0 (1s):
Coming up on the get lean, eat clean podcast.
1 (4s):
The closer you look at something to tie to that muscle gets to shape the lens, to move the light point of focus inside your eyebrow. It's not designed to be super tight all the time, and now that's our lifestyle, right? Like you go from looking at a screen, which is, you know, moderately tight to then the way you take a break from the screen is looking. If right now you've got a really tight muscle and then you go back to looking at a screen. So it's the screen. Life is really causing this muscle to stay tight.
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Hello and welcome to the get lean eat clean podcast. I'm Brian grin, and I'm here to give you actionable tips to get your body back to what it once was five, 10, even 15 years ago. Each week. I'll give you an in-depth interview with a health expert from around the world to cut through the fluff and get you long-term sustainable results. This week I interviewed the founder of N myopia.org, Jake Steiner. We discussed all things relating to prescription eyewear, along with tips and tricks for better eyesight, the single worst thing you've been doing for your eyes. Why it's time to get away from the screens and get outside and much, much more. This was the first time we've talked about eyesight and improving it on the podcast.
0 (1m 17s):
And I'm excited to share this with you. I think you'll get some great tips, whether you have glasses or not. So thanks so much for listening and enjoy the interview. All right. Welcome to the get lean eat clean podcast. My name is Brian grin, and I have Jake Steiner here. Welcome to the show, Jake.
1 (1m 35s):
Thanks for having me, Brian. I appreciate it.
0 (1m 37s):
Yeah, I'm excited to have you on. I was telling you this will be a little bit of a change of pace for our listeners. We talk a lot about nutrition, meal, timing, exercise, and probably a topic that gets overlooked a lot and that's eyesight. So before we dive into your website and everything that, all the education that you put on it, why don't you maybe to describe to the listener, how you got into this field of ending myopia?
1 (2m 7s):
So I am an analyst and stock trader or used to be, that was my work. So I spent a lot of time just looking at data and understanding underlying things in businesses. And I had really bad eyesight also. And I went to the optometrist at some point in my twenties and they said, I need stronger glasses. And they were already really strong. I didn't love the idea and asked why, which I do professionally all the time. And they said it's mysterious and genetic. And my that's the first time I ever went as an adult. And I'm like, that's a, it's odd for a person to say, that's supposed to treat you. They don't understand the cause of the thing, which it does happen.
1 (2m 47s):
Right. But still a genetic didn't sound right to me again, like from my professional question, things we didn't genetically change in the last 50 years globally to have a worst vision. It doesn't make any sense, right? So this was before fans internet stuff. So I went to the libraries and did research and I found that near-sightedness short-sightedness is well understood in science. It's not genetic whatsoever. And that in fact, the person I talked to Solomon glasses, it's part of a hundred billion dollar a year business. And the glasses he sells have about a 5000% markup. And from there having understood that the whole thing was kind of not, I don't want to say a scam, but dubious, I started trying to figure out how to fix it.
1 (3m 34s):
And that's, that was a little bit of a bigger journey, but managed to do that. Now I'm not wearing any glasses. Didn't do LASIK, don't wear contacts, have perfect eyesight. And it turned into a little bit of a side thing because I retired early. And just because they pissed me off, like, I'm not really a save the world type, but to just that professional arrogance that you get from people who don't want to answer your questions while also selling your expensive stuff, just pushes my buttons.
0 (4m 0s):
Yeah. And what year was this in?
1 (4m 4s):
Almost 20 years ago now. Oh, wow.
0 (4m 6s):
Yeah. And so since then, you've just been educating people. I noticed your website and myopia, I'm saying that, right? Correct.
1 (4m 16s):
And may opiod.org. Yeah. Not on purpose, really. I mean, if you go back far enough because the science got over a thousand articles in the beginning, it was mostly rants and obscure inside humor. Like it was never intended to be a serious thing because I didn't need to do it to make money. I'm not trying to save humanity. It just was a, an outlet for my, my anx about how optometrists act. And then it turned into a bit of a, here are things that do that seem to be working. And I met more and more people through it that were trying similar things. And it ended up being, it's more of a community thing than just me. Now we have a Facebook group it's like 20 some thousand members and people really figured out how to tweak their, the dependence on corrective lenses to the point that eventually they don't need them.
0 (5m 4s):
So yeah, I noticed that quite the community and that's grown over the last 20 years. So you have over 22,000 people in your Facebook group and I'm sure, I don't know how many people are affected by this year on a year wide basis. I'm sure. Quite a few. I was lucky. I don't, I, I, I have 2020 at least I think, but maybe explain to the, to the reader, how you improved your eyesight and, and sort of ended what many think is probably a genetic thing, but it's really not.
1 (5m 38s):
So yeah, it's the improving part is not that difficult. Most people are motivated. Like did, the thing I found is super weird is that once you have a fix, like when glasses are you wearing contact lenses, you don't care. Right? You just go out it's it's, it's, it's, it's a good enough fixed. You've got other things going on in life where you go, nevermind the state, but just a super short version. I always tell people, you don't realize how much you're missing by not being able to see like sports performance, right? Like you're like golf. Like it significantly affects your sports performance. When you wear corrective lenses, contacts work better, but they will mess up your physical eyeball after a while.
1 (6m 20s):
But with glasses, you really don't have, you don't have good peripheral vision also affects like your, your mood levels. Like anxiety tends to be a thing. Headaches, headaches, potentially. Also anxiety is definitely a thing now because you don't have peripheral vision, you move different because people wear glasses have to look at the ground because they don't have peripheral vision. So they're, they're having to look down when they walk through the world, there, they seem a little off when they talk to you, because as a glasses, where, how it used to be, you train yourself to look straight through the lens. So your eye movement, your head movement, your neck movement is affected. It's it affects all of your life.
1 (6m 60s):
Like I kite surf. Now I paraglide, these are all things that I thought I would never do. You know, I thought I was scared of Heights and you know, clumsy. None of that's true. It's all because you're stuck behind lenses, your visual cortex limits, or a lot of your fine motor control, because it's just like, well, this thing's not working well. So people who are a lot of people who have bad eyesight and in the U S I think the statistics is about 50%. If you have kids, the risks are much higher. Now it's really worth looking into, and, and the fix is super simple. It's, don't wear distance classes doing your closeup. So there's the two mechanisms that run night.
1 (7m 42s):
But one is when you, when you look at something up close, there's a lens in your eye. And it bulges out like its shapes for closeup vision. And it's run by this circular muscle around it. That tightens up. When you look at something up close called a ciliary muscle, the closer you look at something to tie to that muscle gets to shape the lens, to move the light point of focus inside your eyeball. It's not designed to be super titled. And now that's our lifestyle, right? Like you go from looking at a screen, which is moderately tight to then the way you take a break from the screen is looking, if right now you've got a really tight muscle. And then you go back to looking at a screen.
1 (8m 22s):
So the screen life is really causing this muscle to stay tight. And if you go to Google scholar, which I'm a big fan of because all science, right, scholar dot, google.com and you type in pseudo myopia. So not real myopia, basically it explains what your bad eyesight really is. There's tens of thousands of clinical peer reviewed science studies that show your eye is actually just that your bad eyesight starts out as a stuck focusing muscle. So the first time you went to the optometrist and you're lucky you didn't to do this, but for a lot of people, the first time you went, you were misdiagnosed by saying, it's a mysterious genetic condition.
1 (9m 4s):
You have to stuck muscle. So the correct answer would have been for them to kick you out of there and be like, go outside and play more. And you would have been fine, but they sold you glasses for 5000%. Markup. Those things cost $2 wholesale lenses. And then that becomes something called lens induced myopia. Also on Google scholar, where your eyeball elongates, because of the lens where I'm keeping the short, especially since you don't wear glasses, basically wearing the glasses, activates the mechanism and the eye that adjust its length that works throughout your life just to keep the eyeball at the right shape. Cause it's a fluid football. And then if you wear those glasses, there's a little bit of light to focus us behind the retina that causes that axial allegation, you can reduce or eliminate a lot of that don't ever wear them when you use your computer, or if you have to wear glasses, because I said, stepdad use slightly weaker lenses for the computer, right?
1 (9m 59s):
Like that's really the, the number one thing. And then the super short version it's like getting a shape means you should go to the gym is you wear slightly weaker glasses. And every three to four months, your eyesight has improved enough to adopt it to the week of classes, to where you can keep making that reduction. So every three to four months you get slightly bigger glasses until eventually you don't need that. And that's kind of all there is to it.
0 (10m 25s):
Hmm. And what type of like daily activities can people do, maybe even if people that don't have glasses to help with their eyesight, certain foods they can eat is going out to the, in the sunlight. Obviously I know in the morning, that's a, that's a great thing just for circadian rhythm and, you know, helping you, you know, get the day started and, you know, get that cortisol levels up and wake you up. There's certain things that you could do throughout the day, or even eat that can help with your eyesight and make sure that you don't get glasses
1 (10m 60s):
Food. So, okay. I said is all about, it's all about that muscle. Like if you spend too much time in front of screen, that muscles tight, the muscle gets stuck. You can't see clearly the distance. So the number one thing really is just get the eyes to relax. And that's 20 feet, six meter distance. That muscle is completely relaxed. The more time you spend in that distance, the better you are like you and golf ideal, right? Because number one, you have to drive there. So you're spending time going there. And then you spend hours and hours and hours and hours on that course, all distance vision, right? Like having a hobby, like you have that, that involves specifically distance vision.
1 (11m 42s):
If you aren't wearing glasses, you're never going to need them because you have, you're getting hours of distance time, right? Like focused is this time you're looking at tiny little ball flying through the air. That is perfect. Like that is what gives you and keeps good eyesight. If you already went glasses and you have this kind of sport, it's really easy to improve your vision because you have a thing that you do with your eyes besides looking at screens.
0 (12m 5s):
Right? So screens obviously are not healthy for your eyes. What about, and I have them right here. What about like blue light blue? I figured I'd put them on. What about blue light blocking glasses? Especially at night and stuff they become, it's become a million-dollar industry.
1 (12m 20s):
Yeah. And it's up there. I'm jealous of that industry because those things add like 2 cents to the cost of the lenses. So those should cost you $3 wholesale instead of two. And I'm being super generous. So blue-blocking glasses are like Coke, zero. They're like low fat, whatever. Oh, you'd love that. You're a big fan of low-fat products. It's like that it's it's the problem is a screen, right? The problem is drinking a Coke and Coca Cola realized that now they could say, well, maybe just sugar is bad. Maybe it's not us. Right. Just drink the Coke zero. I have the low fat version of the thing.
1 (13m 2s):
It's the problem is a screen like blue light block, like blocking some spectrum of UV of the whole light spectrum is yes. Like nighttime shore, like sleep rhythms that are things that you don't want that much blue in the light. But what you really want is not that much screen in your evening. Right. It's it's my problem with it is it's not that it doesn't work. Like there's definitely benefits, but the problem is you wouldn't need them. If you had good habits in the first place, you know what I mean? Like it's, it gives people that, excuse, I'm fine with a screen now. Cause they throw it on this blue blocking glasses. I'm fine drinking the Coke because it's Coke zero.
1 (13m 42s):
It's the same kind of thing. Like it would be better to adjust your screen. Use, get up a little earlier, go to bed a little earlier, listen to podcast. Instead of watching YouTube, you know, like small adjustments that you wouldn't need to rely on another product for would be better for you.
0 (14m 2s):
And as far as training the, I know you mentioned golf. Like, I mean, I do play with some guys who cannot see the ball for the life. They're like, where'd that go? Right. You know, it's in the right rough, but so training the eye, looking for things that are far out there, like th th that is obviously like, you mentioned a positive for vision. And it sounds like looking at things that are really close to your eyes, that like, you don't want to do that. It sounds like that sort of locks the eyes that correct.
1 (14m 35s):
Eventually the eye's not designed to do that for hours and hours and hours at a time, every single day. Right? Like a computer distance is much better than phone distance. The closer you get the title of that muscle gets the worst is the phone, the smaller, the screen, the point of immersion, like how close you're going to hold it. Instinctively is going to be closer. Right? So phone's the worst case scenario. If you want to consume content, TV, distance is ideal because you're getting really close to relax. Muscle, computer distance. Yeah. I mean better. So phone, distance, no good. Like, like parents giving their kids phones as babysitters is, is the worst. Right? And while your friends who can't see the ball at all classes, right.
1 (15m 18s):
But glasses that let you see the ball with a little bit of challenge, because what will happen is instead of not seeing the ball, now they can see the ball, but not just given to them easily, they get to look for it. Right? They got a ticket. A challenge. Actor is a way to challenge your eyes and their vision will improve. Like the guy that can't see the ball now gets glasses only wears them for golf. Now he can spot the ball with a bit of challenge three to four months from now. He could reduce those classes a little bit, see the ball again. Right. And you could do that until he actually becomes competition. Because now I can see the ball and not new classes again.
0 (15m 57s):
So you're not totally anti glasses. It's just, you're saying, if you do need glasses, get them. So they're not. So actually they're not quite what you need. Is it like they challenge your eyes a little bit, correct
1 (16m 12s):
Glasses or like weights, right? In a way I don't like weights. I don't want to pick things up that are heavy, but they're incredibly useful if you want to create a stimulus or if you need to create a stimulus, right? Like if you, if your vision sucks, then you've gone to need some of it to help you get to better vision. Super useful. Last are super handy. I wear reading glasses. They're not close by right now, plus lenses sometimes because they make your of vision worse. Like if you have perfect vision and you buy a pair of plus 0.5 to opt a reading glasses meant for people with presbyopia, you put those on you. I mean you, because you have good vision, you computer screen will be harder to read.
1 (16m 54s):
And if you do that for just a short period, like 15, 20 minutes, three, four times a week, you'll notice your distance vision will be even better. So glasses are cool. It's just, they're sold to people, not just at massive markups, but without telling them the negative consequences of the way they're being used.
0 (17m 15s):
So someone like myself who has decent vision, what type of glasses should I get? Can you say that again?
1 (17m 20s):
Because it's reading glasses, you can just go to any, just get
0 (17m 24s):
Reading glasses
1 (17m 25s):
Super low one. So you want like half diopter and just for short spans of time, I work with, I work with athletes and professionals and pilots and people that need better than 20, 20 eyesight. And you can tweak that you can get 2010, not everybody, like there's a definitely a genetic component, but if you want to see the golf ball further and better, you can accomplish that also. Hmm.
0 (17m 51s):
Yeah. It's, you know, I never quite thought about that, but yeah. I mean, for, for performance, that's like huge, important, hugely important. You're seeing a lot of guys on the golf course. I know we're getting to golf. I could talk about golf all day, but they applied other things. What about sunglasses about wearing those on a daily basis? I, I know that it's important to actually not use sunglasses and get that sun exposure for some of the time. But what about if you're outside and you're reading and things like that, you really don't want to be, you know, trying squinting all day too, right?
1 (18m 27s):
Yeah. My personal rule, like I don't have a serious opinion, but sunglasses is, if I'm squinting, otherwise I'm wearing like, I'm a big fan of the hippies are right. In some ways less stuff, right? Like the less, you don't ideally want another product to remove you further from nature or compensate for some lifestyle thing. The last things, the better your health is going to be in a lot of ways. Right? Like, but some stuff is also really cool. Like again, like if I'm shaded outdoor and I can see fine, I prefer to get natural UV. I like that. There's lots of benefits to that apparently. But if it's super bright and you're squinting, I would, I would reach for some,
0 (19m 11s):
I noticed on your website, you have a seven day course for people to, to take, maybe explain to us the, the gist of the course and how people can in what people might learn from taking that.
1 (19m 23s):
So yeah. It's so annoying, right? It used to just be a one day. It used to be a one day thing, because if you, if you're interested, right? Like if you're like, well, but I said will be nice. Number one is you should be skeptical because there's a lot of stupid stuff on the internet, especially various sites because I'm in that area. So we started discussing like, how do you research if a thing is actually possibly true. So when this whole thing was one day, people would just kind of browse through it, remember 20% and then ask all the same questions all the time. So I finally went, here's one day's worth and here's one day's worth. And here's one day it's worth way more helpful because it's a huge topic.
1 (20m 4s):
And super important, I believe is don't believe people that, that gives you, these are five easy steps to block. Because number one, there's always more to it. Number two is you want to understand what it is that you're getting into. So you're not wasting a bunch of time or spending money on things that you don't need. So it's, it breaks it down. It starts with the science and then super important. You don't realize how simple glasses are. People go to atomic truest. And this is changed to read of the room and the seat and the chair. And then the, you look at the eye chart and the flipping lenses around, they remove you from the process from understanding the process. And actually you eyesight, it's super simple. You take a book.
1 (20m 44s):
I like books the best, but screen would work, hold a coaster in front of you and try to read the letters when are super clear. And then you move it slowly, further back, further back until there's a tiniest bit of blur in your case. Ideally, that doesn't happen. But if it does take a measuring tape side of your eye to the, to the book and that distance is the blur horizon, when things get blurry, and if you take a hundred divided by a distance, it's 50 centimeters, right? A hundred divided by 50 is two. You would need to dial up the glasses to have perfect vision. So all this stuff, the optometrist does that mean my master rate.
1 (21m 25s):
You can replace with just that and get exactly the same results over complicated, in my opinion, because gas costs $2. You can go buy them online. If you know how to measure yourself. Part of that week long thing is kind of walking you through all the bits to give you back the ability to do this by yourself. You have the book, you figure it out, the distance, 50 centimeters. You need to DAPA glasses. Now I can go online and buy your own glasses. And you can have experiments that I recommend you start with. Close-up only, so you're not affecting your driving. And you're recognizing people and your golf game. You just sit in front of stream with lower power glasses, figuring out how that affects your clarity.
1 (22m 9s):
And that basically turns into a bit of a week of just general education. And after that week, you don't have to buy anything from me. I have the website with 1200 plus articles and 300 videos and a huge forum and a big Facebook group to help you figure all this stuff.
0 (22m 26s):
Hmm. Love that. And what would you say has the industry changed over the last 20 years that you know, you've been obviously doing a lot of research and a lot of behind the scenes work, has it changed or has it pretty much stayed the same?
1 (22m 43s):
It's the trying to make more money, right? Like myopia is going up. Like more people are becoming short-sightedness in Asian countries, especially study requirements, a lot more intense. There's a genetic factor possibly also in well over 90% of school aged children in Hong Kong and Singapore new glasses. So super profitable industry. I own stock in a bunch of lens manufacturing companies done very well in that there is some interest now in stopping the progression, which is super interesting. So you can buy contact lenses, for example, that have these de-focus rings in them that do the same stuff I talk about, but patented and with a giant price tag.
1 (23m 26s):
So now they're selling these things, especially for kids saying, if you spend a couple grand, here are products that, that slow the myopia progression. There's also lenses that flatten your eyeball while you sleep a contact lenses and temporarily give you a better vision. So also helps slow myopia progression. Again, these are, you're going to pay two grand a year for don't actually address the problem. Slow down, slow down. The problems created by their normal treatments, right? At, at a much higher price tag at a much higher profit. And don't stop the thing. But now they're kind of headed in that direction because the Mubea problem that creating is just unbelievable, right?
1 (24m 8s):
Like it it's, it's affecting everybody in the world. It's literally their treatment. So there is now there's the thing of, how about we make our treatment less bad, but we charge a lot more money for it. So it's modern medical science is amazing, right? Like there's just amazing stuff. Super cool. I'm a big fan. Like I'm not into conspiracies and I love what we can do, but when profit becomes involved, it gets super murky because then it's like, there's a lot of incentive to keep treating the symptom and not actually fixing stuff. Right? Like, so during this fine line of it's amazing, the day we live in, but you can't just blindly trust that whatever they're selling you is the right thing.
0 (24m 53s):
So my opiate is near-sightedness. And what about far side being farsighted? Is that a lot less prevalent,
1 (25m 1s):
Much less prevalent when your baby, but your eyeballs too short. This is your hyperopic. All babies to can't recognize the parents face up close early on. And that mechanism I sort of touched on axial change the length of the eyeball, the eyeball along gates in the baby's eye till the baby has clear vision. And that mechanism continues to work throughout your life. Anybody who tells you otherwise, Google scholar look that stuff up. Eyeball keeps adjusting in length till it's perfect. It hyperopia is much less of a problem because there isn't myopia is caused by muscle spasm and then the glasses, the opposite doesn't happen much.
1 (25m 42s):
So some people have hyperopia, but it's really uncommon, common as presbyopia. So once you get into your late forties, early fifties, the optometrist catches you to try to sell you glasses for close-up. Your closeup vision gets worse. The lens in the eye hardens with age and a focusing muscle has a harder time moving the lens for closer vision a little bit. And then they sell you reading glasses. And then you become dependent on reading glasses for people on that age range. I always recommend do not get reading glasses, try to keep the book a slightly bigger distance reading, good lighting or Paige. I mean a screen, whatever it is.
1 (26m 23s):
And don't become reliant on those things. Because once you are now, you don't have course efficient anymore either. And then if you're Emilia and presbyopia, now you're rank classes that correct for everything. And if you take them off, you just can't see anything.
0 (26m 37s):
What about LASIK? What about LASIK surgery? I know you touched on that and on the website a little bit,
1 (26m 44s):
Man. So I have a podcast, but because I suck at podcasts, it's not really, I don't do guests. We just have to only talk to people who are working on their eyesight. So generally not interesting to anybody unless you're working on your eyesight and you want to see what other people are doing. Call the podcast, like whatever, it's the name of your podcast? It's the short-sighted podcast, but I don't recommend it. It's really just a tool. Like if you're working on your own eyesight, here's other people are doing it. It's not, there's no a great benefit for it. But I had one guest ever like just a guest guest, the former head of the FDA surgical devices.
1 (27m 27s):
And this guy got LASIK approved. The actual man he's in his seventies now. And he's got this big Einstein hair going all over the place. The man at the FDA who put the final stamp on LASIK, had an hour chat with him. I did a terrible job. You should maybe talk to him, but he was amazing and shocking in all his revelations. Like the man got LASIK approved, like, don't forget, like this is the guy at the FDA. He spent an hour talking about the suicides caused by LASIK. The fact that the FDA didn't have any criteria for medical consequences, not. He said, literally the only requirement was that your eyeball wouldn't fall out and demand sided.
1 (28m 11s):
And I put them in the show notes, all, all his claims were he included references for everything. You're, you're cutting the eyeball. Like the structures, the structural integrity is compromised. You're cutting the nerves. So you have no pain sensations for up to a year. They may come back and then you have, may have pain. Who knows because the FDA didn't check for it, right? Like there is dry. He said 30% of the people have permanent dry eye, not replaceable again, not it wasn't part of the trials. It wasn't part of the testing. So basically if you do LASIK and you think it's safe because the FDA said, so I recommend either Googling Morris Waxler or having a listen to that episode before you consider LASIK, because it is far less, generally safe than people would have you believe.
1 (29m 2s):
Hmm.
0 (29m 3s):
Okay, good to know. And I noticed you talk about night vision training. I'm curious to know about that. What's that about
1 (29m 12s):
First year? Well, so what happens is a different part of your eye is working more actively in when you're in low light conditions. Also your, your pupils are wide open, right? So you have less of depth of field. So any imperfection in your distance vision that you have during the day that may not be that noticeable becomes much more noticeable at night. So it's not a main, it's not a real focus, but anybody who's got not. So great vision will notice a lot more at night. So the, the way to deal with that really is to improve your vision overall, which is going to improve your different diet patient also.
0 (29m 51s):
Gotcha. And, oh, so I know you mentioned a few things, tips and tricks. Anything else people should know for better eyesight on a day-to-day basis?
1 (30m 3s):
Measuring? I super recommend that little thing I said with the book and the measuring tape, if you do that, you're going to food, right? Like, cause your audience's really into food. Insulin spikes caused bad eyesight while you're having an insulin spike. We have a forum form is much bigger than a Facebook group of people where those implantable blood glucose monitor things, CGMs,
0 (30m 28s):
Continuous glucose monitor. Yeah.
1 (30m 31s):
Yeah. People crazy. And they, they measured the eyesight while they were also looking at the blood glucose. And whenever you'd have a spike, your eyesight is worse. Yeah. So measuring eyesight is kind of neat if you're into this sort of stuff, just because you notice how much it varies with your, with your food, with your sleep, with your stress level, with how much time you spent bingeing Netflix. And if you do that just casually and keep a little bit of a log and start seeing how much your eyesight berries, you start learning, which of your habits are really not good for you and then maybe make small adjustments. And I think it's a super fun way to assess the things in your life that you might be ignoring instead of having things that will be better for you, right?
1 (31m 18s):
Like it's just the measuring and just keeping a log might encourage you to go, well, maybe I'll do something different, right? Like how you might step on a scale or look at your visceral fat and goal, maybe it's time to eat different. It's a, it's a data point that reminds you that maybe it's some of the things you're letting yourself get away with. Aren't really in your benefit.
0 (31m 41s):
Because I think most people are under the assumption that as they age, they're just, their eyes are going to get worse. And like you mentioned, if you do these little steps daily steps that perhaps as you get older, your eyesight could actually improve and you won't need, you know, perhaps to do reading glasses or anything like that.
1 (31m 60s):
Yeah. I know lots of people that are that the age thing, right? Like I'm almost 50 now and I definitely don't need reading glasses or any kind of classes and that's anecdotal, but I deal with lots of people in the 50, 60 seventies. I think it's super fun. And some of the genuinely older people I deal with, I think get a huge kick out of imagine you're 80. Right? And now you're working on improving your vision. Super cool to have this for once in your life. Something's actually getting better. Yeah. I mean, and we're not quite there yet, but you will get to the point where you're like, it's not falling apart. Right? Like you're into a huge topic that prevents a of the falling apart.
1 (32m 40s):
And I think if you let your eyesight deteriorate, it's psychologically a big impact on you imagining yourself as old or getting older, super avoidable.
0 (32m 53s):
Yeah. I would assume that eyesight is somewhat tied to th th the overall health of the individual. I don't know what percentage of people who maybe are diabetic or pre-diabetic who perhaps have failing eyesight as well. Do you know anything behind that?
1 (33m 8s):
Yeah. Diabetes and myopia. Very much linked scientists, super clear on that. That if you have diabetes, you also have myopia. It's a system, right? Like the whole thing is tied together. The ophthalmology can do all kinds of interesting tests by just looking at the retina in your eye, the Blas blood vessels in the retina of your eye are very telling of all the health stuff too.
0 (33m 29s):
So first and foremost, individuals should maybe test their eyesight by like you mentioned, holding a book, does it matter what side of you just hold it right in front of you? And then you just measure like in centimeters, how far away it is until it starts to get blurry, is that right? And then you divide that by a hundred,
1 (33m 50s):
A hundred divided by that. Honey is the doctors of your bosses. Super simple, super simple. And there's nothing more to it. I recommend eye checkups. I recommend an ophthalmologist who is an actual medical doctor. If you want to do eye checkups, I am a big fan of that, but there's no need for the optometrist. And they get mad at me for saying that. But like, anytime you're trying to get a medical test in a shopping mall, you should maybe go on. Maybe that's not the place for this. Right. Like annual checkup at the ophthalmologist. But for eyesight, self measuring is super handy. Like you said, I don't know if I'm 20, 20, you know, buy one on Amazon or print line and find out
0 (34m 29s):
By
1 (34m 30s):
An HR. Yeah. And just hang it up somewhere. Also, you might notice that, right? Like you, you hang it up somewhere handy. And when your house, where you're reminded of it, put a little piece of tape on the floor for the correct distance. And then once in a while, just stand in front of it after you had a Netflix binge, and then you go on, that's not as good as it normally is. And then those little bits, it's just because you have data right now, because there's a big difference between going, this is probably not great for me. And your brain is like, yeah, we can get away with it. But then when you measure it and you're like, well, that's really not amazing. Then you might do something different.
0 (35m 6s):
So if you find that your eyesight's starting to get worse, like you mentioned some of the things that you can, what would be, I know you said a few already, but what would be some good things for people to do top it, like, obviously you mentioned going outside and playing golf or things like that where you sort of have to look far, anything else
1 (35m 25s):
Don't live somewhere where they do lock downs.
0 (35m 28s):
Yeah. Right?
1 (35m 31s):
Yeah. No, I'm joking. But also my email, my inbox has gone super crazy since all that happened because now people are really just sitting in front of screens and a lot of people having more sites, if your eyesight is getting worse and you're not 12 or four, and the ages where kids get introduced to screens or school homework, it's because you're probably using screens too much, you know, for one, get a checkup in general, that stuff is fine, but it's a clear sign that you're likely your habits have changed. And very likely is that you've becoming more of a screen addict. And you really want to address that. Like your vision should not be getting worse in your adult life.
0 (36m 12s):
And I would like, obviously this is reading help, improve eyesight.
1 (36m 18s):
No, it's actually the before screen life, like for old people like me, we just had books. Like that's when my Mubea started. It's good. Now you're spending a lot of time for the book, the muscles tense. You're the pseudo myopia. You get classes. So it's not, but reading is good for your brain. So like, I have a Kindle because if you read on your, on an iPad, then you get notifications and blah, and the screen's not as good. So I read on a Kindle. I still read a lot. But then when I'm done reading, I make a point of being outside. Right? Like usually I'll go to a coffee shop and read that takes me a motor bike ride or a bike ride somewhere. So when I'm done reading, I have that built in distance, vision time to get back to my house
0 (37m 2s):
With holding the book farther away from you, be a good thing to do, not having a too close to you.
1 (37m 8s):
Sure. Absolutely. There's in China. In some schools, they do this thing where they have this barrier that literally pops up in front of the desk. So the students can get too close. Like they have to sit up straight. So for one there's good posture. It can't get too close to the text. So the distance is key, right? Because the closer you get the title, that muscle gets literally like closer, closer, closer, because the, the light where the light converges on the retina, that point changes, right? So something has to adjust. So you keep seeing clearly, and it's that muscle squeezing that lens. So the further way to always do better.
0 (37m 45s):
Yeah. For anything, whether it's screens or books. So if you hit a golf ball that goes really far, you're having an advantage.
1 (37m 55s):
And I say this, and you laugh. You have a gigantic advantage because you have a hobby. And the word addictive is probably not the right word, but it's tempting you away from a screen because we live in this time now where just, there's nothing easier and quicker to fix your board and then reaching for the stupid thing and watching something that you forget three minutes later. I always tell people this and people so often don't get it is find a thing to tempt you away from the screen. Golf is perfect, right? Like you, you get to get all nerdy with all the golf clubs and you get to go drive to a course and you got to have friends like bread and all kinds of things that take up a pretty significant amount of time of your free time.
1 (38m 38s):
That all involve focus, distance, vision. Super good for you.
0 (38m 42s):
Yeah. And if you don't play golf, how I always talk about it, go out, go for a walk a few times a day. Right?
1 (38m 48s):
We are anything I'll tell
0 (38m 50s):
You what drives me nuts is people that take their dogs for walks and they're staring at their phone. I'm like, what's the point of that?
1 (38m 59s):
It's it's. Yeah. And I talk, I try not to get into this because I'm like, here's how to fix your eyes. And I don't want to be the dude preaching. I had addiction issues in my past because I made way too much money, way too early. And I get into the party scenes. And I agree with problems. Some say with very substances that I thoroughly enjoyed, right? Part of the problem is thoroughly enjoying it. People who have never had an addiction problem don't understand that they're addicted to the screen. It is an addiction. It has all the same symptoms. The only difference is nobody will shame you for it. Nobody will kill you for it. And everybody will say, it's fine. It's an addiction, right. If you can't walk your dog without bringing your phone to stare at it, you're having a real addiction problem.
1 (39m 42s):
Right. And that's, there's great books on that, but I recommend you read books on, treat it like a drug addiction, realize you're never going to get rid of it and realize that you can always have screens, but there's definitely a time to put that stuff down.
0 (39m 58s):
Yeah. I agree. What kind of book, what type of books do, is there a one or two that come to your mind that people can?
1 (40m 5s):
I know. And I just, as I set it on, like my dumb ass can't remember the title like Kindle is somewhere here. There's a super great book. I read really recently from a guy that, that explains that addiction is not a disease. And
0 (40m 21s):
Well, if you think about it, I'll think about it. Think about it. Let me know. I could always put it in the show notes.
1 (40m 28s):
Yeah. Put it in the S I S I saw recommended it was an awesome read because it explains how your brain is designed to desire is a huge part of the wiring of our brain. And it's supposed to be there. It's a big, it's a big element of food, right? Like food addiction is a serious thing, and it's just, there's desires built in and it's necessary. And you, you gotta have desire to live, right? Like I want to eat and we miss wire it by going, I'm going to eat this donut. And for a while, there's the two obvious explains on my bed. There's a part of your brain that goes, but we shouldn't eat a donut. And by eating the donut too often, too many times, you build wiring in, into your brain that circumvents this whole part of your brain.
1 (41m 13s):
That goes, yeah, but we shouldn't. And then you just do it. And now you're addicted, right? Because you literally miss wired your brain by doing this really tempting, really fun thing too easily, too off, and recovering that ability to go, do you know what? Not today is difficult, but manageable. And you can do it same with phones. Right? Like we go out to dinners and my rule is I pay, but nobody gets to bring the phone.
0 (41m 38s):
Yeah. Oh yeah. Dinners. Yeah.
1 (41m 42s):
Think we live in weird times. Like the thing really is playing golf, right? Like boredom is, is, is one of the greatest gifts you got to get bored. Right? Phone remove the boredom. Boredom is proceeded after boredom comes creativity or something, right. Like you'd never get into golf necessarily if you just grew up with a screen because you're like, ah, fine outside going somewhere. You're learning something. I don't think so. But you had to be bored enough at some point to go. I'm going to invest the effort that later will yield a reward.
0 (42m 19s):
And that's obviously we won't get all go all the way down this, but that's obviously a big issue with kids nowadays is the fact that they don't experience boredom.
1 (42m 27s):
Yeah. I found the book by the way, the biology of desire.
0 (42m 31s):
I liked that stuff. I'll take a look,
1 (42m 33s):
Super, super, super, super worth reading
0 (42m 35s):
Biology of desire. I'm always into that stuff. Well, Jake, this was definitely a different topic for my audience and something that I, I, I truly do appreciate where's the best place for, you know, people to find you
1 (42m 52s):
And myopia.org. It's, it's, it's a terrible destination. Pre-warning does a lot of inside human jokes, but since I'm not trying to make money or be famous, it's just because I like doing it, but it's a good starting point anyway. And it's an entry point of pretty big community. Lots of people are doing it. Lots of signs, lots of ways to go about it. Once you get past the, I make a lot of terrible jokes.
0 (43m 16s):
I've watched some of your YouTube videos. I've seen some of your terrible jokes though, but you have a whole community of followers and people. So obviously this is a relevant topic for a lot of people. So, and I do you offer like, coaching? It sounds like for athletes and people like that, or
1 (43m 35s):
No, not really. So there are courses that are available sometimes they're nice because they're structured and they offer support and stuff, but I don't do a lot of them just because I'm a little bit spoiled by my lifestyle in general freeway works great though. Yeah. I'd
0 (43m 53s):
Recommend that. What's what's that free the freeway,
1 (43m 57s):
The freeway free resources.
0 (43m 59s):
Yeah. Tons of free resources on and myopia.org. All right, Jake, all the way from Thailand. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
1 (44m 10s):
Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
0 (44m 13s):
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0 (44m 54s):
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