Traditional and Homeopathic Eye Care with Edward Kondrot, MD, DHt

Many thanks to Edward Kondrot, MD, an ophthalmologic surgeon who also practices homeopathic medicine. He completed a traditional ophthalmologic residency in 1981 and is also a Doctor of Homeopathic Therapeutics (DHt). Dr. Kondrot also regularly performs medical mission work in Africa. He’s also worked locum tenens performing ophthalmologic disability evaluations in veterans.

Dr. Kondrot is the author of five best-selling books on eye disease and has an active Substack question and answer program. He sees many patients who have not found an effective treatment with conventional medicine and turn to him for alternatives and hope. His interest in homeopathy was kindled when it offered him a cure for his adult-onset asthma, which had not responded to conventional therapy.

During our 20-minute conversation, Dr. Kondrot shared the joy he experiences from helping patients preserve or regain their sight. He is a strong proponent of a healthy and nutritious diet to optimize physical function and promote healthy aging.

Dr. Kondrot can be reached at his website: healingtheeye.com

Or by email: drkondrot@healththeeye.com

(For those interested in ophthalmology, please check out Episode #124 with Dr. Daniel Laby, sports vision Specialist.) 

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Transcript

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[Andrew Wilner, MD] (0:08 - 1:26)

Welcome to the Art of Medicine, the program that explores the arts, business, and clinical aspects of the practice of medicine. I'm your host, Dr. Andrew Wilner. I've planned a great program for today, but first, a word from our sponsor, locumstory.com.

Locumstory.com is a free, unbiased educational resource about locum tenens. It's not an agency. Locumstory answers your questions on their website, podcast, webinars, videos, and they even have a locums 101 crash course.

Learn about locums and get insights from real life physicians, PAs, and NPs at locumstory.com. And now to my guest. Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Edward Kondrot. Dr. Kondrot is a homeopathic ophthalmologist who devotes his practice to traditional and alternative therapies for the treatment of eye disease. He is the author of five bestselling books and now has an active sub stack question and answer program. I'll just mention for those interested in ophthalmology, please check out episode number 124 with Dr. Daniel Labby, a sports vision specialist. And now to our guest, welcome Dr. Kondrot.

[Edward Kondrot, MD] (1:28 - 1:33)

Well, it's a real pleasure to meet you, Dr. Wilner, and happy to be a guest on your show.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (1:34 - 1:47)

Yeah. Thanks for joining me. And I know we're having some internet issues, but we're going to push through it and see if we can get to the end.

Okay. So why don't we start with why eye disease? How did that happen?

[Edward Kondrot, MD] (1:48 - 2:46)

Well, I wasn't smart enough to become a neurologist. So I had to look at something else. My goodness, you really have to have a brilliant mind to go into neurology.

But to answer your question, when I was in medical school, I loved all the rotations that I did. I like psychiatry, I like pediatrics, I like surgery, internal medicine. And I discovered that ophthalmology would enable me to kind of combine all those specialties into one.

There's three aspects to my practice. One is the part that I have my most passion is my mission work. But unfortunately, I don't get paid when I do my mission work.

So I had to look for a source of income to support my mission. And that's when I started doing locum tenens, which I love. I did some work for a company where I did disability exams for the VA, that disability eye exam, which I love.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (2:46 - 2:46)

Oh, wow.

[Edward Kondrot, MD] (2:46 - 3:44)

And I'm doing some locum work with Kaiser Permanente here in California, which I really enjoy because you kind of put the hours in and you work whenever you're able to. And then the third wing of my practice is my private consulting work. I have a passion for helping people that are going blind.

You know, so when the eye doctor tells you, I'm sorry, there's nothing else we can do. Get your affairs in order. That's when they usually find out about me.

And then they begin exploring homeopathy and alternative treatments. And I think it's so important that a patient, you know, never gives up hope. There's always something that you can do.

And so that's my passion is helping people who are going blind to actually restoring their vision and getting them back to a level where they can function.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (3:44 - 3:52)

Now, just to clarify, you mentioned California, but I remember something about Florida on your website. Where are you physically located?

[Edward Kondrot, MD] (3:53 - 5:07)

Well, at one time we had an active practice in Florida. That's where people would go to my practice and stay for, you know, three to four days. Then when COVID hit, we kind of changed the whole method of my practice.

And that's when we developed the home program. And now with technology, with Zoom, communication, our home program, I kind of, I'm a consultant with a patient that kind of advise them on alternative treatments. And then I get a feedback from their eye doctor when they go back for their periodic eye exams that we can know exactly if we're having an improvement and then either continue or we'll make some adjustments to help them, you know, continue to have a movement, you know, in a positive direction.

That's great. You know, as an ophthalmologist, I think I practice more psychiatry than I do actual physical medicine. And one of the greatest fears is going blind.

And a lot of it is giving people hope and reassuring that there's alternatives to, you know, to save their sight. So I love, I love ophthalmology. It's been a real passion of mine.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (5:07 - 6:02)

You know, I was very interested in neuro ophthalmology. And whenever I examine a patient, I always look at the eyes. I've diagnosed hundreds of cases of latent strabismus because the first thing, first thing I notice, if there's not conjugate vision, then that's a tip off that it might be a neurologic problem.

Although oftenly it's just, it's just something that's, you know, the person's had for a long time. But we have to get that sorted out. So, yeah, the eye is, well, the window to the soul and also to the brain, among other things.

So I'm quite, quite interested in eye issues. So you did medical school, you did a residency in ophthalmology, and then somehow you got interested in homeopathy. I saw you have a diploma in homeopathy.

Now that's not the usual track. So tell us about that.

[Edward Kondrot, MD] (6:02 - 6:24)

Well, you know, when I went into practice, I thought there wasn't one eye problem that I couldn't cure with surgery. I was a very good surgeon and I developed severe adult onset asthma. And because of three medications that I was taking, one of the side effects was a, was a bad tremor.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (6:24 - 6:24)

Yeah.

[Edward Kondrot, MD] (6:24 - 8:14)

And you can't be a good surgeon with a tremor. And I had to take Inderol, which is a beta blocker to calm my nerves, but made my asthma worse. That was my life.

I was miserable. And I said, there has to be a cure for this. I mean, I was an athlete.

I was doing marathons. I had healthy lungs prior to the asthma. And so I began to look at alternative solutions and I thought, well, maybe homeopathy could help me.

And I know it wasn't a placebo effect because the first homeopathic remedy I took didn't do a thing. Second remedy maybe helped a little bit, but the third remedy, it was like somebody turned on a light switch. My asthma went away mentally and emotionally.

I changed. I became a little calmer, more open-minded. So I began to really look at homeopathy and I said, why didn't they teach us this in medical school?

Interestingly, I went to Hahnemann Medical College, which at one time was the top homeopathic college in the United States. But of course I didn't learn any homeopathy then. So I discovered that there were many ophthalmologists in the 1800s and early 1900s who combined homeopathy and ophthalmology.

And so that became really a passion of mine is studying some of the old textbooks. And that led to me getting a degree in homeopathy. And my goal was, let me use this modality to help my patients, especially when I would see an individual that I really didn't have a solution.

You know, macular degeneration, end-stage glaucoma, optic neuritis, maybe homeopathy could help. And there was a case after case in the old homeopathic literature using homeopathic remedies to treat these conditions.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (8:16 - 8:27)

That's, this is really fascinating because just for our viewers, homeopathy is not taught in medical school. It's considered to be not the, not science-based. Is that fair?

[Edward Kondrot, MD] (8:28 - 8:41)

Yeah. I mean, people, when I was in medical school, we would joke about a dosage. If it wasn't effective, we'd say, well, that's a homeopathic dosage.

In other words, too small to have any effect.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (8:42 - 9:19)

Right. So this is very, it's a little unusual for a traditionally trained physician to branch out into homeopathy. But I'm very sympathetic.

You know, my, when patients come to me with, oh, can I try this vitamin or this or that? As long as it's not harmful. It's like, well, you know, whatever works, if it works, okay.

You know, don't spend a fortune on it for the next 10 years if it's not working. But I'm very open-minded in terms of helping my patients. If they find something that works and it's not in my book, that's okay.

You know, if you see results. So you've been doing this for a long time. So you must have seen positive results.

[Edward Kondrot, MD] (9:19 - 10:25)

Amazing. Amazing. One of the first patients I treated was a medical doctor who had a stroke in his left eye and a central retinal artery occlusion.

It was blind as a bat. And he came to me, he was Indian. In India, homeopathy is really popular.

He came to me for treatment and I told him, you know, I was taught that homeopath, you know, nothing can help a central retinal artery occlusion. It's a stroke in the eye. And so I took his case and prescribed a remedy and told him to, you know, get back to me and let me know.

And it reversed his vision. He brought back. So he recovered.

Recovered. That's like a case report. Yeah, well, I did publish it in the homeopathic literature.

But, you know, the traditional ophthalmology literature, they wouldn't even look at it, you know. Interesting. And so I have, you know, hundreds of cases like that, you know, miracle cures, if you will.

Now, the only problem with homeopathy, which I think is really interesting, homeopathy doesn't treat the disease, it treats the person with the disease.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (10:26 - 10:26)

OK.

[Edward Kondrot, MD] (10:26 - 12:55)

And we're always looking for a causative factor, some event. Whether it's mental, emotional, which might have triggered that disease. Now, with this Indian guy talking to him, he told me he loves to argue.

And he said he even if he knows he's wrong, because it's where the person down to he admits that he's right, you know. And so I was asking him, well, what was going on right around the time you lost the vision and he told me he lost an argument to his wife. Now, a traditional ophthalmologist would say that has nothing to do with you losing your vision, but to a homeopathic doctor is like, you know, my antennas go up.

That was the case. So we look at homeopathic remedies that have that particular aspect. The other thing about homeopathy, if you begin to study it, it is an exact science.

Our homeopathic remedies that we use have been proven more extensively than any pharmaceutical drug, any pharmaceutical drug. So every homeopathic remedy that we take has a wide variety of effects, mental, emotional, physical. And so that's essentially what we do.

We it's kind of like a combination of medicine and psychiatry. We're looking at the mental and emotional component related to the disease, and then we prescribe a remedy. So, you know, I tell my patients, you know, I wear two hats.

I'm a board certified ophthalmologist. I do surgery, but I'm also that homeopathic doctor and I want what's best for the patient. And many times, you know, ophthalmologists rush into surgery or they're using toxic petrochemical eye drops, which may cause more side effects.

So I believe there has to be a balance. And in most cases, I like the homeopathic approach first. Let's try to find out what is the underlying disturbance and take care of that.

And I think we're going to make that particular person a more healthy individual than just addressing, oh, you have a cataract. Let's operate on you.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (12:56 - 13:10)

So with the treatment for cataracts, for example, be different for each individual, depending on their individual circumstances, or is there just, you know, treatment A that you pull out? You've got a cataract, you get treatment.

[Edward Kondrot, MD] (13:10 - 14:35)

How does that say that's the traditional medical model? You know, you have blood pressure, high blood pressure, you take Losartan, you start off with that or you have a tremor, you know, homeopathy, we treat the person. So if I treat 100 people with cataracts, each one may need a different homeopathic remedy.

So you look at the individual. When did you begin to have problems with your vision? What was going on in your life?

How is your vision limiting you? What is it you can't do? And it becomes very, very fascinating because you're treating the person, not so much the disease state or the cataract.

And that's one of the big problems I have with ophthalmology now is that, you know, somebody comes in, they diagnose cataracts and time to do surgery, and the patient is not really having any vision problem. You know, why operate? God gave you a good functioning lens.

Why remove it if you're not having any difficulty? Now, it's much different if your cataract is advanced and you're not able to function and you're limited in your activities, then I'm all for having surgery. But unfortunately, you mentioned earlier that you have early cataracts.

Well, everybody after the age of 50 starts to get early cataracts.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (14:36 - 14:43)

I think the stressor in my case, they told me it's old age. So, you know, that's hard to avoid.

[Edward Kondrot, MD] (14:44 - 15:04)

You know, hey, no, you have to embrace old age. You're, you know, the wisdom. Samuel Hahnemann, the most famous homeopath, did his best work at age 83.

83. Okay, I got a long way to go then. I'm 75.

So I have eight more years to go. Well, a lot to look forward to.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (15:04 - 15:29)

Stay tuned. Hopefully we'll still be doing episodes in the future. Yeah.

So every time I go to the eye doctor, they tell me, well, you've got early cataracts. As far as I can tell, they don't bother me. But at some point, I guess they will.

Is there anything I can do in the meantime to kind of slow that process down?

[Edward Kondrot, MD] (15:29 - 17:36)

I think there's no question that cataracts are related to nutritional deficiencies or toxins in our environment. You know, I do a lot of mission work. And when I go to Africa, I see young people, 20s and 30s with cataracts so advanced, they're blind.

And it's clearly related to nutrition. I think in particular, vitamin C deficiency. There was a book written by Dr. Levy on vitamin C, and he feels that there's an epidemic now of focal scurvy. You know, you don't hear about scurvy in the U.S. And the reason for that is, my goodness, they put vitamin C in Froot Loop cereal. So nobody's completely deficient. But when we're under stress, we certainly need more vitamin C.

And as humans, we're not able to produce any vitamin C. We have to take it as a supplement or adjunct with our food. So I think vitamin C deficiency is part of it.

And also heavy metal toxicity. You know, all the contaminants in our food, poor water. The old doctors in the 1800s felt there were three causes for cataracts.

Hard water, too much salt and too much sugar. And so if you think about it, our food is heavily salted. We're over consuming sugar and our water supplies are contaminated.

So they're, you know, contributing factors right there. So I believe I tell my patients, you know, I think food is our best medicine. I believe what Thomas Edison said, the doctor of the future would not prescribe any medication, but instead advise the patient on diet and nutrition.

And unfortunately, very few doctors talk to their patients about diet and nutrition. I think that's part of the biggest causes of the poor health in the U.S. is that our poor diet and nutrition.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (17:37 - 18:03)

We did do a program that you're following up on actually about with a functional nutritionist who talks to people about their diet. People have, you know, cramping or unexplained GI symptoms. They go to lots of doctors.

They still have the problem. And she meets with them and they try elimination diets and they try, they do a lot of fancy testing that conventional doctors don't do. It was a very interesting program.

[Edward Kondrot, MD] (18:04 - 18:09)

But I keep it simple for my patients. If it has a label on it, don't eat it.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (18:10 - 18:42)

Right. We talked about ultra processed food and what does that even mean? And she said, well, you know, processed food is anything that has a package.

If it comes in a package, you know, if you can't grow it or pick it, it's processed. And, you know, you don't have to avoid all of it, according to her. But the more you can avoid, the better.

Now, back to your patient, his story. I do lose a lot of arguments with my wife. So do you think that could be a contributor?

[Edward Kondrot, MD] (18:43 - 19:51)

That could be a contributor. Yes. No, I'll tell you the biggest factor.

You know, I believe our body has a wisdom. And symptoms are developed based on homeopathic philosophy to protect the body. Like, for example, you get a cold, you have an elevated fever.

That elevated fever is to protect your body. For some reason, you have to increase your metabolism, maybe to fight the virus. Now, the traditional doctor treats with opposites.

You have a fever, let's lower the temperature. Interestingly, what does the homeopathic doctor do? Well, if the body has an intelligence, let's give you something which causes a fever.

Now, you may think, hey, Dr. Kondrot, that's crazy. You're going to kill the patient. But actually, if the body has a wisdom and it's trying to do something, give the body a medicine to help what it's trying to do.

So in homeopathy, we actually give a medication which causes a fever in a healthy individual. Now, when I was cured of my asthma, I was given a homeopathic remedy which actually causes asthma.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (19:52 - 19:55)

Oh, that's fascinating. Right, I do remember reading about that.

[Edward Kondrot, MD] (19:55 - 21:11)

It's the law of similars, like treats like. COVID changed my whole practice. So, you know, before people would come to my office and stay for three to four days, and I would treat them and, you know, try different treatments.

Now we have a home program where I would do a Zoom consultation. I'd review your eye records to see what's really going on in your eye. And I do a homeopathic intake.

I talk to you about, you know, when your vision problems started, how is it limiting you? What other physical problems do you have? Well, you know, your stage in life.

But to back up, I think one of the biggest reasons why people get vision problems they're afraid of aging. So if the body has a wisdom, it makes sense that when you look in the mirror, you have cataracts, you don't look as old as you do. So it's a filter for the wrinkles.

Yeah, so I'm 75. And sometimes I look in the mirror and I go, who is this old guy? That's not me.

And maybe the body will protect by me developing macular degeneration or cataracts. I look in the mirror and I go, hey, you're still looking good guy.

[Andrew Wilner, MD] (21:12 - 23:49)

Well, Dr. Kondrot, I want to thank you for joining me on the Art of Medicine. Thank you. And now a final thanks to our sponsor, locumstory.com.

Locumstory.com is a free, unbiased educational resource about locum tenens. It's not an agency. Locumstory exists to answer your questions about the how-tos of locums on their website, podcast, webinars, and videos.

They even have a locums 101 crash course. At locumstory.com, you can discover if locum tenens make sense for you and your career goals. What makes locumstory.com unique is that it's a peer-to-peer platform with real physicians sharing their experiences and stories, both the good and bad about working locum tenens. Hence the name, locumstory. Locumstory.com is a self-service tool that you can explore at your own pace with no pressure or obligation. It's completely free.

Thanks again to locumstory.com for sponsoring this episode of the Art of Medicine. I'm Dr. Andrew Wilner. See you next time.

This program is hosted, edited, and produced by Andrew Wilner, MD, FACP, FAAN. Guests receive no financial compensation for their appearance on the Art of Medicine. Andrew Wilner, MD, is a professor of neurology at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, Tennessee.

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