system. There are more eye movements required that are less organized. When you read a book, you're going left to right and you're going in a line. On the screen, you're darting your eyes all over the place. It's a closer working distance. There's the high energy, short wavelength light, the blue light. There's the contrast, the glare, the brightness.

• 17:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  The flicker, I think is the problem. Reading books then compared to being on a screen is completely different. You're saying it's better to read books.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  Better read books and tactily holding the book gives you such a better sense of where this is positioned in space so you can make the right eye movements that are more accurate.

• 17:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  But that's one thing I don't think we really have realized. I've understood this through my work with my own movement coach, Helen, who is just phenomenal. But that tactile awareness, you know, we are these three dimensional creatures. And, you know, just as if in a car, when you're moving fast, even though you're sitting down and your brain's like, there's a disconnect here, like I'm not moving, my quads are not moving, yeah.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  But the whole world is.

• 18:04Rangan Chatterjee?

  The whole world is. There's a big mismatch there. I think also on screens, there is that mismatch. What you said there was, was really quite provocative that at least in a book, you know, you can feel that you're feeling the page, all the signals, the inputs to your brain, they're all kind of, they're synchronous, they're all going the same way. Your brain knows what to expect, whereas on a screen you don't.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  And not only do you not, you're locked in, you get the dopamine release where it just wants you to stay and come back for more. And then all of a sudden you're under that stress state for significantly longer than you would be on paper because you're coming back for more and you're almost getting the taste that your brain doesn't want to let go of.

• 18:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. Let's get back to the practical exercises. You've said a 202020.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 18:53Rangan Chatterjee?

  Is a great practice for anyone. Okay. So after 20 minutes of being on a screen, make sure that you lift your head up and you look at something 20 feet away.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  And for at least 20 seconds.

• 19:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  For at least 20 seconds.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  And that's 20 minutes max. Take breaks, regular breaks. I mean, doing it every 10 minutes is even better.

• 19:13Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. And that's something I want everyone to think about themselves, right? So you mentioned a few of those.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:18Rangan Chatterjee?

  Daily things that people can do. So.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Let's do eye stretches.

• 19:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  Eye stretches.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  Which helps calm the nervous system, build flexibility, kind of like yoga for the eyes. Everything we're talking about, I'm saying do one eye at a time because that allows for such quality control. We can make sure that if somebody has an eye coordination problem or some other visual developmental problem, it's not going to be made worse by this. So cover up an eye, look as far up to the ceiling as you can, hold it for five seconds. Don't look too far that you can't hold fixation. So if your eye is darting around, go a little bit lower and then go down to the floor as you can for five seconds, to the left, to the right. And then the diagonals, up and left, up and right, down and left, down and right. Do it the same amount of time, right eye is, left eye.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  This is a great exercise that a lot of my athletes do before, we kind of come up with a pregame routine or ritual for most athletes or even like before the workday, like do this before you're sitting down for your Zoom calls. And great way to just kind of open up the visual system. And then I think the other really good one to do would be peripheral pointing. And this is, I mean, we've talked about periphery a dozen times today. This is really powerful. So again, one eye at a time, but you're going to look, pick something straight ahead across the room and don't look away from it. So for me, I'm looking at this blue chair across the room. And then I'm going to pick something with my side vision without moving my eye there. I'm going to pick this painting on the wall and point to where I think it is.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  And then when I think, when I'm ready, I make the eye movement over and see how close I was. For me, I'm a little bit off, so I'm bringing it back down. I'm going to try again. And then when you get it right on the money, go farther out, but you're going to try going to the left, to the right, up and down. You're basically actively opening up your periphery and kind of painting in the periphery. Same thing, right eye is with left eye. You mentioned your walk this morning. So many people are going to notice on walks that, and walks are so good for de-stressing the visual system and helping create optic flow, which allows better coordination with the eyes. You're going to notice, you see the mailbox to the left, you see the house to the right, but it's really hard to see both of those at the same time without selectively attending.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  The more intentional you are with this, you'll be able to see that this kind of concentric ring gets wider and wider and you're able to take in more off to the sides. But even when you're in the car on a Zoom call at the dinner table, try and see how much you can see without moving your eyes to see.

• 21:51Rangan Chatterjee?

  Hmm.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  So trying to take in as much as you can in the room. And that's a great tool that can help pull you out of a state of fight or flight when you're driving in an unfamiliar territory and you're scared. If you're in a concert or at a sporting event and all of this busy, crowded input in the periphery makes you feel like you want to shut down, this helps you actively open it up. So much potential can be unlocked through vision. And really the goal here is how can performance in life be enhanced, optimized and improved? And any brain at any age has the neuroplastic ability to rewire itself with the right work,

• 22:38Speaker 01

  with the right motivation, with the right compliance, so that this is possible and doable for anybody.

• 22:44Rangan Chatterjee?

  I really hope you enjoyed this week's Bite Size. Do spread the love by sharing this episode with your friends and family. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back next week with my new conversation on Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Size next Friday.