Kind: captions
Language: en
how can you manage vision loss you know
I'm in my 50s it's something that I'm
concerned about I know a lot of our
listeners have reached out to our team
about this specifically through your
diet what what's the your Paradigm or
the principles or your approach uh
towards towards that yeah such a great
question and I'm so glad we're talking
about Vision uh Jim because that
actually was one of my first passions as
a scientist and also as a doctor in fact
I wanted to be at one point I thought
about becoming an opthalmologist and eye
doctor because I was so fascinated by
this little ball uh we've got two of
them in our uh in our heads and they are
Direct Communications to our brain so
everything that we appreciate about the
world and frankly about ourselves you
know we associate with what we can
actually see in fact vision is one of
these senses that is the most precious
sense to us but we don't think about it
until we start to lose it or we need to
we start having problems right so if you
think about General Health as something
that you that many people take for
granted until you start to lose it and
that's all you can think about so to
within Health our vision health is like
that it's just something we assume it's
part of who we are every single day
until you start having problems then
you're like wait a minute what's going
on I can't see as well so I'm a
scientist I'm a what we call a vascular
biologist so I study blood vessels and
blood vessels are connecting every
single organ in your body
uh from your mouth to your brain to your
eyes to your heart to your lung and your
livers and so the idea of food being
something our nutrients being delivered
from what we eat through our bloodstream
to our eye is absolutely vital for the
ongoing health of our vision and to
prevent vision loss and I'll come back
to that talk about how do we do that but
the other thing is I'm a clinician I'm
internal medicine and what that means is
I take care of men and women young and
old healthy and sick and because vision
is one of my passions and brain health
is something that I'm intensely
interested in and have actually been
working on from a dementia perspective
from a cognition perspective listen
anybody who sort of our age range
probably knows if not our direct parents
then the parents of our friends our good
friends who are actually struggling with
you know the cognitive and functional
issues of Aging this is uh something
that my research has actually been
directly influencing it because the eye
is connected to the brain in fact the
eye is the opening to the brain uh from
a visual signal perspective this is why
what protects the eye also protects the
brain this is why the eye in fact is a
window into some of the problems of the
brain and most doctors don't look in the
eye only an opthalmologist really does
that so and again I'm internal medicine
so I cover the whole gamut and I became
a food is medicine researcher because I
have a background doing medical therapy
development as you actually mentioned in
my intro um I was looking at blood
vessels as a common denominator of
disease and by looking at ways to
Wrangle the common denominator you know
like what is it that underlies connects
all these different diseases from vision
loss to cognitive dysfunction and
dementia to obesity to diabetes to
cancer to heart disease Well turns out
to be blood vessels and so what I is I
did a deep dive into the space to ask
what Medical Treatments biotech
treatments can we actually um uh Wrangle
can maneuver help produce squeeze out uh
using Innovation and that became such a
successful uh Enterprise I then started
to ask well you know what happens if we
start throwing food into the same system
and what I discovered is that when we
started throwing food and food extracts
into these drug development systems to
help keep blood vessels healthy
including
I found that about 50% of the foods that
we were actually testing were as or more
potent than the drugs that we were
developing and so I'm one of the ogs
when it comes to food is medicine and I
love to talk about it because while
treatments you know you write a
prescription as a doctor for people you
know it's the right drug for the right
person at the right time but not it's
not it not everyone can get the
treatments they need food is medicine is
something that we do for ourselves it's
very empowering that we can actually you
know use knowledge modern knowledge to
be able to make those daily decisions
that can actually help prevent disease
so you don't need the doctor to do that
intervention or if you're actually
having the doctor to do intervention you
can actually do something for yourself
in addition to what the prescription
actually does so this all kind of comes
all the way comes all the way down to
the fact that our vision is a is a
window to our brain our vision is a
sense that we prize the most um you know
if you lost your sense of smell yeah you
know you're probably okay with it like
you had a cold you start losing your
vision all of a sudden like that sets
off panic and so we can eat to preserve
our vision there are foods that are now
known to be very important to contain
the secret sauce to helping us preserve
our vision and by preserving our vision
as it turns out the research is showing
it also helps to preserve our brain
function our cognition why don't we
start by defining the term that I use in
the intro angiogenesis
and so what is it and what role does it
play in overall uh brain health and and
vision okay angiogenesis angio is blood
blood vessel Genesis is how they how the
body grows them so angiogenesis is
simply how our body grows and protects
blood vessels and what's really amazing
is that uh we've got
60,000 miles worth of blood vessels
packed into our adult bodies Under the
Skin through all of our tissues all the
way down to the bone and even inside the
bone we've got more circulation and our
blood vessels are the highways and
byways that bring the oxygen that we
breathe and the nutrients that we to to
feed every single organ including our
eyes and especially our brain okay
that's really the connection so when we
have healthy blood vessels very good
circulation our vision is actually good
when we've got good circulation in our
brain our cognition is actually good and
guess what happens when we start to have
problems Vision the most common causes
of vision loss and cognitive loss is
actually interference with the
circulation of both our eyes and our
brain not surprisingly both are in our
heads and our skull connected to each
other and so this you know sort of like
what feeds the brain feeds the eye what
ails the brain also can ail the eye as
well so let's you know use that as kind
of a jumping off point to thinking about
what research is teaching us
the most common cause of vision loss
over the age of 60 is uh diabetes for
people with diabetes is diabetic
blindness all right high blood sugars uh
kind of marinate uh in your bloodstream
all of the blood vessels and when blood
vessels are overly marinated with high
blood sugar and all the the consequences
of what high blood sugar can do
including to your insulin and all the
other hormones and metabolites in your
body you know what the blood vessels do
they actually start to shut down and
when the blood vessels shut down it
Sparks new blood vessels to try to heal
the shutdown areas and when that happens
in the eye it causes a big problem and
here's the reason why your eye my eye
eyes I should say plural are crystal
balls okay think about them they're a
little bit smaller than a golf ball um
and they're crystal clear from the front
of the eye you get light wake up in the
morning you see the bright sunlight
that's light entering your eye going
through um clear liquid all right it's
like a fish tank with an aquarium the
light goes right in goes through a hole
the pupil and then goes right to the
back of the eye and the back of the eye
which is connected to the brain there is
a carpet of nerves the ner carpet of
nerves is called the retina you may have
heard of the retina but it's really
literally a carpet of nerves that can
that is made of uh neurons okay brain
cells effectively um interlaced woven
stitched together with a circulation
because the power it takes to process
the re the uh definition that we want
for our vision requires a lot of blood
flow a lot of oxygen and so the nerves
and blood vessels are laced together
okay like a like a beautiful
old-fashioned tablecloth and when the
light signals hit that nerve signal and
it's powered by the blood supply it
allows that nerve signal to go straight
into our brain okay right to the back of
our brain and basically that's how we
actually see now the
circulation when it has to grow to
overcome damaged blood vessels from a
disease like diabetes or there's
something called macular degeneration
most common cause of blindness vision
loss in people over the age of 60 um
without diabetes so we're it's blood
vessels are unhealthy and they do the
same thing they react to their unhealthy
state by trying to grow more of
themselves in order to maintain the
blood flow that is actually not adequate
and when the blood vessels grow in the
eye listen this is a crystal clear ball
when blood vessels have extra blood
vessels have to grow to compensate for
problems and circulation that's where
there's there's not a lot of room for
growing new blood vessels and so when
those new blood vessels grow they grow
abnormally from diabetes or aging they
leak now I told you there's fluid in the
eye it's Crystal Clear but when blood
vessels leak they're leaking cloudy
fluid or they're leaking blood now
immediately we put blood into this
Crystal Clear aquarium it's kind of like
dumping a you know ink into your fish
tank what do you think's going to happen
you're not going to be able to see
through that ink right and all of a
sudden you are losing vision and so the
the most common causes of vision loss in
the world are due to abnormal blood
vessels unhealthy blood vessels and
that's why some of the real
breakthroughs that have come through the
work I and other people have done is to
develop
anti-angiogenic blood vessel taming
think about the lion tamer in the circus
down boy okay down blood vessels back to
normal beat them back in the shape
prevent that leaking that is actually
the uh biggest breakthrough in the
treatment of vision loss to prevent
diabetic blindness and blindness from
aging from macular degeneration okay now
to get those treatments done Jim you got
to inject in the eye you got to put a
needle in the eye which nobody
volunteers for it works really well so
the question is how can you avoid
getting there to begin with as you were
just saying at your age my age we don't
want to ever get that Needle on the eye
what can we actually do to help protect
it and this is where diet comes in
because our nutrition can help us keep
blood vessels healthy and they can also
help to tame those um blood vessels that
might think about acting up and that's
really where uh eating to beat vision
loss is a reality today and before we
get into some of these Foods uh our show
is very very very tactical and my my
promise to everybody is you know we keep
it we keep it you know to a certain
amount of time but then also give people
practical pragmatic things that they can
do that's simple and easy I just I want
to get clear then so your eye which has
these also neurons uh it's kind of like
a like part of almost part of your brain
that's outside of your your skull and as
the foods could potentially protect and
maybe prevent or mitigate like even uh
it it's their neur protective and we've
done a lot of episodes on certain foods
that are good for your brain you know
neuronutrition it could also be
protective to your eye have has your
research shown that we could actually
even not even just protect but even
reverse has that been seen yeah well
actually by by actually taming blood
vessels remarkably for people who have
lost Vision we can actually in some
cases reverse vision loss and restore
lost Vision I have a patient and this is
about 10 years ago when the these
breakthrough treatments these are the
injections came out before that there
were no treatments okay uh I had a
patient who was in her 80s her favorite
thing was playing golf you know it
requires a a good Vision to hit that
ball and good coordination and she was
so bummed when she had Immaculate
generation she couldn't see the bul golf
ball I got her on treatment and uh in
about two months I got a call from her
out of the blue and she's like guess
where I'm calling you from Dr Lee I'm
calling you from the golf course and I
am playing my game and and really
scoring and doing really well at it
again you took me from not being able to
see my the ball to being able to see
again and in fact I'm like how did you
get there her name was Gloria and she
said you know because I I I knew she
couldn't drive because of the vision L
she was like guess what I drove myself
as well I I got my license back because
I could see again so this is dramatic
stuff when you entame and keep blood
vessels healthy and by the way the same
foods and approaches that actually
maintain vascular Health this is what
we're talking about blood vessels that
you wouldn't normally look when you look
in the mirror when you've had a late
night out okay and you see your eyes are
bloodshot it just it's an example of how
many blood vessels in your eye the ones
that count for vision you can't see in
the mirror they're behind the eye you
know when you go to the eye doctor and
they dilate your pupils and they put
your chin on and they look deep they're
really looking a part of your brain
they're looking at that tapestry the
neurons that are there interlaced with
blood vessels we can see it all
now what the so the key thing is that
the foods that actually can be used to
protect the approach protect that carpet
of neurons interlace with blood vessels
keeping those blood vessels healthy
taming those abnormal blood vessels also
turn out to be protective for the brain
as well and so here is sort of a twofer
right you were talking about like uh uh
the the the eye and the Brain uh being
uh outside of the skull here's a better
way to think about it the brain like
your skull is really a two-level house
okay the brain is on the upstairs on the
second floor and underneath the brain
underneath the floor which is the bottom
part of the skull to housing your brain
on the first floor are your eyes so the
part of your brain that's on the first
floor are your eyes and then you go walk
upstairs and now the brain's right there
and so this connection just like in your
house of the circuitry and the
circulation between your eyes and your
brain suddenly makes sense and what we
eat
can be good for the brain good for the
nerves and what's good for the brain the
blood vessels and the nerves and the
Brain also good for blood vessels and
nerves and the ey so this is a perfect
topic for your audience it's really
really interconnected and very practical
too I love that