Business Talk
Welcome to Business Talk, where we dive deep into the stories behind the businesses that shape our communities. We bring you conversations with inspiring entrepreneurs who share their journeys, challenges, and the unique value they bring to their customers.
In this podcast, we explore the passion and vision behind successful businesses, uncovering the secrets to their success and learning about the innovative products and services they offer. Whether you're a fellow entrepreneur looking for insights or simply curious about the businesses in your area, this podcast is your go-to source for inspiration and practical advice.
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Business Talk
Dry Eyes, Digital Screens, and What Your Vision Is Trying to Tell You
Vision health impacts every aspect of our daily lives, yet many of us overlook crucial warning signs our eyes are sending. Dr. Cal, an Air Force veteran turned eye care specialist and owner of Eagle Vision Eye Care and Eye Spa, joins us to share eye-opening insights about conditions we might be dismissing.
That burning sensation when staring at screens? The occasional blurry vision that clears after blinking? Those "stuck together" eyelids in the morning? These aren't just minor annoyances – they're your body signaling potential dry eye syndrome. Dr. Cal explains how this increasingly common condition connects to everything from our digital habits to underlying health conditions like diabetes. His holistic approach focuses on treating the root causes without medications, ensuring eyes receive proper nutrients to maintain optimal health.
Most fascinating is the discussion about children's vision health in our screen-dominated world. Dr. Cal reveals how excessive electronics use is causing abnormal eye elongation in kids, progressively worsening their vision. Through innovative treatments like orthokeratology, his practice helps slow this deterioration while eliminating the need for daytime corrective lenses – a game-changer for young athletes and active children. Beyond eye care wisdom, Dr. Cal shares powerful entrepreneurial advice for anyone facing business challenges: "Find your purpose, find your why" and "don't compare yourself to someone else's endpoint when you're at the beginning." His journey from military service to specialized eye care embodies the persistence and passion he advocates.
Ready to discover what your vision is trying to tell you? Listen now and consider scheduling your comprehensive eye health evaluation – because seeing clearly is about much more than just vision correction.
Welcome back everybody to the podcast, where we uncover the stories behind thriving businesses and bring you the expert insights straight from the source. It's my pleasure to be able to introduce to our listeners today Dr Cal. He owns a company called Eagle Vision Eye Care and Eye Spa. So good morning, dr Cal. How you doing? Good morning, dda, glad to be here. So good morning, dr Kyle. How are you doing? Good morning, dda, glad to be here. Awesome, yeah, I love the logo. I love everything in the background. Very nice job, I love that a lot.
Speaker 1:So, for our listeners, I just want to let you guys know I'm your host, dda, and in today's episode we're going to bring you behind-the-scenes experiences and give you valuable insight. This podcast is your go-to source for learning about the businesses that shape our communities and discovering how to make the most of their services and listeners. If you do like this content and you want to see more of it, please like and subscribe. Even feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions regarding what we're talking about on this episode. So, with that being said, I want to go ahead and jump right in and let Dr Cow share with us a little bit about his background.
Speaker 2:Dr Cow, Thank you, sir. Well, first of all, thank you for having me on. This is a great opportunity for me to speak about what we do, and I'm so passionate about what we do. So thank you, sir. I appreciate this. You're very welcome. I'm a former military veteran, Air Force veteran.
Speaker 1:Thank you for your service. We talked about that as well.
Speaker 2:Yes, sir, and I learned how to care for patients and I found my purpose. I said to myself found my purpose. I said to myself this is what I really enjoy doing. And from there I left the military and started my undergraduate and I bumped into a friend of mine who said you know, I knew you were in the medical corps. So there's an eye doctor that's looking for someone to work part time. I started working for the eye doctor and the rest is history. I said I love this, this is what I want to do the rest of my life.
Speaker 1:I love that and you know when we're talking about your practice and the different services that you bring to your patients. One thing that stood out with me in reference to your industry is all about the dry eye syndrome, and I think a lot of people probably experience that, dr Kyle, but don't understand. You know what is entailed. I mean, they could suffer from dizziness, they could suffer from itching. I mean all different things. Can you elaborate a little bit more on dry eye syndrome?
Speaker 2:Of course. Thank you, that's a great question. We all have dry eyes in one form or another, and dry eyes can come from different areas of our lives, whether it's the food we eat, our work, environment, immune disease that we might have. There are different, different aspects that can affect dry eyes, or all of the above. It can lead to headaches, it can lead to poor work, it could lead to not getting enough sleep. It can lead to so many things. So what we do is we're a holistic practice. We don't give you any type of drugs or injections. We work on your body, we work on your eyes, making sure your eyes provide the proper nutrients and fluid that your eyes deserve to kill the bacteria, keep your eyes looking healthy and clean and keep you working properly. That's our goal to keep your eyes looking healthy, clean and refreshed with the proper nutrients. That's what we do in our clinic.
Speaker 1:I love that, and so let me ask you a question. If someone one of our listeners is experiencing what type of symptoms would they experience experience in letting them know that they have dry eye? What do they need to look for?
Speaker 2:Another great question. When you look at your computer screen and sometimes it might get blurry and then you squeeze your eyes and gets clear again, that's a symptom of dry eyes, believe it or not. If you're always rubbing your eyes, if your eyes are always red and you're using those eye drops to get rid of the redness and it comes back, that's a symptom of dry eyes. Some patients say my eyes feel like they're sandpaper. Some patients say when I wake up in the morning, my eyelids are stuck together. Those are symptoms of dry eyes. There's so many subtle clues that your body is trying to tell you that your eyes are not producing producing enough moisture.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love that. And you know, people talk about diabetes, right, and diabetes can be caused by so many different factors. Does the eye itself contribute to that?
Speaker 2:Yes, it can. What happens with diabetes? Diabetes starts by affecting the smaller blood vessels in your body. Guessabetes starts by affecting the smaller blood vessels in your body. Guess where a lot of those smaller blood vessels are In your eyes. So diabetes can start to damage those blood vessels and it can show up in your eyes. That's why we suggest strongly suggest a yearly eye health evaluation where we can bring you in, do images, look at the different parts of your eyes and we can see diabetic changes and one of those changes dry eyes. So we start seeing the effects of diabetes on your eyes. First of all, we're going to contact your primary care physician to say something's going on here. Second of all, we're going to care for the dry eye segment of the part of the eye where diabetes can affect.
Speaker 1:Interesting. You know I was also thinking about the difference between Dr Cowell, between people wanting to wear eyeglasses versus lenses. Can you elaborate on the difference and why do people go either route or both?
Speaker 2:Well, I would say eyeglasses is a form of vision correction, right? Some people feel more comfortable with the frames on their face. Some people like the way they look with eyeglasses. It can be a fashion statement With contact lenses. Some people do not like the way frames feel on their face, so they go with the contact lenses. We take it a step further.
Speaker 2:At Ego Vision Eye Care we do a form of treatment that's called orthokeratology and what this is? This is a form of treatment where you wouldn't even need to wear glasses or contact lenses. Some people don't want to wear glasses or contact lenses at all. We even take it even further for children. Because of the advent of electronics, the eye is abnormally getting longer inside the head with children and that should not be happening and that causes their vision, their distance vision, to get worse and worse and worse. So we do a form of treatment called orthokeratology to slow down that growth. What kids love is they don't have to wear glasses or contacts at all during the day. Our youth athletes, they love it. But what we love about it, what we're passionate about, is that we're slowing down that nearsightedness. We're keeping it from getting worse and worse and worse.
Speaker 1:I love what you said, too, about electronics. You know, since the, since the dawn of all this, the electronics coming into existence, you know more and more, and everyone is using them more and more. Do you see that there is a association between your eyes, maybe getting worse because of electronics?
Speaker 2:Yes, totally. You talk about dry eyes. Dry eyes have been increasing amongst all of us from using electronics. We're not blinking as much, we're staring at these screens and it's starting to deteriorate the glands that forms the moisture in your eyes. That's part of our dry eye treatment to keep those glands healthy. And also electronics. Kids are staring at these screens from the time they're one to two years old all throughout their lives and it's causing that deterioration in the growth of the eye and it can cause all kinds of damage to the back of the eye. So with our treatment and ortho keratology we're stopping that. We're keeping that damage from happening and keeping their vision from getting worse and worse and worse. So, yes, electronics has been the cause of a lot of these things, but electronics are not going away. So if you have that holistic care to help with the dry eyes, to keep that eye from getting longer and longer inside a child's head, that's where we step in and that's what we can proudly and passionately practice.
Speaker 1:That's such great information, dr Kyle, for our listeners as well. One thing I also want to kind of would like for you to share is you know there are listeners here that either want to get into your industry or wanted to be a business owner, or currently are business owners, and maybe they're trying to get over that hill. Maybe one or two, some advice for them to keep pushing forward and what to look for.
Speaker 2:Oh well, first of all, I would say find your purpose, find your why. Find something that will drive you when the business is up, but especially when the business is down. You have to know what you want to do, you have to like what you're doing, but you also have to trust yourself that you're doing the right thing. That's what's going to drive you. All businesses have their winter season, that down season, when profits are not coming in, you're not making enough money.
Speaker 2:You might say to yourself well, am I doing this? Should I quit? No, if it's your purpose, if it's your, why? If it's what you really want to do, then drive yourself. You know what you want to do, you like what you want to do and you trust that you're doing the right thing. And I would. I would say this as well when you think about what you're doing and you think of someone doing something that that, hey, that's what I want to do, do not compare yourself to their end point. Do not do that. You're at the beginning. They had trials and tribulations to get to where they are right now. Just push yourself because you found your purpose.
Speaker 1:I love that Again, great advice and a couple of things I took away from that is passion. Don't give up. And as business owners, that's one thing that sometimes we're sitting on that edge, on that fence, thinking, my gosh, am I doing the right thing? What you're doing, and you really believe it's going to build the relationships, what you offer to the community, then again, over time, it will lend to be in your favor. With that being said, as we wrap up, could you provide our listeners with the phone number, as well as a website to get a hold of you if they want any additional information?
Speaker 2:Of course, our office phone number is 407-324-3633. And the best way to get in touch with our practice is through our website, eagle Vision Eye, spelled E-Y-E eaglevisioneyecom, e-y-e eaglevisioneyecom. You can schedule consultations, you can reach out to us. That is the best way, and you'll also be able to look on our website and see our different specialties and see the different things that we help to keep the eye nice and healthy.
Speaker 1:Well, dr Cal, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to be able to discuss your services and what you provide to the community regarding your business, and we definitely want to wish you the best in success in the near future as well.
Speaker 2:Thank you, sir. Thank you for this opportunity. I really appreciate it. You're very welcome.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning in to First Media Consulting Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to First Media Consulting Podcast. If you enjoyed the podcast, subscribe today To nominate a business you would like to recommend to be on our show. Go to firstmediaconsultingcom or call. Thank you for listening.