Transcript of Neuro-Optometrist: Your Eyes Are Sabotaging Your Performance and You Have No Idea | Dr. Bryce AppelbaumYour Eyes Are Sabotaging Your Performance and You Have No Idea | Ep. 326 with Dr. Bryce Apbaum New

So, Dr. Bryce, it's always good to see you. I had a great time when we spent— when you did your TEDx in the Philippines. It was really an amazing experience, and I learned a lot from that. And I was just shocked about this connection that you keep talking through in terms of how vision, performance, all these things. So I want to understand because I don't think people know how important this is, but you've said that training the eye-brain connection can be the single biggest lever pull for performance.

100%. How our eyes work together as a team, how they can focus, track, converge, process information that really allows us to show up in the world the way that we all deserve to. And whether it's reading fluidly and efficiently, whether it's performing on the sports field, whether it's driving at night, whether it's um, just productivity throughout the workday. Just like we can train and exercise so many systems within our body, we can train and exercise the eye-brain connection and we can rewire our brain so that our dominant sensory system of vision is the one that's given us an advantage in the world and guiding and leading us rather than interfering like it is for so many people.

How come there's not enough people talking about this?

Because there's not enough people doing this work and because we are in a reactive healthcare system. Where I was trained in school on how to manage vision decline and how to intervene when there's disease and how to get everybody to see those tiny letters on the bottom of the exam chart. But that's a reactive approach. What we do is all proactive, recognizing there's a brain attached to the eyes and how the brain filters, organizes, stores, processes all the input coming in through the eyes. That's really what allows us to achieve at our potential. And there are so many people struggling unnecessarily with these hidden functional vision problems. I would imagine in the next 3 to 5 years, this is going to be one of the hottest topics in all of performance and health. Because what we're doing right now, having this conversation on a screen, screen time is the new pandemic. It is ruining our eyes and our brains. We're only starting to learn now what, you know, significant time on screens is doing to so many aspects of function. And it's not good what's coming out, but yet with the right training, the right foundation, we can all thrive in this digital world.

I mean, that's amazing. We were talking earlier about like microplastics and things like we keep hearing, I feel like about the same things over and over again. And it's great to know that there's something else. And you've also said that vision decline as we age can be optional. Obviously, I wear glasses. I, you know, they recently told me that I might need to have bifocals. And I'm like, Dr. Bryce, I'm like, no, like, I'm not going to wear bifocals. I'm like 42 years old.

So people think as we get older, vision drops, cognitive capacity drops. And although both of those are common, that's not normal. It doesn't have to be that way. And you are at the prime time where for most people in our 40s, our focusing system becomes more rigid, less flexible. The lens inside of our eye hardens, the fibers controlling it get sluggish. And so you have to start holding things farther away. But grabbing reading glasses is literally the equivalent of you saying, my knee hurts, I'm going to jump in a wheelchair. Like you're stopping using the system. So rather than relying on the drugstore over-the-counter readers to do all the work for you, you can train your focusing system to hold clarity close, to hold clarity at a close distance for 2 seconds at a time, and then 5 seconds and 10 seconds. And with the right work in this, Specific right visual exercises, you can at a minimum kick that can down the road for a long amount of time. But there's certain exercises, you do those every day, you literally will not need reading glasses. And we have patients in their 70s, even one in his 80s who trains his eyes like, like he does the rest of his body every day, but he's not wearing reading glasses.

So what can I do? Well, how can I get started?

Get started, uh, number one, like not taking a reactive approach, not listening to your eye doctor who says there's nothing else that can be done and you need stronger glasses to do what you could do previously. A simple eye exercise that really moves the needle. I call it eye pushups. It's a near-far focus activity. So let's all do it together. So cover up an eye with one hand, take your thumb, stick it all the way out, and then bring your thumb towards you, looking at your nail as close as you can till it gets a little blurry and then stop. Make it clear, look real hard, think about locking in your focusing system. Your pupil's going to get really small when you look at this. Hold it for 5 seconds, then look out into the distance for 5 seconds, then back at your thumb for 5 seconds, back in the distance. So this is kind of a gross stimulation relaxation, turning on, turning off, same amount of time right eye as you do left eye. Most people will notice that one of the eyes can hold the thumb a little closer than the other, and literally being able to hold your thumb a millimeter closer after a week.

Millimeters add up to centimeters, which add up to inches, which add up to even more than that. And it's literally using your visual system and countering some of the age-related changes by exercising that system in a way that most of us don't even know is possible. You do that every day, you literally will not need to go down the bifocal route, at least for a long time.

Thank you. I mean, we could stop right now because that is all I needed to know because I am not Dr. Bryce, I'm not wearing bifocals in my 40s. So I appreciate that.

I will not either. I'm not going to wear them in my 50s or 60s either, but you know better, you can do better. You know, if it's the type of thing like this, the person who says vision exercises don't work is the same person that says normal exercise doesn't work. Like you got to do it. You got to know what to do and you got to do the right type of stuff that actually moves the needle. And unfortunately, you can't trust everything that's on the internet these days in terms of what can be done to help counter some of this. But there's science behind everything that we do that actually moves the needle.

And you, you talked about, uh, people having ADHD, dyslexia. So people that have those that are more, oh, I have, I think I might be dyslexic or I might have ADHD. What's the connection there?

Yeah, so I mean, very often ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, even autism spectrum disorders in some cases, they're incomplete diagnoses without addressing vision first. And so many of the symptoms and behaviors of functional vision problems are exactly the same as those labels. And yet these are all treatable. So it's not like there's a blood test that says you have ADD or that you have dyslexia. It's based off of a profile. No one is born with the ability to read or to use their eyes to converge, to track, to focus. It's all developed through our life experiences. It's either learned appropriately through the right sequencing of developmental milestones or learned poorly and it leads to these vision imbalances. So something like dyslexia very often is not dyslexia. It's faulty communication between the language processing centers of the brain, the auditory processing centers, the visual processing centers. And reading is probably the most complex neurological task that many of us take for granted. And especially as a child, we're asking children to develop the ability to read when their brain is undergoing rapid, massive changes in terms of development. I've yet to meet somebody out of tens of thousands of patients where we couldn't improve their reading ability.

So I would just say, you know, if you cannot control your eyes and their ability to focus, then you cannot control your mind and its ability to focus.

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So habits, I mean, everything in balance is really a good methodology to apply for life. The average American spends 7 hours and 4 minutes a day on a screen. The average 8 to 10-year-old American spends 6 hours a day on a screen. When you're on a screen, your visual system and your focusing system are locked up. And tension over time, unless you're trying to get buff, that's not a good thing for the visual system. And so taking breaks from screen time can do wonders. As silly as that sounds, I always say the 20-20-20 rule. Take a break at least every 20 minutes for at least 20 seconds and look at something 20 feet away. Ideally, get up, get outside, get some movement in, get some natural lighting in. But if you're putting in a bunch of hours of screen time, taking a break every 20 minutes in those bunch of hours, you're going to have better performance and more stamina over time versus if you're not looking up from your screen the entire time. And when you're on a screen, you're thinking, your attention and your vision all become tunneled and locked up. That's really what causes so much myopia or nearsightedness.

That's what causes headaches, fatigue, and eye strain. It's what causes reaching for that third, fourth, fifth cup of coffee because your brain is on overdrive just trying to use your eyes rather than having the right visual foundation and functional systems in place to be able to crush what we're asking of ourselves in this digital world that we're in.

I spend a lot of— I might be at 10 hours a day.

So yes, 7 hours is definitely underreported.

I probably— yeah, I might be too many hours. So I'm glad that that you said this so I can, I can really start to do this because it's, it's obviously something that I've been thinking about and I wanna make sure that I'm also, you know, not going to do some sort of damage for later on in life. With, when you talk about screens, there's a huge debate that I've been watching around blue light glasses. I see people wearing them, I see people saying that they don't need to wear them. What do you think?

Blue light's like the new gluten. Like blue light and gluten are dancing together at the prom together.

So whenever I eat a gluten, I eat a gluten-free muffin while I'm wearing my blue light glasses.

You got to take a picture and post on that. So first of all, blue light is not bad for us. Blue light is essential for us, but natural blue light. And it helps regulate mood, circadian rhythms, hormones, but that's why it's so important to get fresh blue light in your eyes in the morning. First thing when you get up for 2 to 10 minutes, and then ideally at night before going to bed, helps set your circadian rhythm and kind of ground you in time and space. But artificial blue light blasting you from screens all day long, that's what causes a lot of oxidative stress within the eyes, causes inflammation. And so certain people who are really sensitive to blue light absolutely need blue light glasses on all the time. But typically The $5 ones you get on Amazon, you're paying for the quality that you're getting. Unless the blue light glasses are dark red, amber, or like orange, which block 100% of blue light, the clear ones are only going to block a very small amount. And often they don't even block the harmful blue light. They just block like random blue light. So you want something that's kind of broad spectrum.

We talk a lot about what we call vision performance. Well, Digital Performance lenses, which are glasses that are for screens with a blue light filter, but also that have a specific amount of magnification in them that allow your response to the visual stress to be less and give your brain a better opportunity for eyes to work together. So that's really helpful. But in general, like blue light, it's not great for us. And we have an artificial blue light and we have receptors in the back of our eye and our retina whose sole responsibility is to signal the sleep-wake mechanism that allows melatonin to be secreted, when those are overstimulated all day long, it literally throws off your sleep, falling asleep, staying asleep. And when we mess up our sleep, that can have drastic negative impacts on so many areas of health.

So would you say the same thing around like stopping a certain amount of time before I go to sleep I should refrain from watching?

So ideally, like 2 hours before bed. For many people, that's not realistic. So if you are going to be on your phone or tablet before bed, that's when you want to have the really robust biohacking blue light glasses on, the dark red or the amber ones. And in general, like the bigger the screen, the farther away, the better. So watching TV in bed far away on a massive TV is less disruptive to the eye-brain connection than, you know, having a tablet inches from your face blasting you all day. But ultimately, like, if you are going to be on any screen before bed, blocking blue light's going to help you transition into sleep mode more easily.

I turned down the light on my phone. There's like some sort of light. I was at some, some person at some eye doctor. I went somewhere, was like, turn down this light. I don't— does that make a difference?

The brightness? Yeah, brightness definitely helps. You can put it in night shift mode, which then— Night shift mode.

That's what it was. Yeah. Yep.

That can definitely make a difference. And all these habits, they stack. So for some people, I mean, when you put on the red blue light glasses, you get sleepy even if you put them on during the daytime. So, you know, wearing those for many people does help a lot. And, and for sleep, I mean, there's so much we can hack with the right temperature, having it be cool enough, you know, having all light blocked off. Even I have patients who even like blocking off that red light on the TV that shows that it's off, like you block that off and like their sleep is so much more consistent and they're able to get more deep sleep and more REM even with just that. So there's so many things we can do to help regulate our nervous system, but I'm of course biased. When we rely on vision to regulate our nervous system, we've got a way, way better outcome.

That's like my wife Kate, who you obviously got to meet. She has to wear like something, like a thing that covers her face because any light, any little bit of light, she can't sleep. Me, I could be, I could sleep right. Like if I close my eyes right now, I could probably fall asleep.

I'm like, so that's okay. It doesn't have to look at you before bed, right? No, no, I'm just kidding.

But I think truthfully, like, and then when she wakes up, both, it makes sense. That's what it is.

But you falling asleep quickly. I mean, falling asleep is, is important, but then also you should really look at the quality of your sleep. I bet you like—

It's horrible. I already know the quality of my sleep. I got sleep apnea too. So like, if I don't use my machine or there's like a little hole and it seeps air out, I'm pretty, I'm pretty miserable.

So maybe this is a simple way to, to have a quick win, you know, trying to maybe fall asleep. At the same amount of time, maybe a little later, but if you fall into deep sleep and you get enough cycles of REM, you're gonna feel more refreshed and maybe even need less sleep.

I know sleep, sleep has been my enemy for many years. It's like I, I need to do, I, I'm gonna try the blockers. I'm gonna try a bunch of things cuz I think it's good to test because I'm, I'm at that point where like I need, I need to really get the good sleep. So When I'll give you the name of a few good companies off air. Yes, please. So what do you— so do you think then that because they— whenever I get my eyeglasses, they always try and sell me on the blue light filter on my glasses. Is that a waste?

It— for most, unless these are glasses you're wearing just on screens and it's a really robust blue light filter that has like the lens looks at a minimum like purplish or bluish. If it's just a clear light, a clear lens, it's not doing much. And especially if these are glasses you're wearing all the time, there's so much more you can do with the money that goes into the, that add-on there that has a better, a higher impact on performance.

If, and thank you for that. So I'm, I'm, I normally say no because I was very skeptical and because they always try to sell so many things. But I appreciate you letting me know.

So if, If, and I'm not anti-glasses, but I will tell you, like getting new glasses every year because your prescription's changing as an adult, that's not normal. It means you're adapting to the lens you're in and needing something stronger or different to maintain that same clarity because of the near visual stress that you're under. And likely your focusing system and the inside muscles of the eyes responsible for clarity kind of acting like an old school camera lens that's on manual focus. We want it to be on autofocus. And so we should really, when we're getting glasses, not everybody has to see the same. Not everybody has to see HD clearly. And finding the weakest lens possible that's most balanced between each eye that improves performance, that's really the ideal prescription that lets you see 20 happy, not necessarily 20/20.

20 happy. You know, lately I've been not wearing my glasses. The first time really ever in my life where I'm going like the last few months all day. Not really even wearing my glasses unless I leave the house and I have to drive. Of course I'm going to wear my glasses, but if I'm just hanging out at home and doing stuff, I find it almost— I started getting a lot of headaches before and I was thinking like maybe my glasses, I'm too close to the screen. So, but based on all the reasons that you're seeing, like the majority of reasons, I don't know if there's an average reason that people come to see you, but based on what, what people are coming to see you for, what they're asking about. What is something that people need to know out there that also might be feeling the same way?

So I think what, what I see more common than any other kind of pain point is people saying life's too busy, they're too tired to read, they're relying on audiobooks, reading's helping them fall asleep at night as a sleeping pill, there's decreased productivity throughout the workday, they're getting brain fog, they're back-to-back Zooms and they're just gassed. And for most people, it has to do with how the inside and outside muscles of the eyes are not working together as a team. And these adaptations or these bad habits that are emerging because of too much of this near visual stress mode that we're under. And what we do with vision performance training is we use the eyes almost as like joysticks to tap into the brain, to rewire the brain. To change how we're using these functional systems, but to free up the brain from all this extra load, extra stress it's under to be able to operate the way in which it's wired. So we see people who drastically improve reading performance and stamina. We see people who avoid ball sports or like the last one picked for sports teams. Now all of a sudden their depth perception improves and it becomes something that they're really good at.

We actually work with a bunch of professional teams and individual athletes who maybe don't even have problems but want to, uh, get an advantage in life by optimizing critical areas of performance that give them an opportunity to achieve at their potential. And I would say one of the coolest things we're seeing now that I would've said 5 years ago wasn't possible is we're getting adults out of reading glasses. And I wasn't talking about this before, but now I'm talking about every chance I can get. We do these, uh, vision performance training boot camps where people fly in for a week of treatment. It's about 12 hours of treatment plus evals in 5 days. It's a heavy lift, but we're actually able to, with very, very high accuracy, get people to become less dependent on their reading glasses, get many people out of reading glasses, or even rely on a weaker lens and improve eyesight. Where pre-COVID, I would have said that's not possible for adults. That's what I was taught in school. It doesn't work that way. And I would say now, not only does it work, Like we have the protocols in place that we keep fine-tuning and we're getting people to really open up their world through a lot of this, this training.

That's amazing. I mean, just thinking about that in, in that time period and being able to do this, I mean, it's incredible. So I'm glad that you are sharing this with people because I think if you've never had to wear glasses or now, you know, reading glasses, like you, it's hard to understand just how annoying or challenging it is. You know, the crazy thing is that people now are wearing glasses, not glasses with prescription, just glasses, because it's like a fashion sense. When I was younger, I'd be made fun of it. Now people are like wearing glasses just to like, as a, you know, as an accessory.

And 100%, it's the cool thing to do. I work with an NBA team where we do these evaluations to help them decide who to draft based off of where they're operating, where they could be. And there's plenty of guys who come into the event wearing like fashion glasses. And I'll start asking like, so how often do you wear these? Like, what's the point of these? What, you know, tell me about your visual history. And they're like, oh no, this just looks good with my outfit. I'm like, you wore this to come into an event because you probably thought it would look good. But yeah, I mean, that's, that's where we are. And I just want to say like, I cannot thank you and Kate enough for all that you're doing, but creating this incredible event in Manila where you gave me the opportunity to share this message with the world, and it was so beautifully done. You know, the, the, all the speakers that were there, the whole experience. And I look at that now as like, we have this pilot light that's always on and would not have happened without both of you. So I'm just so grateful for that opportunity.

And thank you for, for helping me change how the world's looking at vision.

Well, Dr. Bryce Applebaum, I mean, I'm super appreciative of you. I'm so glad that you got that message out there. I'm sure millions of people are seeing it. You're on so many different shows, you get to meet really incredible people, but at the same time you're changing the world. And that's, you know, obviously a beautiful thing. So people want to visit you, they want to learn more, how can they do so?

Appreciate that. So my practice, myvisionfirst.com. We've got two locations in Maryland, right outside DC, one in Bethesda, one in Annapolis. We've got an online vision training program called ScreenFit, which has, significantly moved the needle. We've had thousands of people go through it as young as 5, as old as 89, with 100% of people who've completed the program seeing a reduction in symptoms. And that's just a great way to get this accessible and get people to start, get across the start line to get rolling on their vision improvement journey. And then I guess social media, uh, Instagram is our biggest platform, Dr. Bryce Applebaum, but my ancestors wanted to make life really hard for me and they spell Applebaum A-P-P-E-L instead of the fruit L-E. But if you spell it right, you'll find it on there. Uh, then those are probably the best ways.

You need to get both handles so, you know, one can forward to the other. But, but Dr. Bryce, this has been great. I learned a lot. I've been wanting to really dive into this for a bit so I can help. So next time, next time you come on, I'm going to show you where I've gone in the process and I got to come out to Maryland and visit y'all. But thank you so much for joining us today.

Such a pleasure and honor to be here. Thank you for having me.