EP 178: What Your Eyes Reveal About Your Attachment & Stress | Dr. Bryce Appelbaum

When your nervous system shifts into fight or flight, your peripheral vision collapses. The world starts to feel smaller and feels less safe. Most people never connect vision with safety. Welcome to this episode of the biology drama podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Amy. Two thirds of the neurons entering your brain come from your eyes. So vision becomes a direct route to a felt sense of safety or danger. I wanted to have Dr. Bryce Applebaum on because vision is such an important aspect of our development as a young child and our attachment and he is a true pioneer in the field of neuro-optometry. Vision problems can be triggering our attachment insecurities and addressing the vision problems can actually help. Lacey Suby, one of the advanced biology trauma practitioners and a licensed clinical social worker based in North Dakota, interviews my good friend Dr. Bryce Applebaum in this episode. And he will be even walking you through three eye exercises that you can get started with today. So grab a note pad. You will want to take notes on this one and take it away, Lacey. Dr. Bryce, so you are a neuro-optometrist. I'm guessing a lot is maybe not familiar with what neuro-optometry is. So could you give us a little bit of insight as to what that means to you? Yes. And such an honor to be here and just very grateful to be educating and empowering everyone and letting you all learn about the file that we all have with vision being able to regulate our nervous system. So with optometry, ophthalmology, opticians, a lot of words that have owes in them and that sound similar, I would say I look at neuro-optometry as having kind of an intimate understanding and appreciation of not just eyes and not just brain, but the connection between the eyes and the brain and recognizing that all of our functional visual skills are tracking our focusing, our depth perception, our teaming, our coordination, our skills that allow us to show up in life the way that we deserve to allow us to take in novel and familiar situations and be able to really touch the world as best as we can through vision and process information fluidly and not just looking at the ability to see but really how the brain is able to filter, organize, store and process everything that comes in through the eyes, how to make sense of it, drive meaning and then direct the appropriate action. So it's kind of an intimate relationship between all the interwoven connections up here and the pathways from the eyes to the brain. Yeah, that's so interesting. I think that's at least for me specifically, it's not something that you often hear about and is certainly more of a wider view of what our eyes are doing for us than what you would think of in your conventional view of optometry, if you will. So as you know, Dr. Amy is framework, biology of trauma stuff. A lot of it is the whole body picture, right? How our nervous system is handling everything that's taking in so much information with so many sensory inputs and then how it's moving through all of that. And I'll admit, I'm for sure biased, but vision is our dominant sensory system and it should be tied together input from all of the other sensory systems to allow us to feel safe and to make sense of the world around us. And our eyes really gather information but our brain interprets it and our brain knows how to make sense of it. And I look at eyesight and vision as these separate entities and really eyesight's the ability to focus light. Vision is entirely brain function and how we're able to process and filter what's coming in and then know how to act appropriately. And when our system is under stress, everyone in this room knows we operate very differently. And so many simple tasks in life are causing significant visual stress, which then forces our brain to function and adapt very differently than it would otherwise. And when we are under stress, just as humans are what that looks like visually is our pupils widened and we get locked in with this tunnel vision. And evolutionarily that was to focus on the saber to tiger coming at us to block out all the noise and to decide, are we running or are we turning that tiger into dinner? But now that same response, the same fight or flight response and autonomic dysfunction is really what all of us are tapping into right now when we are on screens. Screens present toxicity or nervous system. They force our thinking, our attention and our vision to become tunneled and become locked up. And so we're all going to have the ability to access peripheral awareness and get our eyes to work together and know what signs to look for and what to do to actually improve and optimize how our brain is functioning through vision so that vision can allow for confusion in our brain and chaos in our life to then turn into clarity and turn into openness so we can almost ground ourselves in space through vision. And we love to, at some points, they go over a few eye exercises that we can all have in our back pocket for when we are feeling like we are tipping into that fight or flight response. We can pull those out and then know how to kind of looks more softly, more panoramically and access more of what we're capable of cognitively. Gosh, you've said so much just in that little period of time. There's so many directions that I could go with it. One of the big things that you said or mentioned in what your explanation is autonomic dysfunction. So when you talk about autonomic dysfunction from the perspective of our eyes and how our eyes are connecting with our brain, can you give us a little bit more information of what that means to you? What does that autonomic dysfunction look like? Yeah. So vision is a direct reflection of brain function and it's not just an eye function. And people think vision happens in the eyes, but vision is really happening as a brain process where the brain then decides what everything means that's being said to it from the eyes. And I know Amy so beautifully talks about threat detection and nervous system states and when we're hyper vigilant and how we process sensory input, I would say at a minimum vision is deeply involved in all of those, but most people don't even have a file on it. And so when I think of the autonomic nervous system, that's really should be a healthy balance between both of our eyes working together, but most importantly how we're processing central focal input as well as peripheral ambient input. And so when somebody is, let's say, driving over a bridge or in a tunnel, oftentimes we come aware of what we're not aware of in the periphery and we kind of collapse and pull in and almost look like we have this, we're looking through paper towel holders and then mental health starts to spiral because we feel unsafe and we feel like the world is harder to navigate. So when that happens, we're literally completely collapsing our peripheral processing and locking into our central processing, which really is what allows us to not trust what we're seeing. So people who have fear of heights or hesitant around stairs or escalators or knocking over glasses of water, bumping in the walls or tripping over changes in elevation on the curve. I mean, that's essentially not trusting what we're seeing, but it's not having our world be opened up and not being able to look softly and take in all that's around us. And so somebody who's in autonomic balance means they can see each individual tree with the forest. They can see the figure and the ground, the central and the peripheral. And that's something where when there's balance there, it allows us to be that much more present, not just in space, but spiritually and in our mind as well. And I think that's something that we all deserve to have functioning at that level as often as possible. But for a lot of people, requires work and breaking down the past trauma and all the things that you guys do better than anybody. Yeah. Thank you for that. Yeah, I think that those are such important things. And what I love hearing from you is that we're all deserving of this, right? That each one of us can have access to these things. We just have to know how to access that. That's why we have you on as a guest today to go through some of these pieces. So vision really plays obviously a very central part of our everyday life for many people, pending there's not some impacts there with their vision. How are we taking that for granted and how can we kind of hone in on how it is impacting us and maybe how our threat systems are turned on and sensing more danger than really what's what we need to be sensing. So we can kind of get that whole world view. do you like you are talking about? - Yeah, I think it's important to recognize that vision is a developed and a learned process. So no one's born with the ability to read or to use our eyes to converge, attract a focus or even with the ability to see in 3D, it's all developed through our life experiences and it's developed through the right sequencing of developmental milestones. So it's either learned appropriately through that right sequencing or learn poorly and that it leads to these vision and balances. For kids in particular now, I mean, being exposed to screens and technology earlier than ever before, being asked to read it all in early ages, like their visual environment is very different. And but even as adults as well, I mean, we're in this stress state from our environment in so many different ways. And I think it's in thinking about fun things to talk about today, I kept going back to kind of trauma changing our perception of everything and not just our emotion, but trauma changes how you experience the world. And vision is literally how we construct our experiences of the world, neurologically, not just kind of metaphorically. And that impacts our perception, our interpretation, our reality construction. And so even just kind of being able to have interpersonal connection and engage with somebody, I mean, we're often not looking at each eye, the mouth, the nose, we're kind of seeing the face as a whole. But even just reading certain cues, if we're not trusting what we're seeing, if we don't have eye movement control, if we don't have itaming that is accurate and fluid, we can almost misinterpret any social situation or any physical situation and immediately kind of pull back into that threat response, which then again, classes are periphery, we become really focal, really central, and everything shifts and we often start to spiral. So I think a big aspect of healing, regardless of what we're healing from, requires safety, but also requires effort. And it requires our nervous system to feel, to be regulated, but to feel safe. And I think that's something that can be trained, can be enhanced, can be rehabbed, can be developed from a vision perspective. And if we look at how vision that influences attention, we can selectively place our attention anywhere we want. We can have stamina and flexibility with our attention if our change in eye movements are both conscious and accurate the way that we want them to be. - Right, you hit on a couple of really key points there too, with biology of trauma work, a lot of it, really all of it comes down to the foundation of that felt sense of safety. And so in the THA community with Dr. Amy, we're working on understanding what that means in the varying different levels. So when you talk about trauma impacting our vision and then how that's putting us into some of these danger states, what kinds of traumas do you see in your practice that create those barriers? So when I think of trauma, I think of kind of a wider array than some people in my field, you've got physical trauma, you've got brain injuries. I have personal experience with that walking alongside family members through that. I know that that's impacting, but does do things like emotional traumas or biochemical physiology traumas impact all of that as well? - We could have this entire conversation beyond trauma here. So first with physical trauma, I have a two location practice in Maryland and about 60% of our practice is dedicated to traumatic brain injury and specifically concussion recovery. And that's the physical trauma obviously, but vision, not eyesight, is represented in every lobe of our brain and more than half of the real estate in the brain is dedicated to processing vision. Two thirds of the neurons entering our brain come from our eyes. So you can't have a head injury, minor or major, not have vision be impacted. It's just a matter of at what level. And often when that does happen, we notice that the simplest of tasks become really overwhelming and hard. So the sensory overload, the strained eyes, the light sensitivity that go into the mall or grocery store and just everything is so overwhelming because there's this busy crowded periphery that we can't navigate or filter and organize. And most people listening, you know, probably have had some level of physical trauma that maybe they don't even recognize. The National Institutes of Health, a mile down the road from my office in Bethesda, Maryland says that 28% of Americans have had at least one concussion in their lifetime. I think the numbers probably double that, but often it's the hitting your head on the countertop in the kitchen or the playground accident when you're younger, but you never got the eye brain connection checked. And maybe you went to the ER, you went to the primary care doc and they said, "You may have had a head injury, but you're gonna be fine. Go sit in a dark room or get back to life." Neither of those is appropriate. But it's often the present day symptoms or struggles that can be tied to a previous event or previous trauma that maybe we don't ever connect the dots or maybe we do, but the unnecessary struggling that's occurring through these hidden functional vision problems, those can be weeks, months, years or decades after the event occurred. And symptoms may improve, but the functional vision problems do not, our brain just learns how to bypass them and compensate. And so with the right type of work, with vision performance training, with vision therapy, pretty much every concussion can get back to a previous level of function. It just requires the right work, right motivation, right compliance, right supplements, right lifestyle modifications, right nutritional protocol, but even improving some is better than not improving at all. And so I think that's hopefully anybody listening can recognize like if any of this resonates or sounds familiar, this is a loving wake up call to say action can be taken kind of like we do physical therapy for certain aspects of our body. We do vision therapy for that I bring connection and so much can be done. The psychological trauma, the emotional trauma, the spiritual trauma also can significantly influence things. And we see so many patients who for whatever reason have difficulty with visual memory or difficulty seeing the world from other perspectives other than their own, or never have developed some of these systems. And then that just goes on as your normal and you just learn how to navigate that world. But all of this is treatable, trainable and teachable. It just requires again the right type of work. There's a gentleman we're working with now who had significant emotional trauma as a child. And it was at a time when his brain was going through rapid neurological development. It was also at a time when he was learning how to read. And to me that's like the most complicated neurological task that we asked developing brains to engage in. And he just never learned how to read. And he skipped over all of it. And he's been, he identifies himself as being dyslexic. He says he's severely dyslexic. He's never read a book in his life. And turns out that dyslexia often is not dyslexia. It's a functional vision problem causing the same symptoms and struggles. And for him he had very erratic, poorly controlled eye movements. He was skipping words, losing his place. Words were going into an out of focus. He couldn't remember what he was reading. So he was relying on audio books his whole life rather than reading with his eyes. And he just now we just had his first progress valuation this morning. And he just read his first chapter book last week. And it's one of these things where if you know what to look for, a hidden functional vision problems are everywhere. But often we don't know what to look for. And often we take these labels or these misdiagnoses from a reactive medical system. We allow them to define us and then it limits so much of our ability to achieve it, our potential. And in his case it was just his eyes weren't working well together as a team. And I'm simplifying yet obviously it's not that simple, but he's at the point now where he's like, I can do anything now as an adult. And he's now says he's going to be applying for all these new career paths because he realizes he doesn't have to just be an interpersonal connection. He can actually be behind the screen and have to read and digest information and still be successful. Right. So he had danger turned on just from not being able to read. Like he was moving about life missing so many opportunities, holding himself back thinking he couldn't. And interesting for him he retreated. And he I kind of similar thing happened to me as a child I felt like a turtle in my shell just not feeling safe in life. But for him, he pulled back from any other perspective of somebody else in his life because he was just so insecure and internalizing what was happening. So a point where if you gave him a block pattern and said how would this block pattern look if you were sitting on the other side of the table? if you're sitting on the left or on the right, he hadn't developed the ability to perceive things from perspective other than his own. And so from that standpoint, I can never play sports because he could never put himself in the defense's point of view. He could never learn a playbook. And he just had this kind of egocentric view of the world because that's where he was felt the safest. But now so much has opened up for him in so many ways. And his was emotional trauma early on, but it then manifested in many other ways. Wow. Something that you said too that really resonates with me and I hope does with our community as well is that you can get to your previous level of functioning. Or in this case, to higher levels of functioning than he thought was accessible. There's just so much hope in that. I really want people to hear that that you're not doomed. You don't have to accept the diagnosis or the misdiagnosis as you said or the labels that there's there's a weight out of this and your body can heal and move beyond. So that's so cool. And when we can I just add one thing when we think about neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to develop and learn and grow. I mean, pretty much anything is possible with the right motivation and obviously the right work to get there, but especially when it comes to vision and to eyesight, there's, you know, we're all trained as eye doctors to manage vision to climb rather than to do the opposite to optimize and enhance and people think that as we age, cognitive capacity drops and vision drops and although both of those are common, that's not normal. That's just what most people experience. So we can actually age powerfully when it comes to vision and cognition, but we have to be able to have the right instructions for our brain. We got to be able to know, you know, how we can use our eyes to rewire the software to change our using vision, but then to unlock so much potential and absolutely that's possible for any brain at any age. Awesome. I love hearing that. One thing I wanted to touch on before kind of going into what this can look like for a lay person walking about life is neurodevelopment. So you talked is for this gentleman specifically, you talked about emotional trauma early on in life. I imagine that there might have been some attachment difficulties or something of the sort. So when, when you think of a developing infant and how their primary caregivers are caring for them, especially with today's world and what's common in today's world, what are your concerns? What are you seeing? And what are some positive ways that we can start kind of shifting our thoughts around that to optimize infants, you know, and moving about their developing life? I'm a very, as Dr. Amy knows, a very positive person and optimistic person. So I don't want to be talking too much doom and gloom, but I will say we are now seeing what a generation of screen time and a lack of interpersonal connection looks like from a social development, emotional development, cognitive development, vision development perspective. And the amount of infant setter just given phones or tablets as babysitters is terrible. And, you know, our children are being exposed to a very different world than we were exposed to and not engaging with three dimensional space and not outside and not exploring and having vision guide movement like it's intended to. And it's causing significant challenges with even just eye contact and connecting with others. And, you know, we're seeing generations of individuals who have a hard time having conversations with people in real life and who apply for jobs and do interviews where an in person interview is like, Oh, I'm not doing that. I'm going to just talk on zoom or I'm going to just send over my information. And I think that that human connection piece is massive for so many aspects of life, but also for the development of vision. I mean, when we don't have a loved one and a caregiver that's consistent, we don't develop object permanence and we don't develop size, consens, and we don't develop the ability to read facial expressions and to feel empathy and feel love and it's scary. I mean, we have a lot of children that we work with and we're about 50/50 adults and kids in terms of enacted treatment, but we have a lot of children who were, you know, in orphanages or not given that love or didn't have that constant caregiver with them where literally the ability to just control eye movements is significantly impaired. And I always say that, you know, if we have a difficult time controlling our eyes and the ability to focus, we're going to have a much harder time to control our mind and its ability to focus. And so a lot of times it's hard to even just develop the attention and the visual attention that's needed for aspects of life. We're seeing a lot of people with significant reading problems with AD or ADAG diagnoses, with balance issues, coordination problems, sensory processing deficits, sensory integration dysfunction, autism spectrum disorders. I mean, the list goes on and on and not to say that vision is the cause or necessarily the only treatment for those, but we can open so much up when we can facilitate the necessary vision development to take place that maybe was skipped over or bypassed for whatever reason. Awesome. Thank you for touching on that. I know it sounds scary when we think of things in that context, but just kind of backtracking a little bit to maybe the beginning of our interview is that there's still hope, right? Like with the right services, there's still hope. And if we continue to understand our bodies from that whole picture perspective, there's so much healing that is available to people. So I don't want people to gloss over that part of it. Yes, we need to know about the concerns, but we also need to pour into that hope to what is available in healing. So when you think of just the everyday person and maybe I don't know if you would want to break this down into kids versus adults, our body is pretty good at overcompensating and it's making up for the areas that are maybe lacking. And so we can tend to move about life, not even realizing that we have some of these concerns. Is that fair to say with what you're seeing as well? Absolutely. And I think to really simplify it, all functional vision problems are either avoidance or maladaptations. And the maladaptations that bad habits that emerge are us using our brains very differently than they're wired. So if we don't develop the ability to fluidly track our eye movements and take in a room, often the issue is not that somebody maybe can't focus, it's that their nervous system won't let them stop scanning a room. And to be able to walk into a room and go in, make a few eye movements around, scan around and feel safe is almost a gift now. Because a lot of times we almost retreat, stay back and we're more in that hyper-vigilant hyper-ware state, which then allows a lot of internal systems to spiral. But for adults, for kids, vision should be giving us a sense of safety, should be giving us an advantage, should be guiding and leading in life. And when it's not, it can be really scary. From a driving standpoint, from a new environment standpoint, from a interpersonal connection standpoint, and even just from a perceiving threat standpoint when there's not a threat, but maybe that's just in our head and we're not necessarily in our heart and kind of present in what's occurring. Yeah, having presence and being in our heart is so important and impactful in one of the exercises that we learn in the 21-day journey with Dr. Amy is orienting to our space. But being able to slow ourselves down enough to ground into where we're at and find safety. So for a person that's going about life and maybe they have their body that is overcompensating, thinking, "I don't have any vision concerns." What can a person start to kind of cue into about themselves? What should we maybe be looking for to begin to get more curious about? Is there something more that's accessible to me? Is there more healing and opportunity available to me? And I think hopefully by everyone's realized this is way more than just eyesight. So vision's way more than 2020 eyesight. So I think some signs or things to kind of clue in on would be like if we're experiencing fatigue throughout the day or loss of productivity or loss of focus or we're scheduling important calls or meetings or situations earlier in the day because we feel like we're sharper and we're more alert and entuned with everything earlier in the day. It's oftentimes our brain on overdrive trying to just align point and focus the eyes that gets harder the longer asking our brain to go through those tasks. So reaching for that third or fourth cup of coffee at 2pm, brain fog, decreased comprehension with reading, our mind wandering in certain situations or when we are reading, or even just like a career that doesn't reflect intelligence or potential, or wanting to be more sedentary and wanting to not be in a social environment because there's a lot to take in and you know any change in eye movement is a change in attention whether it's voluntary or in voluntary and if you can't control your eye movement, you can't control your attention. So I think from that standpoint, people who fear driving at night, people who don't like driving on the highway because it's harder to motor plane and take in all that information or struggling with parallel parking. I mean those are all signs of functional vision problems. Somebody who gets motion sick as a passenger in the car but not as a driver that's treatable and that's a functional vision problem. Oh interesting. Somebody who relies on audiobooks or uses reading as a sleeping pill because it's so taxing your fatigue into the system. I mean that's not how it's supposed to be but that's very common and I think when we start thinking about just how much we use our eyes all day every day, especially in this digital world that we're all in, when we start to notice that fatigue sets in or happiness changes throughout the day or we start trying to control our world to manage some of the drop off that occurs. Those are clear signs that our eyes are not working as well together as a team as they're supposed to. Wow. So interesting when you talk about all that and so when our eyes are not working well, you had mentioned earlier that you kind of like go into a tunnel vision. Yes. And so your periphery is maybe turned off not as accessible. So our periphery collapses under a fight or flight response under stress and this might be a great time. Can we go through a quick vision exercise that I would love that. Okay so and we have there's infinite numbers of exercises but one that I love that's called peripheral pointing. So what this is is you're going to everyone's going to look at something across the room straight ahead and not move their eyes away from that. So I'm looking at the light switch across the room for me and then you want to notice something else off into the periphery without moving your eyes here. So I'm going to notice this door off to the side. So I'm going to point to where I think the door is without moving my eyes there and right at the door handle. And when I think I'm ready, I'm going to make the eye movement over and see how accurate I was and if you're right on the money, great, bring your hand down go something farther out. But if you're off, bring it back down and reposition. And so do it to the left, do it to the right, do it in the diagonals, you're essentially kind of painting the periphery. But you're finding that light switch to access and open up periphery, which periphery is what grounds us in space visually. And I've had patients say that literally something like peripheral pointing has saved their life. And I say I know that's a little hyperbolic, but that analogy I gave initially of driving over a bridge or into a tunnel while all of a sudden the world feels like it's collapsing because you're aware of what you're not aware of and you're trying to pull in. We can then look softly and have a panoramic view and open up our side vision, open up our periphery. We can take in so much more space. Our depth perception is enhanced and we're able to take in more with less. And that's the type of thing that periphery is really the key to understanding sense of self in space, but to taking it, taking in more information and really pulling yourself out of that fight or flight response. And I work with a lot of professional athletes and high performance individuals where a lot of times if somebody wants to keep the rire on the ball on the ball better, obviously we forgot what's going on. We have a tailored approach depending on what's going on. But having them access periphery almost makes it feel like what's coming out to is in slow motion because you're in that heightened state of central and peripheral awareness. And that's one of those root causes for so much unnecessary struggle, something like motion sickness. You know, if you're in the backseat of a car or passenger and you're reading on your phone or the chair or things in front of you are static, but then your vestibular system, the internal GPS system, the roadmap of life that lets you know which is up, which weighs up, down, left, right, all that when that's activated and your visual systems activated, but they're setting conflicting signals for the brain to filter and interpret. Then it kind of leads to this, this kind of tottering back and forth. And that's what causes a lot of that dizziness, nausea and hypersensitivity to motion. Yet when we're driving, we can access more periphery. We can motor plan what's coming to you, compare our body for what's what's the next move is. And the overwhelming majority of motion sickness has a visual component that's treatable. And there's a many people who notice that they get motion sick when they're on a screen, like after desks, steady. And that's the vestibular system being tapped into and almost this disequilibrium emerging, which is really common after head injury, really common after neuroinflammation. We see a lot of patients with Lyme disease or northern flammatory issues or a lot who've had COVID the vaccine or booster and then all of a sudden that low level systemic inflammation spirals out of control. And then the simplest of tasks become so difficult. And having the brain's ability to access filter and utilize periphery with central processing can allow for so much more balance and a seesaw that is level versus one that's shifting selectively between the two. So opening up that periphery gives you access to feeling just safer in your everyday environments. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, that can be simply tapped into for somebody who's moderately near sighted or has a moderate specific prescription where even like a contact lens that up versus glasses having the lens be closer to the eye does allow for you to access periphery a little bit more. But also, you know, people who go to the eye doctor and get new glasses and, you know, every doctor is set on this heavy pursuit of getting to see the tiniest letters as crystal clear HD sharp as possible. Oftentimes that overrides too much central processing and allows periphery to be collapsed there. So we want to find the right balance where we're kind of 20 happy rather than 2020 where we're able to have performance be improved by having the weakest lens possible that gives the most improvement in performance, but that's supposed balance between you shy. And along those same lines, like if you're getting glasses and you're putting them on and the doctor saying, oh, get used to them because in your saying they feel a little off. If they feel off, that means they are off. And yes, your brain will get used to it. That's not a good thing. You want to find the right type of prescription. If any, that's going to improve performance. And simple wins can have a cumulative effect and add up when we're kind of hitting this from a few different angles. Wow. So you did that just that very brief exercise, which I intend to do in my everyday life now. So thank you for that. Neuroplasticity takes repetition. And so to open up that periphery, doing some simple exercises like that, what would you recommend for somebody if they're wanting to just open that up slightly, of course, each person is going to be different based off of what's happening for them. But how often would you want somebody to be doing simple exercises like that to sharpen things a little bit? So we exercise in strength in our bodies and all the muscle systems in our bodies, many people every day. Yeah, for some reason, we think we don't need to exercise and strengthen our most dominant sensory system of vision. And I know that sounds a little silly, but you know, we those who do eye exercises in the right ones every day notice a very big difference in terms of productivity and performance. And I would say when there are problems in place and we can go through a formal program and eliminate the roadblocks and rewire the brain and things where it needs things are where they need to be then oftentimes you don't really need to do much to keep up with it. But for those who don't have access to that, I mean, having a simple protocol like we would have with sit-ups, air squats and pushups for our body, you know, we could come up with a sit-ups, air squats and pushups for our visual system. So we have the peripheral pointing. I think another great one would be eye pushups or near-far focus. And so let's go through this together. But this is a great one to help maintain flexibility and stamina with our focusing system. And just to give a quick little bit of perspective here, just because we have birthdays every year doesn't mean we need to succumb to giving up. And there are some age-related changes that occur that for most people in their 40s, the lens inside of the eye becomes hardened, the muscles and fibers controlling. That lens become more original less flexible. We have to hold things far the way until our arms are long enough and then a lot of people listening know the drill, then you grab over the counter readers. But instead of grabbing those readers the first chance you get, try training your focusing system to hold clarity close distance for two seconds at a time. And then three seconds and then five seconds in with with enough practice and with the right exercises you'll see a difference there. So something like eye pushups can develop flexibility and stamina to the focusing system, the inside muscles of the eyes, the accommodate system to not allow something like screen time to cause that system to become locked up. So I pushups with that would be is cover up one eye with your hand. And then with the other hand, stick your thumb up like you're giving somebody a thumbs up here and have it so that you can see kind of the nail portion of your finger. They're going to look at your nail and you're going to bring it as close to you as you can until it gets a little blurry. Then when it gets a little blurry, stop and hold it and try and make it clear. So you can think about looking really hard, looking at the thumb, visualizing your pupil getting small because the focusing muscles right behind the pupil, you're stimulating the system, you're looking hard, hold that for five seconds, and then you can look out into the distance across the room for five seconds and then back at your thumb for five seconds, back in the distance for five seconds. So this is a gross stimulation, relaxation, stimulation, relaxation, the focusing system. You want to do it the same amount of time right eyes you do left eye. And most people will notice that one of the eyes can hold the thumb probably a little bit closer than the other, which means under two eye conditions, we're actually focusing our eyes at slightly different planes because of likely a binocular rivalry or competition where it's too hard to focus both together. So you're kind of adapting and picking one rather than using both. And this is the type of thing if you did this every day for two minutes a day, if you could hold that two millimeters closer after a week, millimeters, add up to centimeters, centimeters, add up to inches, inches, add up to much more than that. And something like I push ups has gone viral on social media for us a dozen times because it actually works. And if you do eye exercises like I push ups every day, you literally will not need stronger reading glasses. Many people may be able, may even be able to get by with weaker lenses and the ones they have. And some may be getting out of getting out of readers altogether. But you got to do the work. And the people that say that vision exercise doesn't work, those are the same people that say normal exercise doesn't work. I mean, you got to do the work. You got to do the right work. You got to do it for the right reasons. And unfortunately, kind of vision exercises, at least on the internet is kind of like the Wild West. Now there's a lot of stuff that's being said and done that doesn't always have science behind it. And I think the equivalent of that would be like somebody saying, I want to lose 10 pounds. I'm going to do jumping jacks every day. If you're going to have to do a lot of jumping jacks to get in good shape. But if you were to do other things that are more targeted, you're going to notice that the weight would be a byproduct of what's improving in terms of strength and flexibility. So something like I push ups, even 30 seconds a day is better than none. And it's simply powerful because it almost relaxes the focusing system of the nervous system. It helps maintain better flexibility. And many people doing it will notice that things kind of appear softer and seem a little bit easier. So that's a simple one. And again, we've got countless simple ones. We've got an online vision training program. And then we also have customized work in office. So there's so many different ways to get involved in terms of getting started on that vision improvement journey. But I think my, the most important take home I hope is that we're not set in, we're not stuck in the mud in terms of where our visual system is operating. And with the right type of work, we can climb out of this place and get to a place of better flexibility and stamina and really open up a lot more of our brain capacity through visions. Right. And opening up that brain capacity, even like you said, just doing the 30 seconds of I push up today, what I hear from you is that too is something that will help calm our nervous system and bring us back into that felt sense of safety, which is really the optimal way of living, right? Like that's that's where all of our healing and all the goodness lies is in that felt sense of safety. Can I add one more just so we have that the please do. So let's then do eye stretches because this is again simple. None of these require any equipment. So eye stretches cover up an eye. And all of these we're doing one night at a time because we want to equal eye skills between right eye and left eye stuff, both are open. There's less of a competition. So you look as far up to the ceiling as you can hold it for five seconds. I don't go too far that you can hold it steady. And then it goes far down the floors. You can hold it for five seconds all the way to the right. And I know this is let this is faster than five seconds, but we're going to make this fast for this conversation that always the left. And then up and left, up and right, down and left, down and right. And so that's something where you're relaxing the nervous system. It's kind of like yoga for the eyes and a great reboot to do like if somebody's on zoom calls all day. Do these in the morning, maybe at lunch and end of the day. And you'll notice you can perform better for longer. Taking lots of vision breaks is huge. So the 2020 rule I talk about all the time, which means anytime you're on a screen or with any near focus task, taking a break at least every 20 minutes for at least every 20 seconds. It looks at something at least 20 feet away. So kind of disengaging, ideally a movement break, ideally outside with some natural lighting, but you're kind of disengaging, giving yourself a vision break and then coming back. Because if you're plowing through eight hours plus on a screen all day long without breaks, very different performance and outcomes. And if you're able to disengaging, come back and maintain a higher level performance for longer periods of time. Right. So I know that Dr. Amy is taught also in the 21-day journey and ocular exercise of just, you know, sensing into your eyes, covering your eyes. And basically how she goes through how that's helpful to our brain. I don't think that people understand how much energy our eyes and our brain together are using. Can you touch on that real quick before we wrap up? Yes. Yes. And I think the exercise that she kind of does a tweak of an old school exercise called popping. And popping is the same is similar to that. And with popping, you rub your hands together and you can kind of heat within the palms. And then you're putting the palms over your eyes and you're blocking out all the light. And that's, you know, a great way to calm the nervous system as well. You know, the eyes are some of the most metabolically active tissue within our body. And I think density per small area, there's more mitochondria in our eyes than anywhere else in our body. And our eye. Might have mitochondria. For some people that don't know what mitochondria is just basically just our energy of ourselves. The powerhouses of ourselves and our eyes are super active when we're asleep in the dark because of all the photo receptors that are constantly regenerating and sending signals to our brain. Vision taxes the system when it's not operating the way it's supposed to. And anyone who experiences a teague, strain, tiredness, or just again, decreased productivity at certain points or lots of focus at certain points, we all need to be at least thinking that vision is likely playing a role there and then maybe even a massive role. So to be able to give love to that system knowing that I can't do much when vision is not operating the way it's supposed to, that can open up a lot of doors and make life a lot, a lot calmer. And our eyes are actually extensions of our brain. They're part of our brain that in you'd row separate from our brain, they're the only part of the brain you can see without things getting messy. And we really got to take good care of them if we want to be living for a long time and being able to take in the world the way that we all deserve to. That's awesome. I love that. Thank you so much for for touching on on that piece of it. Absolutely. I love hearing to that physiology part is just so neat to me that they're actually part of our brain, something that also most people don't maybe recognize. And you can eat well for your brain, you can take supplements for your brain and then there's definitely certain things that are better for the eyes, but if you're taking care of your brain, you're likely taking care of your eyes as well. Any quick recommendations on some go-to foods that you would say are really beneficial for this type of work? Yes, high level most important. Omega threes are massive for brain function and for eye function. And so omega-3 fatty acids, you know, if you can remember the acronym smash, so that's cold water fish like salmon, macro, anchovies, sardines, and halibut, that's the smash. Green leafy vegetables have these macular carotenoids in them called lutein and ziazantine. And those are almost like internal blue light blocking filters that protect us from harmful UV light that's out there. Antioxidants are wonderful for the eyes, so any type of citrus fruit or colorful vegetable. I always say the one food that I think is one of the best for the eyes would be eggs. Eggs have so much healthy nutrients in them, but there's lutein in the in the yoke of eggs. There's coline as well, which is great for cognition and lutein is great for the macula, so the 2020 area of our retina that allows us to see really clearly. And there's even studies that say lutein can help offset some of the detrimental effects of macular java. for people with moderate or severe levels, especially even with studies there. So you want good healthy fats, you want lots of protein and anything that's bad for the body is typically bad for the eyes. So seed oil, sugar, process foods, and then oftentimes even like gluten and dairy can cause this neuroinflammatory reaction that is not good for the eyes as well. - Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that. Absolutely. - Feeding us, feeding our bodies at that cellular level just helps everything. Operating a little bit better, a little bit more clearly, no pun intended. - And little winds add up. So I hope no one listening feels like, oh my God, I have to do a million things. Like start to do in a couple of things. - No, start small, start small. Yeah, it really becomes more gainful when you just pick one thing. And Dr. Amy talks about that a lot too in the biology of trauma framework of, let's just focus on one thing to track because if you're trying to do all of it, you get overwhelmed and then you kind of just don't want to do any of it, which is counterintuitive, obviously. So for those of us who are not in Maryland, - Yes. - Might be in a different part of the country or a different part of the world. How would we find information about this kind of stuff? How do we find information that you are putting out there into the world? Can you direct us to some avenues to access this information? - Absolutely. So I would say, well, first of all, ScreenFit is our online vision training program. And I think we're gonna give everybody in your community a massive discount from that. And I'm sure we'll give Dr. Amy a code for that, but we want to make this as simple as possible for people to get started on this journey. ScreenFit is, we've had thousands of people go through it, as young as five, as old as 89, with 100% of people who've gone through it seeing a reduction in symptoms. And so this is a kind of self-guided program. There's two different courses, each course has 30 lessons, but each lesson is a video of what to do. You then put the tablar to the phone down and you actually do the exercise. You don't need to do, you only need equipment and it's not more screens to treat screens, but at the goal is to kind of teach the specific visual skills and abilities needed for life. And so that's a great resource on social media, on all the platforms, but Instagram probably our best one where we're constantly putting out lots of different exercises and information that people can have access to. And a ScreenFit handles just Dr. Bryce Applebaum, so DR, BRYCE, and then Applebaum, APP, EL, B-A-U-M. My ancestors wanted to make life really challenging and spell Apple EL instead of like the Fruit LA. And then our practice website, myvisionfirst.com, kind of hosts everything on there. I would say just along with a lot of things, be very careful what you see on the internet, especially with vision, there's a lot of people because the need is so high and vision problems are everywhere and screen time becoming the new epidemic, there's a lot of people. I hope putting things out there to help people, but a lot of times saying something like, do sunning or just take off your glasses and then everything's gonna be great and you're not gonna need them anymore. Oftentimes there's a lot more involved than just that, but make sure you're kind of using your own intuition and then anything that you're doing has science behind it. But I think this is becoming one of these levers that we're all learning, we all have access to that can significantly change so many aspects of life and optimize so many areas of life. And I've heard a lot of people say that functional vision training is kind of like the new microbiome, we're realizing that vision is gonna be influencing so many aspects of health, of focus, of energy, of consciousness in ways that we didn't even know as possible. And it's coming, we're getting to a point in the world where this is really needed for pretty much everybody. And in the past it was, when anyone would benefit not everybody needs it, that's changing as the world's evolving now. - Yeah, and I know that there's so much more that we didn't even get into. I could talk to you for hours on all of this stuff. It's so intriguing to me. So I really appreciate the information that you've given us today just in the short time that we've been able to chat, but also a huge thank you to all the information that you're putting out there as a resource for people, even just accessing some of the simple information on Instagram can make such a difference for everybody's lives. Thank you for being a voice in a world where we're needing more of that. - Absolutely, and I just wanna share for anybody. I hope you know this, but you are all so unbelievably fortunate to have Dr. Amy guiding the ship. I'm in a health entrepreneur group that I've been in for about four years. And I met Amy probably the first day I was in this group and have continuously been blown away by her brilliance, her heart, but also her unique perspective to tie together so much of life and unnecessary struggling and trauma that we all hold within us that limits us until we recognize that we can open up these doors and knock all of us out of the way. And I continuously seek out Dr. Amy any chance I can get to just pick her brain and talk to her because she is a beautiful person inside and out, but I know has helped tens of thousands of people. - Dr. Amy is an amazing individual inside and out and so much gratitude to her for all the programming that she's putting out there. Thank you so much for just for everything that you've shared with us today. - Awesome. Thank you for having me such an honor to be here. What Dr. Bryce shared adds another piece to what the body keeps telling us. The nervous system speaks to every part of us, including our eyes. They are a direct route to our regulation. Peripheral collapse is autonomic dysfunction made visible. Opening that back up gives the body a path back to a sense of safety. Now this is one of those episodes to share with anyone that you know with vision problems. Someone in your life has been carrying the effects even of an old concussion perhaps. We're struggling with screen fatigue or living with childhood dyslexia label that may have been something else entirely. This conversation could give them that missing piece and help them change their life. Dr. Bryce is offering my community a discount access to screen fit. $200 off his online vision training program. So be sure and check that out in the show notes. Thank you, Lacey. And again, if you want to find her, you can look at the Biology of Trauma Professional Directory. I'll have the link in the show notes as well as a link to become a Biology of Trauma Professional if that is something that you are interested in. I'm your host, Dr. Amy. Until next episode. Lots of love.