There's a lot of misconceptions around how we get back under our eyes. I always assume it's their stress name that's sleeping. So I did research a look into this, and a lot of people don't know this, but it's actually... Really?
Mm-hmm. So if I never want to get back into my eyes again, what is the natural easy solution? Try this. Dr.
Joseph Allen is the board certified eye doctor. Helping millions of people understand eye health and unlocking the secrets behind achieving sharper and healthier vision. Everyone is talking about what's having these conceptions because I don't know what's true. Sure.
Okay, so my vision loss being inevitable. Is that true? Unfortunately, there are changes that are with age that will change your eyesight condition. But there's a lot of things that can help prevent them to have slowed down progression.
We'll go into them. And then everyone's going to want my eyelids to off-twitching. What is that? I live my own kind of eye.
So that is your threshold of your stress. You have more sleep, it's not drinking so much caffeine. What about blue light? Is that harmful?
The blue light that comes from your digital screens has consistently shown a research to not increase the risk of aging eye disease. And the research on using blue light glasses shows that it could just be placebo effect. But if you're worried about how blue light's affecting you, just moving your phone back twice as far, it will decrease your blue light exposure by 75%. And more people are starting to care about that eye health and before.
But is our eye health getting better or worse? Of course. For example, right now, 30% of the world's population is their size. But by 2050, we will have about 50% of the inner-side because of our lifestyle.
So how much screen time being endorsed reading books up close is okay? It depends on age. So who are you? What do you do?
And I think most importantly of all, why is it so important that you do it? I am a doctor of optometry. I am a fellow of the American Academy of Optometry and I'm a diplomat of the American Board of Optometry. So I practice eye care here in the US.
And I see patients for all sorts of eye conditions, whether that be diagnosing, managing anything from vision problems simply as like nearsightedness or stigmatism to fitting contact lenses, to diagnosing different diseases in the back of the eye, and then prescribing medications or therapy to try and prevent that from getting worse or to help treat it. On top of all of this, I also host various, on various social media channels, an educational website about helping people learn about the eyes, their vision, and finding the best vision products. And that really falls back to my mission of just helping people see their very best today, but also keeping them see their best tomorrow. I mean, you think about where we are as humans as relates to our eye health.
Like, what's the macro picture? Like, what's going on? I don't know whether it's just because I'm getting older, but I'm wondering if more people are starting to care about that eye health than ever before, and if they are, why? And is our eye health getting better or worse?
I want to say that I think people generally are being more interested in eyes and vision. Unfortunately, part of that is probably because they're noticing more problems, right? People are starting to notice dysfunctions or more problems with their eye strength. They're noticing more problems with dry eye.
Children are starting to become nearsighted, faster integrated degrees. And because of those factors, we're also seeing a lot more eye health conditions in the back of the eye that also is reflected with other metabolic diseases like diabetes. Significantly causes damage and leads to potential blindness inside the eye. So there's a lot of factors to it.
What's changing? You know, you refer to some of the situations that are becoming more or worse, etc. That would suggest that there's something environmental within our lifestyle that's having an impact on that. So again, there's many factors that go into it.
Certainly just having an aging population, our population, a lot of people are starting to move into older age groups. We also have aftermath of poor diet. A lot of people with diabetes, high blood pressure, and other conditions that cause ripple effects down the road. And then our society has changed, especially in the form of lifestyle beyond diet.
Also, what we do throughout the day, how much time do we spend on devices up close? How much of our society is focused on education? And how much time do we spend indoors? All of these things are pushing us to, as a society, to have different changes within the eye and increase our risk for diseases and potential vision loss.
Why does it matter? You know, I ask that question because I think for people to spend time listening to all the education you give out, they first have to really believe that their eyes matter. And I know this sounds like a crazy question because we all can understand that seeing things is useful. But sometimes in life, I think we don't appreciate things until we lose them.
I think in your line of work, you must see that more than ever, no pun intended. Right. No, you're absolutely correct. And it's so frustrating as an eye care provider of how many patients or how many people just come in, because they finally notice something's wrong.
And usually by the time something's wrong, they notice it, it's already too late. And so one of the best things I can recommend for anybody is to, whether you think you have a problem with your vision, because a lot of people are like, I see great, I see fine, I don't need to see an eye doctor, it's like, no, you absolutely need to. There's so many different, not only just problems with your eyesight that we can catch, but there's so many, there's over 270 different conditions. Systemic and vision.