The Health Curve

Eye Health: How To Protect Your Vision | Grayson Armstrong, MD at Harvard, Massachusetts Eye and Ear (Bonus Episode - World Sight Day)

• Dr. Jason Arora • Season 1 • Episode 19

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Bonus Episode - World Sight Day (October 9)

Most of us don’t think about our eyes until something goes wrong—but vision problems are far more common than you might realize. Globally, at least 2.2 billion people live with vision impairment. Of those, about 1 billion (nearly half) are cases that could have been prevented or have yet to be addressed. Many studies further estimate that up to 90% of vision impairment arises from causes that are preventable or treatable.

In this episode, host Dr. Jason Arora speaks with ophthalmologist Dr. Grayson Armstrong about the most overlooked threats to eye health, why regular exams matter, and the habits that protect your sight for life. From aging and common conditions like cataracts and glaucoma to red-flag symptoms you should never ignore, this conversation helps you understand how to keep your vision clear and strong.


SPEAKER_01:

Hi guys, thanks so much for joining us on the Health Curve for this special episode on eye health for World Sight Day. We're very lucky to be joined by Dr. Grayson Armstrong, who is an attending ophthalmologist and educator at Harvard and a really good friend of mine. Let's start with a statistic just to set the scene. So 2.2 billion people in the world, roughly, live with visual impairments. That's about a quarter of the world's population. And around half of those were preventable. But eye health, as we know, is ignored often until it's too late. We really only do anything about it once we notice a problem. So today we're going to be asking the question: how do we proactively protect one of our most vital senses, our sight? Grayson, it's so great to have you here, buddy. It's been a long time. Thanks for joining me.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you for having me. It's good to see you too, Jason. How was your trip to Taiwan? It was busy. I was over there talking about eye health and eye trauma and all the things that we'll talk about today. But you know, the whole world is curious. The whole world needs to see. And there's a lot of eye doctors all over the world that are curious about how to better manage and better treat. So I got the luxury of traveling abroad, talking to that group of doctors, and yeah, it's good to be back.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, we've got World Site Day coming up. And obviously, eye health is one of those things that, you know, our site is probably the sense that we talk about the most, we feel most connected with, it's the most noticeable thing. Eye health is very much overlooked, though. And people don't necessarily start thinking about it until something starts to go wrong. How common are eye health issues?

SPEAKER_00:

You'd be surprised, Jason. There's a lot happening in the world of eyes. So everyone who's lucky enough to live long enough will experience some level of eye condition, most of those being very natural age-related processes that we expect to happen and aren't disease. However, eye diseases are very common and they can be eye-specific diseases, things that are generated from the eye, diseases that start and finish in the eye. But there's also systemic diseases that affect the rest of the body, like diabetes, hypertension, the cardiometabolic diseases that you generally talk about on this podcast, those have an impact on the eye as well. And so I think that it's worth knowing that an eye is really just an extension of the rest of the body. And just like anything else, it's at risk of being negatively impacted by overall poor health. And so it is important in the context of good cardiac fitness, in the context of good brain health, it to also focus on your eyes.

SPEAKER_01:

And one of the really surprising statistics I came across was 2.2 billion people in the world are estimated to have vision impairment, and about half of those are believed to be preventable, which is about a billion people. Can you talk more about how common this is?

SPEAKER_00:

I think that there are more than half that are preventable or treatable. And that means that people are unnecessarily suffering from vision loss in the world. And that gives us a lot of opportunity to try to address that. And I'm glad that we're able to talk about it today. Because people in the world should never lose vision. You know, no matter your age, no matter your other factors in your life, vision is something that if you're healthy and there's no disease process taking place, you should maintain your vision until the day that you were laid down to rest. And that is something that's important to remind people of. Some people assume as they get older that, oh, I'm just losing vision because I'm getting older. It's just the way that it's gonna go. But no, you really shouldn't have anything that causes you to lose vision.

SPEAKER_01:

And if that's the case, you should see someone about it. So before we jump into that, can you just tell us a little bit about the basic biology of the eye, how it functions, how it works. It just helps to set the scene when we start talking about what can go wrong. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

In its most simplest terms, the front of the eye encompasses the cornea, which is the clear surface of the front of the eye. The lens inside, which is literally an MM or jelly bean-shaped lens, supposed to be clear, and it helps focus the light just like the lens of a camera. Once you get to the back of the eye, you have the retina, which is essentially the film of the eye, like the film of a camera. It picks up the image of the world and then it sends it via a nerve, the optic nerve, back to the brain. That optic nerve is incredibly important for transmitting information. And if a way, the eye is just an extension of the brain, but all of those pieces work in conjunction to give you vision.

SPEAKER_01:

And what are some of the things that tend to go wrong as people get older? And what is normal and what is not normal?

SPEAKER_00:

So let's start with normal. So everyone around the age of 45 will start to realize that their arms quite aren't quite long enough. They're having trouble reading their iPhone, they're having trouble reading their book when they're going to bed without their glasses on, and many people struggle and have eye strain, eye pain, headaches. This is called presbyopia. It's a fancy word that basically just means that the lens inside of the eye is not so jelly bean and elastic as it used to be. It's getting harder, and the muscles in the eye aren't able to focus up close anymore. And so while you used to have 20-20 perfect reading vision as a child, as a teenager, and as a young working-age adult, age 45 hits and boom, many people start to lose that ability to accommodate. And so this is normal. This is not dangerous. And all you need are a pair of reading glasses. This is why when you go to a fancy dinner, you're going to see a lot of the older folks in the room pull out the reading glasses to look at their menu because they understand that there's a support system and a crutch that you can rely on as simple as reading glasses. For those of us that are trying to avoid this, I'm sorry to say there's nothing like age to kind of march with time. You can't reverse this, and there's no great treatment for it. But generally, all you need is a mild pair of reading glasses. That's the first thing. And the second thing that people start to experience roughly around the age of 60, 65, maybe a little bit earlier, maybe a little bit later, is a cataract. So I think we can all, you know, relate to someone in our lives that either had cataracts or cataract surgery. And by the numbers, cataracts, everyone who's lucky enough to live long enough will generate a cataract. It's a normal process of aging. It's not a disease, it's just something that you develop inside of your eye. That crystalline lens I talked about, the clear focal lens, it starts to get hazy and it gets yellowed, it gets opaque, and it's essentially like looking through a dirty windshield of a car. If you can't see out the windshield, then you can't see. And it's the same way in the eye. As this thing gets a little bit opaque, a little bit cloudy, the world is not as clear as it used to be. It's a little fuzzy. The way people tend to experience it the most is when they're driving at night. You start to have a lot of headlights causing glare, and it's so hard to see the road that many people start to not want to drive at night. But again, that's not just an aging thing that you have to live with forever. There's an easy fix, and it's cataract surgery. Unfortunately, there is no medical treatment yet that may come down the road. But surgery for cataracts takes roughly 15 to 30 minutes on average. It's the most common surgery in the United States and safest by the numbers. Amazing outcomes, and it gives you the ability to see again, unlike the cataract. It just clears up your vision, it's a one-time thing, and it never comes back again.

SPEAKER_01:

Great. And are there any other common things that tend to happen with the eye that are normal as you get older?

SPEAKER_00:

Some of the things that you'll expect with the eyes and around the eyes with aging. The skin of the eyelid is the thinnest skin on the body. And so it's not uncommon as we age to naturally have that start to droop a little bit. And so that's something that many people get bothered by. And if it's blocking your vision, then there's simple procedures that can be done to remove that excess skin and give you your peripheral vision back. It also, of course, helps with cosmesis, right? We want to look good. We're all a little bit vain. And so that's something that you could expect with time. It's not uncommon to have dry eyes. And so in various settings, for example, I'm here in Boston. When it gets cold, it's very common for people to get dry eyes. The eye isn't producing enough tears, perhaps. And there's also oil glands on the eyelid that are supposed to secrete oil called mybone, mybomian glands. When those get cold, the mibomian oil gets hard like butter, and it doesn't flow like it's supposed to. And so in cold settings, you're going to find that dry eye is incredibly common, easily treatable, but very common. If you're in a humid place like Florida, you know, Mexico, South America, it's very, very common for that humidity and the heat to keep that oil flowing. And dry eye may not be as big of a deal.

SPEAKER_01:

I want to get onto the eyes as a window into whole health. And this is one of the most common things you see as an ophthalmologist, right? Can you tell us a bit more about that?

SPEAKER_00:

We're lucky to live in a day and age where, you know, we have a lot of amazing tools. So I'll start by saying that everything we're going to talk about is actually going to be a future where artificial intelligence can be used to screen for your entire body's health purely by a photo of the eye. So let's dive in a little bit. So when you have diabetes, for example, it's a very common condition that raises blood sugar in the body. And that blood sugar elevation causes damage to small blood vessels. The microvasculature of the eye is no exception. You have tiny little blood vessels that are inside the eye, it's supposed to be working to keep the vision clear. But if those blood vessels are leaky, or if you have a lot of blood leaking out of those blood vessels, it blocks your vision. Diabetic retinopathy is what we call the condition of abnormal blood vessels inside of the eye due to diabetes. And it's the most common cause of blindness and vision loss in working-age adults in the United States and worldwide. It's incredibly common. The issue is that most people will see pretty good until it's really, really, really advanced. And so for people with diabetes, one of the things that's recommended is to get an annual eye exam every year to check for diabetic retinopathy. If you have type 1 diabetes, you can delay that exam by five years after your first diagnosis because it takes some time to build up. But if you have type 2 diabetes, we assume that has been kind of smoldering along at a little bit of a longer pace already. So at diagnosis, we recommend you get an eye exam and screened every year. And of course, if there's something wrong, you might need to be seen sooner. But that's just one example. People with high blood pressure, people with cholesterol issues, that also shows up inside of the eye. Not only that, but people with cancers can have issues inside of the eye. You know, anemia, low red blood cell count, that can also show up in the eye as well. Surprisingly, people with poor diet and malnutrition or poor absorption of certain nutrients can also have vision issues and it can affect the optic nerve health and decrease your vision, whether it's your peripheral, central, or your color vision. So there's so many things. You can essentially think of the eye as a microcosm of the rest of the body. And anything that's happening inside the eye would also be happening inside of the brain, the heart, your lungs, your kidney, your liver. And so it's just one piece that we just happen to be able to look inside. And that's why these new tools for artificial intelligence to look at the eye with a photo are so powerful. Because you can look directly at the nerve tissue, at the blood vessel tissue, and you can determine whether someone has findings that correlate with kidney disease, that correlate with things like Alzheimer's and neuronal disease, with cardiac disease, cardiac risk factors, and stroke risk. All of that can be determined by the eye. And so I guess that's a long-winded way of saying that if you have systemic diseases, get your eyes checked, because it can definitely show up there as well. But vice versa, maybe getting your eye checked will help you find that systemic disease early.

SPEAKER_01:

And that's a nice segue into talking about how do you monitor your eye health anyway? So even if you don't already have an eye condition, if you don't suddenly notice something that's changing your vision, and if you don't have a systemic medical condition like diabetes, what should the average person do on a day-to-day, year-to-year basis just to ensure that they are monitoring both the health of their eye, but their whole health by paying attention to their eyes? What are some of the things that that people should be aware of? Recognizing that we have a global audience, things around insurance, et cetera, will vary. But one of the goals of this podcast is really to empower people to do as much as they can on their own in a safe way.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. No matter where you are in the world, maintaining your vision is critical. And imagining what life would be like without vision is so challenging. You know, there's so many studies that show that vision is one of the things that people fear the most of losing. And people fear it more than public speaking, which for many people is saying something. But it is the sense that people fear losing the most. And so our role as, you know, people with eyes, we should get them checked every now and then. Generally, it's recommended that you get an eye exam around the age of 40. If you haven't had any eye exams in the recent past, and even if you don't notice any eye conditions, any eye problems. Let's say perfect vision, you've never had glasses, no trouble in the family, age 40, just go ahead and get your eyes checked at least once. If it's healthy and there's no trouble, then we generally recommend getting an eye exam every two to four years after that. And these are recommendations not necessarily from me, but from the large governing bodies that help kind of set public health initiatives within the United States and the world. Of course, if you have high risk factors for disease like diabetes, like high blood pressure, or even anyone in the family with a history of eye diseases, it's worth getting checked out maybe earlier to check things out and catch it early. Anyone who catches their disease in the eye early is able to treat it and prevent vision loss generally. The earlier you catch it, the better. And so again, maybe if you're healthy, age 40, and then every two to four years after that. But if you're uh having any symptoms, definitely get it checked out. Any risk factors, you might as well get checked out early so you can catch anything early too.

SPEAKER_01:

And what's the most accessible professional or method for people to get their eyes checked in general?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so the easiest way to find a provider of any kind that can evaluate your eyes readily is finding an optometrist. They're very common in every country, and especially in the United States here, they're more numerous than ophthalmologists. They do a great job at evaluating the eye and screening for disease. And so if you go to see an optometrist, not only will they check to see if you have a need for glasses, but they're also going to look inside, make sure you don't have anything going on that's concerning. And if they do have something of concern, they'll send you to an ophthalmologist for definitive diagnosis and treatment. And I think that's an important distinction, right? Optometry is great. They really know a lot about the eye diseases that they need to look for, and they can really determine what needs to be seen by an ophthalmologist. Ophthalmologists are surgeons and they are able to take care of these diseases more definitively and have more training in how to prescribe medications and what to do in that world. So these two professions work together all the time, and we constantly work back and forth because we both have incredible value for the eyes. But if you need to find somebody, it's never a bad idea to start with an optometrist. But if you're curious or if you have a major risk of disease, you could find an ophthalmologist instead.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. So what are the habits and protective steps that people can take on a day-to-day or a regular basis to protect their eyes and their vision?

SPEAKER_00:

The first thing you could do to protect your eyes is to make sure that you're systemically healthy. You know, we talked about the fact that things like diabetes and high blood pressure can impact your eyes and impact your vision. And so if you take care of the rest of your body, you're taking care of your eyes at the same time. Make sure you manage your blood sugars, make sure you're keeping your blood pressure under control, keeping your cholesterol in check, and eating healthy foods. You know, for the eyes specifically, things like fish and green leafy vegetables are incredibly good for the eyes. Some people like to talk about carrots, but everything in moderation, not too much, not too little. And so all those things are fine for the eyes. A lot of people do ask about computer use and whether it's damaging the eyes to be on a computer all day. In today's world of TikTok and hybrid work, it's not uncommon to sit on a computer or a phone for hours on end. So it's not dangerous to use the eyes, it's not dangerous to read, but it can cause eye strain, eye fatigue, and dry eyes. And so we generally ask people about every 20 to 30 minutes, just take a minute or two to relax. Instead of focusing on something up close, look out the window and focus on something far away. It just decreases the strain on the eye. So other people ask about blue light blocking glasses. Now, there's not a lot of data behind this. One thing that it can definitely help with is the melatonin secretion in the brain that helps you sleep. So keeping your sleep cycle on track. But it doesn't necessarily hurt your eyes to use blue light. And so it's okay to not necessarily invest in the blue light blocking glasses all the time. Although it's not a bad look sometimes. So those are the things that I would recommend mainly. And the last thing, you know, just as a quick aside, eye trauma is never expected. It's something that comes up not infrequently. And so protecting the eye is different in different age groups. For young children, they often have sports-related home or school-based injuries. And so making sure that they're wearing eye and face protection during any sports activities or in the school, not running with sharp objects, for example. In working age adults, it often happens when they're, you know, hammering or chiseling or using nail guns. And so wearing eye protection that's shatterproof is critical in those scenarios. And in the elderly, once you've had eye surgery, like cataract surgery, the eye is more vulnerable. Falling out of bed, falling while they're walking, not uncommon. And that's one of the most common reasons for eye injuries in the elderly population. So at any age, just be careful with your eyes. They're very fragile.

SPEAKER_01:

We'll get back to this conversation in just a moment. But if you're finding this episode helpful, here's a quick ask. Take a second to follow or subscribe to the Healthcare Podcast wherever you're listening. And if someone else in your life would benefit from this episode, or any of the others you've heard, please send it that way. All right, let's get back to it. What about UV protection and the sun?

SPEAKER_00:

UV protection is not a bad idea for the eyes. Not only does it decrease the amount of light that gets in, so it gives you an easier time seeing in bright light settings, but UV is thought to potentially contribute to things like cataracts. Questionable whether it has something to do with age-related macular degeneration or not. Some people think it may. And some people that are at higher risk, like people with lighter skin color, may have an increased risk of things like cancer or melanoma inside of the eye with increased UV. Not to mention, the skin around the eye being very thin is very susceptible to eyelids cancers and skin cancer. And so it's not a bad idea to protect it from that perspective as well.

SPEAKER_01:

And I want us to talk about supplements for vision and eye health. Supplements are everywhere. You know, a lot of them don't do what they say on the tin necessarily. It's an unregulated space. It's pretty Wild West out there. What do you see out there? What do people tend to take? What advice would you give everyone around supplements for the eye? I like the pun there. That was pretty good. But to use that again.

SPEAKER_00:

The general thought around supplements is that it is a major market in the United States. For example,$68 billion was spent on supplements in 2023. And it's expected to rise to$163 billion in 2033. So a lot of people are looking for ways to fix and improve their health, both systemically and of course in the eyes too. We're lucky in our field to have some proof that supplements do have an impact sometimes. For macular degeneration, there was a study called the AREDS study. The age-related macular degeneration study proved that a certain combination of vitamins can decrease your risk of developing advanced macular degeneration or vision loss in about 25% of patients with disease. So these are already people who had eye disease that have known eye risk factors. And in that population, they can use the supplement. That's not to say that you should use this if you're just the average Joe without any eye disease. And if you think you might want it, definitely get an eye exam first, because otherwise it's just making your urine very expensive. It doesn't necessarily help the average person. But there is proof that it helps a little bit. The thing that helps inside of those is carotenoids. And there's many, that's a whole category of chemical substances, and those have been studied in various ways for various conditions. And again, the A-red study shows that A red's vitamins and A red's two vitamins are great, but these other carotenoids plus or minus, whether they have an impact. You'll hear a lot about omega-3s and fish oil. Those things have thought to have had some benefit for things like dry eye. They've been studied for cataracts and have no impact, but for dry eye, the question is still out a little bit. There was a New England Journal article that was published that showed that compared to olive oil, it didn't have an impact on people's dry eye symptoms or their findings. But then again, olive oil is similar to fish oil, and that may have also had a positive benefit. So again, questions out. Generally, I say that it's not going to hurt your eyes. And so if you're already taking omega-3, it may help, but it may not be the only thing you need. You also need to make sure you're taking good care of your eyes in other ways as well. One of the more common things you can consider a supplement is artificial tears. So tears that are placed on the eye to lubricate the surface. Because dry eye is so common, they're very commonly used to lubricate the surface. And I think that almost all of them are helpful for people who are symptomatic with dryness of the eye. And there's a lot of marketing that goes into them. My general thought is whatever's on sale is probably fine. Pick the one that's easiest and cheapest off the shelf, and it's probably going to do just fine in treating your dry eye disease. And for artificial tears, you also include eye drops in that. Oh, of course. Yeah, so artificial tears are literally just eye drops that have the same kind of chemical makeup or similar to a tear on your eye. And so for people that don't have enough tears or having trouble with their eyes, you put this drop on the eye, it lubricates the surface, and it gets rid of any of the dry eye symptoms like itching, scratching, foreign body sensation, like you have an old eyelash in there, that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01:

I just want to briefly touch on any red flags people should be aware of. You know, if something happens with their vision, if they notice something, they should go get help. What are the things people should know about?

SPEAKER_00:

Just remember, first and foremost, that no one should ever lose vision. If you're losing vision and you can't see like you used to, whether it's reading vision, peripheral vision, driving, etc., that's not normal. Go in and get your eyes checked because many times it's treatable and fixable. If you're having vision loss, whether it's a central blind spot in your vision, flashing lights in your vision, like a bunch of fireworks going off, black floating dots in your vision, like either dust, smoke, or black bugs that seem to be floating around that when you're swatting away at them, they don't tend to go away because they're inside the eye instead of outside. Those are red flags for real disease. You could have something going on like a retinal detachment or bleeding inside of the eye. And that's something that needs to be checked out. Because again, it can be treated, but if you don't do anything about it, it's almost certainly going to get worse. We want to catch things early to save your vision.

SPEAKER_01:

And you briefly spoke about the future of ophthalmology and eye health because there is a lot of cool stuff going on in this space right now. You and I both know that. Can you tell the public a little bit about what's coming?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's almost telling them what's already here. So the future is now, my friend. We have amazing technology in our field, and we're really kind of paving the way for many other fields in medicine. You know, we talked before that taking a photo of the eye can show you a lot of systemic health. And it may feel very futuristic to just take a quick photo and be able to tell all these conditions. But it's actually happening already. Here at MASH General Brigham and Harvard Medical School, we've deployed 20 AI cameras across the primary care and endocrinology offices, and it can determine whether you have diabetic retinopathy within five seconds. But not only can it do that, it can tell you if it's severe enough to need to see an eye doctor or not. And so those tools are so much more accessible than the average ophthalmologist because you're already getting your blood checked and you're already getting, you know, your diabetes evaluated at your primary care office. And so why not get a quick photo at the same time? You know, it keeps a lot of healthy people out of the eye doctor's office and gets the people who really need care in. And so I think that this is a future state that's really nice. And it's already happening now. The medications that we have for eye diseases are advancing at a remarkable rate. We are the first to have a gene therapy to replace a defective gene inside of the eye and replace vision for people that were otherwise blind. We took a child, the actually at our hospital, Mass INER, we were the first to use an FDA-approved gene therapy to replace the vision of a child, where at first he couldn't even navigate the world in the dark. And then he could ride his bike, play catch with his dad, and got back to school in a meaningful way. It's amazing what we can do. And lastly, surgery's come a long way too. You know, it used to just be that when people had cataract surgery back in the years ago, we would take the cataract out, but they would need these huge, thick Coke bottle glasses and looked kind of goofy, but at least they could see. Nowadays, not only can we take the cataract out, but we can put new lenses in the eye that gives you good distance vision, good reading vision. And maybe you don't even need glasses at all in the future. You can get your vision better than it was when you were a kid sometime. So the future is now, and our field is only going to be pushing things forward with artificial intelligence and other technologies too.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, ophthalmology has really set the pace, hasn't it? Looking forward to it. Before we close out, I just want to go through a few mythbusters. We typically do this in the episodes. People will hear a lot of misinformation and lots of myths. God knows I've heard many myself. And as our expert, just please tell us, is it true or not? And what should people really know about it? So the first one is sitting too close to the TV can ruin your eyes. And this is a personal one because my parents used to feel that this was the reason I got glasses as a kid.

SPEAKER_00:

Jason, there's evidence that says that your parents were right. You know, worldwide, there's a huge epidemic of myopia, which means nearsightedness. And it seems like it's not a big deal to be nearsighted. But in actuality, people who are incredibly nearsighted have a higher risk of blindness, higher risk of vision loss, higher risk of glaucoma, and other diseases like retinal detachment that can cause severe permanent vision loss. And we found that in recent years, as children are more often looking at iPads and books and their screens instead of being outside, the incidence of myopia is going up. So there is some truth to the fact that if people stare at things very close for a very long time, it seems to make them more nearsighted over time. And so that's why in many countries, we do encourage children to play outdoors, to get away from the screens. And it's important for people who have nearsightedness, especially at a young age, to do those things and perhaps see an ophthalmologist about treatments to prevent it from getting worse.

SPEAKER_01:

Another myth that we hear a lot is that wearing glasses can actually make your eyes weaker. Can you comment on that?

SPEAKER_00:

I'm gonna say that's false. So one thing to know is that if you needed glasses, you've always needed glasses. And if you haven't worn them, just because you've been living in a hazy world doesn't mean that the glasses aren't gonna help you. Nothing about wearing the glasses is gonna make your eyes weaker or make you more reliant on them. All it's gonna do is highlight how much you needed them in the first place. And when you take them off again, it's gonna be harder for you to live without them because now you know how much you were able to see all in the first place. So no, I'd say that's uh false. And how about eating carrots can improve your eyesight? Everything in moderation. So carrots are great. I think carrots have some aspects like carotenoids that are good for the eyes. In fact, carotenoids are the same thing that are in age-related macular degeneration treatments like A-reds, vitamins. But I have had patients that have overdone it. They've eaten so many carrots that they're literally orange skin. There's a lot of sugar in carrots too, so it can increase your risk of diabetes. So don't go crazy, but everything in moderation.

SPEAKER_01:

Another one we've heard is that doing eye exercises can actually cure vision problems. So just sort of sitting there looking far into the distance, looking up, down, left, right, all those sorts of things. Is there any truth to that?

SPEAKER_00:

You don't need to be an Olympian eye muscle, my friend. You know, these muscles around the eyes are strong enough to keep moving most of your life without any trouble. And so eye exercises don't tend to help most people. But there is an exception. In young children and adults that have trouble focusing up close and have double vision when they try to read, there are things called quote unquote pencil push-ups, where you do kind of force your eyes to focus on a target coming closer to your eyes. And that can train your eyes to work together up close so that you don't see double. So while rare, I've got to tell you, that's probably true for a minority of patients, but for the average Joe, you don't need to work out your eye muscles.

SPEAKER_01:

I've got a random one for you. How about a baby's eyes keep changing color and then eventually they set?

SPEAKER_00:

That is a real one, my friend. So when you're born, the eye color is not necessarily the eye color that you're gonna have your whole life. So when you have a little baby, it can get darker, it can get lighter, and it can change over the course of that infant's life. And so enjoy it while you can, but know that it might change later.

SPEAKER_01:

So another myth that we've heard is that colorblindness is incredibly rare. Is that true?

SPEAKER_00:

That is false. Colorblindness is not uncommon. Now, colorblindness is a very common condition, especially in men, and many people go their whole lives without realizing that they're not able to see colors like the average person. So you can survive and do fine in your job, in school, in work without noticing you have colorblindness. And it does tend to run in families, by the way. There are other issues that can Cause colorblindness that are less common when people have issues with their optic nerve, like multiple sclerosis or autoimmune conditions. That can also lead to colorblindness, and that's not normal. But that's something that isn't you're not born with. That's something that you develop later on in life and would notice. And so if you develop colorblindness, that is rare and needs to be treated. But if you've had colorblindness your whole life, that's actually quite common. Reading in dim light is bad for your eyes. Is that true? Not bad for your eyes' health, but definitely hard on the eyes in terms of eye strain and headache. So as you get older, especially as cataracts start to develop, it can be a little tough to read in dim lighting. You know, don't get worried. It's okay to read in dim lighting. It's not going to cause any permanent damage to the eye, but it's only harder on yourself. And so you might find that after 30 minutes, an hour of reading in a dark setting, you're having trouble focusing, your eyes are a little tired, you've got a little bit of a headache. Just turn on a brighter light or put on your reading glasses, and that's all you need.

SPEAKER_01:

So I've got one last myth for you, which may or may not be true. Can poor vision skip a generation?

SPEAKER_00:

So because some eye diseases are genetic, technically this is a true statement. And so someone who is a grandparent with an eye disease can have it pass through the family undetected in their next generation, and then in their grandchildren, it can show up sometimes. So yes, that's not unheard of.

SPEAKER_01:

So just to close out, Grayson, is there any other parting wisdom you'd like to share with our listeners?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I think we covered a lot today. So thank you for this opportunity. The one thing I'll say is that just remember that some eye diseases run in families. And so if you're helping manage your parent or your loved one with an eye disease, whether it's glaucoma, macular degeneration, or something else, because it could run in the family, you should probably get your eye checked out too. The earlier you catch it, the more you can do to prevent the vision loss. And sometimes you don't have it to lose vision at all. So get your eyes checked if you think there's any risk. And again, just remember no one should lose vision from natural age related processes. If you're losing any vision, definitely get your eyes checked.

SPEAKER_01:

Grayson, thank you so much for joining me. I'm sure our listeners will get a lot of value out of this episode. Thank you so much for having me, Jason.