Today we are myth busting. I'm going to be breaking down the common eye and vision myths
that I hear all the time from my patients in the clinic to things I see on the internet,
which honestly get a little scary. So let's find out what's the truth and what's BS. First,
let's start off with the historical myths, the ones that we've heard since we were young kids.
Number one is that eating more carrots will improve your eyesight. This myth actually
started as World War II propaganda, and basically, people have believed it
ever since. But unfortunately, no, eating more carrots won't give you superpowers,
won't help you reverse your need for glasses or anything like that.
Carrots are a good supply of beta carotene, which your body converts to
vitamin A, and vitamin A is an essential nutrient. for the eyes and your vision,
but getting more vitamin A and having more beta carotene from eating carrots, again,
won't enhance your eyesight in any way. Unless you happen to be severely malnourished and deficient
in vitamin A and having night blindness, then yeah, having more vitamin A may help.
But again, it won't reverse your need for glasses or anything like that. Next is reading in dim
light. will ruin your eyesight. Again, this is a really old school myth. I've read this in an old
medical book from the 1800s even. And it makes sense because if you try to read in dim light,
you strain your eyes and that kind of hurts and you think it might ruin your eyes.
But no, simply trying to read in dim light means that your pupil dilates and you lose your depth
of focus and you end up causing more eye strain. But it won't necessarily cause
damage to your eyes. or make you need stronger reading glasses or anything like that. So if
you happen to enjoy reading or watching movies or playing video games in the dark, go right ahead.
It's not going to hurt your eyes at all. But you may notice less eye strain if you turn on
a light or two. Next up is sitting too close to the TV is bad for your eyes. I'll admit this is
one that I did when I was a young kid and my parents would always say, don't sit so close
to the TV. Let me know if you've ever gotten so close up to the TV that you saw the individual.
Like red, green, and blue colors, you know, where you see the individual
pixels on the screen. Let me know if you've ever seen that because, yeah,
I would, I would get that close as a kid. But no, there's nothing magical about the
TV that's causing damage to the eyes or anything like that. However, being indoors
for longer periods of time and looking at near devices, again, for longer periods of time is
associated with a higher risk of young children developing higher amounts of nearsightedness.
But as I've mentioned in some other videos, there have been studies showing that spending
at least two hours a day outside sort of negates a lot of those kind of influences
to develop more nearsightedness. And that's why you hear so many
doctors these days telling kids to put down devices and get outside a little bit more.
So in short, again, no, TVs not ruin your eyes. Next, 2020 means perfect vision. I actually did
a video once on what 2020 really means, and if you want to nerd out and know the, like,
exact definition, I'll put that link in the video description below. However,
2020 doesn't mean perfect vision. 2020 is really just kind of the standard vision, which, if you
have normal eyes, that are healthy and you've had a good visual processing center develop from when
you're a young kid, most people should be able to obtain and see a 2020 line on the vision chart.
But it's not uncommon for a lot of my patients to see better than 2020. I often get them seeing
to 2015. I've even had five or six patients in my career hit the 2010 line, which is twice as
good as the 2020. So no 2020 isn't. Perfect vision. It's just kind of the standard now
Let me know if you've heard this one that if you cross your eyes, they will stay that way
Obviously this one is not true when somebody does have a cross eye We call that having strabismus
and there's different types of strabismus But most cases are either congenital like somebody's
born with it or maybe after a few years of life a young child Who's maybe farsighted?
Learns that they can see better naturally by using their eye muscles,
but that causes their muscles to turn inward, and then maybe they'll have a preference for one
eye while the other eye is turned in. And, thankfully, if we catch that early enough,
we can prescribe proper glasses, and that'll straighten the eyes out and fix it.
Otherwise, when adults develop a cross eye, it's usually because of something happening
with the eye muscle, or perhaps one eye has lost vision or gone blind in a way from damage,
and then The good eye kind of takes over, hyperfocuses,
and the other eye ends up just kind of giving up and the eye muscles turn in.
But no, if you choose to cross your eyes a whole bunch, it may cause a lot of eye strain,
but it won't stay that way. Next up are the common questions and myths I get from
patients in the eye clinic. First is that wearing eyeglasses will make your eyesight worse. or make
you dependent on them. Now, wearing prescription glasses is not going to make your eyesight worse.
It's just kind of a cerebral, kind of psychological effect because wearing
glasses helps you see a lot better and clearer. And then when you take them off,
your brain is comparing how good it was seeing, like the high definition vision
with glasses. to how you were seeing without them and so you learn to prefer seeing really
well in sharp vision and so it's really just comparing those two, but it doesn't
necessarily push and make your eyes worse or again more dependent on needing the glasses.
Also in the need of needing stronger reading glasses as you get older, right, as we're over the
age of 40 people need reading glasses. And people notice, hey, at 40, they can maybe start at like
the plus 100 level, but by the time they're like 55 or 60, they need like plus 2 or 250. But that's
not because the reading glasses are making your eyes worse or more dependent, it's that normally,
just with age, You need stronger powers because the lens changes inside of the eye.
And really just that awareness is more of a coincidence. Next,
will phones and computer screens damage your eyes in any way? I think the answer
to this is pretty obvious because we all are staring at our phones and computers all day,
and nobody's really going blind from it. It's true that focusing on something up close,
like a computer screen, or maybe a cell phone that you hold really close to your face,
that will increase your risk for eye strain, and people tend to blink much less often.
when you're staring at these screens and that ends up translating to worse dry eye
symptoms. And maybe again for young children, holding things really close to the face for
long periods of time and remaining indoors may increase the risk for nearsightedness. Otherwise,
no, looking at these digital screens aren't really hurting our eyes long term.
And this kind of leads into the next myth. That blue light hurts our eyes.
Without going too deep into the science of it, the simple answer is no. The amount of
blue light that comes from your digital screens is not anywhere powerful enough
to really cause a biohazard or damage to the eye. The vast majority of blue
light you'll ever see in your lifetime, in fact, comes from the power of the sun.
sun. The human eye has evolved to have certain pigments in the retina in the back of the eye
to shield and absorb the high energy blue light from sources things like the sun and
the digital screens. These pigments are known as lutein and zeaxanthin and we get them just
naturally in our diets and basically work as an antioxidant and anti inflammatory
again to protect the eye from oxidative stress and damage from high energy light.
It's true that blue light does scatter more inside the eye, and often is attributed to
more problems with glare. And exposure to blue light is known to influence our sleep cycles,
and even our metabolism in some studies. Blue light glasses are still a thing,
and some doctors do recommend them for people with either eye strain issues,
or maybe they're concerned that they have a retinal disease,
and they just want to have as most protection as they possibly can against blue light.
However, I feel the eye care and medical communities have largely kind of Backed
away from the whole blue light glasses thing because it kind of got out of control Back in
2020 and we just have more research that has come out And so I think a lot of people are
kind of hesitant if blue light glasses are really necessary or not But again,
anecdotally some people still just love the blue light glasses And if you are worried
about blue light affecting your sleep best to just turn off the digital devices or at
least turn on kind Of the blue light filtering modes on most phones and computers the next myth
is that if you have astigmatism, you can't get contact lenses, and you can't get Lasik.
It's sad that we still hear this all the time because I don't think this has been
true for like 30 to 40 years. People with astigmatism can easily be fit into just
about any type of contact lens. Even the soft contact lenses now come in pretty high powers.
For correction of astigmatism and people with extreme levels of astigmatism, they may need
to go into a specialty lens, but they're still available and can help them see pretty easily.
And for people who are interested in lasik, yes,
astigmatism can be corrected with lasik, even opt to almost five diopters of astigmatism,
which is. a lot of astigmatism. Plus there's been many other procedures invented and
advanced that now can be mixed and matched with LASIK to help correct for astigmatism.
How about this one? Contact lenses can get stuck behind your eye. This is a
common fear I think everyone gets when you first get contact lenses, but no,
the eyeball has a clear membrane around it called the conjunctiva,
and there is no way for contact lenses to get through that and get stuck behind the eye.
Basically, the top of your eye is just a dead end, where things can get trapped up there,
but they can't get all the way behind the eye and get to your brain or anything like that. But if
you do ever get stuck with a lens way up there and you can't get it out, I did do a helpful
video kind of walking you through that process, and you can check that out if that ever happens.
And then, getting LASIK means you'll never need eyeglasses again. LASIK eye surgery will
permanently reshape the surface of your eye to help you see better. But, unfortunately,
by the time everybody hits about 40, 45 years of age, our lens inside the eye starts
to crystallize. And this becomes rigid, and it becomes very hard for us to focus on near objects.
That's why you see people needing things like reading glasses or starting to wear
the dreaded B word in eye care, bifocals. So if you've had in mind that you just get lazy,
it can be done with glasses and contacts the rest of your life,
unfortunately, that's just not realistic. At some point you may still need glasses.
later in your life, even after LASIK. Okay, now let's talk about the real interesting myths,
the ones that I see all the time here on the internet. First is that eye exercises
can reverse your need for glasses. I honestly wish this one was true,
because it would revolutionize the entire eye care industry, but it just doesn't work that way.
In fact, this myth has been around since the 1800s, maybe even longer, and you would think
in this many hundreds of years, we'd have some evidence. that this really did work. I always see
these kind of trending videos pop up in my feed of people trying eye exercises and they claim
that it helps, but it's always by somebody who has no idea what they're talking about.
And honestly, designing a study to show that eye muscle exercises would
even work would be pretty easy to design, and maybe, who knows? If you stick around,
subscribe to the channel. Maybe I'll end up doing a video on that this next year. Trying to prove or
disprove if eye muscle exercises actually do anything for your prescription at all.
There are some eye exercises that have been well studied and are used for certain eye conditions,
such as convergence insufficiency, for example. This is where somebody can't cross their eyes
appropriately and they always see double when they're trying to read. In those cases,
eye exercises known as vision therapy, orthotics or vision rehabilitation can
be prescribed and that will help somebody improve their eye muscle coordination.
And that can improve again, how they use their eyes,
but it doesn't reverse their need for glasses. Like it won't take you from being a minus two
diopter nearsighted to being back to zero. And I think anybody who's made videos and
claimed that they've been able to reverse their need for glasses. with those methods,
simply just have no idea what they're talking about, and if they did reverse it,
it happened because of some other mechanism, and not because of the eye muscle exercises.
Next myth is, sungazing improves eyesight. By sungazing, I mean people who purposefully stare
at the sun for a certain length of time. Sungazing has been part of several religious and sort of
naturopathic healing practices over time, but has never been shown in any research. to improve the
health of the eyeball in any way, and if anything is a high risk for permanent damage and blindness.
In fact, just a few months ago, I had a patient who came in with permanent vision
loss and having spots in their eyesight that never go away. Because they stared
at the sun. You know how if you take a magnifying glass outside, it'll focus
the light to a single point and you can burn ants or start a fire or something like that?
Well the lens inside of your eye magnifies the light exactly that same way and the sun rays
will focus to the retina and burn a hole in it, something that we call solar retinopathy. And
again, this can result in permanent vision loss and blindness. So absolutely not,
please do not stare directly at the sun, despite what internet health gurus may tell you.
Next, castor oil. Castor oil is good for the eyes. I've heard and read things on the
internet that castor oil could improve your dry eyes, it'll get rid of your cataracts,
it'll cure your eye floaters. It's true that castor oil is found as an ingredient in some
eye drops for dry eyes. Mostly because the oil helps tears not only stick to the eye,
but also prevents them from evaporating off of the eye surface.
But unfortunately, there is no evidence that getting castor oil and putting that in your
eye will permanently cure your dry eyes, or that it could even get inside the eye to cure things
like a cataract or eye floaters. Anybody who may have tried castor oil and noticed improvements
in their eyesight probably just noticed Improvement due to less dry eye symptoms.
I think the issues that eye doctors have about patients trying this on their own is because 1.
there's no real scientific studies to show that it works and 2. when you go online to buy castor
oil There's really no regulation of what's in castor oil or how it was made or stored And if
that perhaps is truly what's in the bottle and who knows what you're putting in your eyes at
that point But otherwise if you see people saying that castor oil will heal all these things on the
eye No, it's just a big ploy to try to sell you something and get your hard earned money.
Next up is N acetylcarnosine eyedrops for reversing cataracts. If you've never heard
of NAC eyedrops or this N acetylcarnosine eyedrops, these are basically working as
an antioxidant and have been kind of preached on the internet that again they can reverse
cataracts. Because a lot of cataracts that are forming inside the eye do form out of
oxidative stress and the idea is that if you're adding an Antioxidant to the eye then that'll
stop the cataracts from forming or even maybe reverse them That's at least the idea But again,
there are zero research studies really showing that this is true in any capacity In fact,
the inner eyeball already has a It has tons of antioxidant capacity, mainly through vitamin C.
In fact, the highest concentration of vitamin C in your whole body is inside of the eye.
But unfortunately, no, there's no evidence that NAC eye drops do anything. And again,
I think the people who are preaching this are just trying to sell you something and
make money off you. And the next is MSM eyedrops cure eye floaters.
If you've never heard of MSM eyedrops, this stands for methyl sulfonyl methane,
and these are eyedrops and kind of a supplement that's been around again
for a long time and is often preached by alternative medicine practices. This
is a naturally occurring compound that works as an anti inflammatory and again
an antioxidant and has often been seen to kind of be promoted to be helpful for eye floaters.
However, again, there are no studies showing that MSM eyedrops do anything
at all for the eyes. And with a lot of these alternative medicine eyedrops,
they've never really been studied, not only just for their effectiveness. and doing anything that
they're claiming to help with, but they've never really been studied for safety either.
So as an eye doctor, if you ever came in and you said you've been using this,
I'd always be like, eh, be pretty cautious because you don't know if
that's gonna end up causing a disease. And unfortunately, there's just a lot of
predators out there who will try to say and scam you and try to get you to buy anything.
So if you do ever see a product online or on social media, that seems too good to be true,
definitely talk to your local eye care professional about it, and ask what they
think if they've read anything about it. Because good chance it's probably BS. And then finally,
if you have good eyesight, you don't need to have an eye exam.
This again could not be more further from the truth. Just because somebody may have
good eyesight, maybe they can hit the 20 20 line when they're at the doctor's office or
maybe at a school screening or something like that. Or maybe you passed your driver's test.
That doesn't mean that you don't have an eye disease or some other systemic disease.
going on that could lead to blindness. In fact, blinding eye conditions like glaucoma
don't affect your 20 20 vision until the absolute end of the disease. And
a lot of people don't even know that's going on because they've never gone in to have an
eye exam to get their eye pressure checked or have their eyes studied and looked at.
In fact, last week I was able to catch diabetes in somebody who had no idea that they were diabetic.
And that was simply from just dilating their eyes. and taking a look at their retina. So yes,
please, even if you think that your vision is good, if you think that your children's vision
is good because they don't complain about it, that doesn't mean anything.
Please bring them in, get them officially, thoroughly checked,
make sure that not just that they're seeing their best, but that your eyes are healthy.
Having an eye exam is one of the least invasive procedures that you can have that
has the most health benefits and outcomes from it. Even health insurance agencies
know this, and that's why a lot of health insurances do cover an annual eye exam.
So at the very least, I hope after watching this video,
if you haven't had your eyes checked this year, Please schedule an eye exam. Okay,
so those were the most common eye health and vision myths that I've ever heard or could
find on the internet. Let me know if you have any questions or myths that you've heard of and
drop those in the comment section below because maybe we'll do a round two of this type of video.
Otherwise, if you want to learn more cool things about the eyes, such as how stress
affects our eyes and vision, I did a whole video about that that people seem to really love,
so I think you might like this one too. Check that out, and we'll see you in that video.