Haque's Health Hacks
Haque's Health Hacks with Dr. Anita Haque
Haque's Health Hacks
Vision and Wellness: A Deep Dive with Dr. Scott Kamena
Have you ever wondered why your arms suddenly seemed too short to read comfortably once you hit your 40s? You're not alone. In this fascinating conversation with Dr. Scott Kamena of Murrieta Optometry, Dr. Anita Haque uncovers the surprising reality that virtually everyone will need reading glasses by their late 40s due to natural changes in our eyes' focusing ability.
Beyond the warnings, this episode delivers practical solutions you can implement immediately. Discover which foods contain vision-protecting antioxidants and pigments, how proper blinking techniques and screen breaks can prevent dry eye, and learn Dr. Kamena's ultimate eye health hack – a simple daily eyelid massage that takes just 30 seconds but provides remarkable benefits for tear film quality.
Whether you're concerned about your own vision, caring for aging parents, or raising digital-native children, this episode provides essential knowledge to protect your family's eye health. Subscribe now and join us on our journey to better health through understanding and prevention.
Most people don't need glasses until they hit their 40s. Now most people don't know that everybody needs glasses starting sometime in their 40s. There's very, very few exceptions to that, and those exceptions are like the kind of exceptions that prove the rule, like maybe they have one nearsighted eye and one farsighted eye and so then they don't need reading glasses. But every person with normal vision will need glasses for reading by 48 years old.
Intro/Close:Welcome to the Haque's Health Hacks podcast, your trusted source for wellness, fitness and healthy lifestyle insights. We believe in empowering you with knowledge to take control of your health. Join us as we explore the latest in self-care, share expert advice and guide you on your journey to optimal well-being. Let's embark on this path to a healthier you together.
Dr. Anita Haque:Hello and welcome to Haque's Health Hacks podcast. I am your host, Dr Anita Haque, and I am so honored to have an amazing guest on this show today who's not only a friend for many, many years, but he's also very well regarded in our town as our top optometrist from Murrieta Optometry here in Livermore. So, Dr Scott Kamena, welcome, thank you so much for coming on, it's such a pleasure. Yeah, we've been probably like what, working with each other, you know 2007 oh was it.
Dr. Anita Haque:You know the date. I actually thought it was less than that like maybe 2008, but yeah, I'm pretty sure 2007 so we both watch each other evolve.
Dr. Anita Haque:You know health journey, our practices, you know in so many ways um and I was just 90 pounds you did lose a lot of weight with training with don parker, my husband, at the gym, yeah, yep, nutrition and all the things and I've had the uh honor of, you know, working on your body, because you work your body really hard too, and postural positions. So if you don't mind to share a little bit about your journey, you know, as an optometrist, like what inspired you even to become an optometrist from the start here.
Dr. Scott Kamena:I mean, the real answer is my dad is an optometrist I mean, he's retired but he's still got his license and we grew up here in town and my dad always had the opportunity to be involved in our lives. You know in scouts and you know everything that my brother and I did all our activities in school. My brother and I did a lot of activities in school and he was involved in city politics back in the 80s, and so it gave him the opportunity to do something that allowed him to be social at work. I love people, he loves people, so it's a job that people ask me do you like your job? And I will say it beats working because I get to spend time with people, talk to them and do something that helps them and it doesn't hurt.
Dr. Scott Kamena:It's not like going to the dentist it doesn't hurt. So that's how I got inspired it doesn't hurt.
Dr. Anita Haque:So that's how I got inspired. You're so right, you know. I don't know if I've ever shared this with you, Doc, but I considered going into optometry no you never told me.
Dr. Anita Haque:No, I haven't told you this, because the one thing that deterred me from, you know, going down that path was that there's quite a bit of physics involved and I did not enjoy physics. So I first thought about becoming a dentist and I decided I don't want to do that and I thought optometry was my next, you know, choice. And then when I learned that it was like a lot of physics, that kind of what led me down chiropractic. So yeah, I often.
Dr. Scott Kamena:There's a lot of forces in chiropractic, that's for sure but yeah, but you know I mean, the thing is, and you know what you have to do the classes you have to take are not really representative of like what you have to do on a daily basis, but you know there's a hurdle you have to jump. But a lot of people you know if, if there's any parents listening or kids listening, it's like you know if they don't like chemistry or they don't like physics, you know they just have to get through that and you know when you're actually doing school you're not really thinking about physics or chemistry that much.
Dr. Anita Haque:Oh shucks, If I had only known. No, I'm kidding.
Dr. Scott Kamena:You are a wizard at what you do, and I think that it's a good thing. You don't like physics.
Dr. Anita Haque:Yeah, see, everything works out the way it's supposed to. Exactly so. I have a question for you, I think you know, for our listeners. I just want to show that you're a generally a more well-rounded, holistic type of practitioner, which is why I think you and I have always resonated I mean you not only, like I mentioned a couple of minutes ago, that you've, you know, had chiropractic care, you know, through my hands, also with the training nutrition.
Dr. Scott Kamena:So with your feet too.
Dr. Anita Haque:Yeah, so, like, why do you think like eye health is so overlooked? Because I think it is, um, when people think about their overall health and wellness, like they're good about their weight, you know, uh, but how do you feel like the eyes are really connected to the rest of the body?
Dr. Scott Kamena:So, um, I guess the first part of the question why is it overlooked? Um, I mean, most people don't need glasses until they hit their 40s. Now, most people don't know that everybody needs glasses starting sometime in their 40s. There's very, very few exceptions to that, and those exceptions are like the kind of exceptions that prove the rule, like maybe they have one nearsighted eye and one farsighted eye and so then they don't need reading glasses. But every person with normal vision will need glasses for reading by 48 years old, but usually the average age is actually 43. Most people don't know that, um and so, and most people think that if they see well, that their eyes are fine, and most of the time that's true. But conditions like glaucoma, which is where the eye pressure I have a model, I guess that maybe I should grab it or something.
Dr. Anita Haque:No, no, it's all good, it's interesting, while he's grabbing that model, Dr Kamena, you know, I too came to visit you around 44. Uh, yeah, and it's pretty common eyes and you told me the same thing and I was shocked when you said you're definitely gonna need glasses sometimes, but not today and I was like yeah, yeah, and then people you know, think I, like you know, curse them or something, but uh, but it happens and, and so the reason is there's a lens inside our eyes.
Dr. Scott Kamena:This is a model of an eye I guess you know came from a plastic elephant and there's a lens here and it is surrounded by muscles and the muscles squeeze it to change the shape. And so if you have normal eyes and you just relax this muscle, you see good far away, and then when you want to see up close, then you squeeze the muscle I mean squeeze the lens with the muscle and then you focus up close. But the problem is the lens gets hard over time and somewhere in your forties it gets hard enough that you can't do the focusing anymore. In your 40s it gets hard enough that you can't do the focusing anymore, and so that's what triggers a whole bunch of people to get their first eye exam. A lot of people also get their first eye exam when they're kids, because mom wants to make sure they can see before they go to kindergarten.
Dr. Scott Kamena:And one of the things that I just cannot understand is you can't go to school in California without getting a dental exam, so you have to have your dentist sign off. It's okay for you to go to school. You do not need to get your eyes checked Now I don't. I mean, it certainly would be difficult to learn if you're in pain, if you have tooth pain, but you don't use your teeth to learn and you definitely need your eyes to learn. So, true, and a lot of kids function just fine but actually have an issue, whether it's a focusing issue or they could be farsighted, which means they see. What it really means is they have to use this muscle to see clear, far, and they have to use it a lot more to see up close. So they're focusing all the time, which often gets mistaken for attention deficit disorder.
Dr. Anita Haque:Interesting.
Dr. Scott Kamena:The 25% of kids who were diagnosed with ADD actually had farsightedness and that had not been diagnosed. So kids really should and they could have astigmatism. Astigmatism is where this part of the eye, the cornea, is bent and they can still see okay, but things aren't as clear and it takes more effort to focus and it reading is more difficult and they don't know, because if you were born with something, you don't have any reference point and so they have no idea that they have vision issues.
Dr. Anita Haque:That that's all they know. So you're absolutely right. Why isn't an eye exam mandatory?
Dr. Scott Kamena:It's not required, but it's definitely recommended. Right, why isn't an eye exam mandatory? It's not required, but it's definitely recommended. If you, you know people ask me when should you get your first eye exam? The official answer is at six months, two years, four years and then you know, every other year that's the official, you know.
Dr. Scott Kamena:american academy of optometry, of pediatrics, you know. Do people really do that? Do kids, you know? Do I see six-month-old kids, one-year-old, two-year-old kids? I do, but do parents bring them in if they don't suspect there's something wrong? Not very commonly, but you absolutely should get your eyes checked before you start kindergarten. I mean because you just don't know and you have a baseline. But the the to answer to your original question, um, about why people overlook it is they assume that if they see fine, that their eyes are fine. But um, glaucoma, which you know is not very common in people under 50 at all, um, but still it's possible to get is where the pressure in the eye starts to elevate to the point that it damages the optic nerve, which is a connection to your brain and the body. Is an amazing thing and it will cause the peripheral vision to go first in a way that you will not notice at all.
Dr. Anita Haque:Yeah, it's like slow.
Dr. Scott Kamena:Pressure is very, very slow.
Dr. Scott Kamena:If you wait until you notice that it's that there's something wrong with your vision, it's too late to restore what you've lost, and the issue is that the normal range for pressure is between 10 and 21 millimeters of mercury, which is the same scale they use for blood pressure, so much, much lower than blood pressure, but you don't feel pain until somewhere between 30 and 35. So there are people running around, you know, many thousands, if not some millions of them, who have pressure around 28. And it's eroding their nerve and they don't feel anything. Uh, so you know but the short answer to the question of why people overlook it is they just assume if they see good, then their eyes are good.
Dr. Anita Haque:So one important thing that I know I've shared with you but even for our listeners you're so right about glaucoma, because my mom was diagnosed with glaucoma in her twenties and so for me eye health was important at a young age because it was, you know, familial or hereditary, and and for that reason I had gotten my eyes checked pretty regularly. Sorry, hearing a little bell here. Yeah, so I used to get my eyes checked really regularly because, my mom having glaucoma, she would insist that my sisters and I, you know, get checked every year.
Dr. Anita Haque:So luckily, you know, you've checked too recently Did anybody else get it? No, you don't have it for sure.
Dr. Scott Kamena:Yeah, any sisters with it.
Dr. Anita Haque:No, yeah, not that we don't feel and they've all, so it's. It's maybe skipped a generation who hopefully not, but you know for anybody else's sake. But you're absolutely right, she would have not known unless she had that eye exam because she didn't have any symptoms. So, yeah, it's important. So, like you know, one of the things that I hear about all the time, you know and you we talk about nutrition in my practice, I know, in your practice and in our conversations, because it's so vital how do you feel like nutrition impacts eye health? Like, are there like specific foods that you might recommend? Like I know people, carrots, right, everybody talks about carrots right, yes, exactly.
Dr. Scott Kamena:With regard to so, carrots have vitamin A and the retina needs vitamin A to function. Yes, exactly comes from carrot. Um, but that's where vitamin A is is made. Um, but if you have a vitamin A deficiency, you're just going to go blind and that's it, I mean, and you go blind quickly and it's not going to get recovered, and so, but eating more carrots doesn't actually help. You know, you, you?
Intro/Close:get enough vitamin A. More vitamin A doesn't help you, don't you?
Dr. Scott Kamena:know you get enough vitamin A. More vitamin A doesn't help. You don't use the extra vitamin A. I'm not telling people, you know, not to eat carrots. I'm just saying that the American diet has plenty of vitamin A and eating extra doesn't really do anything different. Now, in third world countries it's a big deal and, and you know, india has the highest rate of vitamin A deficiency and kids going blind, um, but in reality, carrots don't make you see better, they just don't.
Dr. Scott Kamena:It's a. It's a something you need for minimum functionality, uh, and people do get it from, from other foods that they eat, um, and they may even supplement it in milk. I'm not sure I know vitamin D supplemented in milk, Uh, but again, I mean, I've never seen vitamin A deficiency in real life and I don't expect to ever see it. Um, really, when it comes to eye health, the most important things are antioxidants, because they help to prevent cataracts. Cataracts are what happens when this lens inside our eye gets to be not clear anymore. So it'll turn brown or yellow. It'll have white stripes in it. It's like looking through dirty lenses, except you can't clean them off. The only way to fix it with current technology is surgery. Now they are working on drugs and you know I've seen I. Several years ago I saw a interesting study that had an eye drop that cured dogs of cataracts, but I haven't seen any follow-up to that. Right now all we have is surgery.
Dr. Anita Haque:So antioxidants do help slow down the that could be like berries and just green leafy vegetables things like that are high in antioxidants, so basically plants.
Dr. Scott Kamena:Yeah, right.
Dr. Anita Haque:Right, I mean, let's make it easy for our listeners. If you eat more plants, you're going to have a healthier body. You're going to have a higher level of antioxidants.
Dr. Scott Kamena:Um, so, and then the other thing that people may have heard something about recently is lutein. So, and then lutein and zeaxanthin, and zeaxanthin is one that very few people have heard of, but you do see lutein sometimes in commercials for products, like you know, preservation, which is a vitamin for the eyes. Um, and if in this model there's a little dark spot in the retina which is supposed to represent the macula and the macula is the part of our eye that we aim with, the part with the good vision, and there's a condition called macular degeneration, which is the most common cause of blindness in the united states now, primarily happens to older people, primarily people over 70. But, um, it turns out that blue light and certain frequencies of blue light not all blue light, but sort of a purplish blue light is the main frequency that causes damage to the macula.
Dr. Scott Kamena:A lot of people think ultraviolet light is harmful to the retina, and the fact is no ultraviolet light gets back to the retina. And the fact is no ultraviolet light gets back to the retina. All of the ultraviolet light that enters the eye gets absorbed by the cornea and the lens. None of it gets back here. So we tell people to wear sunglasses, primarily to prevent damage to the exterior of the eye through ultraviolet light and to delay the onset of cataracts, because the more sun exposure you have, the earlier you'll get cataracts. Interesting, but the macula has this tint in it and that tint comes from lutein and zeaxanthin, and that tint comes from lutein and zeaxanthin, and so you'll see advertisements in vitamins for lutein and zeaxanthin. But in terms of eating it, apparently orange and yellow peppers are some of the best sources of zeaxanthin Really Okay and red peppers are some of the best sources of zeaxanthin Really Okay, and red peppers and green peppers, yeah bell peppers, yeah, bell peppers, yeah, the little bell peppers.
Dr. Scott Kamena:I mean they can be normal size, but you know they're very popular, easy to get in packs at the grocery store and usually the packs just have the orange and yellow or the orange, red and yellow. The green ones apparently don't have any zeaxanthin in it and the red have a little bit, but the orange and the yellow have a lot and you don't have to eat them every day, but if you eat them a couple of times a week, then that's a good way to get your zeaxanthin. And then the green leafy vegetables have lutein I think gosh I just looked this up the other day maybe beans, um, but the main, the main thing is is the zeaxanthin, because that's something that we don't usually get and there have been multiple studies that show the more of these pigments that you eat, the darker this pigment will come. It doesn't have an effect on how you see, but it does affect your ability to to withstand damage from blue light. There's been a lot of attention to blue light lately I was just gonna say like our screens, right right.
Dr. Scott Kamena:So that actually came from a study where the all the attention that's come to blue light came from the realization that that that pigment's there for a reason. So we knew about this pigment. When I was in school, we even had a screen in, you know, in one of the hallways that was set to the harmful blue light color, and whenever you look at that screen you saw a dark spot wherever you looked.
Dr. Anita Haque:Oh, wow.
Dr. Scott Kamena:But nobody bothered to study. I don't know why it didn't occur to me, it didn't occur to anybody. I know none of my professors. Nobody bothered to find out. Why do we have a filter for that light built in? Filter for that light built in? And so around 2010, uh, somebody made glasses that had this tint in it that blocked a hundred percent of the color that this blocks. And they're not very dark, they're just. They're just slightly kind of grayish yellow. And then they made glasses to block other colors in the spectrum. And then they gave these glasses to patients who had early stage macular degeneration, early stage cataracts, followed them for three years and found out that the people who wore the blue blocking lenses were the only ones who had a slower progression for both diseases and that everybody else progressed the same as they would with clear glasses. So that is what started the attention to blue light Now.
Dr. Scott Kamena:So blue blocking glasses means something else now than it did when we were kids. So back in the 80s you were a kid. In the 90s, but when I was a kid, there were glasses called Varnays that were really popular and they were yellow and those were blue blockers. And blue blockers always meant yellow lenses like sunglass, dark yellow lenses. Now, what they mean is glasses that just block a little bit of blue light, and they're fairly clear and they are helpful for protecting your retinal health and your long-term exposure to light that eventually creates cataracts, because something that's been a mystery until this discovery was why the average age for cataract surgery has been going down. When I started practicing in 2000, I would almost never see cataracts in anybody under 75 years old, and a lot of people would make it to their 80s before they had cataract surgery.
Dr. Scott Kamena:Now people are getting cataracts in their 50s Not a lot, but some. I mean I'll see at least one or two a month New cataracts in people in their 50s, a lot of it in people in their 60s. So I mean like a huge reduction in the average age for cataracts, wow. But so you know. The question is why? Right, and so we've always known that ultraviolet light caused cataracts, so in since the sixties. But the first thing that they did was prove that we have less ultraviolet light exposure than we did, you know, before the 2000s. And we do because you know the ozone layer has been largely restored, we don't spend as much time outside, there's much more awareness of sunglasses and caps, um, and all car windshields block 100 of uv light, even if they're not tinted, and so we and most and even clear glasses will block at least 80% of ultraviolet light.
Dr. Scott Kamena:Well wow, A lot of them have ultraviolet coatings so they block 100%, even if they're clear.
Dr. Anita Haque:So we are getting way less exposure to ultraviolet light, yet people stillaracts right, so it's so.
Dr. Scott Kamena:That's where the blue blocking comes in. Blue blocking lenses and screen time yes, that was my question for you, and so we the amount of light that enters your eye.
Dr. Scott Kamena:I'm trying to explain this in a clear way. If I'm getting a thousand photons in my eyes from a screen that's six feet away, okay, if I bring that screen three feet away, so if I cut the distance in half, I'm going to have four times the amount of light entering my eye. So instead of a thousand photons, I'm getting 4,000 photons, and then if I cut that to a foot and a half, it's going to be 16,000.
Dr. Scott Kamena:So whenever you have the distance, you quadruple the amount of light quadruple the amount of light and essentially, you know, the phone screens are about as bright as TVs, ipad screens and computer screens are about as bright as TVs, but we're holding them so much more closely so we're getting a lot and we're staring at them, and so we're getting a lot more blue light staring at them, and so we're getting a lot more blue light in our eyes and just light period. The other thing regarding blue light is it turns out that our circadian rhythm is set by the presence of blue light, is set by the presence of blue light. So if you think back to caveman days, that's why they say the sky's blue right, so the sky's blue
Dr. Scott Kamena:when it starts to get night. So we had other types of light and it's fire. But fire is just red and orange. There's no blue in fire, and so when blue light starts to get reduced in our eye, then we start to get more tired. But if we're still looking at screens, even a screen, a white screen, has blue light in it. It makes us, it interrupts that ability to set the circadian rhythm, which is why a lot of Apple products have the blue blocking feature. They call it night shift, and so you can set a time. You get in your settings and you click play.
Dr. Scott Kamena:And then you can set a time where it will lower the amount of blue light that the screen is sending off and you can slide it to decide how much. You can go all the way to zero interesting that's primarily designed to help people continue to use the screen and still be able to go to sleep on time. That's why they made it yeah, makes sense.
Dr. Anita Haque:I'm gonna have to add that on my settings or change my settings. I didn't know that the iphone had that feature yeah. So yeah, iphone's, I mean maybe the yeah so then do you think that, like, if you are you know I mean we're all on our screens, like it's, it's kind of like you know the pandemic we can't get away from it at this point. So do you think we should all be wearing those blue light glasses pretty much? Probably yes yeah, yeah, I mean they're easy to get.
Dr. Scott Kamena:I I mean, you know you can buy them all over the place. Um, you know you don't have to. They don't have to have prescription. But if you need prescription lenses then you can get that as an option when you get prescription glasses to get blue blockers.
Dr. Anita Haque:Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, okay. That's what I was thinking too. Um, so in, actually, you know, one thing that I kind of deal with with screen time and eye strain is the posture right. You know, cause, the longer we're sitting at our screens, fatigue our eyes feel, cause we're not taking breaks on a regular basis, and then you start to like shift your, your, your cervical muscles your neck forward and then you have that hump in the back of the neck. We're all in this text neck.
Dr. Scott Kamena:No, people get headaches at the back of their skull because they're doing that.
Dr. Anita Haque:Exactly, and I think that you and I actually share a lot of that. Patients because they have eye issues as well as neck and back issues. Because, like I said, it's inevitable.
Dr. Scott Kamena:So is there any advice you can give? I know there are patients. Yes, you do.
Dr. Anita Haque:All the time. So do you recommend, like I always recommend to my patients, you know, set a timer 30 to 40 minutes. Just take a second stand up, you know, stretch back, get your shoulders back, take a minute to step away from your screen, take a sip of water, hydrate and get back into it. Are there any other tips that you think might help people with? Like, because we can't, like I said, it's just, it's only going to grow, it seems, our screen time.
Dr. Scott Kamena:Right helps with the eyes too, you, because when we talk about taking a break, we don't mean just stop doing the boring thing that you're doing and go look at your phone and watch something interesting. That's not a break. A break is looking something ideally 20 feet away, but if you're in a room you can't do that. So at least 10 feet away, so that you are, you know, relaxing this muscle that you've been squeezing all day while you've been looking at a screen, and when people look at screens they don't blink as often so instead of blinking.
Dr. Scott Kamena:you know, every five seconds or so, and there's a large variability in and how often you. Often people blink. You're going to blink every 8, 10, or even 15 seconds, and so when you're not blinking as often, then the tears evaporate and ideally, if you have healthy tears, if you produce a healthy tear film, it's not going to evaporate in the interim between your blinks. And so you know we can measure what we call tear breakup time. You know, clinically in the office, and we want that tear breakup time to be at least 10 seconds, meaning you should be able to hold your eyes open for 10 seconds before they feel dry, before the tears start to evaporate.
Dr. Scott Kamena:Now, by the time they feel dry, they've actually been evaporating for at least a couple seconds. But if they don't last at least 10 seconds, then there's a good chance that they're evaporating in between blinks, that they're evaporating in between blinks, and so then your eyes get drier and drier and then it starts to bug you and then people feel you know, they blink like that, they squeeze, and you know. Another thing you can use is artificial tears. There's a million products on the market and you know some are definitely better than others. I recommend ones that have an oil supplement in them, Something that says, um, you know, there's one that actually says it has omega. You know, fish oil in it, that's a good one, Um, but any product that that either has hyaluronic acid in it right now for a big word right now for anti-aging.
Dr. Scott Kamena:Yeah, and it holds the.
Dr. Scott Kamena:It holds the water to the surface of the eye or something that has, um, some kind of oil supplement.
Dr. Scott Kamena:And it'll usually say you know, they're supplementing the oil because the tears, our tears, are not just water, right?
Dr. Scott Kamena:So there's salt water, which is about 80% of the tear volume, but then oil from our eyelids is 20%, and so right along what we call the water line there are little pores, so above the lashes on the lower lid and below the lashes on the upper lid, but there's 20 to 25 pores because we have oil glands that run the length of our eyelids and when we blink then we squeeze the lid a little bit and squeeze those glands and then oil gets spread over the eye on top of the water part. So it's kind of like, if you look at it, you know oil and vinegar salad, you know the vinegar is on the bottom and the oil is on the top. If you don't have enough of the oil, then the tears are going to evaporate much more quickly and it's really the leading cause of dry eye and, um, gosh, I was going to say something else about that. I can't think of it right now, but I'm sure I will.
Dr. Anita Haque:I've used castor oil.
Dr. Scott Kamena:Yeah, so there's been a lot of. There's been a lot of anecdotal stuff about castor oil and it doesn't, it can't hurt, okay, and you know they're doing studies on health benefits of castor oil. There have been a lot of claims made. You know I've seen very popular YouTubers say things like they help break up cataracts. That might be true, wow, wow. I mean it's being studied. We don't know. You know, I mean I can't say it's not true right, I don't know if it's true.
Dr. Scott Kamena:I I just don't know um, but you know, oils like castor oil, you know, are able to penetrate the surface and you get through the cell membranes and get into the eye. There also helps, again, you know, coat the eye, allow the lid to slide smoothly over the eyeball and keep the tear film from evaporating. I'm not recommending it, but I'm right, but I'm not telling people not to do it because it is not harmful to the eye.
Dr. Anita Haque:The perfect combination might be the castor oil with the hyaluronic acid Sure.
Dr. Scott Kamena:I mean. I'm brainstorming here you know, Coconut oil is another one a lot of people use, and coconut oil actually has been shown to be healthy for the eye and you can put it in. It helps, yeah, so that's another one.
Dr. Anita Haque:So, doc, I know that you always have such great advice. You've always given me great advice. My eyes have come to you about so many of the things that you spoke about today, from you know, my mid-40s feeling like I might need glasses and you shoot me away a little bit to you know, feeling like I might need glasses and you shoot me away a little bit to you know, even recommending that I do some of those proper drops to hydrate my eyes better, because I am using screens so often, like, like I said, so many of our listeners are probably doing so. You know, is there one health hack, one tip that you can offer us here to you know, take better care of our eyes or to help our eye health.
Dr. Scott Kamena:Yeah, I mean, besides the obvious thing, which is you know if, if you don't have any kind of eye symptoms or issues, you should still get your eyes checked every other year.
Dr. Scott Kamena:Okay, and then 24 months if you're not having symptoms, if you do usually, yeah, and if you do have some kind of identified eye issue, most people get their eyes checked every year, you know anyway. Um, but something that I think is really, really valuable is to do eyelid massages, and so because, though so dry eye starts to kick in in our 40s, we do see it younger. Oh, that reminds me what I was trying to say about the waterline.
Dr. Scott Kamena:so don't put makeup on the waterline, okay so a lot of women will put eyeliner right on the waterline and then they are blocking those. Now, you know so because I, you know I look at people's eyes under a microscope every day. I see all my patients in the microscope and this is, you know, my iPads on the stand for that microscope. You know I see what people do and I see you know common makeup patterns. It's super common for teenage girls. You know I see what people do and I see you know common makeup patterns. It's super common for teenage girls, girls in their 20s, to put makeup on the waterline. But it becomes less common as women get older. I see it less and less and it's not necessarily it's usually not because I told them not to do it. Somehow they're figuring out that it's not comfortable and they're stopping.
Dr. Anita Haque:Not this 45-year-old. I still put eyeliner on my waterline.
Dr. Scott Kamena:I'm not going to do that In reality, the waterline is almost as white as your eye anyway, and so if you go below the lower lashes and above the upper lashes, it doesn't really change the way you look.
Dr. Anita Haque:I know, but it smudges down the neck.
Dr. Scott Kamena:Yes, I know, I understand, Dr Kamena, you are correct, but that wasn't the hack I was going to. No, I know, let's go back to your hack. Massage.
Dr. Anita Haque:You were talking about eyelid massage.
Dr. Scott Kamena:So it's basically just you look up, like I'm doing now, and you press on your eyelids. So you're basically pushing on your eye. Don't push so hard that it hurts, and make sure you can feel the eyelashes with your fingers. So then you know you're getting all the way to the edge and what you're doing is you're pressing on those glands and helping to express them. And then you look down and then what I'm doing I like to just use the pads of my fingers and I just kind of press straight in like this.
Dr. Anita Haque:So you're pressing on the eyelids on the bottom and the tops of the lids, kind of like in the corners.
Dr. Scott Kamena:Not just the corners all along.
Dr. Anita Haque:I mean, I guess I'll get closer to the I'm just repeating Dr Camino because some of the listeners are just listening and not able to see oh, I see you start off by putting your eyes up and then using the pad of your finger gently to pad that lower part like kind of the under eye.
Dr. Scott Kamena:So I'm placing them right, I'm looking up, I'm sticking my index fingers on the tips of my index fingers at the base of my eyelashes on my lower lid. Okay, and then I'm just kind of pressing as hard as does not hurt. If it hurts that's too hard, correct, and you don't have to do it for a few seconds and then just kind of going across. And then I look down and I do the same thing on the upper lids.
Dr. Anita Haque:Oh, where the eyelashes are.
Dr. Scott Kamena:Actually it feels good to do it. It does, and you can start higher and then kind of go down and you only have to spend like 30 seconds if that. Even doing it, if you do it once a day and doing it, if you do it once a day, you will push all the old thick oil that's kind of getting jumped up in there out and you keep it moving and and you know if you, if you do it right, you should feel it Like I can feel the oil in my eyes. Now I actually do.
Dr. Anita Haque:I actually feel like there's a little bit of rejuvenation too, to my eyes. So I'm thinking, doc, maybe the hack take it a step further when you take your break from your screen instead of looking at another screen, actually give yourself a little bit of an eye massage.
Dr. Scott Kamena:Yeah, if you do that, yes. You don't have to do it a whole you know you don't have to do it tons, but if your eyes feel dry, that can be a cue to go ahead and do it that's such a great tip.
Dr. Anita Haque:I'm so glad that you shared that massage. Anyways, obviously, chiropractic massage, body work that makes so much sense you can make it part of an adjustment exactly.
Dr. Anita Haque:Next time you come in, I'll work on your eyes as well as everything else, right, like that would be fun for me too. So well, this has been so great. Dr Kamena, I just want to thank you so much. I think that we'll obviously have your information, Murietta Optometry, so that if anyone does need to seek more eye care, you obviously are the expert that I trust and I really appreciate all the health information. You really opened my mind about the cataracts and the blue light glasses and how it all connects, and we're all going to need glasses eventually. So let's try to prolong it by doing some of these health tips a little bit, if we can. So thank you so much again. Sure, my pleasure. Thank you to our listeners. It is always a delight and we appreciate you listening and hopefully you got something out of this to make your life and your health even better.
Intro/Close:Thank you. Thank you for tuning in to the Haque's Health Hacks podcast. We hope today's discussion has provided valuable insights into achieving and maintaining your health. Remember your well-being is our priority. Visit us at haquechiropractic. com or call 925-960-1960 to learn more or schedule an appointment.